Riker waited out the silence. Finally, the whores rallied, for they had other unresolved issues. ‘So tell me what happened to the horse,’ said Minnie. ‘OF Blaze rolled off a cliff at the end of one book. At least tell me the horse didn’t die.’ ‘Well,’ said Riker, ‘I know it looked like old Blaze was goin’ sour, but the horse came back in the next book. Now this Indian girl – ’ ‘Gray Bird? The one who loved the Wichita Kid? He talks about her in most of the stories.’ ‘That’s the one, yeah. She nursed the horse back to health with magic and herbs. The girl died, but the horse was good as new.’ ‘Ain’t that romantic?’ ‘Yeah.’ Mallory left the building and walked past her car, heading for the next block and her office at Butler and Company. It was trash collection night, and the street was rimmed with garbage and a rancid stink. As she passed each metal can, something slithered away in the dark. Eyes shut tight, she pressed her hands over her ears, trying to kill the sound of rats’ feet scrabbling across a rotted wood floor, racing one another to the fallen, bleeding Sparrow. She could not lose the smell of kerosene, smoke and burning skin. Stopping by a payphone, she fed coins into the slot. Mallory dialed three random numbers and then the four she knew by heart, though she had not performed this ritual since childhood. The phone was ringing, and she felt the same excited anticipation. But why? Was it comfort she expected at the other end of the line? A woman answered, ‘Hello?’ One more stranger out of a thousand calls from the street said, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ Mallory had not forgotten the ritual. She knew what came next, the words, It’s Kathy, I’m lost, but she could not say them anymore. ‘Hello?’ The stranger’s voice was climbing into the high notes of alarm. Oh, lady, can you hear the rats on the telephone line? Charles abandoned his previous theories. The child had neither believed in heroes, nor had she relied on fictional people for friends. Far from it. She had once ruled a stable of prostitutes bound to her by stories. It was an ancient lure dating back to the cave, the need to know what happens next. Brilliant child. He pulled another chair into his cubicle for Gloria and Maxine. The women were not related, but resembled one another and even dressed in twin red halter tops and shorts. They were younger than the rest. Their makeup was low key, and they were not battered where it showed. The two prostitutes had insisted on being interviewed together. ‘We do everything together.’ Gloria’s smile was very friendly. ‘Everything, hon.’ On request, Charles was about to finish a story begun in The Cabin at the Edge of the World. ‘And don’t tell us that preacher made it rain,’ said Gloria. ‘Oh, no, nothing like that. When Wichita comes out of the fever, the cabin is still in flames. Now if you recall the clifflianger in the previous book – ’ ‘Like we’d forget that,’ said Gloria. ‘The farmers think the old woman’s a witch and she caused the drought. They move burning bushes in front of all the windows and the doors. Every wall is on fire, and Wichita’s dying. That’s what the old woman thinks. So she gets down on her knees and screams to God for mercy.’ ‘Right,’ said Charles, recalling the final sentence, ‘ „A scream that shivered the stars in the firmament.“ Well, in the next book, Wichita wakes up and soaks the old woman with a bucket of water. He slings her over one shoulder, then leaves by the front door. Walks right through a wall of fire.’ And now he thrilled the prostitutes with another quotation from the page, ‘„… stripped to the waist, his long golden hair flying in the wind and burning with sparks, his skin steaming with the burnt sweat of his fever.“ It’s an imposing sight on the heels of a very loud prayer from the old woman. Now the fake preacher gets religion. He falls down on bended knee and declares the outlaw is an angel. Well, as you can imagine, that gives a few of the farmers pause. Then the Wichita Kid draws his six-gun, and the rest of them have second thoughts about this business of witch burning.’ The prostitutes were enthralled. ‘The Kid walked through fire.’ ‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘But then, toward the end of the book, he guns down another man.’ ‘Oh, he always does that,’ said Gloria. Apparently, this credential of a serial killer was a character flaw she could live with. ‘So the Wichita Kid walked through fire.’ ‘Now,’ said Charles, ‘I believe you mentioned running into Sparrow recently.’ ‘Last week,’ said Gloria. ‘Maxine and me, we were cruising for Johns at the computer convention in Columbus Circle. Sparrow was there. Wasn’t she, Maxine?’ ‘She was.’ Maxine resumed chewing her gum. ‘She was workin’ the crowd, same as us,’ said Gloria. ‘But nothin’ obvious – no flash. She didn’t look like a whore no more. She looked real nice, didn’t she, Maxine?’ ‘Very nice.’ ‘Excuse me,’ said Charles. ‘Did you ladies notice anything odd that day? Something out of the – ’ ‘You mean Sparrow’s new nose job? Or the guy who slashed her arm with a razor?’***