He was disheveled, his waist drooping over his duty belt like excess pizza dough hanging off the pan. One eye was hazel, the other brown, his graying hair slicked back, ears and nostrils bristly like stiff paintbrushes. Wagon drivers were the flatworms of law enforcement, a throwback to a spineless, lazy, lower order of life Passman had grown to despise.

'O-kie do-kie,' he said to her. 'Let's head 'em up and move 'em out.'

Passman squinted at him from her supine position on the floor.

'I can't,' she said.

He clicked her a giddy-up out of the side of his mouth.

'I'm not going anywhere until you at least undo my ankles.' She meant it.

Her dress was pushed up to her padded hips and she could do nothing about it. He was staring. She knew if she lost her temper again, it would only ensure further bondage.

'Please undo my ankles so I can get out,' she said again.

'Pretty please with sugar on top?'

She thought she recognized his voice, then was certain.

'You're unit 452,' she said.

'Guess I'm famous. Now I'm gonna cut off these flex cuffs, but you so much as twitch and I'm gonna keep you busy.'

She did not know his name, but one thing Passman did know was voices. She had total recall when it came to words uttered on the air by hundreds of units she never saw. Unit 452 cut off the flex cuffs with a pocketknife and the feeling rushed back to her feet in swarms of tiny pins. She worked her way to the open rear of the van, her skirt hiking higher, far above the brown tops of her panty hose, up to the waistband. He stared, chomping gum. She inch-wormed her way to the ground.

Unit 452 pushed a button on the wall to open the door to lockup, and on his way in used a key from his snap holder to secure his pistol inside the gun safe. He got out another key, this one tiny, and unlocked her handcuffs.

'Unit 452,' Passman mimicked him. 'Go ahead, 452, I'm 10-1 2600 block of Park. Ten-4, 452. That'd be the Robin Inn, for a meal. Uh, 10-4…'

'You!' Unit 452 was shocked and deeply offended. 'You're the one! That bitch in the radio room!'

'You're that dumb shit who's always hiding out at Engine Company Number Nine playing your fucking nutless puzzle games. Tetris Plus, Q*Bert, Pac Man, Boggle!' Passman accused.

'What, what?' Unit 452 stammered.

Passman had him.

'Everyone knows,' she went on as Deputy Sheriff Reflogle took the arrest sheets from unit 452 and began to search Passman.

'Looks like you're getting the book thrown at you, girl,' Reflogle said. 'Must've been a bad time at home to act out like this.'

Passman wasn't listening.

'You're a joke in the radio room!' she railed on to Unit 452. 'B is boy, not bravo, and H is Henry, not hotel, you shit dick! What do you think you are, an airplane pilot?'

'Now you quiet down,' Deputy Reflogle said to her as he fished eight quarters out of her skirt pockets.

He rolled Passman's fingers on an ink pad and transferred her loops and whirls to a ten-print card. He took mug shots. He asked her about aliases. He asked about a.k.a's in case she didn't know what aliases were. He locked her inside a holding cell. It was not much bigger than a locker, a hard bench to sit on, a small square screen to see through. She ate cherry Jell-O, cottage cheese and fish sticks for lunch. '

The magistrate's office for the city of Richmond was on the first floor of the police department, past the information desk and in close proximity to lockup and Sally Port 1.

It was not quite four o'clock in the afternoon. Vince Tittle wasn't feeling good about his job or life. It wasn't hard to look back and see where he had cracked the glass, chipped the china, scorched the sweet milk in the pot. He had succumbed to a favor. He had sold his soul for an office that looked very much like a tollbooth.

Tittle had not always thought the worst about himself. Until four years ago he had enjoyed a fulfilling career as a photographer at the morgue. He had been proud of taking pictures perfectly to scale. He had been a magician with lighting and shutter speeds. His art went to court. It was viewed by prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and juries.

The chief medical examiner adored him. Her deputy chiefs and the forensic scientists did, too. Defendants hated him. Tittle's lust for justice was what got him into trouble. His road to hell began when Tittle joined the Gentleman's Bartering Club, which included hundreds of people with training, skills and talents that Tittle couldn't always afford. He took family portraits, and photos for Christmas cards, calendars, graduations and debutante balls, swapping his skills for virtual cash minus a ten percent commission that went to the club.

Tittle rarely shopped in reality after that. He could take wedding pictures, for example, and earn a thousand virtual dollars, which in turn he might virtually spend on roof repair. Tittle was addicted to his camera. Soon he became virtually wealthy, which is how he met Circuit Court Judge Nicholas Endo, who was at war with his wife and losing.

Judge Endo believed Mrs. Endo was having an affair with her dentist, Bull Ehrhart, and wanted to catch her in the act. Tittle would never forget what Judge Endo said to him one night when they were drinking bourbon in the clubhouse.

'Vince, you've got virtually everything a man could want,' said the judge as he paid five virtual dollars for a drink that was real. 'But there's got to be one thing in this club you can't buy, and I bet I damn well know what it is.'

'What?' Tittle said.

'You love court. You love the law,' said the judge. 'Taking photographs of stiffs is getting boring. Has to be. Should always have been, Vince.'

Tittle slowly swirled ice in his Maker's Mark. The truth pained him deeply.

'Come on. Come on.' The judge leaned across the table and said in the tone that reminded Tittle of come here, kitty, kitty, kitty, 'I mean, Vince, how goddamn challenging can it be to shoot a liver on a scale, a brain on a cutting board, stomach contents, little cups of urine and bile, bite marks, axes in the back of people's heads?'

'You're right,' Tittle muttered, motioning for Seunghoon the cocktail waitress. 'This round's on me.'

'What will it be, sugar?' Seunghoon asked.

'Another round. You got Booker's?'

'Shoot. I don't think so, cutie. But you know what? I believe Mr. Mack carries it in his restaurant. He has quite a bar.'

'We ought to get that in.' Judge Endo rendered his verdict. 'Best damn bourbon known to man. Hundred twenty proof, knock you back to China. Maybe next time a movie comes to town, Vince, you could take a couple shots of Mack with a celebrity or two? He can hang them in his restaurant. Charge him two hundred virtual dollars, turn around and buy the Booker's with it.'

'Okay,' Tittle agreed.

Their conversation went on for quite a while before the judge got into the substance of his case.

'I think you'd make a damn good magistrate, Vince,' he said, puffing on an illegal Cuban cigar. 'I've always thought so.' He blew a smoke ring.

'It would be an honor,' Tittle said. 'I would like a chance to punish bad people. I've always wanted that.'

'How 'bout we make a trade?'

'I'm always doing it,' Tittle said.

Judge Endo went on to say that he wanted explicit photographs of Mrs. Endo's adultery. He didn't care if they were doctored. He didn't care how Tittle did it. Judge Endo just wanted to keep his house, his car and his dog, and have his grown children take his side.

'It won't be easy,' the judge said, jaw muscles clenching. 'I know, I've tried everything I can think of. But you pull it off, I'll take care of you.'

The next day, Tittle went to work. He discovered soon enough that Mrs. Endo's MO was so simple it was complicated. Bull Ehrhart had forty-three strip mall offices throughout the greater Richmond area, and twenty-two additional ones as far away as Norfolk, Petersburg, Charlottesville, Fredericksburg and Bristol, Tennessee.