Milo peeled off an additional ten.

"Another twenty would be nicer, but thank you, Officer."

"You lie to me, we're going out for a four-course dinner and you're picking up the tab, L.A."

"Whoa." Laughter. "That could clean out my 401(k)."

As we edged out of the downtown business district and got on Sixth Street, Milo said, "I'll be back when it opens, need to figure out a good watch-spot."

"Let's buy gold chains, return as gentlemen."

"Acrylic shirts I've already got--all that breakfast talk got me thinking Paul Revere."

"Little too early for a midnight munchie ride, Big Guy."

"I'm talking one by land, one by sea. As in surf and turf, as in the T-bone-fillet-langoustine combo at that place on Eighth."

I said, "Don't want my patriotism questioned."

We were well short of the steak house when Sean Binchy phoned in.

"Got Bri and Selma, Loot. Right in front of the father's house, I barely turned off my engine when they showed up."

Dropping names as if he and the strippers were old friends. Sean loves the world, an attitude unchanged by facing felonies daily.

Milo said, "Take 'em into custody."

"Already done, we'll be at the station in twenty. They've got interesting stories, Loot."

"About the murders?"

"No, nothing like that, just how they're thinking of turning religious, leaving the life."

"Tell 'em to hold off on repentance, Sean. I need 'em in full sinner-mode."

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER
33

Brianna Blevins and Selma Arredondo wore white tank tops cut high enough to expose drum-tight midriffs, second-skin jeans, backless high-heeled sandals, oversized hoop earrings, gold-plated bangles cuffing their right wrists.

Both girls had eyebrow pierces, tongue studs, multiple holes in their ears. Selma sported a diamond between a perky mouth and a cute chin.

Brianna's visible tattoos were: a left forearm sleeve filled with roses and thorns, a barbed-wire biceps ring, a female devil's face in the hollow beneath her neck, Love inked in black gothic across one collarbone, Devotion stretching the length of the other.

Selma's neck was circled by a blue-and-red-ink necklace of yellow diamonds and red links "supporting" a pear-shaped black pearl that was a masterpiece of trompe l'oeil. Both of her arms were slave-braceleted three times. Chinese characters rose up from where cleavage would be if her breasts could produce such.

Milo asked her, "What does that say?"

"Something about life."

Cell phones confiscated and purses searched, the girls were placed in separate interview rooms and left to contemplate.

Fueled by adrenaline, detective room coffee, and a vending-machine roast beef sandwich that made him grumble about "turf that didn't deserve surf," Milo started with Brianna.

The girl, looking older than nineteen, eyes already running to crow's-feet, kept her eyes on the table.

"Hi, Bri. Me, again. And this is Alex."

"Uh-huh."

We sat down, crowding her. "Tell us about Tristram and Quinn, Bri."

"Don't know 'em."

"Actually, you do, Bri."

"I don't."