A few days before, Hardy could have said he didn't confuse them, they went together. Maybe they still did with him, but he had some figuring out to do. "I'm here about Maxine and Ray."

"Are you with the police?"

"No."

"Were you involved with Maxine?"

This time Hardy laughed. "Not how you might interpret it, but it was with Rusty Ingraham."

"Was he a friend of yours?"

"Why do you ask it like that? Is it so unlikely?"

Courtenay looked Hardy up and down. "Uh huh. Very."

Hardy thought on that a minute. "He's dead."

"What?" Clearly shocked.

Hardy told her about it. He let some silence hang. Then, "The wrong guy might be getting blamed. And I could be mixed up in that."

"A friend of yours?"

"Not exactly. The police have this guy in custody. He'd threatened to kill me, too." Hardy told her why, but also said he no longer had anything to do with the police or the law.

"So what's the problem if he's in jail?"

Hardy lifted his beer can to his lips, found it empty and sat down on the steps. Courtenay sat next to him. "I guess I want to be sure I believe it. I saw the guy today and got the feeling he didn't know what I was talking about." He paused. "He didn't know Maxine was there."

"So why are you here?"

"Because if the guy they got didn't do it, somebody killed a friend of mine and nobody's looking for him."

"Or her."

Hardy picked up his empty can again, shook it, found it empty. He looked far up at her. "You want to tell me about Ray?"

She dug out another cigarette and lit it up. "What's to tell?"

"If he's the jealous type, for example."

She blew smoke at the ceiling. "It broke his heart, I'll say that."

"Maxine and Rusty?"

She nodded. "He couldn't put it anywhere. Like, it's gotta be over or not, right? I mean, Maxine's practically living with this new guy, she's moved out, what does Ray think? But he couldn't accept it. You see that shrine to her in there? All those pictures-I think every damn composite she ever had done-and even after she's dead?" She huddled into herself. "It's kind of freaky, isn't it?"

Hardy didn't know if that was freaky or not. What he wanted to know was whether Ray had ever said he was going to do anything about it. Go get her back. Like that.

Courtenay shook her head. "He had to acknowledge it first, and he wouldn't do that." She blew out smoke, remembering. "Every day, he'd come by while Warren and I were editing. Always started out in control, how's the film going, blah blah, and then he'd see some shots of Maxine and get stupid."

"Stupid?"

"Like talk to her as if she were there. Argue with her, try to talk her into coming back, ask her on dates. Weird. So finally it just got too much. I mean, we're trying to get a film cut here and it's pretty intense, and Ray comes in-I don't know, last week sometime-and Warren just cuts loose on him. Tells him to get the fuck out until he gets it settled. Go see her, figure out what's happening and deal with it." She stubbed out the butt on the landing.

"So then?"

"So he left, and next thing you know Maxine is dead."

"Killed with Ray's gun."

She turned her eyes on him. "Is that true?"

"He says he'd given it to her when she moved out-for protection."

She seemed to be wrestling with something. "Well, I don't know about that... And the police haven't arrested him?"

"They think they have a better suspect. I told you."

She took that in. "Wow. He must be a good one."

"A black guy on parole who'd threatened to kill Rusty, and whose fingerprints were at Rusty's place."

She digested that. "Yeah, that's pretty good all right. I didn't think Rusty could kill Maxine. Warren thinks he did but I just... I don't know..."

"Let's go see if we can find out," Hardy said.

It reminded Hardy of college, sitting on the floor after midnight. Van Morrison was playing softly on the stereo. The Lambada people had gone home. Now it was just Courtenay and Warren, him and Ray. The other three were smoking marijuana, which Hardy hadn't seen much of in recent years. He told them he had a lung condition.

They were all in a corner in candlelight, Warren and Courtenay nestled together into a beanbag chair, Ray and Hardy on the floor. Hardy had switched to water after his fourth beer, filling up the Silver Bullet can about half a dozen times.

The talk was about the movie business, minor league. Warren had gotten four or five investors together and raised close to $200,000, which by Hollywood standards, Warren said, wouldn't make a decent short but got the forty minutes of soft porn, featuring Maxine, they'd watched earlier. Ray's script was at least a credit and could help him get pitch-meetings with 'real' studios down in L.A. Warren gave Courtenay and himself a salary for directing and editing, and Warren got producer points, which probably explained his new clothes, the Movado watch and, Hardy surmised, his arm around Courtenay.

It was, Hardy saw, the entire world for these people. Everything was about could it work or not in a film.

Hardy stretched out on the floor. Courtenay put her foot on his, careful to make it seem casual. "Why's it always a 'film'? What ever happened to the good old movies?" Hardy asked. "I thought film was the stuff inside the camera."

Warren looked wounded. "No. Film is videotape, television. Jesus."

"Sorry."

"It's an important distinction," Ray said.

"Sure," Hardy agreed. "I get it. Film is for videotape. But tape is the film used to make a film. A real film, like a movie." Courtenay pressed his foot. "In the camera, I mean." Hardy figured he might be getting a little contact-high. He wiggled his toes.

"By Jove, I think he's got it," Courtenay said, playing Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

There was silence between songs, then a low, soulful saxophone began wailing.

"Sounds like somebody crying," Ray said.

"Can you blame her?"

Ray sat up. "Who?"

Warren snorted. "Who else?"

"Hey, come on!"

"You killed her, Ray," Warren said. "You come on."

"She's not here!" Ray was pretty stoned. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look around," Warren said. "She's more here than we are."

The saxophone crescendoed. Hardy found himself, like the others, staring at the many faces, bodies and poses of Maxine Weir. It was eerie. In the candlelight, occasionally a flicker would make an eye appear to blink, a cheek seem to twitch.

"I didn't," Ray said.

Courtenay rearranged herself. "He didn't," she said to Warren.

Warren shifted to stoke up another joint. "Come on. The brace was so obvious. I wouldn't never let that go in a film."

"What's obvious?" Ray asked.

"You might as well have told everybody it was you."

Hardy was now carefully watching them both. Ray just shook his head. Warren passed him the joint, continuing, "Everybody knew she didn't need the brace anymore. Putting it on her..." He spoke now to Hardy, explaining. "The whole thing started with the other guy, Rusty, because of the insurance, the accident, you know?" Then back to Weir. "It's too obvious, Ray. You need to be more subtle."

Hardy wondered if Warren thought Maxine's death was some kind of joke, some rehearsal for a scene. He'd seen her, dead and naked, neck brace and all, and there hadn't been anything sexy or funny about it. But he kept quiet.

"He didn't do it," Courtenay insisted. "Leave him alone, Warren."

"I was here all night," Ray said.

"You were not. I know because I was here all night. Sitting on the steps drinking a six-pack, waiting for you to come home."

Even in the dimness, Hardy could almost feel Weir's eyes shift. "Maybe I was asleep. I don't remember."

"How many people, you think, don't remember what they were doing the night their wife died?"

"Leave him alone, Warren."

"Well, I'm one of them," Ray said. "I just know I was here. I didn't go out. I told the police that."

"The police have got somebody else," Courtenay told Warren.

"They're dreaming, then," Warren said.

All this, almost friendly, casual in tone. Low-key, the joint going back and forth, Hardy listening, watching the three of them toss it around as though it were hypothetical. What got to Hardy, though, was the fact that Ray's wife, whom he supposedly loved even unto death, was hardly cold, was being cremated the next day, and Ray wasn't sad. Not at all.

He finally spoke up. "I know the guy they got, and they're not exactly dreaming."

Warren exhaled, into his theory now. "Yeah, well, Maxine dies, Ray isn't where he says he is, he puts a neck brace on her to tell his friends-"

"That's just bullshit, Warren." Warren waved it right off.

"-to tell his friends what he's done, what a mensch he is, for God's sake, so the message is out you don't fuck around with Ray Weir. Especially if you're his property."

Ray stood up, a little wobbly. "Everybody's going home," he said. The casual tone was gone.

Warren ignored him. "And to top things off, Ray now gets eighty-five grand insurance money all to himself to start financing his next film, which he already talked to me about."

"What are you trying to do, Warren? Get Ray arrested?"

"What?" Genuinely startled. "Who's going to arrest him?" Hardy, on his feet, found himself suddenly the center of attention. "Not me, gang. I'm a private citizen. Scout's honor."

"Shit," Ray said, "I've had enough of this. I'm tired."

"But you're getting eighty-five thousand dollars?" Hardy asked.

Ray shrugged. "It's no secret. Maxine's insurance." Warren and Courtenay were also up now. Hardy backed up a step and took in the trio. "If you're so sure," he said to Warren, "why don't you turn him in?"

Warren crossed over to Ray and draped an arm over his shoulders. He smiled. "One doesn't turn in one's friends. And Ray and I are friends. Now we're doing business too. You just like to have your partners be straight with you, that's all."

"I am being straight." It came out like a whine. Warren looked at Ray. "I love you, man, but you are not being straight with me."

Ray cast a pleading glance at Courtenay, who put her hands deep into her pockets and tossed her head. "Come on, Warren," she said. "Whatever it is, it's not Maxine. He's allowed to have some secrets."

"Yes, can't I have a little private life? A little love life?"

"Sure. If that's it. Why don't you just tell me?"

He looked at his shoes. "I'm not exactly proud of this, Warren, but okay, maybe you ought to know. We are partners... I heard you knocking out there. I, uh, I had someone with me. A woman."

Warren backed up a step. "So what's the problem? You couldn't tell me about having a woman over here? I know her?"

Ray shook his head. "She was like-" he stopped. "I paid for it."

Courtenay stepped in. "Ray felt guilty about it, Warren. Can't you understand that?"

"But he told you?"

"He got it off his chest."

Warren draped an arm over Ray. "What's to feel guilty about, man? We're friends. You can tell me."

Ray shrugged. "You know, with Maxine and all..."