RANSVESTIA

honest with my friends and I. You'll have to tell them that you're really Alice."

I shook my head. "No way," I said. I've spent my life-time avoiding ridicule. I'm not getting back into that. I'm Al Evans now, and that's it."

She turned to me, pain in her black, smudged eyes. "Good night, Al," she murmured, tears spilling over and making tracks down her pale, soft cheeks.

I hate my job in the months of January and February. The nights come too early and the ice and freezing rains stay too long. Investi- gative reporting becomes a cold, dark, soul-destroying job. You really have to like what you're doing to stick to it and do it properly. The job I was on wasn't like the soft summer assignment I'd done for Conlon in Europe. That I'd really done off the top of my head. Investi- gating payroll frauds needs every "I" dotted and every "t" crossed, however, for criminal charges will probably be laid against someone if you do your job right—and even if you don't.

Jeff Conlon had seemed to grow older as the winter had come on. He was waiting in his office, a little, tartan scarf about his neck. He listened woodenly to the report I gave him. There did seem to be something odd in the city's construction industry. My tally of workers and hours worked on three sites didn't match the "official" records, that Jeff had somehow managed to obtain, not for inside nor for out- side workers.

Conlon nodded when I finished, "O.K.," he said. "I'll put Bart and Crimmins on it. Leave your notes for them." He leaned back in his leather chair, the only non-standard item in the place. I waited. Conlon would do this to us when he had something on his mind. I wondered what I'd done to upset him.

"You know a, er, a guy called Brennan Lawrence," he said at last. It had been six months since I'd seen "Cindy" when "she" had said a puzzled goodbye to me when I'd left the Beau Sejour at its first stop in Naples. I hadn't rewritten the articles from Paris so that the name, Brennan Lawrence, hadn't been seen by Jeff Conlon.

"Yeah, I know Lawrence," I said.