“Oh, your favorite.” She pulled out a list, and he groaned. “Legwork, legwork, legwork,” she said sweetly, and handed him his half of the list.

Jennifer leaned over the table at Ken’s Pizza and batted her eyelashes flirtatiously at the plainclothes officer across from her. He batted his eyes right back at her, then wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“So, Jen, what is it you want out of me this time?” he asked. “You never buy me lunch unless you want something.”

“Moi?” she exclaimed in mock-horror. “Want something? Why, Wild Bill, I am crushed! How could you say something like that? Can’t an honest citizen buy lunch for one of Tulsa’s finest without wanting something?”

“Not when they’re you, they can’t.” But “Wild Bill” Cody, a casual friend of Jennifer’s who’d recently been promoted to the Detective Unit, didn’t look or sound as if he was unhappy about the situation, so Jennifer decided to continue pursuing the intention that had led her to meet Cody at headquarters and invite him to lunch.

She pouted. “You eat my pizza, you drink my soda, then you make terrible accusations that I’m bribing you.”

“Statements, not accusations,” he retorted. “And the Three-Ninety-Five all-you-can-eat Lunch Buffet is below the five-dollar limit that constitutes a bribe, as you are well aware. So what do you want? I don’t fix tickets and I don’t give out confidential information.”

“I know that,” she said with annoyance. “All I want is office gossip. You used to be in Fraud. What’s the word on Rod Calligan?”

“Current or history? Never mind, both, I know.” He took a long pull on his cola, and the ice clicked against the plastic when he put it down. “History is, Fraud has him on the list of people who might go over the line some day. You know, people who have enough complaints against them that we figure it’s worth watching them in case their companies get in trouble and they start looking for creative ways to finance things? But you also know that list—”

“Is real long.” She nodded. “That’s the way it is around here. A lot of people skate on thin ice but never fall in. Any hint he’s ever been involved in the illegal artifact business?”