I looked through the rest of her bedroom and her closet and then I went into her bathroom. The trick book was wrapped in a freezer-strength Baggie and taped to the underside of her lavatory, along with a little vial of crack cocaine. It had taken me exactly eight minutes and forty seconds to find it. Cops probably do it in less.

I took the book out into the living room, sat on the couch, and looked through it. There were entries dating back ten months to the beginning of the year, and sure enough, exactly five months and one week ago, there was the first mention of Charlie DeLuca. He had seen Gloria on three consecutive days the first week they had met, then five times the following week. The notes were mostly abbreviations, but the abbreviations were obvious. I read them and tried to feel detached and professional, but all I managed was smarmy and embarrassed. None of the notes related to Charlie’s business or to anything Charlie might’ve said about his business.

I looked through every day of every week up until the present and noticed that starting in the fifth week, whenever Charlie’s name appeared, another name appeared, too. Santiago.

Hmm.

I flipped back to the beginning of the book again and this time went through looking for Santiago. His first mention was during that fifth week, with Charlie. Maybe Charlie had brought him along. I kept looking. Sometimes Gloria wrote the full name, sometimes she just wrote S. For the next few weeks, every time there was an S, there was also Charlie’s name, but after that sometimes there was just the S. Luther had said that Charlie had been around last Tuesday and Friday, but there was no mention of him on those days in the book, just Santiago. Maybe Charlie didn’t come around to see Gloria anymore and maybe that’s why she didn’t list him. Maybe he came to see Santiago.

Hmm, again.

Santiago was penciled in for tomorrow at four-thirty in the afternoon. A Friday. Hmm. Charlie wasn’t scheduled, but that was okay. Neither was I.

I closed the trick book, put it back in its plastic bag, then retaped it beneath the lavatory in Gloria Uribe’s bathroom and let myself out. When I got down to the street, Luther and his friend were back leaning against the Pontiac. Luther grinned when he saw me, flashing more of the Mike Tyson teeth. I said, “Luther, you know a guy named Santiago, comes around here sometime?”

Luther stopped grinning and shook his head. “I don’t want no part of that.” He pushed off the Pontiac and walked past me into Clyde’s.

I looked after him, and then I looked at Luther’s friend. Luther’s friend shrugged.

I said, “What was that all about?”