“Trust me, Mr. Black Secret Agent Man, it is.”

“Sure,” Dunne said. He handed Starrell the money. Together, they went down the stairs.

In the basement, Starrell removed a tarp that was covering a pile of stuffed, gray plastic garbage bags.

“They shut down extra quick. Took anything worth anything. Phones. Computers. Left the chairs, the desks. Left my unc hangin’ for two months’ rent. Dumped a bunch of shit in garbage bags. I brought it down here.”

“Why did you do that, Mr. Starrell?” Dunne asked.

“I knew what they was running. And saw they were booking. And I guessed there’d be some interesting shit being tanked. Stuff you could do something with.”

“Like what?”

“You know … whatever.”

“Like blackmail someone?”

“Never know what you might find, right? Like I seen this story on TV. These people found all sorts of things in people’s garbage.”

Dunne untied a bag and reached in. He withdrew his hand. It was covered with coffee grinds. Starrell smirked at him: “Most of it’s paper. But there’s mess here and there.”

Dunne grabbed a piece of paper and wiped off his hand. He slid a crate near the bags and sat on it.

“This is going to take a while,” Dunne said. “If you have other things to do, go ahead.”

“No way, man. I’m staying here. Just in case.”

“Just in case I … strike gold?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Gold, man. Garbage into gold.” Starrell laughed.

“Then you can help,” Dunne said. He threw one of the bags at Starrell. “Separate the papers from the other garbage.”

“And we’re going to do a dogg-dogg even-split, man?”

“Yeah, on any gold we find.”

It took Dunne nearly two hours to review the garbage of the First Ladies Escort Service. In that time, he learned that Starrell’s eighteen-year-old girlfriend was pregnant. That she planned to keep the child and had refused his marriage proposal. That she told him she didn’t want to be tied down to a man with no future. That he worried there was someone else. Or maybe the baby wasn’t his. But, he told Dunne, he wanted to act like a man. Dunne also learned that the owner of the escort business was a white man named Raymond who looked like a squirrel. It was a small operation. The rent was paid in cash. Starrell recalled once talking with the Latina receptionist and joking about the nature of the business. She became upset and told him, “Our girls are good girls.” Starrell didn’t know what that meant. The pages for the current month were torn out. He thought she was lying, like women got to do, to make the world a prettier place. Raymond had left no forwarding number or address. His uncle didn’t even know Raymond’s last name.