It had been Remus’s observation throughout his career that hookers took on the accents and mannerisms of their owners. Black hookers sounded white and white hookers sounded black, white gigolos walked with an NBA spring, black gigolos strutted like John Wayne. By now Remus was used to it. He just did his cooking and ran his joint, live and let be. He didn’t want trouble, and Poison troubled him like an ice pick too close to his eye. She had a mocking smile, as if she knew the joke was on him. Remus sensed that a cold-blooded killing, including his own, would amuse her.

Brazil sat in his booth for quite some time, watching the clientele thin. He was tapping his menu, his table bare since no one seemed inclined to wait on him. He watched the young hooker finish breakfast. She dropped money on the table and got up. Brazil’s eyes followed as she left. He was dying to talk to her, but scared. The bell on the door got quiet in her mysterious wake, and he got up, too. Brazil forgot he had never ordered, and left a tip. He emerged from the grill, notepad out, looking up and down the sidewalk, walking around the block, scanning the parking lot across Fifth Street, not seeing her anywhere. Disappointed, he continued wandering.

A black van with dark tinted glass drove slowly past, but Brazil gave it not a second thought as his mind tried to unlock something he was certain he knew the combination to but could not yet access.

Mungo stared out the van’s windshield at Blondie, realizing that this case was getting only bigger. Mungo watched the slow, languid way the guy moved, stopping every now and then to search traffic and stare. Mungo’s excitement mounted when Blondie approached Shena, one of the oldest sluts in the area.

She was perched on the front wooden steps of a dilapidated wooden house, sipping Coke, trying to get over the night before and readying herself for the one coming up. Blondie walked up like they knew each other. He started talking to her. She shrugged, gestured, then got pissed and waved him off like he was a pigeon in her way. Uh huh, Mungo thought. This boy-bait was becoming a territorial problem out here, moving in on the other hookers’ lemonade stands. Blondie was probably luring men, maybe some women, selling them dope, committing crimes against nature and getting rich from it.

Mungo was convinced that if he dug further he would find out that Blondie was way up there on the drug-dealing chain, probably directly connected to New York. There could be a connection to the Black Widow killings. Mungo got out the video camera and captured what was possibly the best-looking, most clean-cut male prostitute he’d ever seen, except in the movies. Mungo quickly drove back to headquarters.

• • •

West had been up all night. She had done her best to make Niles shut up his yowling and kneading. She had thrown him off the bed until her shoulder got tired. She had talked in an adult fashion with him, trying to make him understand her fatigue and need of sleep. She had yelled, threatened, and locked him out of her room. He had been well rested and happily snoozing on his favorite windowsill when West hurried out the door this morning, late for work. She had no patience left. When Mungo walked into the conference room in the midst of her meeting with the Phantom Force, she was not welcoming.