Page 31

He settled back in his chair. “Such as the stiff in the cellar. Firemen got there first. Now the cops’re in on it too, and the press looks hungry—bad publicity, Vosloo.”

I folded my arms. “What can I say? PR’s never been my area of expertise.”

Charlie stretched—a predatory gesture. Then again, he could make pouring coffee look predatory. Sure impressed Battaglia, though; he almost dropped a new-lit Camel down the front of his shirt, then burned his fingers trying to catch it before it set his chest-hair on fire.

“Okay,” Charlie concluded, at last. “We’ll play it your way. Maybe you didn’t know he was there. Maybe you did, but you got carried away. You’re an artist, right? But here’s the thing, baby—cops trace you, the egg ends up on my face.” A pause. “Get it?”

“They won’t trace me.”

“Care to take a bet?”

He raised an eyebrow. I simply smiled.

“Why, Charlie. And I always thought you didn’t like to lose.”

Smoke hung in the air between us. When I left, my clothes would stink all night of Battaglia’s cheap aftershave (Selsun Blue?), mixed with the lingering reek of struck, sulphur-headed wooden matches.

“Are we done threatening each other now?” I asked.

Charlie narrowed his eyes. “If I wanted to wish you harm, Vocloo, believe me—you’d be harmed already.”

Cute turn of phrase. But I didn’t want to disillusion him; life’s a scary enough proposition, as it is.

“Fine, then. What do you want?”

He shrugged. “Look, I don’t have time to deal with this crap—that’s what I pay my lawyers for. I got a busy night ahead, and no time to play Sherlock Holmes Junior.”

“So . . . ?”

“So—you do it for me. Or you kiss your commission goodbye.”

I glanced over at Battaglia, who quickly looked away, took out a pocket knife, and started trimming his cuticles. I glanced back at Charlie, my own eyes narrowing. “We have a contract,” I reminded him.

Charlie didn’t answer.

“A contract,” I repeated. “You shook on it, right in front of me.”

Battaglia began whistling in mid-tune, something that could have been “Camptown Races” on the world’s worst day.

“Just remember that,” I said. And left.

* * *

It happens all the time.

I saw a picture, once: Two legs sitting in front of a blank TV set, the skin of their upper thighs fried so crisp it had partially melted to the chair beneath. Nothing else. Just a big pile of ash and a black spot on the ceiling which—on closer examination—turned out to be rendered grease. Investigators later found a tooth, embedded deep in the off-centre of the TV’s shattered screen.

They call it spontaneous human combustion.

I used to wonder how it would feel, back then. A stirring in the stomach, like really bad indigestion? A warm breath on the back of your neck? A fine red seed at the base of your spine, suddenly slapped awake, like some fire chakra primed to spark and bloom?

And then . . .

. . . the wave.

Like lava. Like the airless heart of a furnace. Like Ground Zero.

Like love.