Slidel ’s Ford Taurus idled at the bottom of the stairs, AC blasting, tinted windows ful up. Descending, I opened the back door, shoved aside file folders, a pair of golf shoes stuffed with audiotapes, two Burger King bags, and a squeeze tube of suntan lotion, and wedged my computer into the newly created space.

Erskine “Skinny”Slidel undoubtedly thought of himself as “old school,” though God alone knew what institution would claim him. With his knockoff Ray-Bans, Camel breath, and four-letter speech,Slidel was an unwittingly self-created caricature of aHol ywood cop. People told me he was good at his job. I found it hard to believe.

At the moment of my approach Dirty Harry was checking his lower incisors in the rearview mirror, lips curled back in a monkey-fear grimace.

Hearing the rear door open,Slidel jumped, and his hand shot to the mirror. As I slid into the passenger seat, he was fine-tuning the rearview with the diligence of an astronaut adjusting Hubble.

“Doc.”Slidel kept his faux Ray-Bans pointed at the mirror.

“Detective.” I nodded, placed my purse at my feet, and closed the door.

At last satisfied with the angle of reflection,Slidel abandoned the mirror, shifted into gear, crossed the lot, and shot across Col ege onto Phifer.

We rode in silence. Though the temperature in the car was thirty degrees lower than that outside, the air was thick with its own blend of odors. Old Whoppers and fries. Sweat. Bain de Soleil. The bamboo mat on whichSlidel parked his ample backside.

SkinnySlidel himself. The man smel ed and looked like an “after” shot for an antismoking poster. During the decade and a half I’d been consulting for theMecklenburgCountyME , I’d had the pleasure of working withSlidel on several occasions. Each had been a trip to Aggravation Row. This case promised to be another.

The Bankses’ home was in the Cherry neighborhood, just southeast of I-277,Charlotte ’s version of an inner beltway. Cherry, unlike many inner-cityquartiers,had not enjoyed the renaissance experienced in recent years by Dilworth and Elizabeth to the west and north. While those neighborhoods had integrated and yuppified, Cherry’s fortunes had headed south. But the community held true to its ethnic roots. It started out black and remained so today.

Within minutesSlidel passed an Autobel car wash, turned left offIndependence Boulevard onto a narrow street, then right onto another. Oaks and magnolias thirty, forty, a hundred years old threw shadows onto modest frame and brick houses. Laundry hung limp on clotheslines. Sprinklers ticked and whirred, or lay silent at the ends of garden hoses. Bicycles and Big Wheels dotted yards and walkways.

Slidel pul ed to the curb halfway up the block, and jabbed a thumb at a smal bungalow with dormer windows jutting from the roof. The siding was brown, the trim white.

“Beats the hel outta that rat’s nest where the kid got fried. Thought I’d catch scabies tossing that dump.”