He sat there thinking about Melanie Vargas, not even trying to discipline himself, that’s how bad it was already, that’s how much it’d taken over. By the time he looked at his watch, he knew this asshole wasn’t showing up. He sighed and dug a damp scrap of paper from his pocket, moving some folders out of the way to uncover the phone on the desk. He dialed the pager number written on the paper, then punched in the callback number of the beeper store, followed by his personal code and 911. Much to his surprise, in a few minutes the phone rang. He reached for the receiver.

“Yo, Bigga,” he said, “where the fuck you at?”

15

THEY GONNA SEE HOW HE GET DOWN WHEN HE MAD, and it ain’t pretty. He ain’t like the way shit was unfolding. Sitting in a fucking closet in a fucking hotel in Jersey. He trying to be real calm about it, but he starting to get pissed. He feel it building, that humming inside his blood. He take that energy and put it to use. He always feel that way before he do something.

First off, his concentration got interrupted. He hate that more than anything. That weaselly little motherfucker call him before with the location on the maid, all worried she be telling, when he right in the middle of scoping somebody else. As if he already ain’t screwed things up enough by arguing last night and bringing police down. That motherfucker got to go. Yeah, sure, he worried the maid be telling, too, but one thing at a time. Everybody be telling on this job-that’s why he got to kill them all. No reason to interrupt what you doing. No reason to break your stride. You get nervous, you jump the gun, you make mistakes. He shoulda just stayed where he at, took care of the other one first. That other Chinese bitch, the architect. Ain’t never bodied no Chinese bitch before that he could remember. He did that girl China, but she Colombian, they just call her that because she got them scrunchy little eyes. No, he definitely ain’t bodied no Chinese bitch before, and now it look like he doing two in one night. When it rains it pours. Ha, he make himself laugh.

The rain. That another thing got him real pissed off. Rain make him sad. And it bad for planning, too. All them scary movies fucked up when they show the killing happen on some night with a big storm. Ain’t no serious killer like to work in the rain. Slows you down, just like it slow down anybody doing regular shit. How you gonna stand outside and scope when it pouring like that? He sitting for a while in between the Dumpsters out in the parking lot. Good spot, too. The place real deserted, he stick his head up and scope what going on with her window. But then it start to rain so hard he getting wet. Couldn’t even light a cigarette. The drops blowing on him. So he find a door in the back unlocked before he was really ready to go inside. Rain force your hand. Not to mention he gonna have to drive back from fucking Jersey in it. He hated to drive in it.

So he go in the stairwell for a while, but that wasn’t no good. Too open. Whole fucking place deserted, but they still got some cleaning ladies and shit. He find a closet on the same floor as the mark, and he sitting there for a long time in the dark, waiting. He know her door taken care of, but he still worried about the bitch making noise. If he can’t see her window, he can’t know if she sleeping. He gonna have to wait real late if he want to get the jump on her. It better that way in a place like this, so nobody hear. He ain’t come this far by taking foolish chances.

He don’t believe in no wristwatch. Tell time by his head, and he always right. He smart with shit like that-not just time, but like how far one thing be from another, which window you got to go in to get to which apartment. His brain built for this work. So he know he got maybe another hour to wait before she be asleep. The lock been handled, so it wasn’t no problem for him, and his eyes be all adjusted to the dark. No guns this time. Too loud. He like his knife best anyway. He lifted up his pants and took it out of the holster on his leg. He like to feel it in his hand. Maybe it catching the light from the crack under the door, because even in the dark closet, it shine real nice.

ROSARIO WAS SURE SHE’D FALLEN ASLEEP WITH the TV on, but she must be wrong. It was off now, as she awoke from a vivid, pill-induced dream, mouth dry, body heavy to the point of paralysis. She had no sense of how long she’d been sleeping. In her dream she was back home. The strong sunlight and the bright colors lingered on her eyes, radiating circles of blue light out into the pitch-dark hotel room.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the blackness, but her mind was foggy and sluggish from the painkillers. She knew the shape looming over her bed was important, so she struggled to decipher its meaning. It slowly came back to her why she was here in this room. The horrors of the night before, the blood and the fire. Suddenly she understood what the shape was. She opened her mouth to scream at the exact instant his hand shot out, fast as a bullet, to grab her by the hair. She listened as if from far away to the guttural, bubbling sound that emerged, not from her mouth, but from her slit throat.

16

MELANIE COULDN’T DECIDE WHICH PART OF HER job she loved best-the courtroom or the investigating. She was crazy for the courtroom. Standing up there in front of the jury, all eyes on her, she felt like a movie star. But discovering a smoking gun in a hot investigation-that was a huge thrill, too. Smoking gun. What a great phrase. It made her think of finding a murder weapon in the bushes when everybody else had missed it. That’s how she felt tonight, like she’d picked up a gun with smoke rising from the barrel, held it in her hand. Only the gun was a cassette tape.

She kept a tape recorder in her bottom drawer. They’d stopped issuing them to prosecutors when wiretaps went digital. Now you could listen to recorded calls on your computer speakers. She’d meant to turn her recorder in to Supply, but who had time for administrative details these days? Lucky she hadn’t, or she would’ve had to wait until morning to hear the tape. The C-Trout Blades wiretap was old style; the calls were all stored on cassette. She was so giddy with discovery she couldn’t have stood the delay.

The animal-torture photos led her to it. When she saw the pictures of the black dog training to kill at Jasmine Cruz’s apartment, she knew Slice had been there. Not only been there but hung out there, maybe even lived there, treated the place like his own anyway. You don’t teach your dog to kill in an environment you don’t control. And if he spent a lot of time there, no matter how careful he was, Slice must’ve talked on that phone. She would read every transcript in every box, if that’s what it took to find it.

The task turned out to be easier than it looked, precisely because Slice was so careful. The regular players openly used Jasmine Cruz’s phone every day. The wiretap monitors quickly learned their voices and labeled the transcripts of their calls with their names. The call she was looking for, she quickly realized, would stand out because it wouldn’t bear the name of a regular player. Slice would be called “UM”-unidentified male. It would be a slip up, a one-shot deal, made in an emergency or in anger. Once she figured that out, things moved quickly.

She recognized it the instant she found it. The monitor had marked it as non-pertinent because they weren’t discussing drugs. Maybe it wasn’t pertinent to their investigation back then, but it was sure as hell pertinent to hers. She read along on the transcript as she listened to the tape, sure in her gut the “UM” was Slice. Who else would have that voice-low and urgent and dangerous?