The pimp stopped dead in his tracks, bluster fading before he could get the first obscenity out. He swallowed, audibly. "Nelson. I heard you were gone."
Listening to his heart race, Vicki's smile broadened. "I came back. I need some information. I need the name of one of Eisler's other girls."
"I don't know." Unable to look away, he started to shake. "I didn't have anything to do with him. I don't remember."
Vicki straightened and took a slow step towards him. "Try, Andrew."
There was a sudden smell of urine and a darkening stain down the front of the pimp's cotton drawstring pants. "Uh, D... D... Debbie Ho. That's all I can remember. Really."
"And she works?"
"Middle of the track." His tongue tripped over the words in the rush to spit them at her. "Jarvis and Carlton."
"Thank you." Sweeping a hand towards his car, Vicki stepped aside.
He dove past her and into the driver's seat, jabbing the key into the ignition. The powerful engine roared to life and with one last panicked look into the shadows, he screamed out of the driveway, ground his way through three gear changes, and hit eighty before he reached the corner.
The two cops, quietly sitting in the parking lot of the donut shop on that same corner, hit their siren and took off after him.
Vicki slipped the glasses into the inner pocket of the tweed jacket she'd borrowed from Celluci's closet and grinned. "To paraphrase a certain adolescent crime-fighting amphibian, I love being a vampire."
*
"I need to talk to you, Debbie."
The young woman started and whirled around, glaring suspiciously at Vicki. "You a cop?"
Vicki sighed. "Not any more." Apparently, it was easier to hide the vampire than the detective. "I'm a private investigator and I want to ask you some questions about Irene Macdonald."
"If you're looking for the shithead who killed her, you're too late. Someone already found him."
"And that's who I'm looking for."
"Why?" Debbie shifted her weight to one hip.
"Maybe I want to give them a medal."
The hooker's laugh held little humor. "You got that right. Mac got everything he deserved."
"Did Irene ever do women?"
Debbie snorted. "Not for free," she said pointedly.
Vicki handed her a twenty.
"Yeah, sometimes. It's safer, medically, you know?"
Editing out Phil's more ornate phrases, Vicki repeated his description of the woman in the alley.
Debbie snorted again. "Who the hell looks at their faces?"
"You'd remember this one if you saw her. She's..." Vicki weighed and discarded several possibilities and finally settled on, ". . . powerful."
"Powerful." Debbie hesitated, frowned, and continued in a rush. "There was this person Irene was seeing a lot but she wasn't charging. That's one of the things that set Mac off, not that the shithead needed much encouragement. We knew it was gonna happen, I mean we've all felt Mac's temper, but Irene wouldn't stop. She said that just being with this person was a high better than drugs. I guess it could've been a woman. And since she was sort of the reason Irene died, well, I know they used to meet in this bar on Queen West. Why are you hissing?"
"Hissing?" Vicki quickly yanked a mask of composure down over her rage. The other hadn't come into her territory only to kill Eisler—she was definitely hunting it. "I'm not hissing. I'm just having a little trouble breathing."
"Yeah, tell me about it." Debbie waved a hand ending in three-inch scarlet nails at the traffic on Jarvis. "You should try standing here sucking carbon monoxide all night."