I WAS ALMOST READY to draw Scott's gun for protection by the time I made it to the bottom of the treacherously dark stairwell. Instead, I took a deep breath. Then I stepped toward the amplified throbbing, passing through a doorway curtained with crystal beads.

On the other side, I stared, amazed, at the flat-screen TVs, the expensive lighting, the packed center bar that looked like it was made of black glass.

The female bartenders behind it wore black rubber cat suits and fake breasts. Heck, they might have been transvestites. The Bronx really was back.

I had to admit, I was kind of impressed. This could have been Manhattan. The Ordonez brothers had done their degradation research.

Among the predominantly Hispanic crowd was a well-represented contingent of upscale white people. They were sweating on the dance floor, faces rapt with foolish smiles as they spun neon-colored glow sticks in both hands.

Above gyrating dancers, in a steel cage suspended from the ceiling, a naked dwarf wearing angel wings was banging on the bars with a white nightstick. Who thinks this shit up? I wondered.

"I can feel your energy," a bloated, middle-aged bond-trader type said as he spilled off the dance floor and tried to embrace me.

I tried to stiff-arm him away, and when that didn't work, I lightly kneed him between the legs.

"Now you can – maybe," I said as he backed off in a hurry. I fled toward the bar.

"Twelve dollars," the bartender said after I ordered a Heineken.

Look at that, I thought, coughing up the money, they even had Manhattan prices.

Maybe thirty seconds later, a short, pudgy Hispanic man with a goatee smiled and wedged himself in beside me.

"I'm the candy man," he said.

I stared at him. The candy man? Was that a new pickup line? I'd been out of it for a while. Actually, to tell the truth, nice Catholic girl that I was, I'd never actually been in it.

He placed an ivory-colored pill in my hand. I didn't think it was a Sweet Tart.

"Twenty," he said.

I gave it back to him and watched him shrug his shoulders and leave. The Ecstasy dealer had to be working for the Ordonezes, right? But I lost him when he stepped into the laser-light kaleidoscope of the dance floor.

I looked around for either Ordonez. I scanned the A-list booths at the rear of the dance floor behind the DJ. The strobes and violent waves of bass weren't exactly helping my concentration. Like it or not, I had to get closer.

I was skirting the far edge of the dance floor to avoid any more unwanted advances, when one of the doors in the concrete wall beside me opened.

Victor Ordonez stepped out, staring right into my eyes. Before I could move, an iron hand was wrapped around the back of my neck.

I turned and saw my buddy from upstairs, the bouncer in dire need of Jenny Craig. "It's only me, lady," he said and grinned.

"Why don't you come into the VIP room?" Victor yelled over the music as I was pushed inside. "Private party. But you can be my guest."

THE BACK VIP ROOM was actually a tenement basement. Raw concrete walls and floors, cinder-block window frames, the rusted hull of an old boiler. Nice décor. A naked bulb hung above an old grease-caked kitchen table that held a stainless steel electronic scale.

Beyond the table, through a dark doorway, was a corridor with something lying on the floor.

I swallowed hard.

It was a crud-stained mattress.

"Get your filthy hands off me right now," I said, struggling to break the bouncer's grip.

"Calm down, please," Victor said pleasantly as he stepped in front of me. He was wearing a three-piece white suit, white shirt, and a black tie. I wondered if Mickey Rourke knew one of his suits was missing.

"This is a routine security matter," Victor explained. "My employee, Ignacio, forgot to search you upstairs. An oversight on his part."

An alarm bell went off in my head. I wondered what else was routine for the violent drug dealer standing in front of me.

"Hey," I said. "Go ahead and kick me out for breaking your rules. I was thinking about hitting a diner for some breakfast, anyway."

Victor sighed. Then he nodded at the bouncer.

My handbag was ripped away. I heard its contents being dumped onto the table as I scanned the room for another exit.

I couldn't stop staring at the mattress. Or remembering the attempted rape arrest on Victor's rap sheet.

Should I just grab for Scott's gun? I wondered. How many rounds were left? Four? Double-tap Victor, go for a head shot on the behemoth, then get out the same door I came in.

"What's this?" Victor said, picking up Scott's.38 before I could.

I almost panicked. I had an open mike, and I couldn't let the team hear about the gun. I thought quickly. "That looks like a code red," I said casually.

"What do you mean, 'code red'?" he asked.

"That. The gun you pulled and have pointed at me. That looks like a code red!" I said in a loud voice, hoping my mike had picked me up.

My knees stung as Victor suddenly threw me to the floor.

"Shut up, you bitch! Who are you to come into my place, shouting your head off at me?" he yelled.

"Coño! Don't you see?" the bouncer behind me said. "That's a cop gun. She's a fucking lady cop. And Pedro already sold to her!"

"Shut up, you useless hump, and let me think!" Victor screamed.

My face went numb as the younger Ordonez suddenly pointed the gun at me. I stared into the black barrel. Instead of seeing my entire life, everything that had happened since I'd decided to be with Scott flashed before my eyes. In high-definition clarity, I saw every misstep that had led me from two nights before to here and now.

Wait a second, I thought. Where are the troops? I looked at the thick walls. These damn basements! I must have been in a radio blind spot.

"Code red!" I screamed as I scrambled for the door.

The bouncer was surprisingly quick for a mountain. I made it only halfway before he grabbed my ankle and almost tore off my entire left foot.

Then there was a scream – and the door exploded!

Pounding dance music instantly flooded the room. My eyes – tearing in the dust and splinters – were greeted with hands-down the most satisfying sight of my life to that point.

My partner, Mike, shotgun to his shoulder, was riding the knocked-down door into the room like it was a surfboard.

MIKE CRUSHED THE BOUNCER'S ugly face with a shotgun butt to the nose before the monster could even form his first curse word.

"Where's Victor?" Mike then said, tossing me my Glock and cuffs. "We lost your transmission outside. Trahan's informant told us Victor brought you in here."

"I don't know where he went, Mike," I said, searching behind me. "He was right here a second ago."

"Cuff that one to something and give me some backup," Mike said. He leveled his shotgun toward the dark passageway where the mattress lay and then rushed toward it.

I cuffed the unconscious bouncer to one of the boiler's pipes. His glasses were shattered and his leaking face was now the color of his suit. Just a little cop humor, I felt like telling him as I ran into the corridor after my partner.

I heard the sound of a door slamming ahead of me.

Where the hell had Mike and Ordonez gone? I banged my shin on some unseen stairs and jogged up them, my Glock leading the way.

The door I finally found, pretty much with my face, exited onto a field with high weeds and garbage and broken glass. Now where was I?

I blinked in the sudden, blinding daylight. I saw Mike already halfway across the abandoned lot. A half block in front of him, a figure in a white suit was sprinting along 140th Street. It was either Victor Ordonez or an ice-cream man training for the marathon.