 Our first reader today, this afternoon, for the Mysterious Men and Women Hour, which is mystery, crime, and thrillers, so prepare to be at the edge of your seat. If you're not currently on the edge of your seat, move up a little. Our first reader is Michelle Gagnon, and she is a former modern dancer, bartender, dog walker, model, personal trainer, and Russian supper club performer. And I don't think she's done all of those things at once, but I'm sure she'll tell us if she has. Her debut thriller, The Tunnels, was an IMBA bestseller. Her next book, Boneyard, depicts a cat and mouse game between dueling serial killers. Please welcome Michelle Gagnon. Okay, so I don't know if the edge of your seat is quite as appropriate for this story. I'm actually going to read a short story. It's the first piece of crime fiction I ever wrote, so it holds a really special place in my heart. And I haven't really done anything with it yet. When they asked me to read, I thought about this piece. It's called It Ain't Right. It Ain't Right is all I'm saying. Joe just kept walking the way he always did. Shovel over his shoulder, cigarette clinging to his bottom lip. You hear me? He stopped and turned, lifting his head inch by inch until his eyes found my hips, then my breasts, then my eyes. A dust devil word away behind him, making the bottom branches of the tree dance like girls on Mayday, up and down. He stared at me long and hard, and I felt the last heat of the day seeping into my skin and down through my bones, reaching inside to meet the cold that burrowed in my stomach early that morning. She's dead, ain't she? With his free hand, he scratched his belly where the bottom of his Joe's diner shirt had pulled away. Yeah, but just because she's dead don't mean she should be put down like this. He looked past me towards where the road met the hill and dove behind it, wheat tips glowing pink in the twilight. What else are we going to do with her? We stared each other down while the shadows crept in, and the last of the day's heat eased into the darkness like air escaping a balloon. Night surrounded Joe's head, digging under his cheekbones and into his eye sockets, carving out the face that had been so handsome years earlier I swore he could have been in pictures. I turned and shuffled back to the house, kicking up bits of pebbles and dust with my slippers, crossing my arms against the cold that radiated out like there was a snowball growing inside me. He was gone a long time. The six o'clock news came and went, then Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and me checking the clock every five minutes, getting up from time to time to peer past our fading curtains. It was always so quiet at night. I swear the TV was the only thing keeping my head screwed on my shoulders. Law and Order was on when he finally came in, bolted both locks and went to the sink without so much as a word. He washed his hands for a long time. I stared at the screen, trying to figure out why the girl was crying over someone that, from the look of things, she hadn't much liked anyway. He plunked down beside me and made the same sigh as his beer when he popped it open. So it's done then. Yup. And that was the last we spoke of it. But once that cold burrowed inside me, it seemed dead set on staying. It got so I couldn't watch Joe standing in a towel with the mirror all steamed over, shaving in that slow, careful way he did everything, without wanting to sock him over the head with something. I kept washing his clothes and making his dinner. But when he entered me, I stared right up at the ceiling and endured his gasps and cries without a word, both of us trying to pretend that there wasn't another person lying there with us, when both of us knew that there was. Winter made it better somehow, made it so I couldn't imagine her trying to claw through the roots and soil to the air. I knew she was done then, that she wouldn't be able to come after us, at least not till spring. I figured maybe we'd move, head to the city like we always said we would when we were young, and such things still might just happen one day. I had almost put it out of my mind, had managed a smile for Joe when he showed up with a new scarf and mittens in my favorite periwinkle, when blue and red lights pulled into our driveway. The police didn't say much, disproved our eyes while they asked, did you know such and such? Ever hear what went on over there? Any word on who she was seeing? Joe did most of the talking, smiling a little too large, taking so long that you could almost hear him spelling it out in his mind before the words left his lips. Good-looking young men, I thought, always so handsome in those uniforms, so shiny. Then I caught myself twisting the dish towel around and around my hand. She's the type, I heard myself saying. What type's that, ma'am? Trying me now, the older one with the small mustache. Loose, you know, she'd head off with any talent that came down the road. Since the day she was born, dead set on getting out of here. I heard her say once she wanted to go to Vegas, see the lights. Vegas, huh? The two of them looked at each other and nodded, slapped shut their notebooks and waved their way out the door. Joe leaned back on the couch again and started flipping, channel after channel, knives slicing meat, kids swinging on ropes, women cleaning their kitchens. I went through all 500 twice and I saw that he wasn't stopping anytime soon. So I got my new hat and mittens on and went outside for more of that quiet I was always complaining about. It was cold and crisp and the moon shone flat on the field with a strange, dead light, all blue and gray and unnatural. I started down the road without really thinking because if I had been, I would have said to myself, Sadie, the cops just been here and you going to the scene of the crime ain't no way to be behaving. But something about the moon and the quiet erased those thoughts and suddenly I was there. I looked the same as all the other fields. This is why they put up markers, I thought, tapping my feet to keep out the cold. Otherwise no one knows where you last set foot on earth. I tasted the salt before I knew I was crying and was suddenly on my knees tearing at the snow, periwinkle blue pounding at the crust and throwing handfuls of cold past my legs. It should be red, I thought. I'll dig down until I see some red. And then Joe's hands were on my shoulders and he had me in those arms that looked too thin to hold anything heavier than a shovel and I was in my bed, sun warming the curtains and the smell of coffee sneaking under the door. After a knock knock Joe came in, holding my favorite mug with steam licking his face and he kind of smiled at me. He put the mug on the table and smoothed my hair back from my face and he said, I know you didn't mean to do it, I made you and I'm sorry. We were 15 again and he was the only boy in the world for me movie star handsome standing on the side of the quarry beads of water glowing on his skin before he dove in and came up laughing. We were 20 and married and I was pregnant and he had a decent job and we were leaving soon as we saved enough money. We were 30, still happy even though none of the babies had worked out and his job was the same and I had trouble breathing in summertime. We were 40 and even though we had each done a terrible thing he still bought me mittens and lied to the police and brought me coffee in the morning and I thought to myself, this is a good man and I said, let's move to the city and we never spoke of it again. Thanks Michelle. Our next reader is Dominic Stansbury. Dominic Stansbury is an Edgar Award winning novelist. His most recent novel, The Ancient Rain is set in the aftermath of 9-11. Other books in the same series include The Big Boom and Chasing the Dragon. He currently lives in the Bay Area with his wife the poet Gillian Connolly and their daughter, is it Gillis? Gillis. Got it. Thank you. Please welcome Dominic Stansbury. Thanks. Thanks for having me here and thanks to everybody for coming and for the great music too. I was serious. This is the first three pages from a new novel. It's called The Naked Moon. They were coming for him. He knew this now. He would not escape. He picked up the revolver and eased toward the window. Pigeon scuttered and cucked along the sill and so he moved cautiously. He didn't want to rile the birds or call attention to his form from behind the tattered shears. The hotel stood just off Portsmouth Square in Chinatown. A noise rose from the square echoed down the narrow alley. He traveled oddly so the individual sounds attendant coughing, footsteps, statues of talk from down the hall from the square were unnaturally distinct yet somehow disembodied. Their exact origins hard to trace. Meanwhile, he could hear one of Ching Lee's rally trucks. The mayoral candidate had a number of trucks working the neighborhood. Old Ford's loudspeakers planted on the hood, rollicking in Chinese. For a moment, it sounded as if the truck were right out front. Then now maybe Stockton Street. It was hard to tell how close, how far. But through all that noise, he had also heard, he was all but certain, the clanging of the iron gate, of an iron gate. Dante Mancuso had checked in three days ago, but he hadn't given his real name. The hotel was nameless or rather had too many names for any of them to be useful. An engraving in the cornerstone called it the Fortunato Building, named after some Italian immigrant, but the fading letter on the side entrance called it the Three Prosperities. Meanwhile, a sign hung from the side corner. Chinese letters, neon, glass, broken, shattered in such a way that the underlying ideogram, whatever it might have been, was no longer decipherable. There was no front desk in the traditional sense, just a clerk in the gim crack shop below and what used to be the building's alley. Dante had paid for a week and the clerk had given him a stamped receipt with no information other than the date that was not legible. Dante stripped off his clothes and laid back down in the dead woman's bed, placing a revolver on his stomach or what I got that's all messed up right there. He had not slept much the last few days and did not know if he would ever sleep again. He carried a vial of amphetamines. He had a long hand in him he could not describe. He was thinking of the dead. He was thinking of the old timers who had walked these streets before. The Irish dead and the Italian dead and the German Jews all with their demon smiles fresh from the $2.00 whorehouse that used to be around the corner from the hall of justice on the other side of the square before the city had torn down the station and the morgue had all moved it south, had moved it all south of the morgue. Now in the same spot, a tall gray hotel stood at that spot. This is kind of in progress. Dante was thinking of the life he had meant to live but Dante was thinking of the life he had not meant to live but lived anyway of the people he had helped along into the land of the dead. Of people he himself had killed and those whom he had caused to be killed. He was thinking of his cousin, the fool, laying on the floor with the gash on his neck, of his partner at the agency, Jake Cicero, and of a woman in a white dress. He imagined the woman in a place far away, a place that was like this place but not like here. Foreign tongues and the smell of tropical flowers and dark alleys that opened into a sunlit plaza underneath a church with high spires. Behind his closed eyes, the woman emerged from one of those alleys into the plaza standing in her white dress at the stairs at the foot of the church. Meanwhile, overhead the same impossible sky, too blue, too beautiful. There was no escape. If he did not run near Aaron, if he refused, his old friends would kill him. On the other hand, if he cooperated once the Aaron was done, his friends had no intention of letting him walk away. He had a third alternative. He could flee. He could go underground, get another identity. He could hide indefinitely. But even if he were able to hide, the same was not true of the woman in the white dress. They would find her and he would die another kind of death. That's the opening. Thank you. Thanks, Dominic. Our next reader is Nadia Gordon. Nadia Gordon is the author of numerous books having to do with food, wine, sex, and travel, which pretty much covers everything. She's the author of a series of culinary mystery novels set in Napa Valley, including Sharpshooter, Death by the Glass, Murder Al Fresco, and coming in 2009, Lethal Vintage. Please welcome Nadia Gordon. Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. And I'm going to read from my new book that's going to come out in the spring in April of 2009. It's called Lethal Vintage, and it's the fourth installment in my series that's set in Napa Valley. It opens with an epigraph from the Greek poet Sappho and a very brief epilogue. It's kind of a story about the irony of betrayal. Strange to say, those whom I treated well are those who do me the most injury now. Heat dulled the morning air. No breeze, not a cloud. The early sun blazed in a thin blue sky. Sunny Mikosky thought, in the chaotic days that followed, that if only it hadn't been so hot, perhaps none of it would have happened. She might have spent the afternoon pulling weeds in the back garden at Wild Side, her little restaurant in St. Helena, as she had planned to do. Instead, when Anna Wilson, an old friend, called out of the blue with an invitation to have lunch and swim, Sunny had accepted, without a second thought, no matter that they hadn't spoken in years. If it hadn't been so hot that day, they might not have lingered so long by the pool or had so much to drink. Anna, the girl everyone always wanted or wanted to be, might have gone to bed early that night and woken up the next morning. She might have opened her eyes to the dawn light blazing on the vineyard, and delighted in another day of a life that most people would consider one long vacation. But it did happen, and nothing could change that reality, no matter how Sunny tried to will it away later, returning again and again to the pointless hope that it might all be a dream or a mistake, that somehow the plain facts might shift and change and suddenly reveal themselves to mean something quite different from the obvious and undeniable that her friend Anna was dead. Okay, that's the prologue. This is the beginning of the story now. Skin tacky with sweat, Sunny stood in front of enormous double doors, their mahogany polished to an amber glow. She wondered what kind of person lived in a place that looked more like a resort than a home and what Anna was doing staying there. She made eye contact with a tiny black bubble that she assumed was a camera, wiped the sweat from her face with both hands and rang the bell. A small, smiling blue-eyed woman answered the door in an apron and led the way through the house, her blonde ponytail swaying as she walked and a string of friendly Australian accent chatter trailing behind her. The cold air inside the house revived Sunny, poor by poor, and she looked hopefully toward a living room full of art and inviting places to sit. Everyone's down by the pool said the woman, opening glass doors. Sunny stepped back outside into the heavy heat to the low thump of house music down a terraced walk, a rectangle of blue water, flicked bright needles of light. The view stretched across acres of vineyard all the way down the Napa Valley to the Carneros and beyond. Light green squares of vineyard and dark green forested hills and finally fuzzy distant blue stretches where the valley flattened out to Delta. On the slope next to the pool, grapevines baked in the midday sun. At the far end, under an ochre umbrella, lay Sunny's friend Anna Wilson. She was wearing a white bikini and black sunglasses and holding back her long dark hair with one hand as she spoke to the busty girl sunbathing next to her. When she saw Sunny, she leaped up and came bounding over. Same Anna as always thought Sunny, embracing her with a kiss on each cheek. She was still as leggy and light on her feet as a half grown house cat and had the same playful tendency to saunter and pounce. Slightly more taut perhaps, thinner and more muscular as though the tendons had been tightened a quarter turn and the soft spots worn fractionally away. But still beautiful and radiant in that way she'd been famous for around San Francisco back when they used to run into each other at art openings. She and Sunny had known the same people, gone to the same parties and liked each other's company in their 20s. Then Anna went to Europe with her boyfriend and Sunny moved to Napa to open her restaurant. They'd hardly spoken or seen each other in the years since. Same Sunny exclaimed Anna, taking off her sunglasses, except for the short hair. That's new. Sunny put a hand to the line of bangs cut high across her forehead. She wore her Auburn hair as short as a man's, much to her mother's dismay, and had it cut at the barbershop in St. Helena. But it wasn't ugly, she was sure of that and it was easy and cheap and showed off her eyes, which she still considered her best feature. I cut it off after I opened the restaurant, said Sunny. Four years ago. When was the last time we saw each other? My 28th birthday party, Sedana. You cook those enormous crabs and we all sat around cracking them open over newspaper. I'll never forget it. Since then, despite having demonstrated talent and earned accolades as both a writer and an artist, Anna had spent most of her time entertaining an A-list of wealthy and powerful men and skillfully evading their proposals. She was still striking, thought Sunny, though there was something about her eyes that gave the impression of disengagement. The natural brightness of her face with its wide smile and gem-like eyes could mask all but the most subtle indications of what was going on underneath. But the signs were there for those who knew her. She was troubled, and deeply so, if Sunny was not mistaken. Anna held Sunny's wrist as though taking her pulse and smiled. I'm so glad I was able to reach you. When I saw your name in the paper this morning, I laughed out loud. I knew it was a sign that everything would be okay. The only time I've picked up the Napa Register in my entire life, I see your name. You were destined to be here today. I'll leave off there. Thank you. Thanks, Nadia. Our next reader is David Corbett. David Corbett is the author of three acclaimed novels, The Devil's Red Head, Done for a Dime, a New York Times notable book, and Blood of Paradise, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, McCavity, and Seamus awards, and named one of the top ten mysteries and thrillers of 2007 by The Washington Post. For more information about David's books, you can check him out online at DavidCorbett.com. Please welcome David Corbett. Thanks, Nad. I have those contacts where one is supposed to be able to see far and one is supposed to see close, so absolutely everything is out of focus. So bear with me here. This is from a novel that comes out next summer. It's called Wheel of Shadows. Looking out his kitchen window at daybreak, the rancher watched two silhouettes stagger forward through the desert scrub. One clutched the other, but they both seemed hurt. The porch light, the rancher thought. That's the thing they've been walking toward all night. See it for miles, all the way from the footpaths snaking through the mountains out of Mexico. Rooster alerted at the end of his chain, hackles up, snarling his bark, trying to warn the strangers off, but they just kept coming. All right then, he thought, not like you wanted this. He set his coffee in the sink and went to the door leading out to the porch and collected the shotgun kept there, racked a shell into the chamber The sky was laced with feathery cloud pale to the east, purplish dark to the west. A cold, parched wind keened in the telephone wires. The landscape bristled with cactus, noble, saguaro, cholla. Black ancient ironwood cropped up here and there among the mesquite and Joshua trees. Before it could close the door behind him, his wife called his name. She eased forward unsteadily out of the hallway shadow, robes inch tight at her waist. The gaunt face was framed with steel gray hair, pulled back and braided into its rope, but as always it was the pallor that struck him. The treatments were savaging her bone marrow, and he wondered sometimes whether the cure wasn't worse than the disease. Wondered too whether he'd be anywhere near as brave as her when his time came. Where does the promise go when it leaves you, he wondered. He wished the years had made them calm and strong and wise, but they were, her sick, him afraid, trying to protect each other. Their stake owned free and clear, 230 acres, but now a little more than a borderland throughway. Shadows scurrying past the house at night, sometimes trying to door. Shattering a window, hoping for shelter or water or food. Same problems everywhere. The Stanhope girl, raped last spring. Old woman Hobbs robbed at Knife Point, truck stolen, home turned upside down for cash before the culprit scurried off, leaving her tied up in her garage. Enough everybody said. We'll form patrols, we'll make an example out of every tonk we catch. But there's more to enough than the saying of it. Too much expanse of patrol and too many who still slip through to make an example mean something. Asked the two lurching forward, he thought. The promise hadn't left them just yet. It was as simple as a steady light glowing at the foot of a mountain pass with the black desert floor beyond. He felt the pump guns wait in his hands, a commensurate wait on his soul, and it was that second burden that haunted him. They don't look too good, she told him, feeling her way forward, hand to the wall. He met her eyes. They do that sometimes. Is that how we think now? Not because we want to. Remember that part. He turned away and marched across the porch onto the hard pan, telling the dog to be still. The two figures, the one being dragged on closer inspection, appeared to be female. Staggered past a line of Troyas with their huge bulbs of barbed spikes. God only knows what they've suffered in the night, he thought, sidewinders, rattlers, scorpions, thieves. But pity won't help. Pity is the problem. As they came within 20 yards, he saw it stuffed into the man's pants, a pistol. It happened of its own accord then, shotgun raised, tight to the shoulder, barrel aimed straight to the armed man's midriff. Alto, tengo una escopeta. Esta es propiedad privada. It was half the Spanish he knew. Stop. I have a shotgun. This is private property. But he might as well have shouted it to the wind. The man just kept coming. One of the women's arms hooked around his shoulder. The other hung limp at her side. Her steps were ragged. She looked barely conscious. The rancher felt his finger coil tight around the trigger. I said, stop. Damn it. I won't say it again. Next thing I do is shoot. As they were rousted from a terrible dream, the stranger glanced up, still shuffling his feet, dragging the woman from behind. He's barely more than a boy. Stay in the house, the rancher shot back. The guilt and fear, knowing she was right, knowing too that he was all that stood between them and her. It quickened into rage and the impulse quivered down his arm into his hand. Then the young half-dead stranger with the pistol called out in a dust-dry voice his words a challenge and a plea and a cry of recognition all in one. Don't shoot. Help us. Please. I'm an American. The rancher tucked the gun butt tighter into the clenched muscle and aching bone of his shoulder. Don't believe him, he told himself. Don't believe one goddamn word. Thank you. Thanks, David. It's getting pretty exciting in here. Our next reader is Lisa Lutz. Lisa Lutz spent most of the 1990s hopping from a string of low-paying odd jobs while writing and rewriting a mob comedy called Plan B. And after it was made in 2000, Lisa vowed she would never write another screenplay. See whether she's kept to her word. She's the author of the Spellman Files and Curse of the Spellmans. Please welcome Lisa Lutz. Hi. I'm reading from the unreleased Revenge of the Spellmans. In this one, Isabelle Spellman PI has landed in court-ordered therapy. This is Dr. Ira Schwartzman, therapist number one, and we are doing therapy session number 10. Partial transcript reads as follows. This week has pretty much been the same as any other week. So nothing of interest happened? Nope. It was a dull week. I see. And how do you feel about that? Good. Very good. So there's nothing you'd like to discuss? Not really. Are you sure? Let me think about it. Oh, I thought of something. Go on. Only two more weeks. Excuse me? Only two weeks left until our final session in my court-ordered therapy. Indeed. You're right, Isabelle. So our time is nearing its end. Should I interpret that to mean you plan to discontinue therapy after this session? That was my plan. We should do something to celebrate. What do you mean? What's customary for celebrating the end of therapy? There is no custom. I was thinking of bringing in cake. I should probably order it now if we want anything decent. I think it would be better if we just focused on the next few sessions. You're saying no to cake? I don't feel that cake is appropriate. Why not? Let me ask you a serious question, do you think you've made any progress? Therapy session number 19. This is Dr. Sophia Rush, therapist number two. Last week you mentioned that you were being blackmailed. Did I? Yes. Must have slipped my mind. Would you like to talk about it? Nah. Well, I'd like to talk about it. It's really not that big a deal. Do you know you're blackmailer? I'm in the process of narrowing down the list of suspects. So how does your blackmailer communicate with you? Anonymous notes. What do they say? I really don't want to talk about it. If these sessions went according to your plan, you'd sit here in silence for an hour eating your lunch. One time I asked you if I could eat lunch. One time. Tell me what the gist of the notes is, and then we can move on. They said, I know your secret. If you want to keep it, you will meet my demands. So what's your secret? I thought we were moving on. My blackmailer knows where I live. At least I think that's the secret he or she is referring to. So where do you live? I don't want to lie to you, Dr. Rush. I'm flattered. I don't want to tell you the truth either. Are you being serious, Isabel? I sense judgment in your tone, doctor. Right now I'm just confused. The judgment part will come later. You're funnier than Dr. Ira. My couch is funnier than Dr. Ira. See? You really aren't going to tell me where you live. If it makes you feel any better, then I don't have to worry about it. Are you getting enough sleep? No, but I drink a lot of coffee and take the bus. So things even out. Why can't you sleep? I've got a lot on my mind. For instance? Something strange is going on with my brother. We're not talking about your brother. It's my therapy. I thought I got to choose the topics. Let me ask you a question. Have you been hired to investigate your brother? He's family. You don't need a paycheck to investigate family. I'd like to return to the topic of blackmail. Why? Because it's a clearly defined stressor in your life. It's not that stressful. Can we please talk about something else? If you can come up with a topic as good as blackmail on game. I'm on to you in your long pauses. Okay. I'm being bribed by a political consultant. Seriously? Yes. Why? Because he thinks I know something, but I don't know anything yet. What does he think you know? If I knew that, then I'd know. Is this bribe incident connected to the blackmail? Absolutely not. What makes you so sure? The bribe is serious. The blackmail is child's play. I need you to be more specific. My blackmailer is making me wash cars and go to the zoo. The zoo? It was supposed to be SF MoMA, but I thought I could go to the zoo instead. My mistake. My point is they are entirely unconnected. Bizarre forms of blackmail, bribery, secret residences? The odds of all this happening to one person, Isabel. It sounds worse than it is. Let's look at it from a different perspective. Your imagination has gotten you into trouble in the past. That's why you're in therapy. You can't deny that you tend to put a paranoid slant on most things you observe. That was the old me. Are you sure? I've made progress, Dr. Rush. Lots of progress. Have a night. Thank you. Thank you. It's like summer stock here. Fall stock or something. Woodstock, yeah. Literary Woodstock. Our next reader is Sheldon Siegel. Sheldon Siegel has practiced law in San Francisco for more than 25 years and lived to tell the tale. Judgement Day is the sixth novel in his series of critically acclaimed best-selling courtroom dramas featuring Mike Daly and Rosie Fernandez. Siegel lives in Marin County and is currently working on his seventh novel. Please welcome Sheldon Siegel. Thank you. 25 years ago I was 25 years younger. I was 6 foot 4 and I was a good-looking guy. Things changed. Thank you for that nice introduction and thank you all for coming. This is a wonderful event. It's kind of an only in San Francisco event because there are very few places I think we could pull this off and it's a lot of work so to the organizers and to our musical accompanist I thank you. I write books set here in San Francisco so I wanted to read a short piece about a San Francisco location and I wrote a book a few years ago called Incriminating Evidence and this is a description of the corner of 16th and Mission. The area around the BART station at the corner of 16th and Mission is a mixture of rundown two and three-story buildings, housing, burrito shops, produce stands, fast food restaurants and seedy hotels. There are also 56 residential hotels within walking distance of the BART station. Most of them are on mission in the surrounding streets and alleys. 16th and Mission is also the center of San Francisco's heroin trade. Oh, it isn't something that neighborhood residents are proud of, but they understand the problem and they don't try to hide it. The acknowledge can't be fixed easily. The JC Deco public toilet next to the BART station has become a center of commerce and is known as the green monster. People hop off the BART trains buy their stuff and get back on. Gives new meaning to the term one-stop shopping. The sun hits my face as I come up the escalator from the underground BART station to look around the familiar brick plaza, which is dotted with sad-looking palm trees and fenced-in shrubs. The Wells Fargo bank branch greets me as I reach ground level. At least 10 people are lined up at the automatic teller machine. Two young men ask me for money as I step off the escalator and I turn toward 16th. I glance behind me toward Mission, a busy street with a colorful array of small stores, restaurants and produce markets. Tired banners hanging from the street lights proclaim that we're standing in the heart of the mission. Cars and orange minibuses sit bumper to bumper on Mission Street in front of the BART station. The street is too narrow to have any hope of keeping up with the volume of traffic. It's a lively corner but the assortment of homeless people, prostitutes and drug dealers would be intimidating to those who are unfamiliar with the territory. Things have changed a lot since I was a kid. A large man wearing a dirt-covered windbreaker stands next to the green monster. He's chatting with a middle-aged prostitute who's dressed in a short green skirt, a halter top and high heels. She's been around the block a few times. Up 16th, I see a bar called the Skylark, which used to be a transgender gay and Latino bar called La India Bonita. Now it's a hangout for the young professionals who are moving into the neighborhood. Farther up 16th, just past Valencia is another popular yuppie hangout called Tikku. They line up on Friday night to eat crepes. It's common knowledge among those of us who spend time down here that the people in the hotels across the street of the restaurant are shooting up. The mission district has something for everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Sheldon. And our final reader, you've made it. You should give all of yourselves a hand, actually, for making it all the way through. Our final reader this afternoon is Cara Black. Cara Black writes the award nominated and nationally best-selling Amy Leduc Investigation series set in Paris. Her books have been translated into four languages. She lives with her husband, an independent bookseller, her son, and their dog in San Francisco. Please welcome Cara Black. Thank you. It's great to be part of LitQuake. And let's go to Paris. I'm going to read from Murder in the Rue de Paradis, the book that came out this spring. My detective is Amy Leduc. She's a half-American, half-French computer security detective. And it's August 1995 in Paris. Just a brief setup. She's gone to a party in the trendy 10th arrondissement to get a computer security contract. She's got it and now it's time to leave. But August 1995, there was a bombing in the San Michel metro. The dense August evening air lay still and heavy. A figure was leaning against the cream-colored stone walls under the glass-owning Marquis canopy. No trains ran this late after the terrorist metro bombing a few days ago in San Michel that had claimed eight lives. She stuck a stop-smoking patch under her arm. She's always trying to quit smoking. And wondered what her chances were of catching a taxi this time of night. A voice came from the shadows. So you're still trying to quit. That familiar voice. The tilt of the head. She froze. But it couldn't be. He was a continent away. Eve, her former boyfriend, stepped into the light and her breath caught. His dark eyes were more deep-set but he had the same long black hair and snaking sideburns. This was a more tanned, gaunter version of the man she'd maintained an on-again-off-again relationship with. You're not hot enough for you, Eve. But how did you find me? She said trying to cover her confusion. Investigative journalists have their ways, they may. He stepped closer. A softness in his eyes. His fingers traced her bare shoulders. Nice outfit. I just flew in. Wanted to see you first. His musky scent drew her again. Still her bad boy type. But she remembered that the last time they'd said goodbye on a street corner on the left bank she told herself never again. So you appear and expect to have a drink, Amy. He said the back of his hand brushing her cheek. You didn't answer my emails. This would go nowhere. Just another pit stop for him. Whenever their paths crossed, the next morning he'd say goodbye on the street corner, step into a taxi and out of her life. Give me some warning next time, she said, backing away. We'll try for that drink. Turkish concierge's twig broom raked the stones. A glimmer of yellow light from the party behind them swept Eve's face. She saw an expression she couldn't identify. I'm catching a taxi, she said. But I've already got one waiting out front, he said with his lopsided smile. That wonderful smile. Let me drop you. So sure of himself. Forget it, Eve. You're not coming to my place. Did I say I was? I'm going to Paris now. Let's have a drink to celebrate. That's all. Outside of the dark passage, the taxi idled forlornly on the deserted street. The metro was closed, and she'd have a long walk in her three inch le buta and heels to her empty apartment. We're not even her dog, Miles Davis waited. Relenting, she said. One drink. Okay, you can guess what happened. Actually spent the night with Eve, asked her to marry him. The next morning the police call and asked her to identify a body in the morgue. So she's gone to the morgue. The white coded morgue attendant pointed to the logbook. Sign in and date it please, Mademoiselle Leduc. The attendant looked no more than 25. Blue ink stained his palms. He was probably a pre-med student. Amy thought. Her hands shook as she clutched the pen. Then it fell from her fingers and clattered on the white-tiled floor. He was mine. He pulled one from his lapel. Signed right here, next to number 48. Her stomach churned. She'd visited the bowels of the morgue to identify the charred remains of her father after the plos fundum explosion. Had been down to the viewing cubicle in the basement to try to identify a drowned woman. But she had never been to what was known as the freezer. Her signature came out of blotted scribble. The attendant took her arm. Boom. We'll just pull him out and then you can. I know there's a mistake. That's why I'm here. She interrupted. There had to have been some error. A horrible one. I'm cooperating so the real victims, loved ones, can be found. He cocked an eyebrow. Can you handle this, Mademoiselle? The last thing in the world she wanted to do was walk into the freezer. Of course, she said taking a deep breath. In the few minutes she'd stood there, the combined odors of formaldehyde and pine disinfectant had overwhelmed her. She wanted to get this over, get out of here, and get the smell off her clothes. Then she'd find Eve and give him a piece of her mind, a big piece of her mind. What business did he have just appearing, asking her to spend his life with him, leaving without a goodbye? Mademoiselle? She followed him through the swinging doors, through the strips of clear plastic and closed the frigid air. Their footsteps echoed off the glazed white tile. Built in stainless steel drawers, lined a chilly room, numbers hand lettered on index cards, inserted in slots above the drawer handles. She closed her eyes, heard the creaking of the wheels as the rollers slid out, the stiff crackling as the plastic sheet was folded back and smelled the cloying sickly sweet smell of death. Ready, Mademoiselle? Thank you. I hope Miles Davis didn't do it. Thank you very much, Kara. And let's have another round of applause for all of our readers this afternoon. And thank you guys all for coming out. Again, this is the end of our program today, but it is not the end of Litquake. Litquake goes on all week, all through Saturday. And there's events every day, every night until then. We'd encourage you to check us out online at Litquake.org. And we want to thank a bunch of people for helping us put everything together today, especially Rosie Levy Merlin, who is back there. Rosie, please, wave your hand. Thank you for helping put together and organize today's event. And also Mark Cappell for graciously accompanying us all day long. And all of our volunteers who have generously donated their time to come out and keep things running smoothly. So we really appreciate it. We also want to thank the San Francisco Public Library and all of the sponsors who have helped to make Litquake such a great event. So, once again, please join us all week long for Litquake. And one final note, which is, right now, if you haven't had enough literature and who has, we'd encourage you to come down to Books Inc over in Upper Plaza, which is three blocks away. They'll be in author signing and reception. And a lot of the readers who read just in the last hour and all day long are going to be there to sign your books and chat you up. So please come on by. Thanks again.