The guy with Mike Tyson’s teeth looked in at me and said, “Say, man, who you lookin’ for?”

“Gloria Uribe. She around?”

“Naw, she workin’. She better be, she know what’s good for her.”

“You her business manager?”

“Naw, man, she Haitian or Cuban or somedamnthing like that. They got their own people to take care of’m. I got somethin’ on the fourth floor just as good, though. No waitin’.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “My heart belongs to Gloria.”

He said, “Shee-it, you the poe-lice, all right.” His buddy laughed and they knocked fists.

I gave him the okay-we-both-know-I’m-a-cop face. “What’s your name, homeboy?”

“Luther.”

“Luther, make a friend on the force. Gloria do a good business?”

“Fair to middlin’.”

“White guys?”

Luther nodded and winked at his friend. “You sniffin’ ’round ’bout that gangster with the big car. You from Organized Crime?”

“Maybe.” Maybe. Did Eliot Ness say maybe? “Tell me about the big car. He here often?”

“Two, three times a week.”

“There any pattern to when he comes around?”

Luther gave me pained. “Man, all these questions grinding my brain, you know?”

“Unh-hunh.”

I dug out a twenty and passed it to him. He didn’t look impressed. “Tha’s pretty thin pickin’s.”

“It’s the budget crunch, Luther.”

“I hear that.” He made the twenty disappear. “He came around twice last week. On Tuesday, then again Friday. Usually a Friday.” He looked at his friend and the friend nodded.

I said, “What do the bodyguards do while he’s with Gloria?”

“Shee-it, he ain’t had his posse around in three months.”

I looked at him. “He’s been seeing Gloria Uribe for three months?”

“Hell, he been coming around longer than that.” Luther squinted at his friend again. “What, four, five months now?”

The friend nodded, unh-hunh.

Luther looked back at me.

I said, “He’s been seeing Gloria Uribe for maybe five months, and when he comes, he comes alone?”

Luther frowned and gave me the heavy-eyelid treatment. “How many times I gotta say it, a lousy twenty bucks.”

Luther’s friend yawned and stared at something down the street.

I thought about it. In my business, you look for things that are out of the ordinary because out of the ordinary things usually mean clues. Sarah Lewis had said that Charlie DeLuca never stayed with a woman for longer than three weeks and that he never went anywhere without bodyguards. Of course, that was a long time ago and maybe Charlie had changed his ways. Maybe Charlie and Gloria were in love and all the getting together without bodyguards was to discuss wedding plans. Then again, maybe not.

I said, “Luther, Gloria just a streetwalker, or does she do outcall?”

“She walkin’ when times are hard. Things looking better, she be strictly outcall. You can tell when she outcall, ’cause her nose in the air.”

Luther’s friend laughed like hell.