“What are the washcloths for?” Brazil asked.

“What do you expect? Finger bowls? It’s a messy profession,” West remarked.

He shot her another look.

“No matter what kind of car I drive, they know I’m here,” she went on, flicking an ash out the window.

“Really?” he asked. “I guess the same ones have been out here, what, fifteen years, then? And they remember you. Imagine that.”

“You know, this isn’t how you make points,” West warned.

He was looking out and thoughtful when he said, “Don’t you miss it?”

West watched the ladies of the night and didn’t want to answer him. “Can you tell which are men?”

“That one, maybe.”

Brazil stared at a big, ugly hooker in a vinyl miniskirt, her tight black top stretched over opera breasts. Her come-hither walk was slow and bulging as she stared hate into the cop car.

“Nope. She’s real,” West let Brazil know, and not adding that the hooker was also an undercover cop, wired, armed, and married with a kid. “The men have good legs,” she went on. “Anatomically correct perfect fake breasts. No hips. You get close, which I don’t recommend, they shave.”

Brazil was quiet.

“Guess you didn’t learn all this working for the TV magazine,” she added.

He could feel her glancing at him, as if she had something else on her mind.

“So, you drive that Cadillac with shark fins?” she finally got around to it.

He continued looking out at the trade show along the street, trying to tell women from men.

“In your driveway,” West went on. “Doesn’t look like something you’d drive.”

“It isn’t,” Brazil said.

“Gotcha.” West sucked on the cigarette and flicked another ash into the wind. “You don’t live alone.”

He continued staring out his window. “I have an old BMW 2002. It was my dad’s. He got it used and fixed it up, could fix anything.”

They passed a silver rental Lincoln. West noticed it because the man inside had the interior light on and looked lost. He was talking on his portable phone, and casting about in this bad part of town. He turned off on Mint Street. Brazil was still looking out at dangerous people looking back at them when West got interested in the Toyota directly ahead, its side window knocked out, the license plate hanging by a coat hanger. There were two young males inside. The driver was watching her in the rearview mirror.

“What you wanna bet we got a stolen car ahead,” West announced.

She typed the plate number into the MDT. It began to beep as if she’d just won at slot machines. She read the display and flipped on flashing blue and red lights. The Toyota blasted ahead of them.

“Shit!” West exclaimed.

Now she was in a high-speed pursuit, trying to be a race driver and balance a cigarette and coffee and snatch up the mike, all at the same time. Brazil didn’t know what to do to help. He was having the adventure of his life.