The Bardot lips twitched with amusement. “Food not to Velda’s taste?”

“Food very much to her taste. That’s why she doesn’t like it.”

Sheila gave me a kiss of a smile. “Watching her figure?”

“Her and me and every other right-minded man in town. Are you okay, kid?”

“Super. Why?”

“I got X-ray vision. Me and Clark Kent. I can see right through that make-up.”

Her left eye was a little swollen and expertly dabbed with flesh-colored cosmetic.

She frowned just a tad. “Is it that obvious, Mike?”

“Could be I’m a detective. What’s his name? I might have something for him.”

She brought us to a stop and her smile turned into a tragic thing that wouldn’t fool anybody. “No, Mike. Please don’t. Please stay out of it. I’m breaking it off. I promise. I swear.”

I touched her cheek, lightly. “You have any trouble shaking loose, kid, you know where to find me. And it won’t cost you a penny. I enjoy spending time with men who think beating up women is fun.”

She swallowed, nodded, then delivered me to my destination and slipped back to her post.

Pat hadn’t lined up a backroom or anything, just a big corner booth filled with rumpled men in rumpled suits. I shook hands with everybody, then squeezed in next to Pat, who was my age, blond with gray-blue eyes, a trimly muscular build, and a methodical mind.

“We decided,” Pat said, “not to wait for you before we started drinking.”

“Good call,” I said.

There were seven of us, including but not limited to burly, balding Shannon himself; Chris Peters, his slim young current partner on the PD; and Ben Higgins, an already retired skin-and-bones copper who’d been the sidekick before that.

I’d barely settled when a waitress in a white dress shirt and black skirt delivered me a Canadian Club and ginger. Like I said, I was something of a regular at Pete’s. My preferences were known.

We talked old times. I won’t bore you with it, but Peters loved hearing everything, particularly the tales that showed how dogged and tough Shannon could be, but also the ones that made this older mentor of his seem human, like when the Wall Street Cop was on the receiving end of his former partner Ben Higgins’s practical jokes.

“Hell,” Higgins was saying, “I didn’t even know you could melt Ex-Lax down and make a decent hot fudge sundae out of it. Turns out you can!”

Over everybody else’s laughter, a smirking Shannon said, “It made hot fudge all right, let me tell you.”

Several rounds of drinks went by before we finally ordered. Everybody got the house specialty—bone-in rib-eyes—and the waitress was still getting the particulars, salad dressing, veggies, potato and so on, when a tall, broad-shouldered guy of maybe thirty-five came in, leading two men a decade or so older who seemed vaguely servile yet bore a distinguished quality the younger man somehow lacked.

They were peeling out of their Burberry cashmere trenches, the older men revealing Brooks Brothers suits each worth a week of my rent at the Hackard Building. Shannon—sitting next to Pat—leaned over and said to both of us, “What the hell are they doing in a joint like this?”