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  I pulled my “just in case” burrito out of my bag and set it on a plate for her.

  “What’s this?” she asked, her eyes shining like I’d placed a Christmas present in front of her.

  “Beefy bean and cheese.”

  “Hot sauce?”

  I dropped a couple packets of Del Scorcho on the table next to her.

  “You are the best niece I ever had,” Aunt Sue said, digging in.

  “I’m your only niece.” I grabbed her plate of runny meatloaf and gave it a proper burial in the garbage disposal.

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “Thanks. You’re my favorite, too.” I dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

  “Mmm,” she said, making little yummy sounds. “Why is it that the worse a food is for you, the better it tastes?”

  “Burritos aren’t that bad,” I countered.

  “Come on now, all that fast-food stuff is terrible. Full of preservatives and cholesterol. That stuff will kill you. Clogs your arteries, you know. Millie Sanders said her cousin ate that McDonald’s stuff every morning, and he dropped dead of a heart attack just last week. He was only seventy-three!”

  “Well, then it looks like I’ve got a few good years of drive-thrus ahead of me before I have to start worrying about it.” I gave her a wink.

  “Got any more hot sauce?” Aunt Sue asked around a huge bite.

  I dropped a couple more packets on the table.

  “You eat already?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  Her shoulders sagged. “Darn. Because I made meatloaf.”

  I bit my lip. “I know, Aunt Sue.”

  “Oh.” She paused a moment, as if her brain was struggling really hard to make those connections. Finally she shrugged. “Well, maybe I’ll make lasagna tomorrow.”

  I put the pan of meatloaf mush in the sink. “Well, I’ve been warned.”

  Aunt Sue gave me a playful swat on the arm as I brushed past, stopping to deposit another quick kiss on her little old forehead, before scooting off to my room.

  Once there, I kicked off my shoes, sat cross-legged on my patchwork bedspread, and booted up my laptop, going through my nightly ritual of checking various email accounts, Twitter posts, and celebrity watcher blogs for any hot leads to pad tomorrow’s column. Thanks to a carefully cultivated network of informants, I had eyes all over Hollywood.

  A couple baby-bump sightings on Melrose, a fender bender in Malibu involving a judge from American Idol, and one from a guy who worked at Dunkin’ Donuts in Santa Monica who swore a certain bulimic actress was in buying glazed old-fashioneds like they were going out of style.

  Envisioning tomorrow’s headline, GOLDEN GLOBE WINNER GORGES ON GLAZED GOODIES, I opened a Word doc and started snarking away.

  I was halfway through tomorrow’s masterpiece when an instant message popped up in the corner of my screen. From ManInBlack72.

  A quick jump of adrenaline hit my stomach, and I bit my lip to keep the corner of my mouth from curving into a smile.

  Like most of Hollywood, I have my own dirty little secret: an online crush.

  When Felix took over as managing editor, he was appalled by the paper’s lack of “digital exploitation,” as he put it. Personally, I figure a paper should be on paper, but Felix was more of a computer whiz than I, and his first steps were to put everything online—an interactive Informer webpage, daily tweets, blogs, and Facebook and MySpace accounts for all the staff.

  ManInBlack72 first contacted me through my new MySpace account this past summer. He was a friend of a friend of a friend…Well, you know the drill. How does anyone know anyone online, but suddenly you’ve got five hundred friends, right? And one of them was him. He put a pic of that cartoon robot, Bender, from Futurama in my comments section. You know, for Tina Bender. Ha, ha. Pretty cheesy. And I told him so. Surprisingly, he had a sense of humor about it and sent me a cartoon with a wedge of Swiss cheese in it the next week. Pretty soon comments turned into private messages, which turned into emails, which turned into giving out our IM handles.

  Which turned into me suppressing a smile as I clicked the “accept message” button.

  Hey, Bender.

  I quickly typed back. Hey.

  How was your day, babe?

  If anyone else had called me “babe,” I would have given him a thorough lecture on the history of the feminist movement. But ManInBlack was the only one, aside from Aunt Sue, who ever asked about my day. And considering Aunt Sue didn’t remember what I’d told her two seconds later…it was nice someone asked.

  Good. Got my column in on time.

  Look at you being all prompt.

  I grinned at the compliment.

  Anything juicy to share? he asked.

  Sorry, pal, you’ll just have to read the papers like everyone else.

  You’re a cruel woman, Bender.

  I know.

  Good thing you’re so damned cute.

  My stomach did a funny little shimmy. Even though I knew he was full of it. I never posted photos of myself online. The fewer people who knew what I looked like, the easier it was to do my job. The only avatar pic I had up on my MySpace page was of me morphed into a Simpson’s cartoon character that I’d gotten during the movie promo. Not really an exact likeness.

  But, instead of calling him out as a blatant liar, I responded with, I try.

  Hmm…that was where you were supposed to mention how hot I am.

  Like a tamale, I joked back. Even though I had no idea what he looked like, either. The only photos on his page were of Johnny Cash, Darth Vadar, and the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones duo. You know, all men in black.

  So, how was your day, hot stuff? I asked.

  Ahn. But it’s getting better.

  Rough day at the office?

  I had no idea what Black did. He’d joked a few times that he could tell me, but then he’d have to kill me. Not that I minded. It added to the mystique that he had some unmentionable job. In my mind, he was kind of like Batman—too modest to tell me he was a billionaire by day and a superhero by night. So I never pushed the issue. It would have totally killed the fantasy to know he pumped gas for a living.

  I’ve had better, he typed back. How about you cheer me up?

  Hmm…You like knock-knock jokes?

  Not exactly what I had in mind…but let’s hear it, Bender.

  Okay…Knock, knock.

  Who’s there?

  Boo.

  Boo who?

  Don’t cry, tomorrow will be better.

  There was a pause. I wasn’t sure if it meant he was laughing or groaning.

  Cute.

  I let out a breath. Cute was good. I’d take cute.

  Thanks.

  Hey…look outside.

  For one irrational moment, my stomach clenched on that burrito as I whipped my head to the window, half expecting Black to be standing outside on the lawn. Instead, as I pulled the gauzy white curtains back, I saw the tail end of the sun’s descent onto the horizon. Or, in my case, onto the roof of Hattie Carmichael’s Cadillac in the driveway next door. But the glow of bright oranges and reds as the last rays of daylight fought through the thick Indian summer smog was brilliant. Like a surreal oil painting…or some kid’s Creamsicle smearing across the sky.

  Wow, I responded

  Beautiful, huh?

  Very.

  Amazing how something as toxic as our smog layer can create a picture so gorgeous. There was a pause before more words appeared on my screen. That’s how you are.

  Hmmm…had he just called me toxic?

  Me?

  You’re the brilliant sunset ending my smog-shitty day with a smile.

  I felt a big goofy grin take over my face.

  Thanks.

  ’Night, Bender. Be good.

  ’Night, Man in Black.

  Then the little “online now” icon next to his name disappeared.

  I looked at the little blinking cursor, the quiet screen bringing me back to realit
y.

  Sad that the most intimate relationship I had was with a computer screen. I know in reality there was some guy on the other end, but, like I said, he probably pumped gas for a living and lived in his mother’s basement.

  Man in Black was a fantasy, nothing more. I knew that the image in my head was nothing like the real guy would be. In my mind he was six feet tall, dark hair, even darker eyes. A sort of crooked, imperfect, but oh-so-sexy smile, kind of like Elvis, lifting one side of his lip at a time. Maybe a scar. Something he’d gotten at his very dangerous and mysterious job.

  I sighed, clicking shut the screen. Until tomorrow, fantasy man…

  Instead, I turned on the TV, threw in an old Seinfeld DVD, and let the canned laughter fill the silence as I finished my column.

  The next morning I woke up late, shoved myself into a pair of purple jeans, black Converse, and a black Tshirt with pink lettering that read, “If You Can Read This, You’re Too Close.” Then I hopped on my bike and pulled up to the L.A. Informer’s offices almost on time. The Informer was situated on Hollywood Boulevard, just bordering the trendy tourist part of town and the part where you don’t walk alone at night without body armor. The building was a square, stuccoed, three-story thing that was at one time white, but now lay something closer to dingy beige. Built around the same time as the famed Hollywoodland sign, it might have been charming once, but that had been many years and many uncaring landlords ago. Sun-faded awning over the door, peeling paint near the windows, a rusty metal fire escape clinging to the side of the building as if its life depended on it. Trump Towers it was not.

  I pushed through the doors and rode the elevator to the second floor, dropping Strawberry Shortcake on my desk with a clang.

  “That you, Bender?” A head popped up from the neighboring cubicle. Balding, gray stubble along the chin, droopy, bloodshot eyes—Max Beacon, the oldest, most experienced, and generally the most hung-over member of the Informer’s staff. He covered obits and had his own, detailing how he’d died of liver failure, pre-written and tacked to the fabric-covered wall of his cubicle, right next to a poster of a bulldog saying, “This is my happy face.”

  “Hey, Max. What’s new?”

  “Remember that guy who played Bette Davis’s son in that film about the traveling theater group?”

  “Uh huh.” I nodded. Even though I had no clue what movie he was talking about.

  “Died today. Sixty-four. Heart failure.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Very. Hey, did you see the new applicant on your way in?”

  I pushed my chair back, glancing toward Felix’s glasswalled office in the far corner. Until this summer—when he’d moved up in the world to take over as editor—Felix had been the Informer’s star reporter. Ever since he’d become the boss man, Felix had been interviewing applicants to fill in his former position. So far none had passed his test.

  I squinted at the latest victim sitting across the desk from him. Blonde, miniskirt, jugs out to here.

  I did a low whistle. “She applying to be a reporter or go-go dancer?”

  Max chuckled. “She’s been in there for over an hour.”

  “Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m sure Felix wants to thoroughly go over all her professional assets.”

  Max chuckled. “Maybe he’s checking her experience.”

  “Or he’s outlining the benefits of working here.”

  Max snorted. Then tilted his head to the side, eyes clearly trying to get inside Ms. Jugs stretchy little top. “Tough being the boss, huh?”

  “That’s why they pay him the big bucks.”

  “How come you never wear little skirts like that, Bender?”

  I shot him a look. “All right, enough ogling, old man. Back to work. Those people aren’t getting any deader.”

  Max gave a watery-eyed last look at our new applicant, then disappeared back behind the partition.

  I flipped on my monitor and, while I waited for my system to boot up, checked my voice mail for any salacious overnight news. Lucky me, I had two messages.

  I keyed my pin into the Informer’s ancient message retrieval system and heard a male voice in answer.

  “Hey, girl, I was at Basque last night and, baby, do I have a good story for you.”

  I grinned. One of my informants. A former sitcom star from the nineties who still held on to enough fame to get into all the right places, but whose bank account had nosedived right along with his ratings. He needed cash, I needed insider info—the relationship was a win-win.

  I grabbed a pen and listened as the message continued.

  “Guess whose dealer was there, talking about how he’d delivered a certain package to someone in rehab last night?…Blain Hall.”

  “No way!” I blurted. I did a little happy dance in my seat. Blain Hall was the front man for Dirty Dogs, an angsty rock band that had recently swept the Grammys. Unfortunately, it turned out Blain’s raspy vocals and unending stage energy were due less to natural talent and more to cocaine. A totally eighties drug. A fact I’d pointed out in my column, citing that his choice of vice was almost as passé as his ballads of teen malaise.

  Yeah, I probably wasn’t going to be on Blain’s Christmas card list this year.

  I made a note to call back for all the gory details and erased the message, moving on to the next one.

  At first, heavy breathing was the only sound to come through. I was about to discount it as a wrong number and delete, when the caller finally spoke up.

  His voice was distorted and mixed with some sort of electronic equipment. It almost sounded like he was far away or talking in an echoing tunnel. Mechanical, deep, and eerily inhuman.

  “I’ve had enough,” the odd voice began. “Enough of your malicious lies. You delight in ruining people. Well, I’ve had it with your kind. Stop printing stories about me. If you don’t…” The voice paused, heavy breaths puffing through the other end before he finished his threat. “…Tina Bender, you’re dead.”

  Chapter Three

  I froze, my hand clutching the receiver as the voice mail system beeped and asked me if I wanted to delete, save, or listen to the current message again. On instinct, I replayed it, straining for any sign of the caller’s identity. Was it a friend punking me? Some irritated starlet out drinking with her friends? A couple of kids crank calling the local paper?

  No clue. The voice was so distorted I couldn’t even be sure it was male. It was deep, but that could easily have been manipulated by whatever machine he/she had used to make it sound like I was getting a threat from Stephen Hawking.

  While the Informer had an entire file of nasty reader letters to the editor, some that even bordered on terrorist manifestoes, this was the first time I had personally received anything this weird. Granted, every now and then I got an irate call from someone’s publicist, but generally Hollywood operated on the theory that there was no such thing as bad publicity. Celebs usually started worrying when they stopped showing up in our paper.

  As soon as the message ended, I hit the save button and crossed the newsroom to Felix’s office. I knocked softly on the door before pushing it open.

  Felix looked up from the blonde, his gaze slowly shifting from her “girls” to me.

  “Tina?” he asked.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I started. Then took my first real look at the new interviewee. She was just as much the sorority girl up close as she was from across the room. Big blue eyes, gooey pink lip gloss, mouth in a permanent sexy pout. And a shirt that was at least a size too small. She looked like she was smuggling cantaloupes under her top.

  And, I noticed as I gave her the up and down, she did the same thing back to me.

  “Did you need something, Tina?” Felix asked.

  “Uh, I need to speak with you.”

  “About?”

  “Something’s come up.”

  “What kind of something?” Felix prompted.

  “A phone call,” I hedged, not sure how much I wanted to s
ay in front of Barbie.

  “From?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What did they say?”

  I glanced at the blonde again. “Um…any chance we could discuss this in private?”

  Felix shook his head. “Sorry, where are my manners? Allie, this is Tina Bender, our gossip columnist. Tina, Allie Quick. Our newest reporter.”

  I raised an eyebrow his way. Seriously? He’d hired the pair of tits?

  “Nice to meet you,” Allie said, extending a hand.

  Reluctantly, I shook it. Her grip was firm, though my hand came away smelling like some sort of peachy lotion.

  “Allie will be taking over as field reporter,” Felix went on. “Covering my old beat.”

  “Fabulous.” I swear I really tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I gave Barbie a week before she realized this job involved actual work, not just cozying up to Christian Bale.

  “What was this call you got?” Felix asked.

  Obviously I was going to do this with an audience whether I wanted to or not. So, I told him about the weird caller and the mechanical voice and the threat on my life. Though even as I keyed my pin into the system a second time, replaying the message for the boss, I realize how silly the whole thing was. We were a tabloid. It would have been surprising if people didn’t hate us. Ninety-nine percent chance it was just some idiot blowing off steam.

  Unfortunately, Felix didn’t bet odds.

  “I don’t like this,” he said, replaying the message a second time. “When did this come in?”

  “Last night. The time stamp says eleven thirty.”

  “Were you here last night?”

  “No. At home.”

  “Alone?”

  “My aunt was in the other room.”

  “Any idea what story this guy is referring to?”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “Are you kidding? I’ve reamed dozens of celebs this week alone.”

  “Any of the articles nasty?”

  I shot him a look.

  “Right,” he said. “Stupid question. You check the caller ID?”

  “Restricted number.”

  “Maybe you can trace the call?” Allie piped up.

  I nodded. Reluctantly. “Maybe,” I hedged. Techno genius I was not. However, considering our editor in chief’s pockets were tighter than Joan Rivers’s last facelift, our phone system was hardly state of the art. I made a mental note to look into it.