Out of the corner of his eye, Noam saw Hersh leaping on top of the man, pulling out his knife.

Noam’s own finger curled around the trigger of the semi-automatic.

It was hard to tell which came first. The plunges of the blade or the muffled spitfire.

26

The phone rang three times before Rina became aware of its intrusion, before she realized that Peter was sleeping through it. She reached over him and picked up the receiver. The man on the other end asked for Sergeant Decker.

It was still dark. She shook Peter’s shoulder and brought him to consciousness. He snapped open his eyes, took the phone and was all business.

“This is Sergeant Decker,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m Jack Cleveland with the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. I spoke to you last night. You wanted to know if there were any assaults or homicides that might have resulted from a gay pickup? I told you there weren’t any.”

“Yeah,” Decker said. He was already out of bed.

“You were a day off,” Cleveland said. “We’ve got a vicious…man, vicious ain’t the word for it. It’s a monstrous homicide—WM named Oliver Harrow, in his fifties, around six one or two, two hundred pounds. Sound like something you’d be interested in?”

“Yep.” Decker slipped on his pants. “When was the call fielded?”

“About midnight,” Cleveland said.

Decker looked at the clock. Quarter to two. He put on his shirt and said, “Any of the bars still open?”

“Not now,” Cleveland said. “But they were open an hour ago, when I took a picture of the victim’s face and told my men to circulate. The guy’s body…you’ll see for yourself.” There was a sigh over the line. “We found someone. A bartender who knows the victim, has a vague recollection of the guy he left with. Bartender’s with a police artist now. Then I remembered your call. I figured maybe you have something to offer me.”

Decker said he’d be right down.

They’re on a spree, Decker thought. On a goddamn killing spree.

At six feet four and two hundred forty all-muscle pounds, Jacques Antwine Cleveland had played high school football, basketball, and baseball. But a bad slide into home at the age of eighteen quashed his dreams of playing big time. Just bad luck. That’s what they told him after bodycasting him from the waist down.

Bad was an understatement. It was downright shitty luck. Instead of raking in millions, here he was, at two-thirty in the morning, scanning the ground for pieces that had once been part of Oliver James Harrow.