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PART TWO

The names of the streets are mostly to be taken from the things that grow in the country, as Vine Street, Mulberry Street, Chestnut Street, and the like.

– WILLIAM PENN, Instructions to His Commissioners, 1681

Q: What type of crack or what quality of crack did you see on Brooklyn Street? Was it good, was it bad?

A: What type of crack?

Q: Was it good quality or poor quality?

A: Oh yeah, the best work in the city.

Q: The best work in the city? What does "best work" mean?

A: The best crack in the city.

Q: Is that just that the amount you sold was good in terms of volume, or was it the actual quality?

A: Quality.

– DAVID WEST,

United States v. Williams,

United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Criminal Docket No. 2-172, February 23, 2004, Notes of Testimony at 736-737

FIFTEEN

"Honey, I'm home!" Vicki called out, unlocking the front door, which opened to the shrill barking of a dog and the warning beep of a burglar alarm, set in case a psycho killer dropped in for Glenlivet, neat. She went to the keypad to disable the alarm before it went off, while her parents' Welsh corgi sprinted into the entrance hall and attacked her shoe.

"Ruby, no!" Vicki said over the beeping, shaking her toe to get the dog off. She punched her mother's birthday into the white keypad, but the alarm went off, erupting into earsplitting sound. She shook her foot but the corgi hung on, a nasty blur of tan and white. Her startled parents rushed in from the kitchen.

"Mom! Dad! Did you change the alarm code?" Vicki yelled over the din.

"Yes, it's my birthday now!" her father shouted, wincing. Vicki was trying to remember her father's birthday but it was too noisy to think. Her father hurried past her to the keypad and punched in the new code, mercifully silencing the alarm, if not the corgi.

"Ruby, no!" her mother said, but the dog growled and shook her head, with Vicki's toe still in her teeth. "Ruby, no!"

"Why does she do this?" Vicki couldn't help but laugh, ﬁnally freeing her pump. She had no idea what had possessed her parents to buy this dog. Every time she came home, the dog attacked her toe, heels, and ankles. Either the animal had no long-term memory or her name was Ruby, no! "Mom, doesn't she know me yet?"

"She's a herding dog."

"So?"

"Ruby, no! Ruby, no!" Her mother bent over in her white silk blouse and full navy skirt, tugging the determined dog by her red leather collar.

"Why does she bite me? I'm family."

"That's why she's herding you."

"She's insane," Vicki said, reaching down to pet the puppy, who only scampered away, barking and play-bowing on her short legs. She had eyes like brown marbles, legs like stumps, and a body like a Tater Tot. She kept nipping, trying to bite Vicki's toe. Adorable, for an attack dwarf.

"Why didn't you call ﬁrst, Victoria?" her father asked. He was still dressed from work in suit pants and a starched white shirt, but his Brioni tie was loose, which qualiﬁed for him as casual dress. His straight, dark hair, growing sparse on top, matched dark eyebrows that capped small brown eyes. His nose curved like a hawk and his lips were thin, with a small scar on the top lip that appeared when he frowned, as now. "We didn't know you were coming."

"I have only the four lamb chops, honey," her mother added, with plain regret. Her greenish eyes softened in spite of the surgically enhanced lift at their corners, and her hair, chin-length, curved gently under her chin and shone like jet in the light of the entrance hall's chandelier. "We're on the South Beach Diet, so we have to watch. I would have bought more if you'd called ahead."

"Sorry, I didn't get a chance." Vicki wouldn't tell them she'd been stalking crack addicts. She had long ago stopped telling her parents anything. In fact, she was hoping she'd get to eat a full dinner before her father brought up what happened last night. "I was close by and figured I'd stop in. If there's no dinner, that's okay."

"Nonsense, you can have one of my chops," her mother offered, putting a silk-swathed arm around Vicki and giving her a brief hug. "Come in, we were just about to sit down." She smelled like Chanel and felt just as elegant, but it freed the dog to bite Vicki's foot.

"Mom, your dog hates me," she said as they walked into the dining room, which had an oval walnut table as its polished center, surrounded by Chippendale chairs and red wallpaper blooming with etched Chinese poppies. Against the far wall sat a mahogany sideboard, and the rug was a silk Oriental, a red-and-white pattern that complemented the Mandarin-hued borders of her parents' china, now set with cooling food in two place settings.

"Ruby just wants you to stay with the group."

"She bites!"

"Herds," her mother corrected, and they fell into step, with the dog herding Vicki's heel.

"Why doesn't she just lick my face like a normal dog?" Vicki remembered the neurotic poodle from her childhood, which looked like a saint next to this one. "Peppy never did that."

"Ruby has different instincts. She bites you only so you'll do what she wants."

"The control freak of dogs."

"Oh, hush." Her mother released Vicki with a smile and turned to the swinging door to the kitchen, in the back of the house. Ruby let go of Vicki's heel and scooted after her. "Sit down while I get you a plate. I'll be right back."

"Can I help?"

"No, thanks. Keep your father company," she called back airily, her navy silk skirt billowing gracefully behind her, her waist still svelte. Vicki became aware that her father was watching her mother with similar admiration. They stood in the large dining room, saying nothing, and she wondered if there would ever come a time when she felt completely comfortable alone with her father, without her mother to ﬁll in the silences. There was only one subject that she and her father ever agreed on:

"Mom looks great, doesn't she?" Vicki asked, but it wasn't a question.

"Absolutely. She goes to Curves now."

"There's a Curves here? Where?"

"On Lancaster Avenue, near the tile place. And Eadeh, the rug place."

"I see those Curves commercials all the time." Vicki was putting herself to sleep with her own conversation. She was ﬁlling up the air with words until her mother got back and rescued them from each other. What was taking her so long?

"Eadeh has very nice rugs. Very nice Oriental rugs."

"I heard that."

"She loves Curves. She goes three times a week. Here. Let's sit. Dinner's getting cold." Her father pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat down behind his plate, which held two medium-rare chops of New Zealand lamb, three ﬂorets of barely steamed broccoli, and a portion-controlled tossed salad, sparingly dressed with vinaigrette. Vicki sat down, and he gestured at his plate. "Your mother put us on South Beach, and she's right. We eat twenty grams of carbs a day, no more. It's much healthier than Atkins."

"I'm sure," Vicki said, but she hungrily wished she belonged to one of those Italian families in the Olive Garden commercials, who ate piles of spaghetti with hearty red tomato sauce. Her parents wouldn't be caught dead in an Olive Garden and now they were the only Italians in the world who didn't eat pasta.

"Our cholesterol was too high, and so was our blood sugar."

"Really."

"Now our levels are a lot better."

"Good." Vicki hid her smile. Her parents spent every minute together; driving to the ofﬁce, working across the hallway from each other, then driving home in the same car. They had met at Villanova Law School, married upon graduation, and gone into practice together. Their marriage was all the more solid for their togetherness, although now that they were sharing the same blood sugar, Vicki suspected that they were physically fusing and soon would become conjoined twins.

"We use only Splenda now. It's a sugar substitute." "Splenda. It sounds so cheery." "Make fun, but I lost ﬁve pounds the ﬁrst two weeks." Vicki blinked. "I wasn't making fun, Dad. That's great, that you lost ﬁve pounds." "No, it isn't. The book says you should lose seven. I listened to it in the car, on CD. Your mother lost seven."

"Five isn't much less than seven. It's only two." Math genius.

"Fewer."

"Huh?"

"You said less. You meant fewer."

"Oh. Sorry." English genius, too. "In any event, two fewer pounds doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"Oh." Vicki sighed inwardly. It was almost impossible to agree with her father, even when you were faking it. He was a man who never took yes for an answer. She suddenly regretted coming home. She should have gone to Olive Garden.

"Sugar is poison," her father added. He unfolded his napkin and set it on his lap, then rested his arms on the side of the table. The strains of The Marriage of Figaro lilted from a CD player in the kitchen, followed by her mother, humming along. Her father tapped his index ﬁnger in time, though he would never sing, as much as he loved opera. He seemed preoccupied, and Vicki knew he had to be thinking about Morty and Jackson's murders.

"Dad, about last night-"

"Let's wait until your mother comes in. I know she wants to hear, too."

"Okay."

"This way you won't have to repeat it."

"Or repeat it all over again." Vicki smiled at her own joke, because somebody had to. Her father was listening to the opera wafting from the kitchen, tapping his finger. She changed subjects. "Dad, guess where I was tonight?"

"Where?"

"Washington Street."

"Washington Street?" Her father's eyes flew open. "In Devil's Corner?"

"Yes, I even saw your old house."

"Really." His eyebrows lifted higher, just as her mother returned with an empty plate, which she set in front of Vicki and ﬁlled quickly with one of her own lamb chops and two broccoli spears. Between them, it wasn't enough food for a corgi, and Vicki felt a wave of guilt.

"Mom, that's all right. I'm not that hungry."

"I won't hear of it. I had a huge lunch." Her mother smiled and went around the table to her seat. The barber of Seville was bragging in the background. The dog returned to gnawing on Vicki's shoe.

"I was saying that I was on Washington Street today, Mom. I saw Dad's old house."

"Really?" Her mother tossed her shiny helmet of dark hair. "How did it look?"

"How do you think it looked?" her father interjected. "We can't all be from Hilltown." Hilltown was her mother's old neighborhood, which was nicer, some ten blocks east of her father's. Her mother let it pass, but Vicki was puzzled by his grumpy reaction.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Of course not, Victoria." Her mother's green eyes lit up. "You know your father doesn't like to be reminded of his humble beginnings."

"It's not that, Lily," her father said, turning to her mother. Vicki couldn't see his face from that angle, but she knew what it would look like. "It's a horrible neighborhood now. A ruin."

You don't know the half of it.

"Washington Street, my block, it's a slum now." Her father sipped water from a glass frosty with ice.

"Did you know the alley behind it, Cater Street?"

"Of course. How do you know Cater?"

"I get around," Vicki said, to make him smile, which it didn't. "I was driving through Van Buren and Lincoln Street."

"All the best places. Hope you kept the windows rolled up." Her father stabbed a spear of broccoli, and her mother avoided anyone's eye.

"Dad, was there a vacant lot on Cater when you were growing up?"

"I don't remember."

"Do you have any old pictures of Washington Street or the house? Maybe in Grandma's stuff?" Vicki's grandmother had died ten years ago, and her grandfather well before that. As soon as her father had had the means, he had them both moved into a gated retirement community in Chester County.

"No. I don't even know where your grandmother's things are."

"In the attic?"

"No. I didn't save those things, did I, Lily?"

"You saved nothing," her mother answered.

"Too bad." Vicki thought a minute. "You went to Willow-brook High School, right?"

Her father set down his fork. "Why the questions?"

"I was just asking."

"Victoria, it wasn't high school like you went to high school.

Like Episcopal or another private school with nice green ﬁelds. Lacrosse, Parents' Day. It wasn't pleasant. We were poor. You can't imagine how poor."

As poor as the people who live there now?

"My father worked day and night, three jobs, to make ends meet. I don't think I ever saw him sit down in a chair, not once."

"You've been crabby all day, Victor," her mother said softly.

"No, I haven't."

"You have, too." Her mother faced Vicki. "We lost a house client this morning. Remember Carlon Industries, the dry cleaners?"

"Sure. Jerry Solomon, right?" Vicki's parents did so much business entertaining that she had grown up around their clients and their wives, like Olive Garden families had uncles and aunts. Michael, Sam, and Carol clustered around the Allegrettis' dinner table. They counted as family, evidently until they ﬁred you.

"Yes. Yes. Good for you."

"It wasn't Jerry, it was the son," her father said, but her mother waved him off.

"Please, it was Jerry. He's hiding behind his own son, the coward." Her mother turned to Vicki. "Anyway, Jerry had eleven locations. As you know, we've done all his closings for years, and he let us go today. It was a blow for us."

"We'll do ﬁne without him," her father said, gruff. "The son was a slow pay anyway. Receivables of six months' standing. It's enough, already." He turned to Vicki, miffed but trying to hold it in. "That's not what I want to talk about, anyway. Your mother and I want to know what happened last night. If I've been crabby today, that's why."

"That's not completely why, Victor," her mother corrected, but her father ignored her.

"We pieced together what we could from the newspapers.

Why don't you ﬁll us in? Our only child is on the news, involved with violence, a multiple homicide, a shooting, and we hear nothing but a phone message."

"I told you we should have stayed up for the news," her mother interjected. "Were you on the eleven o'clock news?"

"I was. A case agent I've been working with was killed last night." Vicki gulped chilled water, hoping it would get past the sudden lump in her throat. The barber was singing happily in the kitchen, an ironic soundtrack to Morty's shooting, ﬂashing through her head. "His name was Bob Morton."

"I saw it in the newspaper account, and online. I thought I knew that name."

"We won that case together, Edwards? Morty was his name."

"Yes, I remember now. He was killed, and a pregnant woman, a black, was shot in a house." Her father's dark eyes grew hard as onyx. "It said you were inside the house at the time of the shooting. Were you?"

"No, I wasn't inside when it happened." Vicki reﬂected that maybe she hadn't learned to lie in law school. Maybe she had learned it at this color-coordinated table. "I was outside at the time and I'm ﬁne."

"The newspaper said you were inside." Her mother set down her fork, waiting.

"The newspaper got it wrong. They want to sell papers."

"But you were there at the house last night, weren't you?"

"It's part of the job." Vicki checked her temper, and her father tugged the napkin from his lap and set it down on the table. She knew he wouldn't be eating another bite tonight. He could lose those extra two pounds in no time. The corgi, on the other hand, was making a meal of her shoe.

"You're in the wrong job, Victoria." Her father shook his head. "Two people killed. If this experience doesn't change your thinking, I can't imagine what will."

Morty.

"I don't know why you don't just come to work for us. This is getting ridiculous. My God, what does it take to wake you up?"

Here we go.

"If you like criminal law so much, you can practice criminal law with us. We have only the four associates now, with Rachel going on maternity leave. You can do white collar defense. We get those matters all the time, referrals from the big ﬁrms."

"That's criminal defense, not prosecution."

"Don't be so picky!"

"I'm not being picky!"

Her mother raised a hand, her mascaraed eyes widening in alarm. "Wait, Victoria. Am I to understand that you were at a home when two people were shot to death?"

"I told you, Lily!" her father exploded, turning on her mother.

"Dad, please don't yell," Vicki said, but he wasn't listening.

"Of course she was, Lily! That's what she's saying! That's what she does! She's in the gun and violent crime unit, or whatever they call it! It puts her directly in harm's way!"

"You could have been killed?" her mother asked, shaken.

Vicki felt stunned at her mother's pain, which appeared as unexpectedly as a tornado in the middle of Broad Street. She must have been tense the whole day, her anxiety an undercurrent to the quotidian tasks of answering e-mail, taking phone calls, and attending closings. They had probably fought about it on the way home.

"Victoria, I simply don't understand you anymore." Her mother's light eyes glistened. "How can you do that? How can you? It's as if you intentionally want to hurt us."

"Mom, that's crazy, it's not intentional-"

"I beg to differ," her father interrupted. His skin ﬂushed so brightly she hoped he'd taken his Pravachol. Seville seemed far away, but the dog wasn't. "At this point, isn't it intentional?

To persist when you know how we feel?"

"Dad, it's not about you."

"No, it's about you. Because you, for some reason, want to hurt us, when we have given you everything. You even make much less than you could earn with us and you've no equity! You're not even building toward anything!" Her father stiffened, struggling to keep a civil tongue. "You know, if we owned a family farm, you would take it on, no questions asked. But we own a family law ﬁrm, and you refuse. You feel justiﬁed in refusing. And to add insult to injury, it's not that you don't want to practice law, which perhaps I could understand. No, it's that you don't want to practice our kind of law. That's like saying, I'll grow alfalfa for my family, but not corn!"

"It's different from-"

"No, it isn't! You're a lawyer, Victoria, and you know about foreseeable consequences. If you can foresee the consequences, you are charged with intending them, are you not?"

"Yes, but-"

"So it's foreseeable that our ﬁrm, without anyone to leave it to, will simply be"-her father was so angry, he was at a loss for words, which was as angry as he ever got-"defunct. The Allegretti ﬁrm will simply cease to exist. And you know this and you persist nonetheless, so you are charged with intending that consequence. And why? Because it's not your kind of law!"

"Dad, can we seriously be having this argument again?" Vicki asked, finally getting angry. "I should have a choice, don't you think?"

"Not when you have an obligation! To us, to me and your mother! And not when it can get you killed! If a choice is what you want, then you have it! And if you want to live like a pauper, then do!" Her father rose and gestured to her mother. "Look! Look at what you're doing to her!"

Vicki looked. Her mother's glossy head bent slightly over her plate and her lips, their gloss ﬁnally worn off, pursed in pain. She was trying not to cry.

"Mom, I'm sorry, don't cry," Vicki said, feeling a tug, not for the ﬁrst time. Morty was dead, and now her mother was upset. It had all gone to hell in a handbasket. She didn't want to quit. She didn't think they were right. But she was so very tired. Suddenly the phone in the kitchen started ringing.

"I'll get that." Her father rose and went into the other room, leaving them in miserable silence. Vicki knew that her mother was listening to the phone, to hear if it was a client; like most self-employed people, they worked around the clock. The two women sat in suspended animation until her father returned, his bearing erect, his features emotionless.

"The phone's for you, Victoria," he said.

"Me?" She rose stifﬂy, with a dog attached to her toe, which was when it struck Vicki that maybe her parents were herding her, in their own way. Biting her to keep her close. She knew that they loved her, and she loved them, too, despite their best efforts to the contrary.

"Be right back," she said, wondering who was on the phone.

SIXTEEN

"Vick, why is a black guy answering your cell? Are you cheating on me?" Dan. "I can't talk now." "What up? You said you'd call, and when you didn't, I called your cell. What happened?" "It's a long story." Vicki could hear stone silence from the dining room. At least her mother wasn't crying. "I e-mailed you, too. Didn't you check your BlackBerry?" "I didn't have a chance." "Why does he have your phone? He doesn't even know who you are. Did you get into trouble?" "We'll talk about it later." "That means yes. Are you okay?" "Fine." "You don't sound ﬁne. You sound upset." I am upset. "I'm ﬁne." "Are you staying overnight at your parents'?" "Are you insane?" Dan laughed. "When will you be home?" "An hour." "Want me to come over? Mariella's on call."

"No thanks."

"Then call me, no matter how late. I want to talk to you. I don't like the way you sound. You're worrying me lately, with Morty and all."

"Okay," Vicki said, touched. The man could read her like a book. "Gotta go."

"No matter how late, call me."

"Okay."

"Swear?"

"Swear."

"Okay, good-bye, sweetie."

She hung up, warm inside. Dan was truly worried about her. And he didn't bite.

Vicki got back to her house around ten o'clock, where she ignored her bills, mail, e-mail, and phone messages, and tiredly headed straight for the phone in her bedroom, shedding her coat on the way upstairs, dropping her purse, and kicking off her wounded shoe. She couldn't wait to call Dan and tell him what had happened on Cater Street. He could help her sort it out. He'd been an AUSA so long, he'd have good ideas. Should they bust Mrs. Bristow's dealer? Should they get her into rehab? And Vicki wanted to work on some theories with him, about Shayla Jackson and Bristow.

She ﬂicked on the lamplight beside her bed, slid out of her suit jacket and blouse, then slithered out of pantyhose and her skirt, feeling better once she was home. She loved her bedroom. She had painted the walls a bright cobalt blue last year, by herself, and she had a big TV/DVD player on a white metal stand afﬁxed to the wall. Her dresser, next to the closet, was a pine four-drawer she'd bought secondhand, and the room was neat, clean, and comfy. She undressed, slipped into an old Harvard T-shirt, and tucked herself under her puffy white comforter while she called Dan.

"Hello?" a woman answered, confusing Vicki for a second.

Of course, it was Mariella. She recognized the slight British inflection. Then Vicki heard masculine laughter in the background. Dan.

"Mariella, oh, hi. It's Vicki."

"Vicki, hey, you caught us at a bad time. A very bad time." There was more laughter, and Vicki realized that Mariella and Dan were in bed together. Dan was laughing, then Mariella started laughing. "No! No! Daniel, no tickling! Daniel!"

Vicki felt a wave of shame, then didn't know why. What was she ashamed of? That she was dying to talk to a married man? Yes, for starters. That he was at this moment making love to his wife? Yes, that too. That she would have traded beds in a minute? A trifecta!

"Daniel! Don't tickle!"

"Mariella, sorry, I should go," Vicki said, but Dan's deep voice came on the line, breathless.

"Vick, talk to you in the morning! Duty calls!"

She was about to say good-bye, but Dan had already hung up.

It left Vicki in her blue bedroom, alone except for the silence. She sat still for a minute, propped up by her pillows, trying to process what had just happened. Mariella must have taken a break and come home; she did that sometimes, at weird hours. Dan would have been delighted to see his wife, as he was for every drop of time she threw his way, as an afterthought or no.

He adores her, you idiot. Right now they're making love, ﬁve blocks away. GIVE IT UP, LOSER! YOU NEED A VIDEO?

Vicki stopped feeling sorry for herself, at least temporarily, and picked up the phone. There was work to do. She had made a mental list of all her credit cards and spent the next half hour getting each toll-free number from 1-800 information, then canceling the cards. She ordered a new ATM card, rush delivery, and she'd still have to get a new driver's license and DOJ creds. She sighed and lay back in the pillows, to devise a good lie to explain how they'd been lost. She closed her eyes against the lamplight. Her mind wandered and her thoughts ﬂowed where they would. She was still for another minute, then she reached over and picked up the phone, dialed a number, and waited.

One ring, two rings, three rings, four. After ﬁve rings, the answering machine switched on and said:

"You have reached Grandmaster Bob Morton, and, yes, I am even better-looking than I sound. Please leave a message for me and The Commodores." The tape segued instantly into Morty's trademark song, "Brick House."

Vicki felt a wrenching deep within her chest. She listened to the song, then hung up, and dialed again. She did that four more times, and by the ﬁfth time, she felt better just holding the receiver, listening to Morty, feeling connected to him, somehow. Tonight she didn't know what to do about his murder, but tomorrow she would. She had to. She couldn't help feeling she was on to something, and she couldn't leave it to the cops, ATF, or anyone else. Morty was her partner. Vicki hung on to the phone long after the song had finished, and when the tears came, she let them slide down her cheeks until she fell soundly asleep.

Rring! Rring! It was the telephone that woke Vicki up, her face stuffed in her pillow. She cracked a scratchy eye at her alarm clock. The red digital numbers read 8:15. She had slept in.

Rring! Rring! She pushed herself up from the bed and reached for the phone.

"Vick." Dan, his voice unusually grave. "You near a TV?"

"Uh, yes."

"Turn it on. Right now."

"Why? I'm asleep."

"Just do it."

Vicki reached for the remote on the nightstand and ﬂicked on the TV, set to channel ten. Grisly images ﬂickered across the screen: yellow crime scene tape, uniformed cops standing around a row house, a black van, and a low metal gurney on wheels, bearing a black body bag. In the next scene, a pretty blond reporter said:

"Arissa Bristow was found dead this morning of multiple stab wounds. The body was discovered in Mrs. Bristow's West Philadelphia home, and police have no suspects at the present time." Then the screen changed to a commercial for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

My God. The news stunned Vicki. She felt suddenly chilled in the bedroom and yanked the comforter from the bed, wrapping it around her naked form.

"Isn't Bristow your straw's last name?" Dan asked. "Think she's a relation?"

"It's her mother." Vicki muted the commercials, numb.

"Her mother killed, the night after Morty? Think it's a coincidence?"

Vicki couldn't answer. Her head was spinning, tangling her thoughts. Dan didn't know what had happened last night. She hadn't had the chance to tell him. She didn't know where to begin.

"Vick? You okay?"

"I met her, I was there," Vicki started to say, but she couldn't ﬁnish. I should have stayed with Mrs. Bristow. I should have made sure she got home safe. Her knees went weak, and she felt herself sinking down onto the bed in the comforter.

"Vick, what's going on?"

"I wish I knew."

"I'm coming over. I'll be there in ﬁfteen minutes."

"You don't have to," Vicki said, but she was interrupted by the ringing of her doorbell downstairs, followed by a loud pounding on her front door. The sound frightened her, unaccountably. "There's someone at the door. I have to go."

"Vick?"

"Hold on." Vicki shed the comforter and looked around the room for something to put on. She felt more naked than she was. Something felt very wrong. Suddenly, events were getting ahead of her, out of control. The knocking pounded louder on the door. She had to get dressed. She had to go. "Dan?" she heard herself say.

"I'll be right over, baby," he answered, understanding instantly.

SEVENTEEN

Five minutes later, a scene was taking place that Vicki couldn't have imagined if she'd tried. Two Philly homicide detectives sat across from her on her couch, and against the front wall stood Chief Bale. He had shifted into ofﬁcial mode, unsmiling under his groomed mustache, his dark eyes a mixture of distance and disapproval. He wore his Saturday best, jeans and a black turtleneck under his camel-hair topcoat, but his manner was anything but casual. The cops sat on one side of the coffee table, Vicki sat on the other, and between them on the coffee table, in a clear plastic evidence bag, was her black Kate Spade wallet.

She'd felt almost physically sick when they'd set it down like a trump card. Next to it lay two smaller evidence bags, one that contained her green-and-white plastic library card and the other a curled-up white paper card, her membership to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Evidently, crack addicts wouldn't be seeing the new Manet exhibit. And if Vicki screwed up now, neither would she. She didn't know if Chief Bale was here as friend or foe, but you didn't have to be a former ADA to realize that the detectives were here to question her in connection with Mrs. Bristow's murder. The wallet made her a lead, if not a suspect.

"Your wallet was found on the body," the black detective said. His name was Albert Melvin, and he was young and attractive; clear brown eyes, a generous mouth, and a brawny build in a black leather jacket that seemed to retain the winter cold. He'd shaved his head completely, a macho look that struck Vicki as incongruous with his warm, if ofﬁcial, smile. She was guessing he'd taken the test only recently, because she didn't know him and he wasn't as dressed up as your standard Philly homicide detective. Detective Melvin gestured at his evidence array on the coffee table. "This is your wallet, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course."

"No money was in it. No credit cards, no driver's license. Just the membership card and the library card."

"I'm not surprised."

"How did Ms. Bristow get your wallet? Do you know?"

"Yes, she took it from me, last night. My wallet and my cell phone." Vicki told herself to stay calm. She could ask for a lawyer, but it would signal that she had something to hide, and Bale would ﬁre her again, after he ﬁred her for going to see Mrs. Bristow in the ﬁrst place. She could represent herself; she knew how the Philly detectives put their cases together and she could anticipate the questions they'd ask. "I'd like to explain what happened, if I may."

"Please do," Detective Melvin answered, with his official smile. Next to him on the couch, the other detective made a note in his steno pad, his dark head bent so his pinkish bald spot showed. He wore glasses and a navy suit, with a skinny striped tie.

"First, I'm an AUSA and I had nothing to do with Arissa Bristow's murder." Vicki met Detective Melvin's eye to show him she wasn't guilty, which turned out to be harder than she'd expected. She didn't kill Mrs. Bristow, but she did feel guilty about the murder, and even she could hear it taint her tone. "I did meet Mrs. Bristow last night and may well have been the last person to see her alive, depending on what the coroner told you about time of death." Vicki waited a minute, but they weren't volunteering any information. "Let me start at the beginning, which is when I left Chief Bale's ofﬁce yesterday, before noon."

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the front door, and everyone turned.

Dan. "I'll get it." Vicki practically jumped to her feet and ran to the door, opening it onto a blast of frosty air that wasn't completely weather-related. Dan was acting casual despite the fact that he was standing on the front step with two uniformed cops. Of course, they'd want to search.

"Look what the cat dragged in," Dan said, with an ironic smile. Vicki's neighbors across the street, Mrs. Holloway and the three kids, were at their window, gawking at the two squad cars that sat double-parked in front of her house.

"Come in, everybody," Vicki said, as if she were the perfect hostess. The three men trundled into the house, and she closed the door after them, getting her bearings as the cops introduced themselves. She shook their hands, still in cold black gloves. "I'd make coffee for you, ofﬁcers, but I'm busy being interrogated."

The cops laughed, and Dan quickly masked his surprise at Bale's presence. "Hey, Chief," he said.

Bale merely grunted in response.

Detective Melvin smiled again. "Ms. Allegretti, do you mind if the ofﬁcers look around?"

Dan's eyes widened. "They're really gonna search your house? For God's sake, why?"

"Go right ahead, ofﬁcers." Vicki had no choice but to authorize a consent search. She signed the form when they produced it, with Bale watching her every move, leaning back against the wall again, his arms crossed. She turned to Detective Melvin. "They're welcome to look anywhere. The clothes I was wearing last night are in the upstairs bedroom. It's a black suit, and it's probably on the ﬂoor. You'll ﬁnd hair and fibers from Mrs. Bristow's house on my clothes, and vice versa. I can explain all of that."

"Thanks." Detective Melvin nodded in a way that directed the ofﬁcers out of the room, and Vicki eased onto the couch while the detectives resettled themselves on the other side of the coffee table. A bewildered Dan Malloy remained standing for a moment in his jeans and his black down jacket, then he walked around the coffee table and sat down next to Vicki, who hoped her gratitude didn't show.

"Well, here's what I did yesterday, from noon onward," she began, while the other detective started to take notes. She proceeded to tell them everything, including her call to Dan, but not her call to Morty's answering machine because she was already feeling exposed enough. In the background, the clinking of her pots and pans told her cops were searching her kitchen. Vicki took a deep, final breath. "That's the truth, and the whole truth."

"I see." Detective Melvin looked up from his steno notebook, which he'd pulled out of his back pocket in mid-lecture. His expression seemed relieved and his frown had vanished. They weren't charging her today, anyway. "I do have a few questions. Was there-"

"Wait a minute," Dan interrupted, leaning forward on his knees. "You guys can't really think that Vicki is a suspect in this murder, or, for that matter, in anybody's murder. I mean, this is ridiculous!"

"We have to investigate our leads, sir."

"Get real, detective. The wallet's not a lead." Dan snorted. He'd been a federal prosecutor for so long, he thought the locals were dummies, and it showed. "Who kills someone and leaves their wallet behind with a library card?"

"We didn't say it wasn't strange, sir."

"You know a lot of killers belong to the art museum? Obviously, that crack addict stole Vicki's wallet. I mean, what are you thinking? Vicki's a criminal? She's law enforcement. An AUSA, for God's sake!"

"Dan, let them ask the questions they need to." Vicki worried he was going too far. Behind her, the clinking from the kitchen had stopped and was replaced by the heavy tread of the ofﬁcers' thick-soled shoes as they climbed the stairs to her second ﬂoor.

"But they're stupid questions!" Dan exploded, and Bale waved him into silence, at the same time that Vicki leapt in.

"Please, detective, you were saying."

Detective Melvin resettled. "Ms. Allegretti, how much money was in your wallet?

"About ﬁfty dollars. Also, my credit cards, a driver's license, and an ATM card. And my Justice creds," Vicki added, as if they were an afterthought, but Bale rolled his eyes. Now they would both have to think of a lie.

"Did you report it stolen to the police?"

"No, I didn't think it would matter. I chalked it up to bad luck."

Detective Melvin made a note. "I assume you won't mind us contacting the people you mentioned, including your parents."

Oh, great. "Of course not. Feel free." Vicki recited their addresses and phone numbers, which the detectives wrote down in unison. She would have to call her parents and explain why cops would be calling them, which bothered her almost as much as the ofﬁcers searching her bedroom. She experienced the completely paranoid fear that they'd plant something incriminating in her house. Then again, she also believed that blow dryers jumped spontaneously into bathtubs.

"Now, you said you visited Arissa Bristow to investigate the murder of the ATF case agent. Did you believe that Reheema or her mother was responsible for this murder?"

"Honestly, I didn't know. That's what I was trying to follow up on." Vicki paused. If they were thinking about possible motives for her to kill Mrs. Bristow, it was a stretch. Did she kill Reheema's mother to get back at Reheema for having the CI killed? Too much. And how would the teenagers have known she and Morty would be at the house? Or was their theory more tenuous, like that Vicki killed Mrs. Bristow as revenge for Reheema having her partner killed? No, motive didn't exist. "But after what I learned, I'm not sure that Reheema was involved in any conspiracy to kill my CI or Morty."

Bale glowered, shifting his weight uneasily from one loafer to another. He didn't want her thinking about stuff like this, much less talking about it, but she couldn't stop now. And she was still curious: "Detective Melvin, the news report said that Mrs. Bristow was found in her home, stabbed to death. What was the estimated time of death?"

"Around seven-thirty last night."

The sentence struck Vicki like a body blow. I should have gone after her. I shouldn't have been scared off by that man in the hood.

"Ms. Allegretti?" the detective asked, and Dan put a comforting hand on her arm.

"Vick. You okay?"

Vicki found her voice. "She was killed right after I left."

"Of course, as you probably know, these things are never exact. It's always give or take a half an hour."

"I know." Vicki was trying to piece things together. While I was eating lamb chops, Mrs. Bristow was being killed. "My cell was already gone by that time."

"How do you know?"

"Because I called it from a gas station and a man answered. Maybe he had something to do with her murder." Vicki felt a rush of adrenaline. Had she talked on the phone to Mrs. Bris-tow's murderer? "Think about it. Mrs. Bristow had the wallet and cell, and she'd trade the phone and money for crack. Then she'd go somewhere-probably home-to smoke. The man could have followed her home, taken the drugs and killed her.

Or maybe she bought the drugs and the man followed her home and killed her for them, then took the cell. Either way, we need to ﬁnd that man."

"We?" Detective Melvin arched an eyebrow, and Bale raised his chin. "Who's we?"

"You're right. Not we." I meant me. "I meant you."

"Good. Now, what did the man on the phone sound like?"

"A black male. Gravelly voice."

Next to her, Dan was nodding with vigor. "Exactly. He did sound gravelly. I called her cell, too. A man answered and he didn't identify himself when I asked him. He's the one you want to go after, not Vicki."

"What time did you call, sir?" Detective Melvin made a note.

"Around nine o'clock, I guess." Dan ran a finger-rake through his unruly red hair, as he always did in court. "You heard what Vicki said as well as I did. Bristow was a crack addict, wandering the streets in a lousy neighborhood with ﬁfty bucks in cash. Vicki is right. The likeliest scenario is that Bristow was followed to her house and killed for the drugs."

"That's certainly possible, sir."

"It's a helluva lot more likely than an AUSA kniﬁng her to death!" Dan raised his voice, but Vicki cut him off.

"Dan, really, it's okay."

"You should be on Lincoln Street right now, or Cater," Dan continued, heedless. "Wherever it was, right now, you should be canvassing the neighbors! Checking out who went in and out of Bristow's house last night!"

"For your information, we canvassed already, sir." Detective Melvin raised his large hand, with a Bic pen stuck between his thick ﬁngers. "So settle down. We have to ask your girlfriend a couple of questions."

"I'm not his girlfriend," Vicki said for the record.

Dan shot back, "Who are you kidding? You're searching her house!"

Bale stepped forward, easing off the wall. "Malloy, enough!" he said ﬁrmly. "Let the detectives complete their investigation. You and I know Vicki didn't kill anybody, but they have to do their jobs."

Vicki sighed with relief. So Bale was on her side. It emboldened her, or maybe she just liked her promotion to Dan's girlfriend. "Detective Melvin, who found Mrs. Bristow's body?"

"Her daughter, Reheema."

Vicki felt a sympathetic pang. She couldn't imagine how horriﬁc that would be, ﬁnding your mother knifed to death. "Where was the body in the house, exactly?"

"A bedroom on the ﬁrst ﬂoor."

"When was she found? I don't know when Reheema was released from the FDC."

"Let's see." Detective Melvin ﬂipped back in his notebook, then ran a thumb down the page. "You met with the daughter yesterday in the morning, right?"

"Right." Vicki had almost forgotten, it seemed so long ago. A loud thump came from her bedroom, which everybody pretended not to hear.

"The daughter wasn't released until after midnight last night."

"Why so late?"

"There were paperwork issues, I understand. She went straight to her mother's house and found her body. We caught the case at about one in the morning."

How awful. "The report said Mrs. Bristow was stabbed to death. I assume you didn't recover the knife."

"Not yet. It wasn't pretty. The victim was stabbed nine times."

My God. Vicki's stomach did a backﬂip. "That sounds like rage, as if it were personal, or maybe drug induced."

Dan added, "Like a crack addict."

"Was she found with any crack?" Vicki asked. "Had she used or what?"

"We ﬁeld-tested the pipe next to the bed, which was positive. Toxicology tests on the body aren't ﬁnished yet."

"She'll be positive." Vicki thought a minute. "Where was my wallet?"

"Still on the victim's person, in a pocket in her dress. It was minus whatever credit cards and money you had."

"Reheema found the body and called the cops?"

"Right."

"Who found the wallet, you or Reheema?"

"The daughter."

"So Reheema knows that it was my wallet. She must have been surprised by that."

Detective Melvin nodded. "She was extremely angry. She demanded we question you, and I told her we were coming right here."

"She can't think I killed her mother."

"I can't speak for her, Ms. Allegretti." Detective Melvin made a note. "Now, about this man who answered your cell phone. What's your phone number?"

Vicki gave it to him, and he wrote it down. But she couldn't stop thinking about Reheema. Did she think Vicki murdered her mother?

"And what type of phone was it?"

"A Samsung, the newer model. It has one of those special covers, it's silver and has blue daisies with little green centers on the front."

"Now that should be a crime." Detective Melvin smiled, but Vicki couldn't.

"How will you run that down, detective? Look for the phone? Tap the line? You have enough for a warrant."

"Leave that to us. I'd ask you not to terminate the service, to help our efforts."

"Of course."

Detective Melvin ﬂipped his notebook closed. "I understand that you have a personal interest in this case, but you have to leave matters to us. My partner and I have the highest clearance rate on the Homicide Division. We know what we're doing."

"I respect the Philly police, I was an assistant district attorney." Vicki decided to press her luck. "Though I did wonder why you hadn't called Mrs. Bott, to talk to her about Shayla Jackson."

"We did call, but there was no answer and she didn't have an answering machine. Then we understood she was going to ID the body at three yesterday, not noon. It was a simple misunderstanding." Detective Melvin didn't look happy about it, either. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Ms. Allegretti. Everybody thinks he's a detective. You could have been hurt last night, if not killed."

Standing behind Detective Melvin, Chief Bale wasn't saying anything. He didn't have to.

"But what about the drug activity on Cater? Is anybody going to do anything about it?"

"Ms. Allegretti." Detective Melvin frowned all the way to his shaved scalp. "As you well know, we have a Narcotics Division. That's their job. I'll make a point of notifying them of your observations of drug activity on Cater, and I'll also notify the captain in charge of that district. I'm sure they'll step up the patrols. If there is drug activity, they'll deal with it. You can't. In fact, Chief Bale has informed us that you're on a one-week suspension."

"It is indeﬁnite now," Bale interjected, with a deep scowl. "That's without pay."

No! "Chief-"

"Don't even, Allegretti." Bale warned her off with a raised index ﬁnger.

"Fine, Chief."

"I don't need your permission," Bale shot back, and in the next minute, his attention was redirected to the stairs. The two uniformed cops were coming downstairs, carrying the brown paper bags they used to collect evidence.

"You found my suit?" Vicki asked, though the thought of her clothes in an evidence bag was tough to take.

"Yes, thanks. Took the shoes, too." The cops looked calm, so she assumed they hadn't found a murder weapon. She didn't want to think what her bedroom looked like.

"You didn't toss the place too bad, I hope."

"We improved it," one of the cops said, with a smile. "Give us a chance to make a mess here, too, will ya?"

"No problem," Vicki answered, and everybody rose and stood as the cops split up and began to turn over cushions in the couch. In the meantime, Detective Melvin slid his notebook into his back pocket, as did the other detective.

"Looks like we're done here, for now," he said. "Thanks for your cooperation. You know the drill. Don't leave the jurisdiction."

"You have to be kidding," Dan interjected, but Vicki touched his arm.

"Understood, gentlemen."

Bale was leaving, too, shifting his topcoat higher onto his shoulders and heading for the door. "I have a meeting to go to. Call you later, Vick." He glanced at Dan. "Malloy, put her under lock and key until further notice."

"Yeah, right," Dan said, but he didn't smile. He was watching the uniformed cops search Vicki's books, sliding them out and looking behind each one. She went to the door and opened it to let Bale and the detectives out, but a wet chill blew into the room. It had started snowing lightly, and large, ﬂat ﬂakes ﬂoated from the gray sky. The Holloway kids reappeared at their front window, ogling the uniformed cops.

"Thanks for coming," Vicki said, shutting the door, and she and Dan stood uncomfortably aside as the cops searched her living room.

"Almost ﬁnished, ofﬁcers?" Dan asked, though they clearly weren't, and Vicki felt touched by his loyalty. He stood by her side, staring the cops down until they had ﬁnished destroying her living room, when she ushered them out the door. It was snowing with ﬂakes too wet to stick, but the Holloway kids were out in heavy coats and mismatched mittens, pinwheeling in the snowﬂakes and sticking out their tongues stiff as spatulas. Their mother, Jenny, was laughing with them, taking pictures with a disposable camera. The Holloways stopped when the cops ﬁled out of Vicki's front door and climbed into their respective squad cars, banged the doors closed, and started the cruisers' powerful engines, spewing exhaust into the chill air. Vicki waved a don't-worry-it's-just-business, and in the next minute, the kids resumed their spinning, with their mother snapping happily away.

Vicki watched them for a minute, then closed the door.

Hatching a scheme to get rid of her boyfriend.

EIGHTEEN

Snow fell steadily, mufﬂing the world with nature's own insulation and ﬁlling Vicki's small kitchen with soft, natural light. It would have been cozy if Dan weren't somebody else's husband and she didn't have murder on her mind. She had to think of a way to kick him out without making him suspicious. "You sure you don't have to get home?" she asked.

"Nah, I want to help you clean up."

"I'll clean later. I have some errands to do."

"I do, too. Let's clean up and do them together." Dan scooped coffee grains into the paper ﬁlter with a brown plastic measuring spoon. "First, we need coffee."

Argh.

"It's so ridiculous, them questioning you. I just can't get over it."

"Let it go. They're just doing their jobs."

"Clowns. Jokers. Keystone Kops." Dan put the coffee back in the cabinet, then extracted the glass pitcher from the coffeemaker and ﬁlled it up with tap water. He had taken off his coat and was wearing his jeans with a blue crewneck sweater and no shirt underneath, which forced Vicki to imagine him naked. Finally she understood why men found bralessness sexy.

"They're not so bad," she said idly, but Dan turned, incredulous.

"A library card? Exhibit A?"

Vicki couldn't laugh. She still felt bad that Mrs. Bristow was dead, so horribly murdered.

"What's the matter?"

"I feel crappy, is all."

"Why?" Dan poured water into the top of the coffeemaker, put the empty pot in the machine, and switched the black knob to brew.

"Because I was so naïve. Not only to go to Mrs. Bristow's house, but to leave my wallet." Vicki couldn't stop shaking her head. "If I hadn't been so dumb, she would be alive today. I'm screwing up so much lately and it's killing people. Jesus."

"How do you ﬁgure that?"

"I gave her the money that bought her the rock that got her killed." Vicki bit her lip. "It's the urban version of the house that Jack built."

Dan snorted. "Gimme a break. You didn't give her the money, she stole it. You didn't buy her drugs, she did. She got herself killed, and you had nothing to do with it."

"I don't know about that." Vicki wished she could agree, but she didn't. Why was everything going so wrong? First Morty and Jackson, now Mrs. Bristow. She rubbed her eyes, feeling sick inside.

"Stop blaming yourself. You're not to blame. By the way, sorry I blew you off last night." Dan turned away and went into the cabinet to retrieve their two go-to mugs, Harvard and Elvis. He set them on the tile counter with a harder-than-usual clink, suddenly preoccupied. The coffee gurgled away, ﬁlling the kitchen with the aroma of brewing coffee.

"No problem. I'm sorry I called. I thought Mariella was at work."

"She stopped home."

"That's what I ﬁgured." Vicki hated talking about Mariella.

Snow drifted onto her windowsill in wispy cartoon scallops, but it didn't lift her spirits the way it usually did. Looking up from the coffee mugs, Dan noticed it, too.

"When did it start snowing?" "Not long ago." "I didn't realize." Dan kept looking out the window, the reﬂected light illuminating his handsome features. His blue eyes drooped with morning fatigue, and reddish stubble dotted his chin. He frowned. "Snow is funny. You never know when it starts. It just sneaks up on you and there it is. Before you know it, you're in a snowstorm."

"I guess."

"This is pretty terrible, what's happening here." Dan turned from the window, still frowning, but Vicki wasn't sure what he meant.

"That Mrs. Bristow was killed?" "No. You, on indeﬁnite suspension." Vicki blinked. "At least I'm not ﬁred." Dan didn't say anything. The coffeepot gurgled, and he bent over to make sure it was dripping, without meeting her eye. "Well, I'm not, am I? If I were ﬁred, Bale would have said I was." "With the detectives there?" "Sure, that would make it more fun." "Good point." Dan laughed. "You're right. Bale likes you. I think you're his favorite." Vicki smiled, mystiﬁed. "I thought you were." "No. Strauss likes me, Bale likes you." "But Strauss is Daddy and Bale is Mommy, so you win." "It's not a contest," Dan shot back, and Vicki put up her hands. "Whoa, don't shoot." "Sorry, it's not you. I didn't sleep well, last night. We had a ﬁght." "Who?"

"Mariella and me."

Suddenly Dan had Vicki's full attention, especially being braless and all. But she knew she had to act as if she didn't want to hear everything or she'd never get to hear anything. She reached for the coffeepot, interrupting its brewing cycle, and poured coffee into his Elvis mug. She said lightly, "Forget it. Don't worry. This, too, shall pass."

"Not this one." Dan accepted his mug and took a thoughtful sip. "This was a big, big ﬁght."

"It'll pass," Vicki said, though the Malloy/Suarez family never had big fights. In fact, they rarely fought at all. They didn't see each other enough to ﬁght.

"I'm not so sure."

"Sure you are." Vicki poured coffee into her Harvard mug. The day she'd been admitted, her parents had bought three hundred of them. She tried to think of a new subject, which wasn't hard. "How about that guy who answered my cell phone?"

"You'd think the cops would wake up when they heard that. Instead they're in your face. Jerks."

"They'll get to it, in time." Vicki waited and sipped. The coffee tasted good and hot. Snowflakes blew outside. The kitchen fell silent.

"You wouldn't believe what the ﬁght was about," Dan said, after a minute.

"It doesn't matter. The fight's never about the fight, anyway." Vicki knew this from her parents, two major love affairs, and Dr. Phil.

"Mariella thinks we spend too much time together."

"Who?"

"You and me."

"You and me, spend too much time together?" Vicki felt accused and convicted, both at once. His words had broken through some veneer. The ﬁght was about them?

"She accused me of having an affair with you."

"What?" "You heard me." Vicki ﬂushed. "But we're not!" "Of course we're not, but I can't convince her of that. It's not even the ﬁrst time we've fought about it." My God. "It isn't?" "You look surprised." "I am! I had no idea. Why didn't you tell me?" "Why would I? I didn't want to, it's between me and her.

And I know it's not true, so I don't sweat it." Dan shrugged. "But I can never make her believe me, and lately, it's all coming to a head. It started when I caught her checking my BlackBerry, for e-mail from you."

"Really?" Vicki felt instantly guilty. "Well, we do e-mail." "We're allowed to." "And we do spend a lot of time together. A whole lot." "But we're just friends." Right. "Maybe we should cool it a little." "I don't see why." "So she won't be upset, or suspect you." Vicki felt a wave of shame for secretly wanting him. He belonged to Mariella, and it was obvious now what should have been obvious all along. "Look, our friendship is undermining your marriage."

"No, it isn't." "Dan, it is." Dan frowned. "But she's wrong to be upset!" "That doesn't matter. Her feelings are her feelings. She's your wife." "And you're my best friend." "So, friends take breaks. Maybe we shouldn't have lunch together, every damn day. In fact, I'm sick of you." Vicki faked a smile. You and your bralessness.

"No." Dan set his mug down, and coffee sloshed around the side. "She's not around anyway, and we're just keeping each other company. She should trust me."

"Maybe she does, but she still doesn't like it." Vicki had to admit that Mariella wasn't being unreasonable. "You two were in bed together when I called. She doesn't like it; no woman would."

"I told you to call, and so what? Things are going crazy lately, with Morty being killed and now Bristow's mother. She acts like that's not happening. My God, it's like I have this whole life she doesn't know about!"

"You have to be sensitive to her," Vicki said, managing not to choke on the words.

"Plus, she doesn't know what it's like to work in our ofﬁce, to try to move up there." Dan raised his voice, his tone sharpening. "She doesn't know what it's like to be on trial, day after day. Write motions at night. Meet with witnesses around a court schedule."

Nobody knows what that's like, except another AUSA, Vicki thought, but would never say it, because it was way too true. People at work shared things that outsiders would never understand.

"She doesn't know what it was like to lose Morty. I worked with him for two years, had three cases with him. You saw him every day for a year, on Edwards. You knew him, and now he's dead!" Dan's voice broke, in pain. For Morty. For her. For himself. Vicki felt like hugging him but knew she couldn't. It confused her. She wanted him, but not this way, and she didn't want to cause trouble for him.

"Dan, calm down. Mariella just wants more of your time."

"I want more of hers!"

Ouch. "Right. So you both want the same thing, and this will blow over." Vicki set down her mug. "She's at home now, right?"

"Yes."

"You left her to come over here?"

"Yes."

"Smooth move, Malloy."

"I wanted to help you! You're in the middle of a mess! You needed me!"

Vicki's cheeks got hot. A day ago, she would have loved hearing that. Now, it was a problem. "You helped me, and I appreciate it. But you should go home."

"I'm not supposed to be home, anyway. I'm supposed to go buy salt for the sidewalk, then pick up the dry cleaning."

"Then go home and ask her to go with you. Or take her to brunch."

"She'll say she's too tired. She's been on call for three days."

"Then she'll like that you asked." Vicki waved good-bye. "Go. See ya."

"But what about Bale? He said he'd call you. And your house is a mess, from the cops."

"I'll handle it. Sayonara." Vicki put her hands on Dan's strong shoulders, which felt painfully good, then turned him around and pushed him out of the kitchen, grabbing his coat on the way and handing it to him. "Here. Put a bra on and go home to your wife, who loves you."

"Huh?"

But Vicki had already opened the door. She didn't bother to explain and she ignored the hard knot in the middle of her chest. Doing the right thing was no fun at all. Her only consolation was that she was getting rid of any interference.

So she could get busy.

NINETEEN

The snow was sticking, coming down heavily with more predicted, but Vicki wasn't worried about the weather. The Cabrio was great in snow, the windshield wipers thumped energetically away, and she had bigger things on her mind. Devil's Corner lay under a thin blanket of fresh snow, two inches so far, according to AccuWeather. Through the window she could see that Mrs. Bristow's block was as deserted as it had been yesterday, except that the fresh snow covered the trash, debris, and ﬁlth she knew lay underneath. No children played out in front of the houses; no tongues caught snowﬂakes. There wasn't a snowman in sight.

Vicki found a parking space down from Mrs. Bristow's house and got out of the Cabrio, setting a loafer into wet slush. A chill wind hit her like a blast, jolting her to a realization. No official vehicles were parked out front; no crime scene techs or police cruisers with their engines idling. She hadn't seen a cop in front of Mrs. Bristow's house, guarding the crime scene and logging personnel in and out. In fact, there wasn't any yellow crime scene tape or police sawhorses. She checked her watch. Noon. Only hours after Mrs. Bristow had been found knifed to death, the scene was already closed.

She hurried toward the house, head down against the driving snow, her thoughts churning. She couldn't help but remark on the contrast between this murder scene and Morty's. There'd been tons of uniforms there, not to mention detectives, crime scene techs, FBI, ATF, and DOJ personnel. Admittedly, Morty was a federal agent and the scene had been a triple homicide, but Vicki didn't think that completely accounted for what she was seeing. She reached the step, hesitating before going in. She didn't relish what she had to do, but she knew she had to do it.

She knocked on the closed door once, then again. There was no answer. Snow blew sideways into her ears and hair; she had gone out without a hat, she'd been in such a rush. Wind bit her nose; it was twenty-ﬁve degrees. She had no gloves on, either, and pounded the door once more, hard. It creaked open.

Vicki blinked. The door hung ajar. She didn't want to simply barge in. "Hello?" she called out. "Hello, anybody home?"

There was no answer.

She felt a shiver all the way to her toes, and it wasn't the cold. A woman had been killed here, and the last time she had walked through an open door, Morty had been killed. Too much violence, too much death; all these row homes, awash in blood. Not even the snow could cover it up and hide it, not forever.

"Anybody home?" she called out, louder, knocking again on the open door. A chill wind blew harder, carrying her voice off with the snowﬂakes and opening wide the front door.

Crap. Now Vicki was standing in an open doorway, watching snow blow into the dark living room. She conceded the obvious and stepped inside, shutting the door. She blinked away the snow blindness, waited until her eyes adjusted to the interior light, then turned around.

The living room looked completely different from yesterday. It was much darker because newspapers had been taped up against the windows like temporary curtains, and only indirect light streamed in. The beach chair lay folded on the brown couch, which had been moved into the center of the room and was loaded with black Hefty trash bags, their yellow drawstrings pulled tight. The dark red rug had been rolled up and also placed on the couch, resting on the two armrests, and every bit of trash in the room had been picked up. The ﬂoorboards looked swept and had even been washed clean; wet spots dried here and there, and a lineup of empty water jugs sat against the wall, next to a metal dustpan and new corn broom. The air smelled a little more normal, but it was still as cold inside as out.

"Hello?" Vicki said. The house was still. She braced herself and went into the bedroom where Mrs. Bristow had been killed. The dirty mattress had been lifted up and was standing on end, with the bloodstained side evidently against the wall. Still, it emitted an awful stench; rotting, human blood.

Vicki turned away. The end table had been pushed against the mattress, she guessed to hold it upright, and this room had been cleaned, too, all the debris and crack paraphernalia swept into trash bags and piled in the center of the bedroom. She went into the kitchen, expecting more of the same, and she was right. The cabinets hung open and empty; all the food and cigarettes had been taken out and, presumably, disposed of in the trash bags in the center of the room. The ﬂoorboards had been swept and mopped; a large white Rubbermaid bucket sat in the corner and a lemony Pine-Sol odor ﬁlled the room. A cockroach skittered across the counter, but Vicki sensed he'd be history soon.

"WHO'S IN THERE?" someone shouted, all of a sudden, and Vicki startled, whirling around.

She froze at the sight of Reheema Bristow, aiming a small, lethal Beretta at her. The black woman's mouth set in a grim line, and she stood tall and four-square, her feet planted wide apart, as if she were ready to ﬁre.

"I'm within my rights to shoot you dead, Allegretti." Re-heema's dark eyes glittered under a navy-blue watch cap. Snowﬂakes dotted the cap and her broad shoulders in a navy-blue pea coat.

Stay calm. "That's the third gun pointed at me in two days, and it's getting old. Why don't you put it away before I arrest you for ag assault and weapons offenses?"

"You're trespassing."

"Then I'll go. I came to tell you I'm sorry about your mother." Vicki's chest tightened. She was pretty sure Reheema wouldn't shoot her, but pretty sure had too much wiggle room when it came to small-caliber weapons.

"Why was your wallet on her?" Reheema shot back, her tone icy as winter.

"Put the gun away and I'll answer you. I don't like being threatened."

"I don't like being put in jail. I said, why'd I ﬁnd your wallet in my mother's pocket?"

"Okay, she took it out of my purse. I came to see her and when I went out of the room-"

"How'd you know she lived here? The phone book?"

D'oh. "That would have been too easy. I found out from your old boss at Bennye's."

"Why'd you come here?"

"To learn about you."

"What did you wanna know?"

"If you had anything to do with my partner's murder. If you had Shayla Jackson killed so she wouldn't testify against you, or if someone did that on your behalf. If you resold the guns, and to whom, which I'm still wondering since the one in your hand isn't one you were indicted for. And that's just for starters. Now, put the gun away."

"Ha." Reheema let out a short burst of laughter, like semiautomatic ﬁre, then unlocked the trigger, lowered the weapon, and shoved it inside her coat pocket like a pack of gum.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Now we're even." Reheema snorted. "You attacked me at the conference."

"Oh, that. Shall I go?" Now that the threat was over, Vicki had lost her sense of humor. It seemed as if it should be the other way around, but she was too angry to puzzle it out now. "I'm ﬁnished with the condolences. You blew the mood."

"Not yet." Reheema yanked the cap off her head and shook her hair out. It had been mashed flat under the cap but she didn't seem to care; she was still strikingly beautiful, for a stone bitch. Her cheekbones curved almost delicately, and her mouth was soft and full, however nasty her expression. "Why do you think I was involved with what happened to your partner and Jackson?"

"Because you're the one who benefited from Jackson's murder. The timing's too coincidental, and Jackson dimed on you. She told my ofﬁce that you two were best friends. She testiﬁed before the grand jury to that effect and she was ready to go to trial to convict you."

"I told you, I don't know the girl. She lied."

"She was under oath."

"Oooh. Nobody lies under oath." Reheema grinned crookedly, and Vicki reddened.

"You sure you don't know her?"

"Never met the girl."

"Jackson also said she knew who you sold the guns to. She was my conﬁdential informant in the case."

"That's a lie, too. I didn't sell the guns to anybody."

"What did you do with them?"

"None of your business."

"It would help if you told me."

"Tough."

I should have strangled you when I had the chance. "If it's true that you didn't know her, then it would mean that Jackson, a complete stranger to you, framed you for a straw purchase charge. At risk of perjury, by the way. Why would she do that to you? How would she even get your name?"

"I don't know and I don't care." Reheema's gaze didn't waver. "I care about getting this house cleaned up. You're leaving."

"Not so fast. What did you do with the guns?" "I said, it's none a your business." "How about I tell you? You gave them to your mother, who sold them or traded them for drugs. Or you sold them yourself and gave her the money or the drugs." "I would never give my mother drugs." "But you bought the guns for her, didn't you? One for you and one for her? Then somehow she traded them both. That's why you wouldn't take the deal I offered you. You wouldn't give her up."

Reheema blinked, and Vicki knew she had scored. "Just tell me. If you tell me, I'll go." "You'll go anyway." "No, I won't. I can be a real pain in the ass." "I know," Reheema answered, unsmiling. "Fine. Whatever.

She said she wanted a gun for protection. I left mine here when I moved to my apartment, and she took it." "She sold them for drugs?" "She'd sell me for drugs. She sold everything I owned." Reheema's tone was beyond bitter; it was utterly without affect, but Vicki still felt strange speaking ill of a woman who had been murdered in this very room.

"I know where your mother bought drugs last night." "You proud of yourself?" Well, yeah, Vicki thought, though the question may have been rhetorical.

"You think I don't know that?" Reheema arched an eyebrow. "You think I didn't find that out five minutes after I found her?"

"It's on Cater Street."

"I know, the vacant lot. They opened a store there." A store? "Did you go there?" "That's none a your business." "I was there, last night. I followed your mom, after she took my wallet." "You?" Reheema laughed, less like gunfire this time. "A white girl?" "In a white car." Vicki smiled. Yay! We're bonding! "Why?" "First I wanted to get my wallet back, then I wanted to see where she bought her drugs." "Why?" "Curiosity." Vicki felt tougher by the minute, just talking to someone so tough. In fact, she was sure she'd never experience another emotion again. "You wanted to know, too. You went over there, to see who killed your mother."

"Wrong. I know who killed my mother. My mother killed my mother. Whatever junkie ﬁnished her off did her a favor." Vicki couldn't speak for a minute, the thought was so cruel. "Time for you to go, lawyer. I got a U-Haul out front and I got to get to the dump before this snow gets too deep." "Just one thing. Do you really not know Jamal Browning?" "Don't know him," Reheema answered, her response quick, direct, and believable. "I think he was Shayla Jackson's boyfriend." "Whatever." "How about Jay-Boy and Teeg?" "I told you, no." "They're drug dealers, or work for one." Vicki didn't tell her about the ﬁsh-scale coke. It wasn't prudent to reveal police business to a gun-toting ex-con. "Time to go." Reheema gestured to the door, but Vicki stayed put. "Jay-Boy and Teeg were the shooters. They killed my partner and Shayla Jackson, who was pregnant. I saw them."

"Life in the city. Now, get out."

"Your mother, she was very beautiful, when she was younger," Vicki heard herself say, then wondered why. If she was trying to make some connection, it was futile. Reheema's face remained impassive, and she had already started picking up Hefty bags, two in each hand, and lugging them to the door, which she opened with difﬁculty.

"Leave."

Vicki swallowed hard and walked to the door, then stopped in the threshold. "I'm gonna bust whoever sold those drugs to your mother."

"You go, girlfriend." Reheema dropped the bags and began to clap, and her ironic applause followed Vicki as she walked out the door.

And into the snowstorm.

TWENTY

Snow fell hard, and Vicki hurried to her car, her head bent against the icy flakes that bit her cheeks. She reached the Cabrio, got inside, but didn't pull out of the space right away. Snow dusted her plastic back window, but she could see in her outside mirror that Reheema was carrying Hefty bags out of the house and tossing them into the bed of an orange-and-white pickup, double-parked out front.

She turned on the ignition and watched Reheema work, pretending she was letting the engine warm up. Clearly the woman was determined; a Lady Tiger, indeed. Carrying concealed and aiming without blinking. Cleaning the house the same morning her mother was killed. Being practical, levelheaded, and emotionless about all of it, even her mother's addiction. You didn't need to be Dr. Phil to guess that Reheema might have been the parent growing up, taking care of her mother. Even buying her a gun for protection. Had Reheema been fooled, or did she know? Was she telling Vicki the truth? Either way, Reheema had taken the rap, spending almost a year at the FDC. And she would have been convicted if Jackson hadn't been killed.

Jackson. Morty. Who was Jackson to Reheema? How were they connected, if at all? Was it possible that Jackson knew Reheema but not vice versa? How?

Vicki yanked down the emergency brake and eased out of the spot. There was no one on the street, playing or driving. Not a living soul except Reheema, coming out of the house with another load of bags, a tall, dark ﬁgure with dark bags against the white snow, receding in the rearview mirror.

Vicki reached the corner and turned, noticing things about the houses that she hadn't before, now that it was daytime and the street felt more familiar. Here and there, lights glowed inside the houses, and in one of the windows ﬂickered an electric candle, ringed by a plastic holly wreath left over from Christmas. There was still life in Devil's Corner; still families making their way, and people like Reheema, moving in and trying to set up house.

Vicki cruised ahead, the car interior warming, and approached Cater. The corner at the mouth of the alley was empty. No scary guys in dark hoods. She drove forward slowly and eased to a stop, looking to the right as she had last night. She parked and scanned the street, which looked different in the daylight. There were no cars parked on it, so she could conceivably drive down it, and it was lined with houses, many of which had lights on and trash at the curb collecting snow, their black bags like misshapen body bags. But even in the terrible weather, she could see people milling at the far end of the street. They seemed to be going inside the vacant lot.

The store. Vicki reached into her purse for her Filofax and pen, then started taking notes. Whether it was the bad weather or the fact that the cops had been at the Bristow house, the watchers hadn't come out yet. She shivered in the cold car, but she didn't quit because she'd never get another chance.

In time the foot trafﬁc fell into a pattern; customers walking into the vacant lot, then leaving ﬁve to ten minutes later. A few cars came down the opposite cross street, driving toward Vicki, the windshield wipers pounding to keep the snow off.

They stopped at the vacant lot to let somebody out and back in again after the buy; the transaction was never made curbside. Only a car or two drove past her and up Cater, because the vacant lot was closer to that end, and she noted their license plates.

She documented everything in her pocket-size Filofax. Every hour or so, the same man, a short man in a black leather coat and black leather baseball cap, would leave the vacant lot, walk down the street away from the Cabrio, then return in about twenty-five minutes to half an hour. Alternating with him, but making the same trip on roughly the same schedule, was a taller man in an Eagles jacket and black knit cap. Vicki theorized that they were the go-betweens, going back and forth to a crackhouse that supplied the store.

On the third trip by the man in the Eagles coat, Vicki set aside her notes and started the Cabrio engine. She cruised forward in the driving snow, finally turning on the heat and switching the defrost to MAX to keep the windshield clear. She took a right at the corner and sped to the end of the street, her windshield wipers pumping to keep up with the snowfall. She stopped at the trafﬁc light, striking a blow for lawful behavior everywhere, and turned right.

By the time she was on the cross street, the man in the Eagles coat had reached the top of Cater Street on foot. Vicki slowed the Cabrio to a crawl and double-parked by a salt-covered Taurus to watch him. Eagles Coat had his back to her, the emblematic bird ﬂying high, its talons splayed. The street was quiet; there was little traffic. Nobody was out in the snow; on the drive over, she'd heard reports of a big storm.

Eagles Coat got into a battered blue Neon parked at the middle of the line-up of cars. Vicki waited while he started the Neon, and when he pulled out of his space, she let a black Ford truck get between them for cover, then took off after him. They cruised to the top of the street together, his speed quicker than hers. She stepped on it, tailgating the black truck.

Her heartbeat picked up as the Neon took a left onto Cleveland Street and headed west.

The black truck went straight, leaving her exposed, but a pile of fresh snow covered the Neon's back window, and the driver made no attempt to defrost it. The Neon had to be ten years old, with a large dent buckling the back fender. Vicki had heard that drug dealers kept the nice cars for driving around in and used crummy cars for "work," because they were less conspicuous. The felonious version of a station car.

The Neon sped forward heedless of the weather conditions, with icy snow streaming sideways across the street. Pellets hit the window, making tinck tinck noises, and the windshield wipers worked frantically. Vicki drove as fast as she could, letting the occasional car get ahead of her to minimize her chance of being spotted, since snow on the back window of the Neon was sliding off.

They threaded their way out of Devil's Corner, and Vicki could see through her steamy window that the neighborhood was worsening. They took a right and a left, and the Neon turned quickly onto a street, then parked. She drove past it because she couldn't stop fast enough and she wanted to avoid being spotted. She went around the block to the street into which the Neon had driven and glanced at the street sign. It was crooked, but its bright green was readable in the snowstorm:

ASPINALL STREET.

Whoa. Vicki ﬂashed on the envelopes on Shayla's dresser, in the row house. They were being forwarded to her boyfriend, Jamal Browning. He lived on Aspinall Street.

Vicki's heart thumped harder. She leaned forward over the steering wheel but the Neon was parked too far away to see much. She waited. Trying to stay calm. Wishing she had a cell phone. Who would she call? The cops. Dan. Somebody. Anybody.

She assumed that Eagles Coat was going to Jamal Browning's house on Aspinall Street, because it seemed unlikely that that there were two drug dealers on Aspinall Street. That meant that Jamal could have been supplying the drugs to the new store on Cater, where Mrs. Bristow had bought her drugs. Could that be the connection? Had Reheema given her mother the guns, then her mother sold or traded them on Cater Street for crack, which was in turn supplied by Jamal Browning? Did that mean the guns had ended up with Browning? And what was Reheema's connection?

Vicki got so excited, she almost missed Eagles Coat leaving a house in the middle of the block, then making his way down the snowy sidewalk. He got into the Neon and took off, presumably back to Cater. Vicki hit the gas, steered the Cabrio onto Aspinall, and drove down the street, not daring to pause at the house. It was a rundown brick row house with a yellow plastic awning bowing with disrepair and snow.

Number 3635. Jamal Browning's house.

"Yes!" Vicki shouted so loud her voice reverberated in the tiny Cabrio. But now what did she do?

She wasn't about to knock on Browning's door, but she knew how to accomplish the same end.

TWENTY-ONE

An hour later, Vicki reached the Roundhouse, Philadelphia's police administration building. It looked almost pretty in the snow, only because the whiteness hid the cracked windowsills and stained concrete of its aging facade. The building was composed of two joined circles, hence its nickname, and its design had been positively space-age in the 1970s. She parked in the press space in the lot, as she used to as an ADA, switched off the ignition, and got out of the Cabrio. The cold tightened her chest, and she pulled her down coat tighter around her. It was almost six and the sky was dark. The parking lot was only partly full, which was deceptive; the Roundhouse wasn't closed for business on the weekend, but only got busier. She'd been here more times than she could count, and hurried to the entrance, kicking snow onto her ankles, and went inside the revolving door.

Ten minutes after that, Vicki found Detective Melvin in the ratty squad room of the Homicide Division. The blue paint on the walls had dulled to grime, and large institutional desks dotted the room, defying any normal path of travel. Water-stained curtains hung from uneven valances along the far wall, which curved with the south side of the building. The air smelled of cigarettes, though smoking wasn't allowed. On TV, Cold Case showed America a sanitized replica of the squad room every week. Nobody would believe how crummy it really was, which was the problem with the truth.

"Have a nice chat with my parents?" Vicki asked, sitting down in the old metal chair next to Detective Melvin's desk.

"Not yet. Is that why you're here?"

"No," Vicki answered, and told him the whole story in detail. By the time she was finished, Detective Melvin was looking at her like her father did, which wasn't good.

"Wait a minute," he said, holding up a hand. "In the beginning, you said you went to see Reheema, to explain to her why her mother had your wallet. You felt you owed her that."

"I did."

"So why were you taking notes on drug trafficking on Cater?" The detective gestured to Vicki's Filofax pages, spread out on the cluttered desk.

"I know what I saw, and so do you." Vicki leaned forward. "The opening of a crack store on Cater, supplied by a dealer on Aspinall. And Browning is connected to Shayla Jackson because of the bills in her house. It's a silver platter."

"It's good, but it doesn't prove anything yet."

"I make out an afﬁdavit of what I saw, to get you probable cause for search of the house and for arrest of the two street dealers and whoever's at that crack house. Business is booming and will only grow. We can end this thing right now."

"We?"

"Yes, we. This could lead to whoever killed Shayla and Morty, and maybe even Mrs. Bristow. It's a good lead."

"I agree, it's a good lead, I didn't say it wasn't a good lead."

"Not to mention that the drug business will take down the street, then the neighborhood."

"I've heard that happens, yes." Detective Melvin was already gathering up Vicki's notes, his muscles flexing in the gray pullover he must have been wearing under his leather jacket this morning. Hard to believe that was the same day; Vicki was already feeling like they were old friends, though she could have been delusional.

"Did you see Browning yet? Did you question him?" "Not yet, but we will." "What's the holdup?" "We have procedures, Ms. Allegretti." "Please, call me Vicki when you lie to me." "I'm not." Detective Melvin pursed his lips. "What procedures, then? The homicide procedures I remember are running down leads. Browning is a clear lead in Jack-son's and Morty's murder, and they may all be connected."

"This is a complicated situation, and I'm not at liberty to discuss the particulars of the investigation," Detective Melvin answered firmly, and Vicki eased back into her chair. Being pushy was getting her nowhere fast, and she could see Melvin wasn't happy about the situation, either.

"Does that mean we can't talk about wiretaps? Are you going for a wiretap on my cell? You could get one, based on these facts."

"We understand that and we're investigating it." "I know ATF would get a Title III tap." "We'll investigate our way, not yours or ATF's." "Which would be what?" Vicki knew she was on thin ice, and Detective Melvin's eyes went hard. "Look, I don't have to keep you apprised. If I call your boss and tell him what you've been up to, he'll ﬁre your ass." Gulp. "But if you could just tell me what you've been doing, maybe I can help."

"I don't need your help, thank you. I thought I made that clear this morning." Detective Melvin stacked her notes into a little Filofax tower, like silver-dollar pancakes. "I'll talk to my sergeant about what you learned today, about Browning on Aspinall and the Neon. And I'll turn your notes over to the Narcotics Strike Force."

"The Narcotics Strike Force? But what if the Cater Street store is connected to the murder of my partner?"

"We handle that part, they handle the other. They've had other complaints from the neighbors. They know about the situation, but they're taxed. They'll give this attention if it comes from Homicide."

"Will they coordinate with the feds?" "I'm sure they will, but there are jurisdictional issues." "Who has jurisdiction, state or federal?" "I'm not at liberty to discuss that with you," Detective

Melvin answered, but Vicki couldn't let her hard work fall between the cracks.

"I say you have jurisdiction over the whole case. It's a murder, at bottom, whether a federal agent or not, and I think it has to stay with you, not the Narcotics Strike Force." Vicki was thinking out loud, issue-spotting in criminal procedure. She knew that Homicide could run-and-gun in a way the feds never could. Making a federal case wasn't just an expression.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Detective Melvin's forehead relaxed, and his voice softened. They both knew that jurisdiction was a question of legal power, so it always became a legal power play, and this situation would only make it worse. "But at this point, we think it's a local offense, so it's ours. Doesn't mean we don't have to coordinate."

"With whom?" "A task force." "Oh no." Task force was police code for a committee. Vicki could only guess the pressure he was under. "But somebody has to be running the store, right now. Time matters in a murder investigation."

Melvin managed a smile. "I've heard that, too." "What's the precedent in cases like this?" "There isn't any." "There has to be," Vicki said in disbelief. "Morty couldn't have been the ﬁrst federal agent killed in the line of duty."

"Actually, in Philly, he is. Except for one case that doesn't help us much. An FBI agent, Chuck Reed, was killed making an undercover buy in the nineties, remember? In a car at Penn's Landing?"

"No." Vicki was at Harvard Law in the nineties, but she never dropped the H-bomb unless she had to. "Remind me."

"It was a buy-bust that went wrong, in that yuppie cocaine ring. The dealer was coked up and panicked. He shot Reed, who shot back. They were both killed." Detective Melvin winced with the regret that cops show at another's passing. Grief was the one thing that crossed jurisdictional lines.

"So there was no need for an investigation to find Reed's killer."

"Right, there's no precedent on this one."

"But it is a state law matter, and civilians were killed, too- Jackson, her baby, and Mrs. Bristow, if her murder is related." Then even Vicki thought better of it. "Still, everybody at ATF loved Morty. They'll want to take care of their own."

"Right, of course. So would we." They fell silent on their respective sides of the desk. Vicki felt the tug of conﬂict, and Detective Melvin sighed, a resigned sound that came from deep within his broad chest. "We already scheduled a meeting about your partner's murder with top brass at your ofﬁce, and with ATF, DEA, and FBI."

"Why would FBI have jurisdiction? Because they take it?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, I did." Vicki considered the situation. The FBI was the grabbiest federal agency in existence, after the IRS. "When is the task force meeting?"

"They were talking about Tuesday, but realistically, it'll be Wednesday. They need a day after the memorial service of your partner."

Morty's funeral. Vicki felt a tightness. She'd been so wrapped up in catching his killer, she hadn't thought about his burial. "When is the memorial service scheduled for?"

"I got a memo. The wake is tomorrow night, the memorial on Monday."

Vicki checked her emotions. "Wednesday is when you all meet? That's forever, in a murder investigation."

"This has to be done right," Detective Melvin said, but even he didn't sound like he believed it, and Vicki was shaking her head.

"Procedures?"

"In a word."

"So we have a tangle over whether it's state or federal, then we have a tangle over which federal it is, ATF, FBI, or DEA."

Detective Melvin looked almost as miserable as Vicki. "I'm not even invited to the meeting, only my captain and the feds."

"All that law getting in the way of justice."

Detective Melvin smiled crookedly, but Vicki was already rising to her feet.

"Got a Xerox machine?"

"Sure, why?"

"Time's a-wastin.' "

Vicki reached over and picked up her notes.

TWENTY-TWO

It was almost seven by the time Vicki made her way through the snowstorm to the United States Custom House. A frigid wind gusted from the Delaware River, snow flurries flew around the building, and the American ﬂag at its top ﬂapped madly. Custom House, only ten minutes by Cabrio from the Roundhouse, was a stolid gray edifice that anchored the corner of Second amp; Chestnut Streets and housed a number of federal agencies; the passport ofﬁce, the FDA, GSA, and ATF. The building looked positively bureaucratic in contrast with the funky restaurants, art galleries, and bistros dotting Olde City, and only a single couple was out in this bitter night, walking cuddled together against the storm. Vicki hurried past them, up the cleared granite steps, and into Custom House.

At this hour, the building was closed to the public, and the lobby was empty except for two weekend security guards at the metal detector. She barely knew the unfriendly one sitting at a standard-issue wooden desk, reading the movie listings in the Daily News, but the other, her pal Samuel, looked up from peeling his ﬁngernails. He blanched when he recognized Vicki, and she knew why.

"Yo, Samuel." Vicki was about to produce her ID when she remembered it was gone. "I don't have my ID with me, okay?"

"No sweat, Vicki." Samuel waved her around the metal detector. She'd been here almost every day last year, while she and Morty interviewed witnesses and laid out their case at the ATF ofﬁces.

"Appreciate it. Anybody up there still?"

"Oh yeah, plenty, even the brass."

"Great."

"Sorry about Agent Morton," Samuel said when Vicki had almost passed. It came out as an afterthought, though she knew it wasn't; he must've been getting up his nerve to say something, which touched her all the more.

"Thanks." Vicki checked her emotions before they got out of control. She was already feeling shaky, being in this lobby. The last time she had been here was with Morty. They had gone out to pick up hoagies and fought over who ordered the sweet peppers.

I swear I did, he had said.

Nah, you always get hot.

I'm evolving.

Vicki crossed to the small, circular lobby, which was vintage Art Deco. She knew its history, thanks to Morty, who had loved this building; Custom House had been built in the 1930s as a WPA project, and he had always claimed it was to keep South Philly stonemasons busy, because the lobby was fashioned completely of carved marble. A rosy-bronze marble covered the curving walls of the entrance rotunda, and remarkable royal-blue marble pillars, etched with long lines that lengthened their two-story stature, stood in a ring that anchored the domed ceiling. Gold-leaf ﬂorets twinkled in the dome against a celestial blue background, giving the entire lobby a heavenly, ethereal feel.

Morty.

Vicki hurried past and went upstairs, the clatter of her footsteps mufﬂed by residual snow. She hit the second ﬂoor as she always used to, noting again the oddly painted mauve doorjambs, and pressed a code into the keypad by the unmarked purple door. It was an entrance used only by ATF agents, who bypassed the glass-walled reception area, and Morty had told her the code. She opened the door and had almost succeeded in setting her thoughts about him aside when he was suddenly staring her in the face.

MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR BOB MORTON, read the typed headline, and an almost life-size photo of him hung on the wall, grinning in a tie he wore only for picture day. It was a photocopied announcement of the details of his wake and funeral. Vicki had almost forgotten how handsome he was; she swallowed hard and took a right turn down the hall into an off-white warren of offices, most of which were empty with the lights off, but some of which were not. The Philadelphia office of ATF contained one hundred agents in its several ﬂoors, and she could only imagine how busy these halls had been the past few days, buzzing with agents talking about Morty, comparing notes, and consoling one another. Given what had happened, she had guessed that people would be working this weekend; in fact, because the agents spent so much time in court, many routinely worked nights and weekends, catching up on paperwork, interviewing witnesses, and generally giving the lie to the cliché about "government work."

Going down the hall, Vicki waved brieﬂy at the agents who looked up from their desks, nodding to acknowledge her; she hadn't gotten to know them with only a year on the job, much of it spent with Morty. She traveled down the purple-patterned carpet, feeling out of place without him. A sharp solvent smell ﬁlled the air in the next hall, and she passed a small room containing a trio of men in long white coats, cleaning riﬂes on a table. She finally reached the threshold of the large corner ofﬁce, knocked on another purple doorjamb, and braced herself to meet the boss.

"Mr. Saxon?" Vicki began, then shut up, because he was talking on the telephone and taking notes. He saw her but didn't wave her in, and she wasn't surprised since she wasn't sure he knew who she was. In the meantime, she tried not to listen to any top-secret conversation.

"Eggs, milk, low-fat, no fruit in Phase I," Saxon said into the phone, and Vicki smiled. The whole world was on South Beach. The phone conversation sounded like an instant replay of Vicki's dinner with her parents, before they'd bitched her out. Maybe that was their problem. Not enough carbohydrates.

"Brown or white eggs, does it matter?"

Vicki eyed his ofﬁce, the largest she'd seen here. The three windows were dark behind closed window shades, and the wall behind his desk bore the requisite framed movie poster from The Untouchables with Kevin Costner. ATF jocks loved The Untouchables, Hollywood's version of the beginnings of their agency, and they uniformly revered the real-life Elliott Ness. Every year, Morty had gone to the Elliot Ness party they held in Baltimore and returned with a killer hangover.

"Ricotta? Maggio? That has to be low-fat, too? Gimme a break here, Kath."

An American ﬂag stood to the right of the desk, in the far corner, and a coat rack stood on the near corner, holding a baseball cap, winter coat, and navy-blue bulletproof vest that read ATF in characteristically bold yellow letters. The desk was large and simple, of light wood, and immaculately clean except for a plastic party-favor statue of Jesus Christ, still in the box, which sat next to a nameplate that read JOHN SAXON, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE.

"Pistachios, almonds, not roasted, unsalted."

Saxon made a note with a Bic pen, his oversize hand curling around the paper; he looked like an overgrown schoolboy except for the fact that his gray-blond hair showed a large bald patch. Saxon himself was king-size, easily six four, with broad muscular shoulders in a white cotton polo shirt too thin for winter. His nose and cheekbones were large and pronounced; his eyes an overworked and bloodshot blue, and even his complexion looked ruddy, with a touch of rosacea. Still, he was handsome in a middle-aged alpha-wolf way, and Vicki liked him because he hung up the phone by saying, "Love you, too."

Saxon looked up at Vicki, who introduced herself as she walked in and extended a hand, which he shook, half rising. "Allegretti, how do I know your name?"

"I'm the AUSA who worked with Morty. We got the conviction in Edwards, and we were on Bristow."

"Of course. Morty." Saxon frowned and pursed his lips, which were thin and chapped, as he eased back into his high-backed chair. "Jesus, God. Poor Morty. Siddown, kid." He waved at one of two padded brown leather chairs in front of his desk. "You were with him, right?"

"Yes." Vicki ﬂashed on the scene of Morty at the doorway, blood bubbling at his lips, then forced it away.

"I read your statement. You did a good job, lots of details. It must have been tough." Saxon eyed her, appraising her. "Well, you know, we're all so sorry. Sorry for all of us. Sorry for Morty. He was a great agent. A thorough, professional agent. He would investigate a case no matter how long it took." Saxon ran a massive palm over his forehead, which only messed up hair that was baby-thin in front. "He was such a good guy, even his ex-wife called to say she's sorry." Saxon smiled, and so did Vicki.

"Morty always said he was married to the job."

"He was. ATF was his family, all the family he had. The ofﬁce is in a state over it."

"I can imagine." Vicki felt a twinge at having cut ATF out of her jurisdictional analysis. She felt oddly as if she had betrayed Morty's memory.

"So what can I do for you?" Saxon checked his watch, a gold-toned Seiko. "You heard She Who Must Be Obeyed. It's late and I gotta go."

"I wanted to talk to you about the investigation of Morty's murder."

"Right now? On a Saturday night?" Saxon raised blond, furry eyebrows. "Pretty girl like you, you must have somewhere you have to be."

Actually, no. "I've been upset over Morty, so I've been doing some digging on my own."

Saxon's eyes narrowed. "You're an AUSA, right?"

"Yes, and I was an ADA before that. I've been an acronym for a long time." Vicki was trying to lighten his sudden bad mood, but it wasn't working.

"What do you mean, digging on your own?"

"Just asking some questions and-"

"You have no business doing that." Saxon frowned. "We sent your description of the doers to every ATF ofﬁce in the country. That's where you end and we take over. We'll find those scumbags."

"Does that mean ATF will be in charge of the investigation?"

"Why do you want to know?" Saxon's features ﬂattened to a bureaucratic mask, and Vicki shrugged.

"Because I care. About Morty."

"ATF cares about Morty, too." Saxon laughed without mirth, his manner growing unfriendlier by the minute, and Vicki sighed. What had she said wrong? Or did this guy just need more carbs?

"I didn't say you didn't. It's just that I found out some things today that are related to his murder."

"What things?"

"That's what I came to tell you." It wasn't the way Vicki had expected this conversation to go, but at least he wasn't pointing a gun at her. She began the story in chronological order. "I guess you heard about the murder this morning of Arissa Bristow." "Bristow?" Saxon frowned. "How do I know that name?"

"It was on the TV news."

"What's that have to do with Morty?"

"Arissa Bristow was the mother of my defendant in the straw purchase case, the one that Morty and I went to see the CI about. The CI was named Shayla Jackson."

"Jackson, I remember. But Bristow? When was she killed?"

"This morning, it was on TV," Vicki repeated. "Didn't Chief Bale call you, or someone from Philly Homicide?"

"No. What happened?" Saxon leaned across his desk, and Vicki filled him in about Mrs. Bristow, Reheema, and Cater Street, and ﬁnally Aspinall Street and Jamal Browning. She gave him a copy of her notes from her purse, which she took him through in detail. His eyes widened as she spoke, and he took notes on the same legal pad as his shopping list. When she was ﬁnished, he leaned back in his chair and set down his pen, deep in thought.

"I think Mrs. Bristow's murder is related to Morty's, and the drug trafﬁc to all of it." Vicki was thinking out loud again. "A loose end is that guy who has my cell phone. He has to know something. I ﬁgure this is more than enough for a Title III tap on the cell, don't you?"

"This concerns me," Saxon said, but he wasn't speaking directly to Vicki anymore. His gaze strayed to the windows, but the blinds were drawn. Still he kept looking in that direction, maybe by habit. He seemed to have forgotten that she was even there. "I'm not happy I wasn't told about this situation."

"I'm not, either." Vicki sensed this would be the falling-through-the-cracks part. The jurisdictional turf war. These agencies would have to talk to one another if they wanted to catch Morty's killers. "Who has jurisdiction in the investigation, as you see it? I know ATF will want to follow up because of Morty, but as a legal matter, I think Philly Homicide should-"

"I'm not going to discuss that with you."

Vicki blinked. "I thought we were discussing it."

"No, we weren't. Relations between ATF and other federal agencies on a speciﬁc case isn't appropriate for us to discuss."

Vicki felt slapped down. He didn't mind discussing the case when she was the one giving information. "I guess that will be decided at the meeting on Wednesday."

Saxon lifted an eyebrow. "How do you know about that meeting?"

"I've kept it completely conﬁdential, of course."

"That's not the point. How do you know?"

Vicki paused. She didn't want to rat on Detective Melvin. The plastic Jesus doll stared at her. Behind Jesus was John Saxon. For a minute she didn't know what to say.

"Allegretti," Saxon said sternly, "you're way out of line, what you've been doing. Going to Bristow's house, surveilling Cater Street, following a suspect to Aspinall. You're not a professional, and this is dangerous work. You shouldn't be taking any part of an investigation on yourself."

"I didn't intend to, I was just following up when I went to see Reheema."

"You shouldn't have done that, either. It's better left to law enforcement."

Vicki was getting a little sick of hearing that. "I am law enforcement."

"You're a lawyer."

"I'm an AUSA and it's my partner who got killed."

"A loose cannon is what you are," Saxon said, as if it were an ofﬁcial pronouncement, and Vicki ﬁnally got mad.

"You know, if I hadn't made any progress, you'd have a point." Suddenly, the emotion, pain, and exhaustion she had been suppressing for two days caught up with her, and Vicki rose to her feet. "But I don't need this. All I know is that Morty's dead, and I'm the one driving around after the bad guys. So excuse me if I don't knuckle under."

"You're way outta line, kid." Saxon rose behind his desk and pointed a thick finger at her. "Does Bale know what you've been up to?"

But Vicki was too angry to answer. She turned her back on him and headed for the door.

"Don't you walk out on me, Allegretti! Answer my question! Does your boss know what you've been doing?"

"Tell you what." Vicki turned on her heel at the threshold. "You go food shopping, and I'll let you know when I get my next lead, okay?"

And she walked out before he could shoot.

When Vicki got home, she took an even greater risk than surveilling a drug dealer or questioning the masculinity of an ATF chief-she called her parents. She wanted to explain about Detective Melvin's call. She pressed in the number and took a fifty-fifty chance that the parent she actually liked would answer. After two rings, her mother picked up. Yes!

"Mom? Did Detective Melvin call you yet, from Homicide?"

"Goodness, yes, we just hung up," her mother said, alarmed. "What is going on? Are you okay, dear?"

"I'm ﬁne."

"Thank God! Did you actually need an alibi?"

"No, not really."

"Your father's at the gym. I'm beside myself. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm ﬁne. My wallet was stolen last night by a crack addict, who was killed last night."

"But you were here last night, and you didn't tell us anything about this."

And I'm still not. "We kind of had a fight, remember?" Vicki felt a tug. "I'm sorry I upset you, Mom."

"I'm sorry, too, dear." Her mother's tone softened.

"And for the record, I don't live like a pauper."

Her mother sighed. "You know your father."

"Uh, yeah."

"Maybe I won't mention to him that the detective called."

"Thanks." Vicki felt touched. "I have to go now, Mom. Don't worry too much."

"Just be careful."

"I will. Bye. Love you."

"Love you, too. Good-bye."

Vicki hung up, ignoring the knot in her chest. She thought about calling Dan but she didn't want to cause more trouble for him. She felt a little disconnected from the world. Without Morty. Without Dan. And after Saxon called Bale, without a career.

Vicki considered it. The smart thing to do was call Bale and preempt Saxon, but she'd get ﬁred for sure. She turned it over in her mind, but her brain kept skidding on the ice. She was too tired to think. She needed to eat something and she needed a good night's sleep.

And only after that would she know what to do next.

TWENTY-THREE

Vicki woke up in the morning to a distinctive sound of winter: the sc-c-c-crape, sc-c-c-crape, sc-c-c-crape of a neighbor shoveling his sidewalk. She groaned and checked her bedside clock.

10:49. Late. She felt a wave of guilt. She'd have to get up andshovel her sidewalk so she didn't get sued. Growing up with both parents as lawyers, Vicki had been indoctrinated to shovel before the dreaded underlayer of ice wreaked havoc with the American system of civil liability.

She turned over and stuck her head under the pillow. She hated to shovel snow and put it off as long as possible, a rebel with a Back-Saver shovel. She consoled herself in her own childishness. It was nice and dark beneath her pillow, and her bed felt soft, comfy, and warm. The radiator hissed in a reassuring way, whispering stay asleep, stay asleep, stay asleep, but it couldn't drown out sc-c-c-crape, sc-c-c-crape, sc-c-c-crape, and neither noise stood a chance against YOU'LL GET SUED, YOU'LL GET SUED, YOU'LL GET SUED.

Vicki turned over and squeezed her eyes shut, but it was inevitable. Nothing could silence her lawyer's conscience, and no pillow could block the realization that today was Morty's wake. It was still hard to believe he was dead. She ﬂung off the pillow, rolled out of bed, and tried not to have another thought that would make her sad while she went to the bathroom, pulled on old sweatpants and a crimson hoodie sweatshirt, then trundled downstairs in the chilly house, put on her winter coat, boots, mittens, and stupid Smurfy hat. Then she went to the basement to retrieve her shovel, trundled back upstairs with it, went to the front door, and opened it into a blast of cold air.

The snow had stopped; the sky was clear and blue. The Holloway kids had already been out playing, evidenced by a snowman with a tiny head like Beetlejuice and M amp;M eyes dripping blue tears. Her street had been plowed, snowing the parked cars in until the next decade, and almost all the sidewalks had been shoveled, including her own.

Huh? In the middle of her perfectly shoveled walk, leaning on a snow shovel in his down coat and a Phillies cap, stood a grinning Dan Malloy.

"Nice hat, babe," he said.

Vicki clapped with delight, though her mittens made a muh muh muh sound that had no payoff. "What did you do, Dan?"

"That'll teach you to think about moving. All the neighbors in Center City are mean."

"This is so nice of you!"

"Will work for coffee."

"Done!" Vicki waved him inside. Ten minutes later, they had shed their boots, coats, hats, and mittens and left them by the door in a jumbled pile of his-and-her things, the sight of which made Vicki unaccountably content. She padded barefoot on the cool pine floor into the kitchen, going ahead of Dan. "That was really great of you. I hate to shovel."

"I know that."

"You do? How?"

"Because you told me once."

"I did?"

"Yes." Dan smiled and sat down in his customary chair at the kitchen table, while she reached in the cabinet for the coffee grounds, a role reversal for them. He looked typically unshaven, and his reddish bangs sprayed over his blue eyes, making even hat head look good. Luckily, today he was wearing a bra, in the form of a ratty white turtleneck under the same blue crewneck sweater.

"So you just decided to come over and shovel my walk?"

"Yeah. Mariella had to go in, so I have the day free."

The M-word. Vicki, in denial, had almost forgotten. Dan's snowboots might be parked next to hers, but his bedroom slippers were next to Mariella's. Meantime, he had on her favorite jeans, which were soaked from snow at the lower legs. If they were in a movie, Vicki would ask Dan to take his pants off so she could throw them in the dryer, and they'd end up in each other's arms. Unfortunately, they were in Philadelphia, where things like that never happened and people sat around in wet pants.

"Catch me up, Vick. What's going on? I haven't seen you since they tried to arrest you. You gotta get a new cell phone."

"I will." Vicki poured tap water in the back of the coffeemaker and turned the button to On. "You want breakfast?"

"You have food in the house?"

"There's eggs." Vicki knew because she'd had some for dinner last night, and Dan was already on his bare feet, heading to the refrigerator.

"Scrambled, okay?"

"Fine."

"My specialty." Dan took out the eggs and a stick of butter, and Vicki drew way-too-pathetic pleasure from the fact that they were cooking side by side in her kitchen. Dan set the eggs and butter on the counter and went into the base cabinet for the fry pan. "So I know you've been up to no good, because Bale called me this morning, asking where you were."

"He did?" Vicki turned, surprised. Funny the things husbands don't tell you. Other women's husbands, that is. "What did he say?"

"That he's been calling here and there's been no answer. Said he was trying to ﬁnd you."

"When did he call?"

"Last night and this morning."

Saxon must have called Bale. "Oh no, I must have slept through it. I conked out as soon as I hit the pillow."

"I called late last night and this morning, too."

"I guess I was really sleeping. I didn't even hear the Holloway kids making the snowman."

"You didn't check your messages?"

"No, I was too tired when I got in." And truth to tell, she hadn't wanted to know if Dan had called. Since his ﬁght with Mariella, she didn't feel as if she should call him back. Vicki tabled that for now. "What did Bale say? Is he mad? I'm pushing it, I know."

"He didn't say. You'd better call him, but not until after you tell me what happened yesterday."

Vicki was getting tired of giving everybody reports, but Dan was a great sounding board and he was on her side. The coffee started to drip, and its wet aroma ﬁlled the air. The kitchen was bright, quiet, and still; if the snow had been insulation yesterday, it was a cocoon today. Vicki retrieved their Elvis and Harvard mugs, interrupted the coffee in mid-stream, and poured them both a cup.

"Thanks." Dan melted butter in a Calphalon pan, as Vicki leaned against the counter and began the account of what had happened. By the time she was finished, they were sitting before plates of leftover eggs and Vicki was on her third cup of coffee, which was weak because she had interrupted the brewing process.

"I hate when I do that," she said.

"What?"

"Mess up the coffee, so the ﬁrst cup is too strong and the ones after it suck. I'm my own pet peeve."

"You're too impatient." Dan set down his fork.

"Is that possible? Can you be just impatient enough?"

"You can't." Dan smiled. "That's part of the reason you're getting yourself in trouble with the brass."

"Let the lecture begin."

"No lecture here. You know what you're doing is nuts."

"Insulting Saxon?"

"Yes, and stalking drug dealers." Dan's mouth made a grave line.

"I don't want to talk about that. I want you to help me figure out the connection between Jamal Browning and the Bristows, if there is one."

Dan cocked his head. "Well, lay the facts down and organize them, as if they were evidence. Build your case, only undisputed facts ﬁrst. Then we'll go from there."

"First, Browning supplies crack to Cater." Vicki counted off on an index ﬁnger. "Two, Browning was the boyfriend of my CI."

Dan shook his head. "That's not undisputed. The mother never heard of him."

"But it's likely, and the mother never heard of anybody."

"Not good enough." Dan spoke in his ofﬁcial jury-closing voice. "Second undisputed fact is that Mrs. Bristow was killed right after she bought drugs at Cater."

Vicki resumed finger counting. "And, three and four, the things I'd bet money on are that Jamal Browning was the boyfriend of Shayla Jackson, and that Mrs. Bristow gave the guns that Reheema had given her to the Cater Street dealers, in return for crack." Vicki considered it, then decided she was right. Funny how that always worked. "It's just too coincidental that the CI turns up dead in a houseful of ﬁsh-scale coke, and she happens to be the girlfriend of the dealer who sells to Cater Street."

"It's a baby drug business, from the sound of it, and that's a small world in Philly, believe it or not. Coincidences abound."

"Possibly. And we know that Reheema didn't know Jackson or Browning."

"Wrong. You don't know that at all."

"I do know it. I believe Reheema."

"Why?" Dan asked in disbelief.

"Because she convinced me, and so did that stuff I saw about her on her bulletin board. And the fact that she didn't know Jackson was corroborated by her boss."

"Jackson testiﬁed they were best friends."

"People lie under oath," Vicki said, because Reheema had taught her such things.

"And as between Jackson and Reheema, you believe Reheema, a known felon? Just because she ran track?"

"It's just a feeling I have about her. Reheema's different. And she's not a felon, because she wasn't convicted." Vicki sounded idiotic even to herself, and Dan's mouth dropped open.

"She pulled a gun on you, Vick!"

"She thought I was trespassing."

"So? If you thought somebody was trespassing, would you pull a gun on them? Would you even have a gun to pull? Or would you run out and call the cops?"

Vicki gathered it was rhetorical.

"Of course not. But just as it's second nature to you to call the cops, it's second nature to Reheema not to. Her experience of the cops is completely different from yours. For you, the cops are saviors. For her, they're enemies. You're the enemy." Dan nodded. "This is where Episcopal Academy comes in."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Vick, you're a rookie in this subculture, for want of a better word. You come to it with new eyes, and it's kind of exciting."

"It wasn't exciting, what happened to Morty."

"That's not what I meant and you know it." Dan flushed red, and Vicki regretted her words.

"Sorry."

"What I meant was the whole gangsta thing. The jewelry, the coke, the nicknames."

"I'm not new to it. I saw it at the D.A.'s ofﬁce."

"Not this. Not with stakes this high. If these boys get caught, they go away for life. The boys who play that, they're a different breed. They're what the NBA is to high school ball. They like the big money-tens of millions of dollars-and they kill for it."

"I know all that," Vicki said irritably, but Dan leaned forward, intent.

"No, you don't. You bring this Main Line thing to it. You believe Reheema when she tells you, ‘No, I didn't resell the guns, I gave them to my mommy.' ‘No, I don't know Jackson.' You believe her because you tell the truth and you project that onto her. You believe her because you were raised in a world where people told the truth."

Obviously, he'd never eaten dinner at the Allegrettis'.

"No offense, but you're completely naïve. You can't believe her. You can't believe any of them. They lie to you all the time. Lying is a way of life for them, especially lying to you, an AUSA."

Vicki didn't like this new side of Dan. "You sound racist. Everything's ‘them' and ‘they.' "

"It's got nothing to do with race. I know these people, the mentality."

"What people?"

"People like my father."

It took Vicki aback. He never talked about his father. "How do you mean?"

"A liar, a cheat. A bad boy who grew up not knowing how to make a dime, so he learned how to steal it. Scam for it. Smile for it. The guy could charm the pants off you and you'd never know they were gone until you looked down." Dan shook his head. "How can I make you understand? My dad grew up in a poor neighborhood, just like your dad did. Some kids become straight arrows, like your dad. Go to school, make A's, graduate. Others shuck and jive and look for the angles. The quick buck. They want to be a big shot. My dad's as white as Irish lace, but he's gangsta to the core."

Vicki felt moved by his vehemence but she couldn't see it pertaining to Reheema. "I hear you, and I appreciate what you're saying. But keep an open mind. There's a person in there, even in the baddest gangsta. Even your dad."

"Not in my dad." Dan smiled, without mirth, and Vicki got back on track.

"Let's assume Reheema is telling the truth. Look at the facts. There's something we're missing. Maybe Reheema doesn't know Shayla Jackson, but Shayla Jackson knows her."

"How is that possible?"

"You can know someone who doesn't know you." Vicki was thinking aloud, a bad thing to do in front of a boss but a good thing to do in front of scrambled eggs. "You see them around, and someone tells you who they are. You know them but they don't know you."

"Okay, right. So?"

"So assume that Shayla and Jamal are boyfriend and girlfriend, and Shayla visits him at Cater Street."

Dan arched an eyebrow. "How do you know Jamal goes to Cater Street? At his level, odds are he doesn't go to Cater Street ever, and the runner in the Eagles coat delivers the crack to the store."

"Okay, well, let's say once he does. Once, in the beginning, like when he's scouting locations or doing whatever drug dealers do before they open a store."

"Usually, they hang the sign-Grand Opening."

"Right, the sign and the lights." Vicki was too preoccupied to smile. "Or he drives by and he sees Reheema at Cater Street and she's with her mother."

"Not Saint Reheema. People don't buy crack with their mothers unless they use, too."

"Okay, let's say that Jamal drives by the neighborhood with one of his underlings and he sees Reheema in front of her mom's house, and he says to his pal, ‘Who's that girl?' " Vicki could imagine the scene. "And the friend says, ‘That's Reheema Bristow, and her mom buys from us.' And Shayla's in the car at the time." Vicki considered it and decided that she was right, yet again. "It's possible, isn't it?"

"It's not likely."

"But it's possible."

"Yes."

Yay! "Then maybe it happened." Vicki felt excited, but Dan looked dubious.

"So why would Shayla Jackson frame someone she saw on the street, a total stranger, on a straw charge?"

"I can think of one reason, but you won't guess it because you never met Reheema."

"Why?"

"She's gorgeous. She's stunning. She's like Beyonce, only cranky."

"You mean the gun."

"Exactly."

Dan laughed. "So?"

"If my boyfriend were showing an interest in her, or even asking who she was, I'd be worried." Vicki felt thunderstruck; it made so much sense. Maybe she had actually deserved to get into Harvard. Or maybe she just knew a lot about jealousy. "If I were in love with someone, but he had his eye on someone else or started to stray from me, I'd hate her. I'd want her gone."

"You're vicious." Dan was oblivious, even for a man.

"A straw charge is perfect, and Shayla would guess correctly that Reheema wouldn't dime on her own mother."

Dan was listening now, cocking his head.

"If Jamal started showing an interest in Reheema"-Vicki ﬂashed on the bills on Shayla's dresser-"that would threaten Shayla's support."

"Not bad, but Reheema told you she didn't know Jamal. Is she a liar?"

"No, let's say she didn't know him, but he knew her, like with Shayla. He doesn't approach her, or even hit on her. Maybe he jokes about it or asks his friend about Reheema and Shayla ﬁnds out."

"That would be a very jealous woman."

"They exist." Look across the table, pal. "And we know that Shayla and Jamal did break up, because she was forwarding bills to him. If she were still seeing him, she'd just give them to him." Vicki felt excited. It was coming together, or at least part of it. "Shayla would know about the guns, because if Mrs. Bris-tow traded them for crack, they might ﬁnd their way to Jamal. Or at least he'd know about them. If Shayla knew the guns had been bought by Reheema, she'd know enough to set her up for a straw charge. All it takes is a call."

"Not bad." Dan reached for his mug, which was empty.

"More coffee? I'm getting some." Vicki started to get up but Dan waved her down.

"Don't, you're caffeinated enough."

Vicki smiled. "So what do you think? Am I a genius or not?"

"You're a genius." Dan was nodding. "I think it's all very interesting."

"The question is, what do I do about it?"

"Nothing," Dan answered ﬁrmly.

"What? Why? I have to call Bale, I should tell him."

"Tell him later. If you call him now and start talking like this, he'll ﬁre you for good. He didn't sound happy last night, and Saxon will have called him already." Dan relaxed back in his chair. "Lower the temperature of the situation. Let it sit for today. It's Morty's memorial, you know about that?"

"Sure."

"That will suck."

"Yes."

"Mariella might be able to go, if she can get somebody to take her place."

I could take her place. "That would be nice."

"So I say, let it be. Let Saxon forget your conversation and let Bale cool down."

"But they should follow up."

"They will. If you ﬁgured it out, they can ﬁgure it out. They really are professionals, Vick. Tell them next week and let them take it from there." Dan's tone turned almost plaintive. "Get real, girl. You did great, but Jamal Browning is a killer. A bona ﬁde killer. You're out of your league."

Vicki knew it was true. She didn't have the stuff to go after Jamal Browning. She couldn't prove if he was behind Shayla's murder or if someone else was. And she didn't know if he or his underlings had anything to do with Mrs. Bristow's murder. She knew only that she had the information that would support the wiretaps and surveillance that would lead to the truth.

"Okay, I call Bale now and I'll play it by ear." Vicki rose to go to the phone, newly nervous. She couldn't afford to lose this job, but she wouldn't tell Dan her money worries. No one wanted to hear rich girls plead poverty. God bless the child. Vicki lifted the phone receiver. "I'll apologize for what I said to Saxon, then if Bale sounds like he's in a good mood, I'll tell him the theory. If he ﬁres me, I'll shut up."

"Sounds like a plan. Should I stay or should I go?"

Is holding my hand an option? Vicki thought, but what she said was: "Stay." She picked up the phone and pressed in Bale's cell. It rang a few times, then his voicemail picked up, so she left a message, and managed to avoid begging for her job.

But she hung up with a bad feeling she couldn't quite explain.