“Specific numbers?”

“Can you congratulate me first?”

“Congratulations.” He turned left onto 10 East and ripped pavement. The Porsche’s engine sang. “Numbers?”

She twirled a strand of hair with an index finger. When she spoke, she had to shout over the roar of the engine. “You know, Renaldes could be listed.”

Decker took out his cell phone.

“I’ll do it,” Cindy told him.

“No, I will.”

“Dad, you’re going ninety on the freeway!”

Decker ignored her and called up information.

“You’re crazy!” Cindy shouted. “I have a maniac for a father.”

“I can’t hear! Quiet!”

“Oh God!” She slumped in her seat. “I wish I were a Catholic. Then I could cross myself.”

Decker hung up the phone and put it back into his pocket. “He wasn’t listed. Let’s try again. Specific numbers?”

Cindy sighed. “I seem to remember a six or a seven in the beginning.”

“So that means three numbers if we’re talking around Broadway and Thirty-second.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It was a three-number address. I think it was an even number.”

“That narrows it down. I’m five minutes away. Let’s just poke around. See if something jogs your memory or maybe we’ll happen to come across a shot-out bronze Nova.”

“I will be happy to go along with whatever plans you’ve devised, including leaning on scumbags like Pepe Renaldes, should we find him. But not until you give me the phone and let me call Koby.”

“No.”

“Dad—”

“Not a chance!”

“Daddy, he’s worried about me. And frankly, I want to talk to him.”

“No.”

“If you don’t give me the phone, I’m going to leave at the next stoplight.”

“We’re on the freeway.”

“Daddy, give me the friggin’ phone now!”

“Now that’s conviction!” Decker smiled at his daughter and handed her the phone. “Finally.”

36

Gray skies hovered over the awakening city as the Loo parked the Porsche curbside. We were in an area of high crime, and the lone sports car sitting on the empty block just cried out, Jack me! Chop me! I asked him how comfortable he felt leaving his baby without backup, and he showed me his Beretta. At that point, I gave up. The man was on his own private mission, masquerading as my avenging angel.

It was an immigrant neighborhood, mostly Hispanic, and while the inhabitants weren’t steeped in dire poverty, most of them were surely poor. Because the area predated its current population and there had been wealth a time ago, there remained some magnificent old mansions built with the kind of detail that failed replication. But most of those estates had been bought up by the nearby university and were used for graduate-study centers. The rest of the architecture was a mixture of old and older, of fixer-uppers and buildings in serious disrepair. There were several turn-of-the-century Victorian houses replete with gingerbread, scallops, and curlicues, but the dwellings sagged under age, waiting for that expensive face-lift. There were also some Arts and Crafts bungalows with shingled sides and roofs, and spacious front porches. But the majority of the single-family houses were broken stucco boxes with little to offer except protection from the elements. Even those were preferable to the rows of dingbats—lifeless, square apartment buildings without charm that were shedding stucco chunks like a diseased leper molting facial features.