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The Side Pocket sat on a dusty corner just a few blocks west of where North Temple Street shot straight as a laser from downtown Salt Lake City to the airport. From outside, the pool hall and
tavern looked as if it had originally been designed as a small town jail — salt-and-pepper brick walls, eight-foot-high security bars on the darkened windows, a shingle roof the color of weak tea. Half whiskey
barrels with unhappy junipers planted in them were the management's only attempt at providing an enticement for strangers to enter. The occasional stranger who did enter the Side Pocket was either desperate for a
place to shoot some pool or ignorant about the west side of Salt Lake City, or, more likely, both.
On Friday, after a long two days helping Robin manage the media fallout from the rumors
spreading around the city, Lauren had stopped back at Teresa's house just long enough to hang her suit, tug on a pair of old jeans, and get directions to the only place her sister knew in Salt Lake City where Lauren
could find a pool table. Lauren parked Teresa's recalcitrant Rabbit on the viaduct side of the tavern and walked self-consciously into a smoke-filled room scattered with a half-dozen people who probably wouldn't
have been welcome with open arms in nearby Temple Square.
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