him before. Then it struck me: He looked like Frankie White. If Frankie had been resurrected a little slimmer, a little more handsome, still alive and in his twenties.
He even had the same cruel grin.
He did a thorough job frisking us. If I’d been wearing a wire, he would’ve found it. If I’d had a nail file concealed in any crevice of my body, he would’ve found it.
He took my .22 and cell phone, Ralph’s wallet. He turned out the pockets of our Goodwill jackets.
He raised an eyebrow when he read Ralph’s ID. “Ralph Arguello. I heard about you.”
“All true,” Ralph said.
The guy snorted. “I heard you’d gone soft and Johnny Zapata was taking over your business.”
He shoved Ralph against the wall and frisked him a second time.
“No wallet on the other one,” he told the blonde, digging his gun into my ribs. “Think he’s a cop?”
The woman appraised me coldly.
She had a tan much too good for the middle of winter, mussed-up shoulder-length hair the color of wet sand, a spray of freckles over her nose, black cargo pants and a black turtleneck sweater. She might’ve been any college kid just back from a week in Cozumel, except for her eyes.
She was too young to have eyes like that—startlingly blue and hard as glacier core.
“You’re not a cop if you’re with Arguello,” she decided. “Who are you?”
“Tres Navarre.”
Her eyes narrowed.
An uncomfortable sense of recognition prickled behind my ears. “Do I know you?”
She studied me about the length of time it would take to empty a clip into my chest. Then she glanced at her large friend. “Alex, put them in the wine cellar. I’ve got to think about this.”
Alex scowled. “I don’t take orders from you, Mad—”
“Just do it for once!”
“If Mr. White says to, sure.”
She glared at him.
I hated to interrupt their lovefest, but I said, “Alex is right. We need to talk to Mr. White.”
“No, you don’t,” the woman snapped. “Mr. White isn’t taking visitors.”
“He will for this,” Ralph said. “It’s about Frankie.”
Alex and the woman both froze. Eighteen years since the murder, the name Franklin White was still good for a hell of a shock wave.
The young woman was the first to react. She walked over to Ralph and punched him in the gut.
It was a professional punch—her whole body weight behind it, straight from the waist. Ralph doubled over with a grunt.
“You do not mention that name.” Her voice was steel. “Nobody is going to do that to the old man again.”
“Do what again?” I asked.
She whirled toward me, but Ralph said, “Listen, chica.”
He was clutching his stomach, trying to ignore Alex’s gun at his head. “My wife is a homicide cop. She was about to nail Frankie’s killer when she got shot. I’m going to find the bastard who shot her. Mr. White’s gonna help, because the shooter’s the same person who killed his son.”
“Mr. White doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“That’s not your decision to make,” I said. “Is it?”
Her kick was even faster than her punch.
I thought I was ready for it. I was no stranger to martial arts.
She launched a side-strike and I caught her ankle. I pulled her off balance, but instead of landing on her butt like a good opponent she pivoted in midair, connected her other foot with my face and turned her fall into a roll.
At least, that’s what Ralph told me later.
At the time, I was too busy staggering, admiring the floating yellow spots and tasting blood in my mouth.
The young woman got to her feet. She picked her gun up off the carpet.
“Forget the wine cellar,” she growled. “These two get dealt with right here.”
“Frankie’s killer’s gonna get away for good,” Ralph told her. “That what Mr. White wants?”
The woman raised her nine-millimeter. It was a newer model Beretta, a 9000S with a compact barrel and a discreet black finish. I imagined it would make an elegant hole in my chest.
A man’s voice said, “Madeleine.”
The young woman’s face filled with bitterness, as if she’d just been caught sneaking out after curfew.
At the top of the stairwell, leaning heavily on a cane, looking infinitely older and frailer than when I’d seen him last, stood a white-haired man. He wore a burgundy Turkish bathrobe. His face was the color of milk.
“What is this,” Guy White murmured, “about my son?”
• • •
WE WERE THROWN DOWN ON THE carpet of Mr. White’s study. Persian weave. Silk. I’d had my face slammed against worse.
“Enough, Madeleine,” Mr. White said.
The demon girl’s