“Is it dropping in value as we speak?”

This time, it was Lamar who was hard of hearing. “I consigned my ’62 Precision with George last year. Got twenty times what I paid for it, bought a three-year-old Hamer that sounds just as cool and I can take it to gigs without worrying about a scratch being tragic. George has the contacts. I had enough left over to buy Sue flowers plus a necklace for our anniversary. The rest we used to pay off a little of the condo.”

“Look at you,” said Baker, “a regular Warren Buffett.” Having enough, he rose to his feet before Lamar had time to reply, went to the men’s room and washed his hands and face and checked the lie of his buttondown collar. He ran a sandpaper tongue over the surface of his teeth. Returning to find all the food gone and Lamar tapping a rhythm on the table, he crooked a thumb at the door. “Unless you’re planning on eating the plate, Stretch, let’s go look at some blood.”

The two of them were a Mutt-and-Jeff Murder Squad detective team operating out of the spiffy brick Metro Police Headquarters on James Robertson Parkway. Lamar was six-five, thirty-two, skinny as a shoestring potato with wispy brown hair and a walrus moustache like an old-time gunslinger. Born in New Haven, but he learned southern ways quickly.

Baker Southerby was two years older, compact and ruddy with skin that always looked razor-burned, bulky muscles with a tendency to go soft, thin lips and a shaved head. Despite Lamar’s tendency to digress, he’d never had a better partner.

Nashville homicides had dropped to sixty-three last year, most of them open-and-shuts worked by district detectives. The routine killings tended to be gang shootings, random domestics, and dope dealers cruising into town on the I-40 and getting into trouble.

The three, two-man Murder Squad teams were called out on whodunits and the occasional high-profile case.

The last new murder Southerby and Van Gundy had worked was a month ago, the shooting of a foulmouthed, substance-abusing Music Row promoter named Darren Chenoweth. Chenoweth had been found slumped in his Mercedes behind the crappy-looking warehouse that served as his Sixteenth Avenue office. An unindicted co-conspirator in the Cashbox payola scandal, his death was a head-scratcher with serious financial overtones, possibly a revenge hit. But it closed four days later as just another domestic gone bad, Mrs. Chenoweth coming in with her lawyer and confessing. A quick plea down to involuntary manslaughter, because fifteen witnesses were willing to testify Darren had been beating the crap out of her regularly. Since then Baker and Lamar had been working cold cases and closing a nice number of the green folders.

Lamar was happily married to a Vanderbilt Med Center pediatric nurse with whom he’d just bought a fifth-floor two-plus-two condo in the Veridian Tower on Church Street. Stretch and Sue used overtime to pay off the mortgage and they treasured their meager free time, so Baker, living alone, volunteered to take all the late-night and early-morning calls. Do wake-up duty in a nice, quiet voice.

He’d been up watching old NFL reruns on ESPN Classic when the phone rang at three twenty AM on a cool April night. Not Dispatch, Brian Fondebernardi calling direct. The squad sergeant’s voice was low and even, the way it got when things were serious. Baker heard voices in the background and immediately thought, Complications.

“What’s up?”

“I disturb your beauty sleep, Baker?”

“Nope. Where’s the body?”

“ East Bay,” said Fondebernardi. “First, below Taylor, in a vacant lot full of trash and other nasty stuff. Almost a river view. But you asked the wrong question, Baker.”

“Who’s the body?”

“There you go. Jack Jeffries.”

Baker didn’t answer.

Fondebernardi said, “As in Jeffries, Bolt, and Ziff- ”

“I got it.”

“Mr. Even Keel,” said the sergeant. A Brooklyn native, he worked at a whole different pace, had taken awhile to understand Baker’s slogo style. “Central Detectives buttoned down the scene, M.E. investigator’s down there now, but that won’t take long. We got a single stab wound in the neck, looks to be right in the carotid. Lots of blood all around so it happened here. Lieutenant’s on her way, you don’t want to miss the party. Call the midget and get the heck down here.”

“Hi, Baker,” Sue Van Gundy answered in her throaty, Alabama voice. Too fatigued to be sexy at this hour, but that was the exception and though Baker thought of her as a sister, he wondered if maybe he should’ve agreed to date her cousin the teacher who’d visited last summer from Chicago. Lamar had shown him her picture, a pretty brunette, just like Sue. Baker thinking Cute, then Who am I to be picky? Then figuring it would never work, why start.

Now, he said, “Sorry to wake you, Sue. Jack Jeffries got himself stabbed.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Jack Jeffries,” she said. “Wow, Baker. Lamar loves his music.”

Baker restrained himself from saying what he knew: Lamar loves everyone’s music. Maybe that’s the problem.

He said, “Millions of people agree with Lamar.”

“Jack Jeffries, unbelievable,” said Sue. “Lamar’s out like a light but I’ll nudge him- oh, look, he’s waking up by himself, got that cute look- honey, it’s Baker. You’ve got to work- he’s comin’ round, I’ll make some coffee. For you, too, Baker?”

“No, thanks, had some,” Baker lied. “I’ll be by in a jif.”

Sue said, “He’s so tired- up doing our taxes. I’ll make sure his socks match.”

Baker drove his department Caprice to Lamar’s high-rise and waited on the dark street until Lamar’s whooping-crane form lurched out the front door, a paper bag dangling from one gangly arm. Lamar’s walrus moustache flared to the periphery of his bony face. His hair was flying and his eyes were half-shut.

Baker wore the unofficial Murder Squad uniform: crisp buttondown shirt, pressed chinos, shiny shoes, and a holstered semi-auto. The shirt was Oxford blue, the shoes and the gun-sack, black. His sore feet craved running shoes but he settled for crepe-soled brown Payless loafers to look professional. His Kmart preppy special shirt was broadcloth laundered spotless, the collar starched up high the way his mother had done it when he was little and they all went to church.

Lamar got in the car, groaned, pulled two bagels out of the bag, handed one to Baker, got to work on the other, filling his stash with crumbs.

Baker sped to the scene and munched, his mouth still fuzzy, not tasting much. Maybe Lamar was thinking about that when he swallowed hard and dropped the mostly uneaten bagel into the bag.

“Jack Jeffries. He’s pure LA, right? Think he came here to record?”

“Who knows?” Or cares. Baker filled his partner in on the little he knew.

Lamar said, “Guy’s not married, right?”

“I don’t follow the celebrity world, Stretch.”

“My point,” said Lamar, “is that if there’s no wife involved, maybe it won’t dud out to a stupid domestic like Chenoweth.”

“A four-day close bothers you.”

“We didn’t close squat, we took dictation.”

“You were happy at the time,” said Baker.

“It was my anniversary. I owed Sue a nice dinner. But looking back…” He shook his head. “Total dud. Like a solo that dies.”

“You prefer a sleep-destroying WhoDun,” said Baker. Thinking: I sound like a shrink.

Lamar took a long time to answer. “I don’t know what I like.”