Apron looked up from the book he was reading behind the cash register. In the rear, the cook—Cat’s uptown-bred coworkers liked to say, “Where they find these guys I’ll never know,” but Cat did know, when she was a kid back in the fell she knew ten guys and their fathers who all looked like this, fake tan, gym, and dank cologne, bad haircuts and bad tattoos and not enough sense to leave a business that grew more dangerous as it grew richer—the cook, call him Sideburns, who Cat figured might actually be able to make a grilled cheese sandwich if you presented him with bread, cheese, butter, a frying pan, a burning stove, and a map, Sideburns whom no one had hired for his culinary acumen approached with a slow, dangerous gait. He wore heavy rings on his right hand and didn’t look sweaty so much as bronzed. In a different age, guys like Sideburns would have followed guys like Apron as they in turn followed purple-robed emperors to glory.

So much for history.

“Oven’s broken,” Apron said.

She tapped her cigarettes. “Just a slice? Don’t need it hot, just my buddy’s hungry, you know. And coffee.”

“No coffee,” Apron said. “No slices. Go to Farrell’s down the road. And there’s no smoking here.”

The restaurant was very quiet. Cat, who knew how to listen, heard a soft metallic click. A drop of sweat rolled down Sideburns’s jaw.

“Look, man, I’m in a hurry, are you sure you don’t have—”

“Listen.” Apron slammed shut his book and loomed over the counter. “We don’t have nothing. Take a hike.”

“Sure,” she said. Raised her hands. Apron wore a sharp expressive scent, which Cat could have identified if she wore her Suit. The Suit knew more than she did. Operating plainclothes, she always felt as if someone had chopped off her extra arm. “I don’t want trouble.”

“This ain’t trouble,” he said. She wished he had not sounded almost human there. It made the next bit harder. “So long as you get—”