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“Trouble flying?” I asked.

“Oh, no. It’s just that we couldn’t get our publisher out of there. He sat in on the interviews and developed quite a case on the lead singer. Before we left, he insisted on going into town and buying her candy and flowers. I think it’s a true case of East meets West and falls apart.”

“What does she look like?”

“A sight to behold,” Diana said. “You have to understand this is a punk band, so what you might think constitutes feminine beauty may be somewhat out of date. So imagine a six-foot blonde with a hairdo like Harpo Marx and a safety pin through her nostril. When we were there, she was wearing what looked like a scuba divers outfit—only in red leather. I thought Shiu was going to try to climb her like a tree before we left.”

“Sounds gorgeous. What’s her name?”

“She grew up as Martha Korpak, but now its Sister Song. The band is called Post Partum Repression, and she fits right in with them. But you’ll see them—they’re winding up down there tonight, and Shiu arranged to have them come early and appear at the paper to meet their fans tomorrow afternoon. I hope somebody alerts the National Guard. But hey, I’ve got to get going on this.”

I left Diana and wandered around the newsroom for a while before deciding to take an early slide. I got a few up on the rush hour at the Next Door and was tracking a bit fuzzily when Sam Darlington came in.

“Hey, Liz called in. She’ll be back to work tomorrow,” he said. “I guess her old man is better.”

I didn’t know if that meant something or not, but it didn’t seem to matter as much as seeing if I could get ahead of the bartender’s efforts to keep the beer cooler stocked. He won, as usual, and I lurched over to the park about midnight to get a cab home.

I wasn’t very quiet when I arrived, but when I went into the bedroom, Liz was curled up and breathing steadily. She even could have been sleeping. I debated with myself whether to wake her, but couldn’t think of anything coherent to say and just flopped down beside her. I remember thinking, if I snore tonight, it’ll serve her right.

She was up and showered before I could even open one eye the next morning. When I finished in the bathroom, she came up and kissed me hard on the mouth before she said a word.

“Your toothpaste turns me on,” she said. “Come on, coffee’s ready.”

“You going to tell me where you’ve been for the last two days? I thought maybe they got you, too.”

“Come on, Bob, you knew I was all right. Mr. Creston said you called. I didn’t call back because I just didn’t want to talk about or even think about it all for a while. It was starting to get to me.”

“So where’d you go?”

“I went to see some friends.”

“Who?”

“Now wait a minute. I went to see friends from school. I’ve got some, you know. Kids, like me. Don’t give a damn types. Like me. You wouldn’t like them.”

I felt like a shit and not just from the previous night’s effort to create a boomlet in Stroh’s stock. “Liz, I’m sorry. I was worried and I am hung over. Bear with an old man’s suspicious mind.”

She smiled. “You’ll never have a reason to be suspicious. I’ll tell you if something is happening that changes us. I’m not good at keeping secrets or telling lies.”

“Enough said.” I sipped the coffee and could feel life returning. It made my headache feel more real.

I dropped Liz at the paper and drove over to the state-house. I spent the morning sucking up more coffee and trying to shut out the sound of the pressroom card game. I felt good enough by midday to go outdoors and went by the paper to see if anyone was interested in lunch.

There was a black Cadillac limousine parked in front of the building. I could tell from the plates that it was a rental job.

“We got visitors?” I asked Darlington when I got up to the newsroom.

“Not we, Shiu. He went to the airport to pick up the singer lady and gave her the grand tour of the place. Diana thinks he must have given her airfare, because the band travels by bus. They’re supposed to be showing up here this afternoon.”

Darlington was the cool cat on the staff, single and devoted to girl-hunting vacation expeditions to Acapulco and the Caribbean, but he was clearly impressed by Sister Song. “Boy, what a piece of work that is. The last time I saw shorts that short was in Times Square, and the last time I saw a girl that big she was a he.”

“Shiu’s got himself a queen?”

“No, this is a real woman. A real-big-real-woman,” Darlington said with enthusiasm. “Susan Anton would cry for envy. Jayne Kennedy would hide in a closet. Brooke Shields would go home for her high heels.”

“My God, where is this basketball player?”

Darlington turned back to his computer screen. “With Shiu. Upstairs, I guess.”

I shopped for lunch companions and found no one. Liz was out on assignment. So I went down the block to Angelina’s and sat in the front window munching a foot-long and slurping a Coke. I could see the newspaper building and in about ten minutes Shiu came out with Sister Song.

Sam hadn’t been exaggerating. She was shorter than the Statue of Liberty, but better built. Shiu’s head came to her belt, and if she hadn’t bent from the waist to hear what he was saying as he escorted her to the car, he would have been giving a navel address.

I went back to the Capitol. Liz called late in the afternoon, and I swung by the paper to pick her up. We headed for a rib joint just outside town.

“I was working out at Turg’s this afternoon,” she said. “They were setting up for-the concert, and I did a couple of features for tomorrow’s story. We sure are giving this thing a lot of space.”

“Well, you know Swift. He doesn’t do anything halfway.”

“I’ll say. Before I went out I heard him telling Grace we were going to give the concert a full page Saturday. And a funny thing, he said, That ought to satisfy the little gook bastard.’ It sounded like he really hates Shiu.”

“Could be. Mr. Moto apparently gave him a sixteen-inch reaming on that football player story.” I thought a moment.

“Maybe that’s the way to break out something on Frank. I’ll tell Phlager tomorrow morning.”

Liz had her head down and I touched her arm. She looked up with wet eyes. “Oh, Bob, do you think anything is going to help? It’s been almost a week. I just don’t think…”

“Liz, don’t give up now. He’s gone, but we don’t know anything else has happened. It’s a long time ahead that we have to stop hoping he’s all right.”

To change the subject, I asked, “Were you back when the band showed up at the paper?”

“Oh, God, I was just coming back and I got caught in the middle of it. The crowd was so big they had to block the street off and when they showed up in their beat-up old bus, the kids nearly tipped it over trying to get to it.”

“Did you see the singer?”

“No, she wasn’t there that I could see. Rick says he heard Shiu set her up in a hotel suite and that she went back to rest after she visited the paper. He says Shiu went somewhere to rest this afternoon, too.”

“Ah, the molehill travels to conquer the mountain,” I said.

“Yeah,” Liz said. “What is it about you short men that makes you get so horny about tall women?”

I sat up straight in the car seat. “I am not short. I may have been of medium size until Shiu arrived, but now I am tall. And anyway, women of all sizes make me horny.”

“We’ll see about that after dinner,” Liz said.

CHAPTER 14

When I got to work Friday, there was a message to call Phlager. I have to admit I was worried about returning the call; despite what I had told Liz, I didn’t expect good news.