Page 21 of Slow Burn

“What do you mean, what else?”

“Well—” He gave her an under-the-lashes look, an aw-shucks-ma’am look of discomfort. “Well, I can’t just take this back to my editor. I mean, you know, he’s kind of a hard ass. I need—more. For the amount of money I paid you, I mean.”

“I don’t—”

Lenny stared at her with eyes as blue as a Disney character. He smiled. Dimples. His expression clearly thought he was adorable.

“Um …” He leaned conspiratorially forward over the table and tried for a sexy whisper. “Maybe I could, you know, let it go. For a consideration. Give you the, you know, the rest of the money.”

She smiled, a seething lazy smile, and under cover of the table put her foot up and rubbed the toe of her shoe along the inside of his thigh, right up to the crotch. She gave him a slow gentle pressure, just enough, and when she was sure she had his attention, she flicked her toe up. The sharp point of her four-inch stiletto heel dug hard into his balls.

“You know,” she said, “come to think of it, there may be a few things I could do to you for a couple hundred. Want me to give you a free sample?”

Lenny’s face turned the color of old paper. The plastic bench seat made popping sounds as he tried to press himself back through it. She wiggled her heel deeper and balanced her leg comfortably on the seat, ready to shove hard.

“You’re going to be a good boy, aren’t you, Lenny? I would hate to think you were trying to take advantage of me. Reach in your pocket and take the money out and put it on the table. Now.”

He licked his pale lips and nodded.

“Um, could you—you know—move your foot first?”

“Nope, sorry, not possible.”

He gingerly eased one hip up off the bench and dug in his pocket, until she heard the sound of crackling paper. He slid an envelope over the edge of the table toward her. She counted it slowly; when she felt Lenny getting restless, she jabbed him a little, and he settled down.

“I don’t like it when assholes like you try to shake me down, Lenny. Now we’re even.”

“Well, not quite.” His voice wasn’t steady, but he was making a good run at it, and she eased the pressure in his crotch a little. Relief spilled over his face like water. “Uh, look, what you gave me is good, sure, but I need more. I need—somethinggreat.Something I can run with.”

“Even if I have to make it up?” she asked, and drained the last of her Ginseng Special, a mouthful of sweat and bubbles. He attempted a grin.

“Well, you know, my editor—I really need the story. I’m desperate.”

“Okay.” She took her foot completely out of his target area and crossed her legs. He crossed his. She leaned forward.

So did he.

“I think,” she said, and widened her eyes, “I know who killed him.”

Chapter Eight

Velvet

She felt like an alien from outer space at the library. People stared at her with that weird what-the-fuck-is-she-doing-here look, even the shuffling drunks with their paper bags, and the librarians—Jesus, you’d think she’d come in with a spinning chainsaw and a severed head. The cops—there were so many on duty at the doors you would have thought the fucking President was in the Periodicals—eyed her like they were measuring her for mug shots.

Velvet sat down in an orange 1970’s chair too ratty for a yard sale, and tried to figure out where to go. Hell, she hadn’t been in a library since her sophomore year in high school, when Miss Ardelia Ferguson had made her write a paper on salmonella. A long-haired guy in a ratty old army jacket shuffled toward the magazines—wino, looking for a place to snooze. A yuppie-looking asshole in big-butted Dockers and a ski jacket insulated with shredded twenties asked the librarians about financial statistics—she yawned, on reflex. A guy came by looking for newspapers.

Ah.

She got up and followed him to the elevators, up to the third floor. He sneaked little glances at her lace-inset blue jeans, her high-heeled red shoes, and gave her a smile small enough to have come off a chihuahua. She gave him a go-to-hell-you-asshole look. He shrugged and wandered off to the right.

Newspapers. She looked around at the shelves, the stacked papers, and started pulling things out at random. The smell of ink and cheap paper was kind of nice, after a morning of sniffing wino’s b.o.—soothing. It reminded her of Dad reading the farm reports in the morning. There was a very small difference between soothing and boring.

She found a two-day-old Dallas paper and carried it over to a chair, checked through it page by page until she found the article about the unidentified dead guy at the hotel. She checked the next day’s paper, but there was nothing. He hadn’t even been unusual enough to rate a second notice. They were calling it some kind of smoking accident, the assholes—burying it, whatever it was. She stuffed the paper back haphazardly in the slot and found the new one, today’s paper.

Nothing. She kept turning pages, checking out police reports, the occasional fashion item, dress sales. She lingered over a three-for-one on shoes.

Obituaries.

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