“I was good in English,” Panesa thought back. “And dodgeball, I guess. A president of the Bible Club one year, but don’t hold that against me. Another year on the varsity basketball team but horrible, fouled out the one game I played in when we were forty points behind.”

“What are you getting at, Richard?” asked Hammer, whose nature it was to walk fast and rush to the point.

Panesa was silent for a moment. “I think people like us need friends,” he decided.

West needed friends, too, but she would never admit this to Brazil, who was determined to solve every crime in the city that night. West was smoking. Brazil was eating a Snickers bar when the scanner let them know that any unit in the area of Dundeen and Redbud might want to look for a dead body in a field. Flashlights cut across darkness, the sound of feet moving through weeds and grass as Brazil and West searched the dark. He was obsessed and managed to get ahead of West, his flashlight sweeping. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt, yanking him behind her, like a bad puppy.

“You mind if I go first?” West asked him.

• • •

Panesa stopped in Fourth Ward, in front of Hammer’s house, at twenty minutes past one A.M. “Well, congratulations on your award,” Panesa said again.

“And to you,” Hammer said, gripping the door handle.

“Okay, Judy. Let’s do this again one of these days.”

“Absolutely. Award or not.” Hammer could see the TV flickering through curtains. Seth was up and probably eating a Tombstone pizza.

“I really appreciate your allowing Brazil to be out with your folks. It’s been good for us,” Panesa said.

“For us, too.”

“So be it. Anything innovative, I’m all for it,” said Panesa. “Doesn’t happen often.”

“Rare as hen’s teeth,” Hammer agreed.

“Isn’t that the truth.”

“Absolutely.”

Panesa controlled his impulse to touch her. “I need to go,” he said.

“It’s late,” she completely agreed.

Hammer finally lifted the door handle, letting herself out. Panesa drove off in the direction of his empty house and felt blue. Hammer walked into her space, where Seth lived and ate, and was lonely.

West and Brazil were working hard and unmindful of the time. They had just pulled up to the federally subsidized housing project of Earle Village and entered apartment 121, where there were suspicious signs of money. A computer was on the coffee table, along with a lot of cash, a calculator, and a pager. An elderly woman was composed on the couch, her raging old drunk boyfriend dancing in front of her, his finger parried at her. Police were in the room, assessing the problem.

“She pulled a .22 revolver on me!” the boyfriend was saying.

“Ma’am,” West said. “Do you have a gun?”

“He was threatening me,” the woman told Brazil.

Her name was Rosa Tinsley, and she was neither drunk nor excited. In fact, she didn’t get this much attention except once a week, when the police came. She was having a fine time. Billy could just hop around, threaten away like he always did when he went to the nip joint and lost money in poker.