—I’d like to report a knife fight, he said into the receiver—Yeah, that’s right, a knife fight—In the parking lot of El Rey’s—On Shepherd off Central—When’d it happen? Any minute now.

Litsky hung up.

This is going to be interesting, he thought to himself like a philosopher.

But when he returned to his stool, Dehavvy and the blonde were nowhere to be seen.

Shit.

Litsky studied the path from their table to the little girls’ room; then, short on hope, he scanned the club from end to end. But lo and behold, there they were: Elbow-to-elbow on the dance floor.

The band was playing a Mexicali Begin the Beguine. Either by order of the front man, or through some collective instinct, all the boys had gotten on one side of the rope and the girls had gotten on the other. The band’s take on the number had some advanced mathematics and the local girls were making the most of it. They were doing long division with their hips and shaking their cans to the thirteenth power. Dehavvy and the blonde couldn’t keep up. They didn’t have the bodies for it, or the backgrounds. But they were indisputably in the mix.

Maybe you had to give the blonde credit for taking Dehavvy to El Rey’s, after all. Because if anyone on the dance floor knew who she was, they weren’t showing it. By the time the locals got to El Rey’s, they’d had their fill of deference for the day. (Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.) And with their eyes half closed, swaying like a crowd of cocoanut trees, they were plenty primed for some rapture serene.

At least, that’s what Litsky was thinking when the band broke into Mi Casa for the fourth time. Within a beat, every seat in the house was empty. The blonde and Dehavvy had taken places on opposite sides of the rope now and were matching each other step-for-step—shaking their heads in tandem and waiting for the twentieth measure, when they could stand on their toes and shout Mi Casa! with the rest of them.

Despite the clamor, Litsky could hear the sweet, unmistakable sound of sirens in the distance. He looked back toward the club’s entrance in time to see a tall, thin kid in chauffeur’s getup come scrambling through the door. He took off his hat like he was entering a church. When his eyes lit on the blonde, he made a beeline for the dance floor.

Litsky got off his stool.