'Well, it was.' Quinn pushed his empty plate aside. 'Next time I take you to dinner. A little Italian place called Vicino's on Sligo Avenue, they got a red peppers and anchovies dish to make you cry.'

'That's on your street.'

'We can walk to it,' said Quinn. 'Stay in the neighborhood, until I get my car.'

Juana went to get coffee and brandy from the kitchen. Quinn got up and walked to the fireplace, where a pressed-paper log burned, colored flames rolling in a perfect arc. He picked up a CD case from a stack of them sitting on top of an amp: Luscious Jackson. Chick music, like all the rock and soul with female vocals she had been playing that night.

Juana's group house was nicer than most. Her roommates were grad students, a young married couple named James and Linda. He had met them when he'd arrived, and they were good-looking and nice and, as they had disappeared upstairs almost immediately, considerate as hell. Juana told him that James and Linda had the entire top floor of the house, and she had the finished basement for a quarter of the rent. The furnishings were secondhand but clean. Postcard-sized print reproductions of Edward Hopper, Degas, Cezanne, and Picasso paintings were framed and hung throughout the house.

Juana came out of the kitchen carrying a tray balanced on one hand. She wore a white button-down shirt out over black bells, with black waffle-heeled stacks on her feet. Black eyeliner framed her night-black eyes. She placed the tray on a small table and went around the room closing the miniblinds that hung from the windows.

'Wanna sit on the couch?'

'Okay,' said Quinn.

Quinn pulled the couch close to the fire. They drank black coffee and sipped Napoleon brandy.

'I downloaded all the stories they did on you last year off the Internet,' said Juana.

'Yeah?'

'Uh-huh. I read everything today.' Juana looked into the fire. 'The police force, it sounds like it's a mess.'

'It's pretty bad.'

'All those charges of police brutality. And the cops, they discharge their weapons more times in this town, per capita, than in any city in the country.'

'We got more violent criminals, per capita, than in any city in the country, too.'

'And the lack of training. That large group of recruits from back in the late eighties, the papers said that many of those people were totally, just mentally unqualified to be police officers.'

'A lot of them were unqualified. But not all of them. I was in that group. And I had a degree in criminology. They shouldn't have hired so many so quick, but they panicked. The Feds wanted some kind of response to the crack epidemic, and putting more officers on the street was the easiest solution. Never mind that the recruits were unqualified, or that the training was deficient. Never mind that our former, pipehead mayor had virtually dismantled the police force and systematically cut its funding during his distinguished administration.'

'You don't want to go there, do you?'

'Not really.'

'But what about the guns they issued the cops?' said Juana. 'They say those automatics-'

'The weapons were fine. You can't put a five-shot thirty-eight into the hands of a cop these days and tell him to go up against citizens carrying mini TEC-nines and modified full-autos. The Glock Seventeen is a good weapon. I was comfortable with that gun, and I was a good shot. I hadn't been on the range the official number of times, but I'd take that gun regularly out to the country… Listen, believe me, I was fully qualified to use it. The weapon was fine.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's okay.'

'You're thinking, She doesn't know what she's talking about. Now she's going to tell me about cops and what's going on out in the street.'

'I wasn't thinking that at all,' lied Quinn. 'Anyway, we've got a new chief. Things are going to get better on the cop side of things, wait and see. It's the criminal side that I've got my doubts about.'

Juana brushed her hand over Quinn's. 'I didn't mean to upset you.'

'You didn't upset me.'

'I've never been with someone who did what you did for a living. I guess I'm trying to, I don't know, tell myself it's all right to hang out with a guy like you. I guess I'm just trying to figure you out.'

'That makes two of us,' said Quinn.

She moved closer to him, her shoulder touching his chest. They didn't say anything for a little while.

And then Quinn said, 'I met this man today. Old guy, private investigator. Black guy, used to be a cop, long time ago. I can say that he's black, right?'

'Oh, please. You're not one of those people claims he doesn't see color, are you?'

'Well, I'm not blind.'

'Thank you. I was at a dinner party once, a white girl was describing someone, and her friend said, "You mean that black guy?" and the white girl said, "I don't know; I don't remember what color he was." She was saying it for my benefit, see, trying to give me the message that she wasn't "like that". What she didn't realize was, black people laugh at people like her, and detest people like her, as much as they do flat-out racists. At least with a racist you know where you stand. I found out later, this girl, she lived in a place where you pay a nice premium just so you and your children don't have to see people of color walking down your street.'

'I hear you,' said Quinn. 'I used to live in the basement of this guy's house in this neighborhood, about a mile or two from where I live now.'

'You mean that nuclear-free bastion of liberal ideals?'

'That one.

'A lot of the people on the street I lived on, they had bumper stickers on their cars, "Teach Peace," "Celebrate Diversity," like that. I'd see their little girls walking around with black baby dolls in their toy strollers. But come birthday time, you didn't see any black children at those little white girls' parties. None of those children from "down at the apartments" nearby. These people really believed, you put a bumper sticker on your Volvo so your neighbors can see it and a black doll in your white kid's hands, that's all you have to do.'

'You're gonna work up a sweat, Tuh-ree.'

'Sorry.' Quinn rubbed at the edge of his lip. 'So anyway, I met this old black PI today.'

'Yeah? What'd he want?'

Quinn told her about his day. When he came to the Richard Coles part, he told her that he had kept Coles 'occupied' in the men's room while Strange, the old investigator, made his bust.

'You were smiling just then,' said Juana, 'you know it? When you were telling that story, I mean.'

'I was?'

'It made you feel right, didn't it, to be back in it.'

Quinn thought of the swing of the hammer, and the blood. 'I guess it did.'

'You like the action,' said Juana. 'So why'd you leave the force?'

Quinn nodded. 'You're right. I liked being a cop. And I wasn't wrong on that shooting. I'd give anything to have not shot Chris Wilson, to have not taken his life. But I was not wrong. They cleared me, Juana. Given all the publicity, though, and some of the internal racial stuff, the accusations, I mean, that came out of it… I felt like the only right thing to do at the time was to walk away.'

'Enough of that,' said Juana, watching the frown return to Quinn's face. 'I didn't mean to-'

'It's all right.'

Juana turned him and placed the flat of her hand on his chest. Quinn slipped his hand around her side.

'I guess this is it,' said Quinn.

Juana laughed, her eyes black and alive. 'You're shaking a little bit, you know it?'

'It's just because you're so fucking beautiful.'

'Thank you.' Juana brushed Quinn's hair back behind his ear.

'Well, what are you going to do now?'

'Keep working at the bookstore, I guess, until I figure things out.'

'I mean right now.'