I pointed to a chair and watched her sit down. She looked around my office. "It's not much," I said, "but it's more than I can afford. Let me get you a drink."

     I walked to the filing cabinet and took out my bottle of Cutty Sark. I picked up two glasses and an entire bag of ice from the office fridge. After I made the drinks I put the bag of ice on my hand.

     "How did you hurt your hand?"

     "I hit it against something that was harder than it was."

     Lily reached into the fur and took out a small, fuzzy ball. She held it up to the light. "Do you recognize this man?" It was a shrunken head.

     "That looks like Father Michael. He used to run the rescue mission down by the waterfront. He disappeared about a year ago. Don't tell me, I think I can guess. He knew too much." Lily nodded. "So, what's the connection between you and Tony Bongo?"

     "I can't answer that," she said.

     "You mean you won't answer that."

     "No. I meant exactly what I said. If I answered your question, it wouldn't mean a thing to you. Not unless you know a lot about Quantum Physics."

     "Quantum who?"

     "Instantaneous action at a distance. Collapse of the wave function faster than the speed of light. Correlation of events widely separated in time and space. Any of those things ring a bell?"

     "Negative."

     "Then let's just say that Tony Bongo and I are entangled."

     "I see. Does his wife know?"

     "Not entangled that way, quantum entangled. If you see Tony Bongo, it means that you'll definitely be seeing me too."

     I thought over her story for a moment as I took a long pull off the Sark. It was the screwiest bit of malarkey that I'd heard in a long, long time. "In that case, I hope I'll be seeing a lot of Tony Bongo," I said. "I get forty dollars a day, plus expenses." Lily reached into the fur again and pulled out two Franklin's. As she handed them to me everything slipped a wee bit. Lily wasn't wearing anything beneath the fur, nothing at all.