She took the glasses off. The flesh around her eyes was swollen, puffy, and red; redder still were what had been the whites of her eyes. Lily had been crying. Lily had been crying her heart out.

“I loved Ronnie,” she said. “And she loved me.”

She began to sob and Velda put an arm around her, and gave me a tortured look. Lily had no tears left, but the crying? That may have only just started.

Finally it eased up, and she gave us her phone number, saying she’d do anything to help that she could. If we wanted a look at Jasmine’s “dungeon,” and their living quarters, she’d accommodate us, if we liked. I said we might take her up on that.

She asked, “Can you find the one who did this?”

“Count on it.”

“I don’t mean to insult you, Mike, but…you look like a man who could kill somebody if you felt like it.”

Velda seemed amused by the hooker’s good judge of character.

I said, “Are you sure you’ve never heard of me?”

Her little smile seemed almost embarrassed. “I remembered while we were talking. You killed that Penta character. It was on the news.”

“I did.”

The ravaged eyes bore in on me. “Will you kill Ronnie’s killer, Mike?”

“I promised a friend I wouldn’t.”

“That’s too bad. That’s a shame.”

“But this friend is a cop who will see that the killer goes away for a long, long time.”

“That’s something, anyway.”

She put on the sunglasses and slipped out of the booth. Velda scooted out too, to give her a hug.

When Velda returned, she said, “That special client of Ronnie’s…who liked to get rough. What’s that tell you?”

“Well, two things come to mind. Vincent Colby frequents the Dungeon Room at the Tube.”

“That’s one.”

“And those black eyes that Sheila Ryan habitually gets? We may have been reading that wrong. What if it’s our client’s son who’s been battering that babe?”

“Our client’s son who wears Obsession?” She half-smiled, shook her head. “The one who knows some martial arts? Maybe after the hit-and-run outside Pete’s Chophouse, the dark side of Vincent Colby came out to play.”

I was nodding. “The bunkai knee-kick kills didn’t start in till he’d had the concussion.”

I got out of the booth, threw some bills down to cover the damage. Said, “You go home, doll. This long night isn’t over yet.”

Her hand found mine. “You must be dead on your feet, lover. Come home with me. Let’s get some rest and start back in on this tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “Our killer isn’t taking any time off. I don’t like the way the players in our little cast keep thinning. It’s only eleven. Like the song says, I’ll knock on your door around midnight.”