'You think that's how it works?'

'That's usually how it works.'

'Suppose I got killed tomorrow. What would you do?'

'I guess I'd send flowers.'

'Seriously.'

'Seriously? I'd check tax lawyers from Merrick.'

'There's probably a few of them, don't you think?'

'Could be. I don't suppose there's too many who spent a week in Barbados this month. You said he stayed at the next hotel down the beach from you? I don't think he'd be hard to find, or that I'd have much trouble tying him to you.'

'Would you actually do all that?'

'Why not?'

'No one would be paying you.'

I laughed. 'Well, you and I, we go back a ways, Elaine.'

And we did. When I was on the force we'd had an arrangement. I helped her out when she needed the kind of hand a cop could provide, whether with the law or with an unruly john. She, in turn, had been available to me when I wanted her. What, I wondered suddenly, had that made me? Neither pimp nor boyfriend, but what?

'Matt? Why did Chance hire you?'

'To find out who killed her.'

'Why?'

I thought of the reasons he'd given. 'I don't know,' I said.

'Why'd you take the job?'

'I can use the money, Elaine.'

'You don't care that much about money.'

'Sure I do. It's time I started providing for my old age. I've got an eye on these apartment houses in Queens.'

'Very funny.'

'I'll bet you're some landlady. I'll bet they love it when you come around to collect the rent.'

'There's a management firm that takes care of all that. I never see my tenants.'

'I wish you hadn't told me that. You just ruined a great fantasy.'

'I'll bet.'

I said, 'Kim took me to bed after I finished the job for her. I went over there and she paid me and then afterward we went to bed.'

'And?'

'It was like a tip, almost. A friendly way of saying thank you.'

'Beats ten dollars at Christmas time.'

'But would she do that? If she was involved with somebody, I mean. Would she just go to bed with me for the h.e.l.l of it?'

'Matt, you're forgetting something.'

She looked, for just a moment, like somebody's wise old aunt. I asked what I was forgetting.

'Matt, she was a hooker.'

'Were you a hooker in Barbados?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe I was and maybe I wasn't. But I can tell you this much. I was d.a.m.n glad when the mating dance was over and we were in bed together because for a change I knew what I was doing. And going to bed with guys is what I do.'

I thought a moment. Then I said, 'When I called earlier you said to give you an hour. Not to come over right away.'

'So?'

'Because you had a john booked?'

'Well, it wasn't the meter reader.'

'Did you need the money?'

'Did I need the money? What kind of question is that? I took the money.'

'But you would have made the rent without it.'

'And I wouldn't have missed any meals, or had to wear the panty hose with the runs in it. What's this all about?'

'So you saw the guy today because that's what you do.'

'I suppose.'

'Well, you're the one who asked why I took the job.'

'It's what you do,' she said.

'Something like that.'

She thought of something and laughed. She said, 'When Heinrich Heine was dying - the German poet?'