In the rearview, broad figures boiled out of the house, guns in hand. Anthony whooped and mashed the accelerator. Sharp cracks sounded from behind. He reached the corner and jerked the wheel without touching the brakes, tires squealing, and then he was in a long clean straightaway, and he let the Monte Carlo run, the roaring engine mimicking the roaring in his ears. He cranked the radio as he wove back and forth, pops and screams dying in the background.

And as the good burned smell of gunpowder filled the car, and Merrilee screeched over the speakers in full ghetto bass, Anthony DiRisio burst into laughter, and leaned forward, beating the wheel like a jockey whipping his horse to death.

CHAPTER 13

Cruz had woken from a dream of fire. She'd wanted to slip back to sleep, and had tried a cop version of counting sheep, trying to remember as much as she could of various arrest sheets. Street tags and priors were easy, but height, weight, addresses, those were tricky.

She'd gotten up to the gangbanger from yesterday's shooting – eighteen years old, two priors for assault, known affiliation with the Latin Saints, street name Ratón, a Crenwood address that was probably his mother's – when she gave up. She wasn't any closer to sleep, just more depressed. After a while it got hard to think of bangers as people. One went down, another was always ready to step up. Shorties recruited out of junior high, a ghetto assembly line. Each model younger and nastier than the last.

She rolled out of bed, pulled on sweats and socks. Darkness pressed the glass to the east, and the skyline blazed to the south. Might as well do some work, make up for the time she'd spent yesterday talking to Jason Palmer. As she booted the computer, Cat jumped purring into her lap. She scratched his ears, then sighed, opened the topmost of a stack of manila folders, and started typing.

The Gang Intelligence Unit was the CIA of the CPD, their mandate to track the gangs, their members, alliances, and rivalries. Information came in a hundred different ways: street interviews, graffiti, suspects that flipped on friends for a lighter sentence, arrest photos, tips from confidential informants. When combined, the information was invaluable not only for closing cases, but also guiding decisions on beat-car rotation, preemptive arrests, even budgetary discretion. Gang Intel was a special unit, a plum assignment, and she'd worked her ass off to be the first woman to make it.

The only problem was that instead of gathering info, she'd been saddled with inputting it.

It hadn't started that way. For the first ten months she and Galway had ridden hard, leading the south side in the development of CIs and the amount of useful tips. Even the boy's club had started to accord her a certain grudging respect.

Then the thing with Donlan last year, and it all went to shit.

How everyone came to know, she wasn't sure. But it started with jokes – condoms left on her desk, advice columns about interoffice affairs tacked to the bulletin board. Then some clever prankster had called IAD and suggested her position had to do with favoritism. Total bullshit that they had no choice but to investigate. And it hadn't helped when she found out who the prankster was and took him apart in the boxing ring. So now here she sat, on a "temporary assignment" any secretary could have handled, inputting data other cops collected.

It was the kind of job meant to suck, and it did. But knowing that there were a lot of people who wouldn't shed tears if she quit gave her the strength to stay. Besides, lemonade from lemons. She now knew more about what was happening in Crenwood than anyone. Every tip, every scuffle, every murder, if it had gang overtones, she knew about it. Like a spider in the center of a web, aware of any twitch. The strands ran out in all directions, and every now and then she felt she could see the larger pattern.

It helped a little to think that way. But only a little.

When her phone rang, she answered without looking at the caller ID. "Morning, partner."

"Rise and shine," Galway said. "There's bad guys need busting, and huevos rancheros that need eating. You up for breakfast?"

"Can't."

"Hot date?"

She sighed. "Donlan called last night to schedule breakfast."

There was a long pause. Then Galway said, "You and he, you're not-"

"No." She spoke fast. "Definitely not."

"So what is this?"

"I don't know. Sounds like something is seriously chapping his ass. I gotta tell you, breakfast with him is about the only thing sounds worse than the data entry I was doing."

"I hear you." He sucked air through his teeth. "Look, be careful, all right? Things are bad enough for you as is. Don't need Captain Hollywood messing with your head."

"Sergeant Galway," she said, smiling. "Are you trying to protect me?"

"Hell no. I just don't want to have to listen to you whine anymore than I have to."

Cruz laughed. "Who says chivalry is dead?"

The restaurant off the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel was done rustic European style, like the kitchen of somebody's grandma, provided Gramms lived in a five-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel. Donlan looked right at home, sitting at the antique table in a tailored suit and knockoff Rolex.

"Elena," he said, flashing teeth like a Crest commercial. "Good to see you."

She felt that weird ripple, remnants of attraction mingling with anger and shame. They had agreed to be adult about the whole situation, which meant that she usually felt anything but. "Morning, Chief. How's your family?" She sat carefully, straightening her skirt and her smile.

He looked like he was deciding whether she was insulting him. "When it's just the two of us, you can still call me James."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

She was saved from answering by the waitress. They ordered, a danish for him, a quiche for her, the closest she was getting to huevos rancheros this morning.

She'd come to Donlan's attention six years ago. An offender had been strangling prostitutes, leaving the bodies in burned-out buildings and abandoned parks. Whore murders were notoriously hard to solve: no fixed address, few close relationships, plenty of opportunity. Nobody else was excited about the case, but she'd seen it as a chance to make her name. Worked it off the clock for months, finally catching a break when a Forty-seventh Street 'tute she'd given a card called with the license plate of a suspicious john. Cruz had asked what she meant by "suspicious."

"White," the girl had replied.

"Lots of white johns."

"Not on Forty-seventh Street, sugar."

When they busted him, Cruz had earned her first newspaper ink, a commendation for her file, and the friendly interest of then-Lieutenant James Donlan. He was a politician, with a spotless record and a bright future, and Cruz knew the score. As a Hispanic woman, every success of hers translated into good PR for him. In return, he could give a little guidance, a reference when she needed one. In the CPD, it never hurt to have friends in high places. Everything was clean and above board.

For a while.

"How have you been?" His voice soft.

"Fine, Chief. Just fine. You?"

"You don't sound fine."

"How do I sound?"

He shook his head. Brushed a piece of dust off his shirt, starched white broadcloth that shone like armor. "What are you working now?"

She picked up her coffee, leaned back. Through the haze of steam, his features warped and shifted. "You don't know?"

"I asked, didn't I?" He spread his hands in exasperation. "Can't we just have breakfast?"

No. No, we cannot. Adult, she reminded herself. They were going to be adult. She sighed. "I'm the official typist of Gang Intelligence." She told him about IAD's investigation, about getting pulled off the street to work the database.