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deal with him before all that; if anything should happen . . . it was almost as if he knew.”
      “Knew?”
      “About what was coming. His death, I mean. I think it was the place, and the room.”
      Sanchez frowned. “Room?”
      “Room Number 9.”
      “You’re telling me you saw him in room number 9 at a hotel called Strawberry Fields? Do I look stupid to you?”
      “Please, you have to believe me, everything I’ve told you is the truth. If anything should happen that’s where we’d meet him. He’d be there for us. That’s what he said. He’d come back so that we could continue with . . . what we had.”
      “What you had?” Sanchez said with incredulity. “What you had was sex with a rock star. He’s dead and he’s not coming back. Understand? He used you guys. Get over it. Get over him.”
      The tears were bright in her eyes now, wet on her cheeks. “But he did come back.”
      “Shit!” Sanchez said. “I’m talking to a fucking loony.”
      “No,” she said grabbing him by the arm. “Please.”
      “Look,” Sanchez said. “I want to know where that place is.”
      “I need to prove something to you first. Then I’ll tell you. I promise.”
      “You’d better not be fucking conning me, lady?”
      “Please,” she said again, her voice low, her wet eyes downcast. “You’re my only hope.”
      “Christ,” Sanchez said. “Lead on.”
      She turned and started off.
      He hugged his arms to his chest and hurried to catch up.
     
      Sanchez had been born in the city and he’d lived here his entire life. Even so, he had no love for the place. Despite a multitude of improvements of late the city seemed to be in the process of dying. It had started with 911 and seemed to be worsening. All the false optimism in the world could not shake his feeling of dread. It was in the eyes of those he passed on the street, as if all the light had gone from their souls.
     
     

3
     
      Her apartment was in a reconditioned warehouse just off 11 th Avenue, several blocks north of the Lincoln Tunnel. It used to be an industrial area, old warehouses and tenements now gentrified into lofts and nightclubs and art galleries. Owners cashing in on the real estate boom of the 1980s had turned everything into money. Now it had all gone to shit.
      They took a freight elevator up to the third floor. She took a key from her purse and put it in the lock. The apartment was small but functional.
      “Seat?” she said, taking off her coat.
      He remained standing. “I need to know why I’m here.”
      She went to a stack of papers on a stand. “He gave these to me,” she said, handing them to Sanchez. “Said I was his favorite and that they were some sort of eternal gift.” She pushed her hair back away from her face. “He was a romantic, you know.”
      Sanchez leafed through the papers, frowning. They appeared to be hand-written lyrics, musical notations, guitar chords. “Why should I believe these are Lennon’s?”
      She sighed. “Don’t.”
      “Listen, lady.”
      “Just look at them. They’re signed.”
      Sanchez scanned down to the bottom of the sheet. John Lennon’s signature was there. He leafed through the stack, and there were quite a few. Each was signed. He smiled, shaking his head. “No . . .”
      “I know what you’re thinking,” said Deb Stiles. “But they are real.”
      “Do you know what these would be worth—?”
      “I don’t care about that. I just want to live.”
      “What else do you have?”
      She went into the bedroom, came back with a cherry sunburst Rickenbacker guitar. “To Deb,” it said on the face. And below that, “My eternal rose. Love, John Lennon.”
      “There’s more,” she said. “Do you want to see?”
      He shook his head. “I’ve seen enough.”
      “Yoko used to give him other women just to appease him,” Deb said, seeing the question in Sanchez’s eyes. “She alone couldn’t satisfy him. In