He laid the photograph on the desk, on the blotter, framed against the green felt. He sipped his scotch and looked down at her.

She was one goddamned beautiful whore, all right. Julie Wyant, her name was. She had red-gold hair and blue eyes. She had an ivory-and-rose complexion. She had a dreamy gaze. Weiss liked that about her especially: her dreamy, faraway gaze.

Weiss didn't know much about her, but he knew what there was to know. She had worked out of San Francisco. She was especially popular with middle-aged men. Some guys reach a certain stage of life, and they get all syrupy and nos talgic. She appealed to guys like that. She was gentle and a little spacey, and she had a face like an angel. Her face seemed to remind these men of girls they used to imagine when they were young, girls they made up before they knew real girls. She reminded Weiss of that kind of girl too.

Anyway, she had caught the attention of a professional killer, a whack specialist the newspapers liked to call the Shadowman. Weiss knew this guy. He'd been after him since his cop days. The specialist spent one night with Julie. He hurt her-a lot-that was love's sweet song to this sick piece of shit. He hurt her, then he told her he wanted to keep her with him forever.

Julie believed him. That's why she vanished.

She had phoned Weiss once, at his apartment in Russian Hill. It was the only time he had ever talked to her. She had phoned him and begged him not to try to find her. She knew about Weiss. She knew he was considered one of the best locate men in the business. He could find people because of that way he had of reading them, of guessing what they would do. And she knew he had been hunting the Shadow-man for years. Julie was afraid he would come after her in order to draw the killer out into the open. She was afraid he would find her and then the killer would find her too. So she had phoned Weiss and begged him not to look for her.