“What are these?” Shaw asked.

“They’re from the flash drive that Jack gave me. Security footage from Saturday night.”

Shaw shuffled them; North knew what he was seeing: pictures of Matty at the bar, and the guy on the stool next to him. In a couple of the shots, the guy looked up, and the camera got a great lock on his face.

“It’s not quite how Matty told us,” North said. “The guy ordered a drink at the end of the bar and came to sit next to Matty a few minutes later.”

“Matty probably got him confused with someone else.”

North shrugged.

“We’re going to see Teddi?” Shaw asked.

“We’re going to see Teddi.”

“Please no.”

“Shaw, he literally calls himself the queen of the gays. He’s our best shot at identifying this guy quickly.”

“Regina’s going to be there.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do know that. She’s always there. She’s . . .”

“Insatiable.”

“I was going to say relentless.”

“Insatiable is better,” North said. “She wants you. She wants you bad. And one day, she’s going to get you.”

“No, she’s not.”

“Why not with Tony? I get it: Regina’s a bitch when she’s in character, but Tony might be chill. And it’s been, what, a year since you and Benny broke up?”

“Please drop it.”

“I’m just saying—”

Shaw reached over and gave him a quick, brutal titty-twister, and North actually screeched and barely kept the Grand Caravan from smashing into a row of shopping carts outside the Save-A-Lot.

“You little bitch.”

“I asked you nicely.”

North massaged his chest, casting patently injured looks at Shaw.

Shaw ignored him.

“Ok,” North said. “If that’s how you want to play this.”

Shaw turned his gaze to the window; he spotted a broken bottle on the sidewalk and focused on it, watching it flit by.

“Ok.” North adjusted his hands on the wheel. “Ok, ok, ok.”

Their drive today was shorter: a quick shot north up Jefferson, past Lafayette Park, toward Teddi’s house. Lafayette Square, the neighborhood surrounding the park, was an enclave of wealth like the Central West End in some ways. But Lafayette Square was smaller. And gayer. And had less of the yuppie gentrification that the Central West End had seen. Still, the houses here were nicer, the streets cleaner, and if you lived here, you might even walk your dog at night—not something North would advise if you lived in Benton Park, where Borealis was based.

Teddi’s house was beyond nice. It was fabulous—like Teddi. It was painted a color that Teddi insisted on calling lapis lazuli, with crisp yellow trim and an enormous, sparkling glass rainbow installation in the front swatch of lawn that might have been the single gayest object North had ever seen. Teddi had paid a fortune for it; he made sure everyone knew it.

When they rang the bell, Teddi answered in his typical ensemble of blazer and bowtie and loafers. His head shone—North was fairly sure he used some kind of scalp grease for bald men—and he beamed a smile at Shaw and a slightly frostier one at North.