"Okay, Lucky, wake up."

Rosario's breath quickened. He blinked. His head reeled back, as if he had suddenly lost his balance. His arms jerked across the desktop, scattering the pieces of his disassembled gun. A couple of cartridges rolled off the desk and thumped against the carpet.

Rosario sat upright and shook his head, the slabs of his swarthy jowls quivering. His gaze swung dizzily across the desk and then onto me. His bushy eyebrows arched in astonishment.

Rosario wouldn't remember anything from the instant before I zapped him.

He stared at me, to the door, then back to me. "How'd you get in here?"

"Your receptionist let me in." I closed the door and approached the leather chair in front of his desk. "Mind if I take a seat?"

He looked past me again, his face darkening with annoyance. He rose from his chair. "Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Felix Gomez. I'm here to talk about Roxy Bronze."

"Felix who?" He halted midway up from his chair. The capillaries on his cheeks turned crimson. His eyebrows tightened low on his brow. "Why are you asking about Roxy?"

"I'm an acquaintance of Katz's."

"Katz Meow?" Rosario's glare mellowed. He eased back into his chair. "What kind of an acquaintance?"

"A professional one." I took Rosario's softening attitude as an invitation to sit. What about her had this tranquilizing affect on him? "Katz hired me to find out who killed Roxy Bronze."

Rosario lifted his chin, and his walrus-like eyes appraised me. "Hired? As in what?"

"A private investigator," I replied. "Katz told me you could help. As a favor to her."

Rosario paused. His gaze darted from me to his desk, as if deciding what to do. "For Katz, huh? What do you want?"

"She told me Roxy had plenty of enemies."

"A few." Rosario collected pieces of the military issue .45.

"What's with the pistol?" I asked.

"Why? You some kinda gun-control liberal?"

"Not hardly."

"Then it's none of your business."

"Fair enough," I said. "So tell me about Roxy Bronze."

"Her? There was a line of folks that wanted Roxy out of the way."

"Out of what way?"

"Come on, Felix, don't play dumb ass." Rosario fit pieces of the gun together. "You've done your homework. If you haven't, then you aren't worth shit as a PI."

Rosario worked the slide onto the pistol grip assembly. He fit the slide pin into its hole in the receiver but had the pin backward. He struggled to make the pin align correctly. He bit his lower lip and squinted. Sweat dotted his forehead and nose. I debated helping him but decided against it.

Rosario's hand tightened on the grip of the gun, the whiteness of his knuckles a gauge of his frustration. The pin fell out. He grabbed the pin and forced it in.

A smile of self-congratulation creased his pulpy cheeks. He wiped his brow and looked at me as if expecting an applause.

"Katz told me you financed porn movies," I said. "With whom?"

"You're asking me like you don't know. Cragnow Vissoom, of course," he replied.

How strong a tie did Rosario and Cragnow have? "You friends with him?"

"He's got money; he doesn't need friends."

"Did you have the hots for Roxy?"

Rosario pushed the recoil plug over the spring under the barrel of the pistol. The plug popped free and ricocheted off his forehead. He blinked in surprise. His free hand chased the plug rolling on his desk. "You ever meet Ms. Bronze?"

"Never heard of her until after she was dead."

"Choice piece of tail, that one. If Helen of Troy had half the snatch on her that Roxy did, then the Trojan War would've been worth the slaughter." Carefully, he replaced the plug.

"What about Project Eleven?"

Rosario's gaze cut to me.

I would've liked to read his aura. But if I didn't hypnotize him again, he'd remember my eyes and that I wasn't human.

"I understand her involvement against Project Eleven cost you money."

"Cost me my goddamn ass. I lost out on my share of three hundred million."

"Over or under the table?"

Rosario's lips curled in scorn. "What's it to you?"

"Maybe it had to do with Roxy's interest in Project Eleven."

"You'd have to ask her, but you can't, can you?" he replied. "Roxy had another side to her besides being primo trim. She fancied herself a crusader. She joined up with that meddlesome bitch, Veronica Torres, and the two of them undermined Project Eleven."

Veronica Torres was the activist who spearheaded the neighborhood attacks against Project Eleven, claiming it was nothing but a piggy bank for the well connected.

"And this crusading is what got Roxy killed?"

"Wouldn't know 'cause I had nothing to do with it."

"You don't buy that she was the victim of a robbery gone bad?"

Rosario hesitated. He lay the pistol down. His nostrils widened and contracted like bellows as his gaze flitted about the room. He set his elbows on the desk and folded his hands together in front of his chin. His eyes swiveled back to me and he gave a subdued, "No."

"Why?" I asked.

Rosario cocked a thumb toward the picture window behind him. "I didn't get this view being an idiot." The bluster returned to his voice. "The police report was the biggest piece of fiction since the president's last State of the Union address."

"Why?"

"You mean why did I vote for the Ivy League bastard?"

"No," I replied, '"the biggest piece of fiction' part."

Rosario said, "Rumors."

"What kind?"

"The cops lost the investigation files. Blamed it on a computer glitch. What's been reported is based on conjecture. Bullshit guesswork, in other words."

"What about the original reports? Evidence? The bullet, for example?"

"You'll have to ask the police," Rosario replied.

"Who exactly?" I asked.

"Deputy Chief Julius Paxton of the LAPD. Good luck talking to him."

"Are you and Paxton good chums?"

"Good enough," Rosario said. "I'm a generous contributor to the police benevolent fund."

I tucked Paxton's name into my memory.

Rosario added, "Didn't help speculation that Roxy's death was convenient for a lot of people."

"You included?"

"I got some satisfaction reading that she got whacked." Rosario panned a quizzical look across his desk, then to the floor. He struggled to lean to one side to retrieve the two bullets that had fallen.

"Then why are you talking to me? I mention Katz Meow's name and you unfold like a dinner napkin. Why?"

"Because I'm getting the willies." Rosario collected all the bullets into his hand and began feeding them into the pistol magazine. "Someone's going through a lot of trouble hiding the truth about Roxy's murder."

"That's got you worried?"

"Of course, Sherlock. I don't know who killed Roxy. Or the reason. Now you come with the kind of questions I've been asking myself and I realize that I'm not nuts for sleeping with a forty-five under my pillow."

First Cragnow. Now Rosario. What could make these two crap their pants?

Rosario inserted the magazine into the butt of the pistol. He had a loaded gun in his hand, but I wasn't worried. Rosario hadn't assembled the pistol correctly, and the only way he could hurt me was to throw it.

"What's your impression of Cragnow?" I asked.

"You've met him?"

"Briefly."

"Watch him when he gets shit-faced, which is often," Rosario said. "He starts ranting about taking over Southern California. Not in a business way. But about lifting humanity to a new partnership with the unseen realm. About the next step in social evolution. His crazy talk, not mine."

My fingertips tingled and my legs tensed. Though he didn't realize it, Rosario referred to Cragnow's alleged plan for vampire-human collusion.

"Then why do business with him?"

"You kidding? Ain't you got a dick between your legs? The pussy at Gomorrah is like free bonbons."