“Maybe I do know where a pharmacy is.”

He said nothing.

“Hey, ya know, you gotta get an antibiotic for the bite.”

He spun around. “Are you infected with something?”

“Don’t worry. I don’t have AIDS or anything. Least not that I know of.”

Swell.

“It’s just that bites are dangerous,” she went on, “even if the person isn’t sick. I know that because a whole bunch of my johns bite me all the time, and if it wasn’t for antibiotics, I’d be dead probably.”

He resumed his pace.

“Hey, Decker, c’mon.”

He kept walking.

“I’ll look for this girl…What’s her name?”

“Lindsey Bates.”

“Yeah, Lindsey Bates. I got sources, you know.”

He was outside of the building. Jesus, even Hollywood air felt good.

“Hey, Decker, you got a spare dime or something?”

He turned the corner and started sprinting up the quiet street, embarrassed by the hooker on his tail. Then he stopped abruptly and pulled out his wallet.

“Come here,” he said, crushing a five in his fist. She held out her hand and he dropped the ball of money in her open palm. “Now don’t ask me for another thing or your tail’s in Juvey Hall.”

“On what?”

“Soliciting.”

“Bullshit. I just said—”

“Kiki, I’m a cop. You’re a hooker. No one’s going to listen to you. If I say you were soliciting, you’re going to be busted for soliciting. Then it’s Juvey Hall or foster homes or back to your old man, who’s probably been raping you since you were ten.”

The girl’s face grew glum.

“You must have worked a lot of Juvey.”

He was silent. He knew it all too well.

“I’m real sorry about your arm, Decker.”

“I’m sorry about your face. Keep yourself out of trouble, huh?”

“I’m gonna find her, Decker. You’ll see. I got contacts.”

He slipped into the Plymouth, found a nearby pay phone, and reported the dead girl he’d found in the building to Hollywood Division.

8

He awoke the next morning with an elephantine arm and cursed his stupidity at not going to an ER last night. He’d been too damn tired and now he was paying the price. Fever burned in his brain and his radial nerve shot spasmodic pain into his arm. Rousing slowly from a fitful sleep, he got up and went to the bathroom to change the dressing.

The arm was swollen a dark purple and gouged by deep red, crusty lacerations. He found some alcohol in the medicine cabinet and began to swab the wound, his flesh sizzling at each application of the astringent. The skin turned bright red and cracked open, oozing blood and pus. He washed his arm several times and took out a packet of sterile gauze, a couple of extra-strength aspirins and four leftover penicillin pills. He downed the tablets and wrapped the wound.