My ears are ringing. I know what it means. My whole body goes numb. I wonder how he’ll do me in the joint. Piano wire? Hung in my jail cell?

“Just let me get my pants on,” I tell the pig. I look out the window as I get my black suit on. Someone’s rummaging around in the garbage heap in the alley.

They show me pictures of her, stretched out across the bed with two holes in her chest, wearing the white slip pulled down and soaked with blood. She’s got a strange look of peace on her face, one of her sad, lush pouts on her soft pink lips. Her arms are stretched out like she’s on some kind of obscene cross. The rusty little .22 that did Frank Chambers is clutched in one of her tiny hands. I told her to get rid of that fucking thing when she could. I sit there, numb, I can’t even feel a goddamn thing.

“You know her, Jake?”

“Can I have a cigarette?”

They get me one, a fucking Marlboro Light, for God’s sake. I light it and blow smoke.

“Yeah,” I say. “I know her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Connie,” I say. “Consuela Rodriguez.”

“Born Conrad Jesus Rodriguez Chambers,” says the pig, reciting all of Connie’s erstwhile names like a list of offenses. “Mama was Maria Consuela Rodriguez, a pretty Puerto Rican whore, just like her son turned out to be.” The pigs laugh all around the room. “Mama OD’ed about six years ago in a shooting gallery in the Heights. His daddy was Rick Chambers, consigliere to the gods. With a taste for fresh PR whore meat.” Fitz is grinning, pushing me as far as he can push me. “Can’t blame him, can you? Rick Chambers later started his own family; you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Jake? Nah, I didn’t think so. Anyway, Conrad changed his name early last year, legally speaking. We understand he was a fruit for a whole lot of years, turning tricks out by the wharf. Taking it up the ass, I guess. But then they say guys give pretty good head—you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Jake? We think he was killed in some sort of lover’s quarrel. He had been down to the station to talk to some detectives the day before, saying some things about certain people in his life, saying that maybe his girlfriend wanted him dead. She was one of those women who likes to slap guys around. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Jake?”