She caught me watching her at a light, opened her eyes fully and looked at me with a tiny smile playing on her lips. “Worrying about me again, Kenzie?”

My partner the psychic.

“Just checking you out, Gennaro. Purely sexist, nothing more.”

“I know you, Patrick.” She leaned back from the window. “You’re still playing big brother.”

“And?”

“And,” she said, running the backs of her fingers along my cheek, “it’s time for you to stop.”

I lifted a strand of hair out of her eye, just before the light turned green. “No,” I said.

We stopped inside her house long enough for her to change into a pair of cut-off denim shorts and for me to take two bottles of Rolling Rock from her fridge. Then we sat out on her back porch listening to her neighbor’s over-starched shirts crack and snap in the breeze and enjoyed the day.

She leaned back on her elbows, stretched her legs out in front of her. “So, we have a case suddenly.”

“We do,” I said, glancing at her smooth olive legs and faded denim cut-offs. There might not be much good in this world, but show me anyone who has a bad thing to say about denim cut-offs and I’ll show you a lunatic.

“Any ideas how to play it?” she said. Then, “Stop looking at my legs, you pervert. You’re practically a married man now.”

I shrugged, leaned back myself, looked up at the bright marble sky. “Not sure. Know what bothers me?”

“Besides Muzac, infomercials, and New Jersey accents?”

“About this case.”

“Pray tell.”

“Why the name Moira Kenzie? I mean, if it’s a fake, which we can probably assume, why my last name?”

“There’s something known as coincidence. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s when the—”

“Okay. Something else.”

“Yes?”

“Kevin Hurlihy seem like the type of guy who’d have a girlfriend to you?”

“Well, no. But it’s been years, really, since we’ve known him.”

“Still…”

“Who knows?” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of weird, ugly guys with beautiful women and vice versa.”

“Kevin’s not just weird, though. He’s a sadist.”

“So are a lot of professional boxers. You always see them with women.”

I shrugged. “I guess. Okay. So how do we deal with Kevin?”

“And Jack Rouse,” she said.

“Dangerous guys,” I said.

“Very,” she said.

“And who deals with dangerous people on a daily basis?”

“Certainly not us,” she said.

“No,” I said, “we’re wusses.”

“And proud of it,” she said. “Which leaves…” She turned her head, squinted into the sun to look at me. “You don’t mean—” she said.

“I do.”

“Oh, Patrick.”

“We must visit Bubba,” I said.

“Really?”

I sighed, not real happy about it myself. “Really.”

“Damn,” Angie said.

3

“Left,” Bubba said. Then, “About eight inches to your right. Good. Almost there.”

He was walking backward a few feet ahead of us, his hands held up near his chest, his fingers wiggling like he was backing in a truck. “Okay,” he said. “Left foot about nine inches to your left. That’s it.”