Lucky's teeshirt almost didn't make it through the vent window, but I gave her a boost --at which she grimaced appreciatively-- and made it down the alley to the front end of the building and back around the block and up the street. Whoever the dude in the stretch limo was, he obviously wasn't working the pro line in his recce, so I put him out of mind. We needed a quiet place to work out what we were going to do next; if the information in the two notes was right, we were short on time and long on necessity.

"Ya wanna come up to my place?"

Lucky just turned up her sweet upper lip, and looked over her shoulder.

"Thanks, sweetie, but I'd just as soon go back and thumb a ride with Mister Rentalimo back there!!"

"Thanks. We have life and death nipping our buns and you still have time for wisecracks, huh?"

"You got a better suggestion?"

"Your place?"

"You haven't met my roommate, have you?"

"Should I?"

"Not if your jolly-bag has any particular meaning to you...."

"Oh."

We took a few carefully chosen ramdom corners and ducked into a small cafe, where a forty-year-old waitress gave us a couple of stained plastic menusleeves with mimeoed lists inside them, the price column stained with several decades of white-out, and warned against the Spanish omelette. We slipped into a booth in the shadowed back end of the greasy dive and settled down on the warm red naugahyde banquette seats. We were sweating. But it was airconditioned.

"OK, bright-eyes, what's your read on it?"

I waited while she took a deep breath, several times. I was oping she would do it again, but she leaned over and started speaking in a low whisper that captured all my attention...