Lash had been explaining to her that it's impolite to refer to an African American as a nigga, unless one was another African-American, when Troy Lee came in and said, "She only speaks Cantonese."

"She does not. She keeps coming in and saying, 'What's up, my nigga? "

"Oh yeah. She does that to me, too. Did you give her a pound?"

"No, I didn't give her a pound, motherfucker. She called me a nigga."

"Well, she's not going to quit unless you give her a pound. It's just the way she rolls."

"That's some bullshit, Troy."

"It's her couch."

Lash, exhausted and already hungover, gave the wizened old woman a pound.

Granny turned to Troy Lee. "What's up, my nigga!" She offered and received a pound from her grandson.

"That shit is not the same!" Lash said.

"Get some sleep. We have a big load tonight."

Now half a million dollars was gone. His apartment was gone. The limo was costing them a thousand dollars a day. Lash looked out the blackout windows at the moving patchwork of shadows thrown by the streetlights, then turned to Blue.

"Blue," he said. "We have to get rid of the limo."

Everyone looked up, shocked. No one had said anything to her since they'd finished stocking. They'd brought her coffee and juice, but no one had said anything.

Blue looked at him. "Get me what I want." Not a hint of malice, not even a demand, really, just a statement of fact. "Okay," Lash said. Then to the driver he said, "Take a right up here. Head back to that building where we went last night."

Lash crawled over the divider into the front passenger seat. He couldn't see shit out the blackened windows. They'd only gone about three blocks into the SOMA district when he saw someone running. Running way, way too fast for a jogger. Running—like he was on fire—running.

"Pull up alongside of that guy."

The driver nodded.

"Hey, guys, is that Flood?"

"Yeah, it is," Barry, the bald one, said.

Lash rolled down the window. "Tommy, you need a ride, man?"

Tommy, still running, nodded like a bobble-head on crack.

Barry threw open the back door, and before the limo could even slow down, Tommy leapt in, landing across Drew and Gustavo's laps.

"Man, am I glad you guys came along," Tommy said. "In about a minute, I'm going to—"

He passed out in their laps as the sun washed over the hills of San Francisco.

Inspector Alphonse Rivera watched the broken clown girl—black-and-white-striped stockings and green sneakers—come out of Jody Stroud's apartment and head up the street, then turn and look back at their brown, unmarked sedan.

"We're made," said Nick Cavuto, Rivera's partner, a broad-shouldered bear of a man, who longed for the days of Dashiell Hammett, when cops talked tough and there were very few problems that couldn't be solved with your fists or a smack from a lead sap.

"We're not made. She's just looking. Two middle-aged guys sitting in the car on the city street—it's unusual."

If Cavuto was a bear, then Rivera was a raven—a sharp-featured, lean Hispanic, with just a touch of gray at the temples. Lately he'd taken to wearing expensive Italian suits, in raw silk or linen when he could find them. His partner was in rumpled Men's Wearhouse. Rivera often wondered if Nick Cavuto might not be the only gay man on the planet who had no fashion sense whatsoever.

The knock-kneed kid with the raccoon eye makeup was making her way across the street toward them.

"Roll up your window," Cavuto said. "Roll up your window. Pretend like you don't see her."

"I'm not going to hide from her," Rivera said. "She's just a kid."

"Exactly. You can't hit her."

"Jesus, Nick. She's just a creepy kid. What's wrong with you?"

Cavuto had been on edge since they'd pulled up an hour ago. They both had, really, since the guy named Clint, one of the night crew from the Marina Safeway, had left a message on Rivera's voice mail that Jody Stroud, the redheaded vampire, had not left town as she had promised, and that her boyfriend, Tommy Flood, was now also a vampire. It was a very bad turn of events for the two cops, both of whom had taken a share of the money from the old vampire's art collection in return for letting them all go. It had seemed like the only option, really. Neither of the cops wanted to explain how the serial killer they'd been chasing had been an ancient vampire, and how he'd been tracked down by a bunch of stoners from the Safeway. And when the Animals blew up the vampire's yacht—well, the case was solved, and if the vampires had left, it would have all been good. The cops had planned to retire early and open a rare-book store. Rivera thought he might learn to golf.

Now he was feeling it all float away on an evil breeze. A cop for twenty years, without ever so much as fixing a traffic ticket, then the one time you take a hundred thousand dollars and let a vampire go, the whole world turns on you like you're some kind of bad guy. Rivera was raised a Catholic, but he was starting to believe in karma.

"Pull out. Pull out," Cavuto said. "Go around the block until she goes away."

"Hey," said the broken clown girl. "You guys cops?"

Cavuto hit the window button on his door but the ignition was off, so the window didn't budge. "Go away, kid. Why aren't you in school? Do we need to take you in?"

"Winter break, brain trust," said the kid.

Rivera couldn't hold the laugh in and he snorted a little trying to.

"Move along, kid. Go wash that shit off your face. You look like you fell asleep with a Magic Marker in your mouth."

"Yeah," said the kid, examining a black fingernail, "well, you look like someone pumped about three hundred pounds of cat barf into a cheap suit and gave it a bad haircut."

Rivera slid down in his seat and turned his face toward the door. He couldn't look at his partner. He was sure that if it was possible for steam to come out of someone's ears, that might be happening to Cavuto, and if he looked, he'd lose it.

"If you were a guy," Cavuto said, "I'd have you in handcuffs already, kid."

"Oh God," Rivera said under his breath.

"If I were a guy, I'll bet you would. And I'll bet I'd have to send you to the S and M ATM, because the kinky shit is extra." The kid leaned down so she was eye level with Cavuto, and winked.

That was it. Rivera started giggling like a little girl—tears were creeping out the corners of his eyes.

"You're a big fucking help," Cavuto said. He reached over, flipped the ignition key to "accessory," then rolled up his window.

The kid came over to Rivera's side of the car.

"So, have you seen Flood?" she asked. "Cop?" She added «cop» with a high pop on the p, like it was punctuation mark, not a profession.

"You just came out of his apartment," Rivera said, trying to shake off the giggles. "You tell me."

"Place is empty. The douche nozzle owes me money," said the kid.

"For what?"

"Stuff I did for him."

"Be specific, sweetheart. Unlike my partner, I don't threaten." It was a threat, of course, but he thought he might have hit pay dirt, the kid's eyes opened wide enough to see light.

"I helped him and that redheaded hag load their stuff into a truck."

Rivera looked her up and down. She couldn't have weighed ninety pounds. "He hired you to help him move?"

"Just little crap. Lamps and stuff. They were like, in a hurry. I was walking by, he flagged me down. Said he'd give me a hundred bucks."

"But he didn't?"

"He gave me eighty. He said it was all he had on him. To come back this morning for the rest."

"Did either of them say where they were going?"

"Just that they were going to leave the City this morning, as soon as they paid me."