We told the marks we destroyed the negatives and the SIM cards after they’d paid up, which of course wasn’t true. But it was true that we’d never used the photographs against someone who’d paid—they were insurance, that’s all. Lou gathered them at the end of every case and passed them to the Lady, one of our many rituals. If Jackal had copies, that meant he was running something on the side, had a buyer or was looking for one. Probably trying to pick up cash for a poker debt. The Lady wouldn’t like that.

“Did you have something in mind?” I purred, inching myself forward on his desk, moving my legs apart.

Jackal nuzzled my neck. “I’ll think of something.” He started to stroke up my leg, massaging from knee to thigh.

In all the years we’d been whatevering, there were certain secrets I’d kept from Jackal. My debt to the Lady, for one. And what Lou and I had done to incur that debt. But—stupid me—I’d never considered he might have secrets of his own. Jackal seemed so easy to read. But continuing to blackmail old marks after the Lady’s sting had ended, or else selling them to someone new—I hadn’t guessed he had it in him. A reporter looking for a scoop, a rival business partner, an ex-wife with an axe to grind—pictures worth a thousand words and almost certainly several thousand dollars all told. Double-dipping would be an easy score.

“Come here,” I said, guiding Jackal so close there was almost no space between us.

The nineteen grand in exchange for my silence would be a simple solution, if Jackal had it, but I’d already made one reckless decision that day that had backfired. With Lou and me, there was a code—we watched each other’s backs and we took care of our girls, helped them to their fair share of the cut. But Jackal had brought that girl in here tonight, he’d let me down at the St. Leo, and he’d been complicit in whatever had happened to his ex. No loyalty to anyone but himself. Getting involved with Jackal’s side business was one more bad bet I couldn’t afford.

But maybe there was another way I could use the photographs.

Besides recording the footage, Jackal was the one who collected from the marks, keeping the girls out of danger and making the marks less likely to cause trouble. The Lady set the amount, but it wasn’t like she followed up to make sure that the blackmail had met their satisfaction. If Jackal upped the Klein bribe on the sly, I could slip the excess back to the police before anyone noticed it was missing. And no one would ever have to know it had taken a detour first. Neat, easy, not even stealing, not technically.