Shaknahyi and I checked a large bedroom that had once belonged to the owner and his wife, and another room that had been a child’s. We found nothing except more sad destruction. A corner of the house had entirely collapsed, leaving it open to the outside; weather, vermin, and vagrants had completed the ruin of the child’s bedroom. At least here the fresh air had scoured out the sour, musty smell that choked the rest of the house.

We found the corpse in the next room down the hall. It was a young woman’s body, a sexchange named Blanca who used to dance in Frenchy Benoit’s club. I’d known her well enough to say hello, but not much better. She lay on her back, her legs bent and turned to one side, her arms thrown up above her head. Her deep blue eyes were open, staring obliquely at the water-stained ceiling above my shoulder. She was grimacing, as if there’d been something horrible with her in the room that had first terrified her and then killed her.

“This ain’t bothering you, is it?” asked Shaknahyi.

“What you talking about?”

He tapped Blanca’s hand with the toe of his boot. “You’re not gonna throw up or nothing, are you?”

“I seen worse,” I said.

“Just didn’t want you throwing up or nothing.” He bent down beside Blanca. “Blood from her nose and ears. Lips drawn back, fingers clutching like claws. She was

juiced at close range by a good-sized static gun, I’ll bet. Look at her. She hasn’t been dead half an hour.”

“Yeah?”

He lifted her left arm and let it fall. “No stiffness yet. And her flesh is still pink. After you’re dead, gravity makes the blood settle. The medical examiner will be able to tell better.”

Something struck me as kind of odd. “So the call that came into the station—”

“Bet you kiams to kitty cats the killer made the call himself.” He took out his radio and his electronic log.

“Why would a murderer do that?” I asked.

Shaknahyi gazed at me, lost in thought. “The hell should I know?” he said at last. He made a call to Hajjar, asking for a team of detectives. Then he entered a brief report in his log. “Don’t touch nothing,” he said to me without looking up.

He didn’t have to tell me that. “We done here?” I asked.

“Soon as the gold badges show up. In a hurry to travel?”

I didn’t answer. I watched him pocket his electronic log. Then he took out a brown vinyl-covered notebook and a pen and made some more notations. “What’s that for?” I asked.

“Just keeping some notes for myself. Like I said, there’s been a couple of other cases like this lately. Somebody turns up dead and it seems like the bumper himself tips us off.”

By the life of my eyes, I thought, if this turns out to be a serial killer, I’m going to pack up and leave the city for good. I glanced down at Shaknahyi, who was still squatting beside Blanca’s body. “You don’t think it’s a serial killer, do you?” I asked.

He stared through me again for a few seconds. “Nah,” he said at last, “I think it’s something much worse.”

I remembered how much Hajjar’s predecessor, Lieutenant Okking, had liked to harass me. Still, no matter how hard it had been to get along with Okking, he’d always gotten the job done. He’d been a shrewd if not brilliant cop, and he’d had a genuine concern for the victims he saw in a day’s work. Hajjar was different. To him it was all a day’s work, all right, but nothing more.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that Hajjar was next to useless. Shaknahyi and I watched as he went about his investigation. He frowned and looked down at Blanca. “Dead, huh?” he said.

I saw Shaknahyi wince. “We got every reason to think so, Lieutenant,” he said in a level voice.

“Any ideas who’d want to shade her?”

Shaknahyi looked at me for help. “Could be anybody,” I said. “She was probably wearing the wrong moddy for the wrong customer.”

Hajjar seemed interested. “You think so?”

“Look,” I said. “Her plug’s bare.”

The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. “So what?”

“A moddy like Blanca never goes anywhere without something chipped in. It’s suspicious, that’s all.”

Hajjar rubbed his scraggly mustache. “I guess you’d know all about that. Not much to go on, though.”

“The plainclothes boys can work miracles sometimes,” Shaknahyi said, sounding very sincere but winking to let me know just how little regard he had for them.

“Yeah, you right,” said Hajjar.

“By the way, Lieutenant,” said Shaknahyi, “I was wondering if you wanted us to keep after Abu Adil. We didn’t get very far with him last week.”

“You want to go out there again? To his house?”

’To his majestic palatial estate, you mean,” I said.

Hajjar ignored me. “I didn’t mean for you to persecute the guy. He throws a lot of weight in this town.”

“Uh huh,” said Shaknahyi. “Anyway, we’re not doing any persecuting.”

“Why do you want to bother him again in the first place?” Hajjar looked at me, but I didn’t have an answer.

“I got a hunch that Abu Adil has some connection to these unsolved homicides,” said Shaknahyi.

“What unsolved homicides?” Hajjar demanded.

I could see Shaknahyi grit his teeth. “There’ve been three unsolved homicides in the last couple of months. Four now, including her.” He nodded toward Blanca’s body, which the M.E.’s boy had covered with a sheet. “They could be related, and they could be connected to Reda Abu Adil.”

“They’re not unsolved homicides, for God’s sake,” said Hajjar angrily. “They’re just open files, that’s all.”

“Open files,” said Shaknahyi. I could tell he was really disgusted. “You need us for anything else, Lieutenant?”

“I guess not. You two can get back to work.”

We left Hajjar and the detectives going over Blanca’s remains and her clothes and the dust and the moldy ruins of the house. Outside on the sidewalk, Shaknahyi pulled my arm and stopped me before I got into the patrol car. “The hell was that about the bitch’s missing moddy?” he asked.

I laughed. “Just hot air, but Hajjar won’t know the difference. Give him something to think about, though, won’t it?”

“It’s good for the lieutenant to think about something now and then. His brain needs the exercise.” Shaknahyi grinned at me.

We were both ready to call it a day. The sky had clouded over and a brisk, hot wind blew grit and smoke into our faces. Angry, grumbling thunder threatened from far away. Shaknahyi wanted to go back to the station house, but I had something else to take care of first. I undipped the phone from my belt and spoke Chiri’s commcode into it. I heard it ring eight or nine times before she answered it. “Talk to me,” she said. She sounded irked.

“Chiri? It’s Marid.”

“What do you want, motherfucker?”

“Look, you haven’t given me any chance to explain. It’s not my fault.”

“You said that before.” She gave a contemptuous laugh. “Famous last words, honey: ‘It’s not my fault.’ That’s what my uncle said when he sold my mama to some goddamn Arab slaver.”

“I never knew—”

“Forget it, it ain’t even true. You wanted a chance to explain, so explain.”

Well, it was show time, but suddenly I didn’t have any idea what to say to her. “I’m real sorry, Chiri,” I said.

She just laughed again. It wasn’t a friendly sound.

I plunged ahead. “One morning I woke up and Papa said, ‘Here, now you own Chiriga’s club, isn’t that wonderful?’ What did you expect me to say to him?”

“I know you, honey. I don’t expect you to say anything to Papa. He didn’t have to cut off your balls. You sold ’em.”

I might have mentioned that Friedlander Bey had paid to have the punishment center of my brain wired, and that he could stimulate it whenever he wanted. That’s how he kept me in line. But Chiri wouldn’t have understood. I might have described the torment Papa could cause me anytime he touched the right keypad. None of that was important to her. All she knew was that I’d betrayed her.