Could it get any worse? Oh, yeah.

There was only one stiff breeze in the entire month of August and it had to be tonight. Deluthe’s suit jacket was blown open. Three of the hookers could see the gun in his brand-new shoulder holster. And now they were melting away in the heat.

The whore-store was closing.

All the brunettes edged away, but one blonde sang out to other blondes as she strolled toward Ronald Deluthe.

Go figure.

Riker had seen hookers gang together by race, but never by hair color. Two more blondes were drifting toward the young detective. And now the dark-haired whores had forgotten their fear and proceeded to steal all the trade, picking off commuters, climbing in and out of cars, raking in cash by tens and fives.

Deluthe was deep in peroxide heaven and mounds of pale skin escaping from halter tops. The women stroked his hair, his chest and thighs. They smiled at him with broken teeth and gold teeth, with a ‘Hey, baby’ and ‘Hi, sugarman.’ One whore tapped the book in his hand, saying, ‘So – you know how this story ends?’

Riker’s jaw went slack as he watched Deluthe open the paperback western. The young cop then read aloud to a group of very attentive, nearly naked book fiends.

CHAPTER 11

Lieutenant Coffey closed the door of his office, wanting more privacy for this delicate telephone call to Ohio. He spoke gently to Stella Small the elder, while Stella Small the younger cried on an extension phone. The mother soon faded out of the conversation, but the grandmother remained on the line until weeping made talking impossible.

He set down the telephone and turned to the small television set in the corner of his office. The live coverage from Ohio had resumed as the two Stellas returned to the reporter in their living room. Beyond the couch where the women were seated, Coffey had a picture-window view of their trailer court. A circus of media were camped outside.

The reporter was asking the mother and grandmother about their telephone interview with Special Crimes Unit in New York. ‘Do the police believe they’ll find Stella before she dies?’

No mercy.

The lieutenant looked up at the glass partition and counted up the whores passing by his office, ten of them. Leading this parade was Ronald Deluthe. Riker was the last one through the stairwell door. All the detectives in the squad room were smiling, heads swiveling to follow the women, and Jack Coffey had no trouble reading their minds:

More blondes. God is good.

The lieutenant opened his office door and called out to Riker. ‘Charles Butler is here. He said you sent for him.’

Charles sat in a narrow darkened room rather like a theater audience. Rows of comfortable chairs were raised in tiers, and there was not a bad seat in the house. The stage was a large bright space on the other side of a one-way glass, where Ronald Deluthe was holding the door open for a group of blondes in various stages of undress. The women took chairs around a long table. He could see them all talking at once but heard nothing of their conversation.

Riker entered the room and flopped down in a front-row seat, his tired face illuminated by the light from the window.

‘Hard day?’

‘Surreal.’ The detective rolled his eyes. ‘I’m trolling for hookers with the baby cop, and the ladies are crawlin’ all over him. Now you might think they want Deluthe’s sweet young body.’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘That would be too easy.’

Riker sighed. ‘They wanna discuss literature with him.’ He held up the old western as he stared at the larger room beyond the glass. ‘What you’re lookin’ at out there – that’s the Kathy Mallory Hooker Book Salon. Those women can name all the characters from Kathy’s westerns. They used to read to her when she was a kid, but only for an hour at a time. Some of them knew the beginning of a story, and some knew the middle or the end.’

‘But none of them ever read an entire book.’

‘Right. So this is what they used to do between tricks – they’d marry up the plots of the whole series. Other hookers joined up from word of mouth. And then they started running ads in the Village Voice. It took them years to find each other. And tonight they see Deluthe come along with a book by their favorite author, and it’s one they’ve never seen before.’

‘The last western,’ said Charles. ‘They wanted the story.’

‘Yeah. Well, Deluthe tells ‘em he’s only gotten a few pages into it. So he opens the book and starts reading to a gang of whores. Now the traffic really slows down. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that in New York City. Then the kid stops reading, and he says, „Hey, I know somebody who’s read the whole book.“ So now the hookers think it’s a great idea to go to a police station. It gets better. They invite some more blondes with street-corner addresses. I had to send out squad cars to pick ‘em all up.’

‘And how can I help you?’

‘I’ve read maybe half those books, but that was fifteen years ago. You’re the only one who’s read ‘em all. We’re gonna trade plots for information. At least half of these women know Sparrow on sight. I need a time line for the week before the hanging.’

‘And you’re hoping one of them got a look at the scarecrow.’ Charles turned to the glass and watched Deluthe set up room dividers to create two small cubicles and the illusion of privacy.

Following Riker’s lead, he rose from his seat, and the detective put one hand on his arm, saying, ‘Just one more thing, Charles. Listen carefully. None of those whores know Mallory’s right name. Sparrow was the only one who ever called her Kathy. But you’re gonna hear stories about a little girl with blond hair and green eyes. That kid is officially dead. If she doesn’t stay dead, she’s facing charges of murder and arson.’

On that warning note, a startled Charles Butler was quickly ushered out of the room. Riker locked the door behind them, then opened his hand to display three keys. ‘That’s all of’em.’ For added security, he inserted a toothpick into the lock and broke it off at the lip of the metal. ‘We don’t want any eavesdroppers.’

The detective strolled into the interview room, saying, ‘Ladies, you came to the right place.’ He clapped one hand on Charles’s shoulder. ‘We know how all the stories end.’

And this earned them a round of applause.

If Riker had intended to shelter her from the hooker reunion of Sparrow’s friends, he should have posted a guard. Locked doors had always intrigued her, though this one did not pose much of a challenge. Mallory teased the toothpick out with her fingernails, then made short work of picking the lock. Upon entering the darkened room, she removed her sunglasses and sat down in the front row of chairs facing the one-way glass. And now she waited for the performance to begin.

Something was wrong.

Mallory leaned closer to the glass. She recognized most of these prostitutes from the story hours of her childhood, even women who had been badly altered by scars and broken teeth. It was surprising how many had survived, though this was but a fraction of their original number. The common denominator for these women was not Sparrow, but herself.

What was Riker playing at?

Deluthe stood at the head of the table of whores, writing furiously in his notebook, probably taking orders for a deli run. Riker would not want him in the room when this interview started.

Mallory turned on the sound system. It was another shock to hear Charles Butler’s voice. When he stood up, she could see his head above the gray partition of the far cubicle. Riker was introducing him to a prostitute. Would Charles have enough sense to wash up after shaking hands with Greta? His new friend, the whore, was missing half an ear, old damage from long ago.