Esme didn’t give it a second thought.

“Margaret Mead.” That was the name she was going by in the alley tonight.

“Ah, Margarita.” They all chimed in, charming as hell, and why not? She was no threat to them.

Yes, Margarita frickin’ Mead.

“Arañas, qué tal? Eh?” She heard Johnny make his way through the crowd around the driver’s door, and all she could think was that it was about time.

“Juanio.”The boy with the gold teeth greeted him, giving him a sign that Johnny returned.

“Ramos, your girl.” One of the other Locos made a kissing sound. “Se me empalmó.”

The other guys laughed. The banter continued, and from the sounds of it, Esme was glad she didn’t speak Spanish.

Behind Johnny, from somewhere in the yard, she heard a guy shout out. She glanced through the windshield and saw the tall, muscular man with all the tattoos-Baby Duce. Within seconds, the Locos had melted back into the alley, returning to their posts.

Crisis averted, thank God.

“You’re late,” she said, when Johnny finally got inside the car.

“And you’re Margaret Mead?” He slid her a highly skeptical look.

“Margarita Mead,” she corrected him.

“Shifting your anthropological research from the indigenous tribes of New Guinea to the inner-city tribes of Denver?”

She lifted one eyebrow, nonplussed. This boy was no gangster. She didn’t care how tight he was with Baby Duce.

“Uh… gang culture is highly regarded as a legitimate field of academic inquiry with a number of direct correlations documented between it and more traditionally recognized tribal customs and affiliations.” It was the truth. More than one dissertation had been published on the subject.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Right. That’s what I’ve been studying for the last few years, too, tribal culture.”

For no good reason, she believed him, even if she did get the idea that somehow they were talking about two different things.

“Well, I mean, of course, aside from the violence of the gangs,” she added, wanting to clarify that she understood there were some inherent differences.

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “There’s no ‘aside’ about the violence, Esme. It’s front and center and always coming up behind you when you’re not looking, and I can guarantee there isn’t a gang in America that has anything on the ‘more traditionally recognized tribes’ when it comes to sheer, mind-numbing brutality. It’s a war zone out there, babe, every day, in every way.”

The casual bluntness of his words struck a chord, giving them a hard validity.

“Voice of experience?” she asked, curious as hell.

In answer, all he did was hold her gaze, clear and steady. By the time he looked away, she had all the answer she needed.

Voice of experience? Sure, Johnny thought. Tribal culture experienced and studied from the stock end of an M4 carbine in Iraq and Afghanistan-a curriculum otherwise known as war, which, according to Duce, was where Franklin Bleak was headed, if the bookie didn’t get back on his side of the fence and stay there.

Johnny slipped the key in Solange’s ignition, but held off starting her up. Solange the Cyclone-he’d named the car after Quinn Younger’s mother, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was fifty-four now, and as far as Johnny was concerned, just hitting her stride in the gorgeousness department. The guys at Steele Street had teased him unmercifully when he’d first started calling his ride Solange-but they knew. Each and every one of those pendejos knew Quinn’s mother was hot.

Fast-backed, 4-stacked, and radial-tracked, the 1968 Mercury Cyclone GT was plenty hot, too, but only under the hood. He’d never taken a torch or a hammer to her body. She wasn’t rusted or pitted, so he’d left her alone, let her be the sleeper.

Esme was hot, but he sure as hell hadn’t left her alone. Oh, no. He couldn’t have jumped into the middle of this disaster any quicker if there’d been money in it.

Duce had noticed her, and he’d had plenty of questions about the blonde Johnny had left in the car, especially after Johnny had asked him about Franklin Bleak.

He started to turn the key, then stopped and took a breath.

Had it really only been an hour since he’d been sitting at the Blue Iguana drinking a Corona and minding his own business?

He checked his watch. Barely an hour-dammit.

Leveling his gaze at her from across the inside of the car, he very seriously asked himself if he needed to back off. She certainly hadn’t asked him to get involved; quite the opposite.

But there she was, tucked into Solange’s passenger seat, and there were a few things she needed to know, whether he backed off or not.

“Baby Duce wanted to know if you were Bleak’s Chicago mule,” he said. “Bringing in a few cakes of ice for this deal Bleak’s got going down tomorrow.”

That got her attention. Her eyes widened and locked onto his.

“I told him I didn’t think so,” he continued. “So then he asked me if you were one of Bleak’s girls, and I told him the whole Dixie-tricks-at-theOxford-Hotel scene, and he suggested I call Benny-boy Jackman personally and grease those wheels before anybody had a chance to get themselves all worked up and maybe go gunning for trouble.”

Her eyebrows rose at that, which he considered a good sign. Little Miss Cool as a Cucumber needed to know these guys were heating her up.

“And then he tells me Bleak has been shaking down all his losers for the last couple of months, shaking them hard, hurting a few. A couple of guys have even gone missing, guys who placed bets with Bleak, but bought their blow from the Locos. All bad for business, as far as Duce is concerned. He understands the need to protect profits, and God knows, he’s not above hurting people if that’s what it takes to make his point, but, according to Duce, it’s not like his and Bleak’s customers are stellar examples of humanity, especially Bleak’s, according to Duce. Shit is gonna happen, he says, and a guy who wants to stay in business just has to roll with it.”

For a moment, she just stared at him, and he could almost see the gears churning in her mind, organizing the whole boatload of information he’d just uploaded into her system. He could definitely see the worry suddenly darkening her eyes.

Good. She had reason to worry.

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“I think that’s a… uh, surprisingly philosophical view from somebody who didn’t get past the eighth grade.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought, too. And then I thought, hey, maybe Duce is right, maybe Esme’s getting shook out for some bad money.”

When she didn’t say anything, he kept going, pushing ahead.

“So then I ask myself, Johnny, what do you think? You think it’s the ponies she’s running? Or do you think it’s the dogs?”

He saw her slide her hand farther around the messenger bag and pull it closer.

Yeah, he was going to get to the bag in a minute.

“And then it occurred to me that a girl who’d gotten herself in trouble, a girl who didn’t want to turn a few tricks to get herself out of a jam, or a girl who didn’t want to transport a few kilos of coke in lieu of the cash she didn’t have, might take on another kind of job to pay her debts. She might steal something her bookie wanted, like whatever is in that bag you’re so damned determined to deliver to somebody. Except if you’d stolen it for Bleak, and he was your appointment, why in the hell have we been running from his guys for the last half hour? At least that’s what I asked myself, while Duce was asking about you.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“You can fill in the blanks here anytime, Esme. Just go ahead and jump right in.”

Still, he got nothing.