“You’re losing it big-time, Vargas,” Brad said. “If you can’t catch a goddamn football, how you gonna command a courtroom?”

“Brad’s favorite game isn’t Nerf football,” Joe observed. “It’s keeping track of who has the most macho points.”

Smiling, Melanie bent down and picked up the football. What the hell, she could take a little break, hang out for a minute, like old times. One thing she’d missed out on since Maya was born was the late-night camaraderie around the office. Melanie and her colleagues were too busy to chat during the workday. Their only chance to see each other-to seek advice and trade war stories-came after hours, when the courthouse was closed and the phones stopped ringing. By rushing out every day at five-thirty, she cut herself off from them. That was a price she paid for motherhood, a price none of them could relate to. Melanie was the only woman in her unit with a child. Almost none of the male prosecutors had families either. The job was too intense. It was for young, ambitious, single people. People with outside commitments just couldn’t handle the pressure. She tried not to think about that, about how the two things in her life that were any good-work and Maya-seemed to conflict with each other.

Melanie made as if to throw the football in Brad’s face; he laughed and pretended to cower behind his hands. She walked over and handed it to him.

“From what I hear, you’re winning the macho contest,” Brad said enviously. “Kicking butt and taking names. Her suspect’s got, like, twenty bodies on him!” he said to the others.

“Really?” Susan asked. “Jed Benson’s killer did twenty murders?”

“That’s what the informants say,” Melanie replied.

“And I thought I was hot shit doing the Vlad the Impaler trial,” Brad said. “He only killed four people. Although a machete through the stomach, that should count extra, right?”

“Forget Benson’s killer. It’s Witchie-Poo who scares me,” Joe said. “We saw her ambush you earlier, Melanie.”

“Careful,” Brad said, glancing around nervously.

“Don’t worry, I saw her leave for the day,” Susan said.

“So what was that all about? You okay?” Joe asked.

“She’s all over me about the Benson case,” Melanie said.

“Better you than me,” Joe said, his eyes kind behind thick glasses. He really was a decent guy. She was certain it rankled that she had gotten a plum assignment over him, but Joe would never hold it against her. The son of a prominent African-American city councilman, Joe came from a family that expected him to go into politics one day, but he lacked the cutthroat personality for it. He was intellectual, refined, laid back almost to the point of meekness. Joe’s most famous moment in the courtroom was when he fainted dead away during a blistering attack from the nasty Judge Warner for being late to court. He and Melanie had often helped each other out-he sharing his expertise on legal precedent, she tutoring him on the nuts and bolts of investigation and trial strategy.

Brad checked his watch. “Any of you fine people care to join me at Burger and Brew? Work out my trial strategy over a pitcher?”

“Sounds good,” Susan said. “I’m ready to pack it in for the night, and I’m starving.”

“Sorry,” Joe said. “I’m due at my folks’.”

“Melanie?” Susan asked.

“Nope. Wish I could, but too much work.”

“What happened to the Vargas we knew and loved? Never met a margarita she didn’t like?” Brad said.

Melanie laughed. “You’re confusing me with someone else. I was never that much fun.”

“Well, no time like the present to start, right?”

“Hey, doofus, leave her alone,” Susan said cheerily, punching Brad on the arm. “Maybe if you quit partying so much yourself, you’d get the big cases. Let’s go.”

“I’ll walk out with you,” Joe said.

The bulletproof door slammed shut behind them, leaving the office more silent and gloomy than before.

12

THE SKY OUTSIDE WAS BLACK, SHEETS OF WATER falling sideways in the wind. The rain pounding her window provided the only sound as Melanie hunted through a nearby box for something to read while she ate. She pulled out a random wiretap affidavit and brought it over to her desk, where the soggy plastic bag of diner food gave off a pungent pickle smell. Unwrapping the foil-covered sandwich, she bit into it and chewed the dry, tasteless turkey. Yuck. She hated bland food, but she was trying hard to be good. She thought longingly of the leftover arroz con pollo sitting home in her refrigerator. Lucky thing it wasn’t here, or she’d scarf it all in about ten seconds and feel fat for the rest of the night.

She flipped to the last page of the affidavit, searching for a date. Attested to nearly four years earlier by Special Agent Daniel K. O’Reilly of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it said. Such a pretty name, Daniel. What did the K stand for? Something Irish? Kevin? Kieran? Maybe she’d ask him. No, she wouldn’t. She had to be careful with Dan, and she knew it. She was at a desperate place in her life, and he was too attractive. And sweet. Man, was he sweet. No. Stop thinking about him. The last thing she needed was a new man in her life. She wanted to work things out with Steve, if only for Maya’s sake. Whatever else Steve was, he was a good daddy. Yes, think of Maya. Think of Maya, think of work. Stay focused. Besides, Dan was so hot he probably had a million women. He probably wouldn’t even like her back.

The affidavit began with a background section that detailed the gruesome murder case against Delvis Diaz, the C-Trout Blades founder. She read it and finally understood the chronology. Eight years ago, when Jed Benson was still a prosecutor, he’d locked Diaz up for three murders. Three consecutive life terms for torturing, mutilating, and killing three teenage gang members who were caught stealing drugs from him. Diaz had been in jail ever since. Flush with victory, Jed Benson had left the office, gone into private practice, gotten rich, and expected to live happily ever after. Expected never to hear from Delvis Diaz again. End of story, or so everybody thought until last night.

Meanwhile, the C-Trout Blades, that many-tentacled monster, regrouped and came back stronger than ever under new leadership. They ran a massive heroin ring headquartered at the corner of Central and Troutman in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, complete with guns, drive-by shootings, push-in robberies-all the fireworks of a modern-day drug conglomerate. Dan and Randall had gone after this new generation of C-Trout Blades and made lots of arrests, filling up enough boxes to crowd her tiny office. That case culminated four years ago, with wiretaps, search warrants, and raids that swept up nearly forty gang members. Even if Slice and Bigga weren’t gang members eight years ago when Delvis Diaz was locked up, they might well have been a mere four years ago when Dan and Randall had made their arrests. If they were, somehow they managed to escape detection. But her hope was they’d left some trace buried in one of the boxes sitting on her floor tonight.

Melanie gathered up the empty coffee cups and the sandwich wrapper, stuffed them in the plastic bag, and pulled herself to her feet. She walked out into the hallway and threw the bag into the trash by the Xerox machine to get that awful pickle smell out of her office. The hallway was completely silent, the only square of light the one shining from her own door. She returned to her office and dropped down onto the floor, facing the boxes, her back to the open door.

If she learned more about the gang’s structure, maybe she could find a shortcut to the right files. She leafed through boxes of background documents until she found a good overview of the gang. The C-Trout Blades’ drug operation was huge. Suppliers, mostly Colombians and Dominicans, delivered hundreds of kilos of raw heroin to mills set up by the largely Puerto Rican Blades in empty apartments all over Bushwick. The Blades operated eight or ten mills at a time, changing locations constantly to elude the police. In these apartments, teams of women worked in shifts around the clock under the watchful eye of a manager, cutting the raw heroin with filler and scooping individual dosages into tiny glassine bags sealed with custom-designed stickers.