“I’ll tell him that. Come on, move your ass.”

I followed him reluctantly down the corridor to Hajjar’s little glass-walled office. We stood in front of his desk while he toyed with a small pile of paper clips. After a few seconds he looked up and studied us. It was a careful act. He had something difficult to tell us, and he wanted us to know that It Would Hurt Him More Than It Hurt Us. “I don’t like havin’ to do this,” he said. He looked real sad.

“Just skip it then, Lieutenant,” I said. “Come on, Jirji, let’s leave him alone.”

“Shut up, Audran,” said Hajjar. “We got an official complaint from Reda Abu Adil. I thought I told you to lay off him.” We hadn’t gone out to see Abu Adil again, but we’d been talking to as many of his crummy underlings as we could corner.

“Okay,” said Shaknahyi, “we’ll lay off.”

“The investigation is finished. We compiled all the information we need.”

“Okay,” said Shaknahyi.

“You both understand? Leave Abu Adil alone from now on. We ain’t got a thing on him. He’s not under any kind of suspicion.”

“Right,” said Shaknahyi.

Hajjar looked at me. “Fine,” I said.

Hajjar nodded. “Okay. Now I got somethin’ else I want you two to check out.” He handed Shaknahyi a sheet of pale blue paper.

Shaknahyi glanced at it. “This address is right nearby,” he said.

“Uh huh,” said Hajjar. “There been some complaints from people in the neighborhood. Looks like another baby peddler, but this guy’s got an ugly wrinkle. If this On Cheung’s there, cuff him and bring him in. Don’t worry about evidence; we’ll make some up later if you don’t find nothin’. If he ain’t there, go through what you find and bring the good stuff back here.”

“What do we charge him with?” I asked.

Hajjar shrugged. “Don’t need to charge him with nothing. He’ll hear all about it soon enough at his trial.”

I looked at Shaknahyi; he shrugged. This was how the police department used to operate in the city a few years ago. Lieutenant Hajjar must have gotten nostalgic for the good old days before due process.

Shaknahyi and I left Hajjar’s office and headed toward the elevator. He jammed the blue paper in his shirt pocket. “This won’t take long,” he said. “Then we can get something to eat.” The idea of food-nauseated me; I realized that I was still half-loaded. I prayed to Allah that my condition wouldn’t get us into trouble on the street.

We drove about six blocks to an area of crumbling red brick tenements. Children played in the street, kicking a soccer ball back and forth and leaping on each other with loud shrieks. “Yaa Sidi! Yaa Sidi!” they cried when I got out of the copcar. I realized that some of them were the kids I distributed cash to every morning.

“You’re becoming a celebrity in this neighborhood,” Shaknahyi said with some amusement.

Groups of men were sitting in front of the tenements on battered kitchen chairs, drinking tea and arguing and watching traffic go by. Their conversation died as soon as we appeared. They watched us walk by with narrowed, hate-filled eyes. I could hear them muttering about us as we passed.

Shaknahyi consulted the blue sheet and checked the address of one of the tenements. “This is it,” he said. There was a dark storefront on the ground floor, its display window obscured by flattened cardboard boxes taped in place on the inside.

“Looks abandoned,” I said.

Shaknahyi nodded and walked back to where some of the men were watching us closely. “Anybody know anything about this On Cheung?” he asked.

The men looked at each other, but none of them said anything.

“Bastard’s been buying kids. You seen him?”

I didn’t think any of the unshaven, hungry-looking men would help us, but finally one of them stood up. “I talk to you,” he said. The others mocked him and spat at his heels as he followed Shaknahyi and me down the sidewalk.

“What you know about it?” Shaknahyi asked.

“This On Cheung shows up a few months ago,” said the man. He looked over his shoulder nervously. “Every day, women come here to his shop. They bring children, they go inside. A little while later they come out again, but they don’t come out with the children.”

“What does he do with the kids?” I asked.

“He breaks their legs,” said the man. “He cuts off their hands or pulls out their tongues so people will feel sorry for them and give them money. Then he sells them to slavemasters who put them on the street to beg. Sometimes he sells the older girls to pimps.”

“On Cheung would be dead by sundown if Friedlander Bey knew about this,” I said.

Shaknahyi looked at me like I was a fool. He turned back to our informant. “How much does he pay for a kid?”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “Three, maybe five hundred kiam. Boys are worth more than girls. Sometimes pregnant women come to him from other parts of the city. They stay a week, a month. Then they go home and tell their family that the baby died.” He shrugged.

Shaknahyi went to the storefront and tried the door. It rattled but wouldn’t open. He took out his needle gun and smashed a glass panel over the lock, then reached in and opened the door. I followed him into the dark, musty storefront.

There was trash strewn everywhere, broken bottles and Styrofoam food containers, shredded newspaper and bubblewrap packing material. A strong odor of pinescented disinfectant hung in the still air. There was a single battered table against one wall, a light fixture hanging from the ceiling, a stained porcelain sink in a back corner with one dripping faucet. There was no other furniture. Evidently on Cheung had had some warning of the police interest in his industry. We walked around the room, crunching glass and plastic underfoot. There was nothing more we could do there.

“When you’re a cop,” said Shaknahyi, “you spend a lot of time being frustrated.”

We went outside again. The men on the kitchen chairs were shouting at our informant; none of them had any use for On Cheung, but their friend had broken some goddamn unwritten code by talking to us. He’d have to suffer for it.

We left them going at it. I was disgusted by the whole thing, and glad I hadn’t seen evidence of what On Cheung had been up to. “What happens now?” I asked.

“To On Cheung? We file a report. Maybe he’s moved to another part of the city, maybe he’s left the city altogether. Maybe someday somebody’ll catch him and cut his arms and legs off. Then he can sit on a street corner and beg, see how he likes it.”

A woman in a long black coat and gray kerchief crossed the street. She was carrying a small baby wrapped in a red-and-white-checked keffiya. “Yaa Sidi?” she said to me. Shaknahyi raised his eyebrows and walked away.

“Can I help you, O my sister?” I said. It was highly unusual for a woman to speak to a strange man on the street. Of course, I was just a cop to her.

“The children tell me you are a kind man,” she said. “The landlord demands more money because now I have another child. He says—”

I sighed. “How much do you need?”

“Two hundred fifty kiam, yaa Sidi.”

I gave her five hundred. I took it out of last night’s profits from Chiri’s. There was still plenty left.

“What they say about you is true, O chosen one!” she said. There were tears slipping from her eyes.

“You embarrass me,” I said. “Give the landlord his rent, and buy food for yourself and your children.”

“May Allah increase your strength, yaa Sidi!”

“May He bless you, my sister.”

She hurried back across the street and into her building. “Makes you feel all warm inside, don’t it?” Shaknahyi said. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me.

“I’m glad I can help out a little,” I said.

“The Robin Hood of the slums.”

“There are worse things to be called.”

“If Indihar could see this side of you, maybe she wouldn’t hate your guts so much.” I stared at him, but he only laughed.