He sat at the counter, stirring black S&D coffee, waiting for Spike to stop cracking eggs with one hand over a bowl. Brazil wanted to chat. The Michelob Dry clock on the wall over Spike’s head read ten-forty-five. There was so much to do and Brazil had to get it done by four P.M., when his beat for the newspaper formally began. As much as Packer loved Brazil’s scoops, the regular news of burglaries, robberies, rapes, suicides, fistfights in sports bars, white-collar bank crimes, drug busts, domestic problems, dog bites, and other human interest stories needed to be covered. Most of those reports Webb stole long before anyone else could see them. In fact, the situation was so acute that the rest of the media now referred to the Charlotte Police Department’s press basket as The Webb Site.

West, having recalled Brazil’s early complaint about this, had finally done her bit by calling Channel 3 and complaining to the general manager. This had solved nothing. Nor was Goode receptive when West had brought it up to her, not realizing that Goode, in fact, regularly logged into The Webb Site. These days she and Brent Webb parked all over the city in her Miata. This was not due to a problem with their going to her apartment, where she lived alone. The risk of exposure was a huge turn-on to the couple. It was not unusual for them to park within blocks of his house, where his wife waited dinner for him and picked up his dirty clothes and sorted his socks.

EIGHTEEN

The task force West had assembled to investigate drug deals going down at the Presto Grill also had much dirt to find, sort through, and hopefully match with other crime trends in the city. Mungo was an undercover detective, and he was eating grilled chicken tips and gravy in the grill while Brazil, whom Mungo did not know, sipped black coffee. Mungo had gotten his street name for obvious reasons. He was a mountain in jeans and Panthers tee shirt, his wallet chained to his belt, long bushy hair tied back, and a bandanna around a sloping forehead. He wore an earring. Mungo was smoking, one eye squinting as he watched the blond guy quiz Spike at the grill.

“No, man.” Spike was flipping a burger and chopping hash browns. “See, none’s from around here, know what I mean?” He spoke with a heavy Portuguese accent.

“Where they come from doesn’t matter,” Brazil said. “It’s what happens once they get here. Look, the source of the bad shit going down is right where we are.” He was talking the language, drumming his index finger on the counter. “Local. I’m sure of it. What do you think?”

Spike wasn’t going to explore this further, and Mungo’s radar was locked in. That blond pretty-boy looked familiar. It seemed Mungo had seen him somewhere and that made him only more convinced that he was going to develop Blondie as a suspect. But first things first. Mungo needed to sit here a little longer, see what else was going down, and he hadn’t finished his breakfast.