I put my cell phone and the loaded Colt pistol on the floor within arm's reach. As I hung there, waiting for sleep, I worked the investigation over in my head.

Until now, I had thought of only three motives for Roxy's murder: revenge for thwarting Project Eleven; interfering with Cragnow's scheme of vampire-human collusion; and leaving Gomorrah Video.

Perhaps I overlooked an equally compelling and sinister motive. Who else would profit from her death? I stuck on the word profit.

Profit as in money.

My hacker told me Roxy Bronze had a million-dollar insurance policy that paid out to two parties. Half of the million dollars went to Barrios Unidos. The other half went to the Open Hand in Reseda, a nonprofit medical clinic for porn actors and other sex workers.

Could someone at either of these places have put the bullet in Roxy's skull?

The idea was almost too fantastic to contemplate. Nonprofits were always scrambling for money. Murdering someone for the insurance payout was a dangerous scheme as a fund-raiser. Then again, it was half a million dollars.

The next morning I arrived in Pacoima-a blue-collar Latino community on the north side of the San Fernando Valley. Small homes stood beside subsidized housing projects. People who tended gardens and cleaned toilets for the rich had to live somewhere.

Even with supernatural mojo, I still felt queasy coming here. Since I had left many years ago, vowing never to return, I had graduated from college, gone to war, become a vampire, and settled in Denver. And here I was, back in Pacoima anyway.

Terrific.

Once I got off the freeway, I drove north a few blocks. Surprisingly, Pacoima looked a lot better than I remembered. I counted only one boarded-up storefront and no abandoned cars. Small shops lined the boulevard: nail salons, taco stands, auto parts. I turned right at the corner with a convenience store and gas pumps that used to be a vacant lot.

Barrios Unidos occupied a cinder block building whose original tenant was a Pentecostal church. Beige paint blotches covered graffiti on the walls and the base of the steeple. Weeds and trash collected along a chain-link fence. I parked at the end of a row of a half-dozen cars in the gravel lot.

I entered through double doors that had steel mesh over the windows. A threadbare carpet covered the floor, which creaked when I walked in. From behind the closed door of an adjoining room, children sang a folk tune in Spanish. An easel held a calendar listing the center's events for the month: kindergarten, literacy programs, prenatal clinics, Friday open-mike poetry, and a workshop for novice writers.

The front hall doubled as an art gallery. The exhibition was a series of modern interpretations of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Virgin as seamstress. The Virgin wearing boxing gloves. The Virgin working the drive-thru window at McDonald's.

At the end of the hall stood a table heaped with dried flowers and small mementos. On the wall above the table was a portrait of the Virgin, but the face of this Virgin belonged to Roxy Bronze.

To the left hung a framed front page of the Los Angeles Times dated from seven months ago. The headline read, PROJECT ELEVEN IS A GONER. Below the headline, there was a photo of a victorious crowd waving banners on the steps of L.A. City Hall and giving the thumbs-up.

A door to the right of the table opened into an office. There was one desk when I walked in and two more along the far wall. A pair of young women sat at these desks, their backs to me as they chatted on phones and tapped on keyboards.

A woman stood by the first desk, a battered piece of furniture that looked donated from a thrift store. A paper taped to the desk had the words OPERATIONAL MANAGER marked through and replaced with, La Rena de Todo. The Queen of Everything.

Her head was tipped to one side, and she raked a brush through her wavy brown locks. The air around her smelled of apricot shampoo.

"I'm looking for Veronica Torres," I said.

The woman waved the brush. "That's me."

I introduced myself. Veronica was taller than I expected. We were almost eye to eye. I glanced to see if she wore heels. Nope. Sandals.

She looked to be in her midthirties. A very well preserved midthirties. A trim form in blue capris and a matching sleeveless blouse. High cheekbones and smooth skin a nice mestiza hue of cafe con leche. Her alert mahogany brown eyes complemented the inviting curve of her smile with its glamour magazine gloss. And she had a taut, succulent neck. The gums around my incisors began to itch.

She asked if I had problems finding the center. Considering that I was here to discuss the murder of her friend, Veronica's tone seemed unusually casual and loose.

Boxes filled with papers lay about haphazardly, making the place look like a recycling bin instead of an office.

Veronica pointed her brush to a chair beside the desk. I removed a carton of markers from the chair and sat.

She resumed brushing her hair and looked at me through the corner of one eye, a reaction that made me suspect a patch of pale skin was showing through my makeup.

I touched my cheek. "It's a skin condition. My souvenir from the Iraq war. Nothing to worry about."

Veronica nodded. She dropped the brush into an open gym bag between her desk and a swivel chair.

I heard the quick steps of a child approach. A toddler rushed into the office. A plump woman in a Guatemalan peasant dress hustled in, apologizing, and took the little rug rat with her.

Veronica waved good-bye and settled into the swivel chair. The open laptop on her desk said she had fifty-six new emails.

"When we talked earlier, you said you were an investigator. But you didn't say what kind." She closed the laptop. "You don't seem like a cop."

"I'm a private investigator. Katz Meow hired me." I waited for Veronica to respond to the name.

She turned her head and broke eye contact. Her jaw hardened and her breathing slowed. At times like this I wished my contacts were out so I could read auras and determine how genuine these reactions were. But I couldn't risk revealing myself, not here with these ankle biters running loose and getting in the way.

After a moment she brought those big brown eyes back to me. "Felix, whoever murdered Roxy needs to be punished."

"I'm here to make that happen. First, any idea where I could find Katz?"

"No." Veronica shook her head. "We weren't friends. I only met her once."

The phone rang. A young woman at the opposite side of the office answered and called out, "Veronica, line one."

"Take a message," Veronica replied in Spanish. "Tell them I'm busy with an appointment." She spoke with a rapid-fire Central America staccato that made her English seem like a drawl.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Panama," she replied.

"That's a long way from L.A. What drew you here?"

"Chicanismo is a state of mind. The barrio called and I answered."

The diploma on the wall was her master's in nonprofit management from George Mason University. I could imagine Veronica at any major foundation as the resident Latina hotshot. Instead of a nice salary with fat perks, Veronica slogged through the trenches on behalf of this community for what she could make managing a Burger King.

Veronica didn't see Pacoima the same way I did. For me, it was a dump to escape as soon as I could. For her, this was a place where she could fight injustice and bring hope.

I gestured toward the art exhibit in the hall. "Roxy must have made quite an impression on the people here."

"She was one of the most charismatic women I've ever met." Sadness tarnished Veronica's features. I preferred to see her smile.