Dana said, "Hey! What are you doing? Stop it!"

Pike let Thomas's weight ride the bent arm. Thomas tried to reach Pike with his free hand, but Pike was out of reach. Thomas kicked and twisted, but Pike lifted higher and cut off Thomas's air. You can't get much leverage when you're hanging by your neck with your tongue turning purple.

I closed the door behind them, then brought Dana to the couch.

"He's okay. You sit here and don't get up."

I picked up the camera and sat beside Dana. It was a professional-grade Sony digital with ports for extra memory chips and buttons I didn't understand. I gave the card and phone to Dana.

"Here, hold these, okay?"

"What do you want? Why do I have to hold this?"

"Pike, you good?"

"Perfect."

"Okay."

The camera had a view screen for reviewing shots. I turned it on, then pressed a button labeled REVIEW. The screen filled with the picture of an ordinary street. It was the picture Thomas had most recently taken. A bright yellow bar across the top of the picture showed the number 18. Eighteen pictures were stored in the memory. I pressed the review button again to see the seventeenth picture, and clicked back through the remaining pictures one by one. The first four pictures were ordinary shots of ordinary things, but the fourteenth picture showed a dimly lit room through what might have been partially closed curtains. The image was small and orange, but I made out what seemed to be a woman's back and a man's legs. They were stretched out on a bed, and the woman was hunched over the legs. The only clear shot of Dana was when she first entered the room and was still on her feet. The angle showed a clear view of her face. None of the shots showed the Home Away Suites or George Reinnike, aka Herbert Faustina, but as soon as I saw them I knew what Thomas and Dana were hiding.

I said, "This is sweet. Thomas here takes pictures of Dana with her johns. Why do you suppose he does that?"

Pike said, "Blackmail?"

Thomas thrashed as he kicked at Pike's legs, but Pike did something to the bent arm, and the thrashing stopped. Dana didn't try to get up. She seemed embarrassed.

I said, "You and Mr. Three Strikes left something out of your story the other day. Herbert Faustina's real name is Reinnike. An eyewitness saw Thomas take a picture of you and Reinnike outside the Home Away Suites. I want to see it."

Dana said, "We didn't take any pictures. Whoever said that was lying."

"Tell you what, I want you to call Detective Pardy for me. You have his card and the phone. Let's see how it works for Thomas when he's booked for blackmail, extortion, and suspicion of murder."

Thomas stiffened again, and his eyes widened. Dana held the phone.

"Dana isn't helping, Thomas, so I'll have to dial. We'll tell Pardy you don't just pimp tricks for your girlfriend, you take pictures to blackmail her johns. Then we'll see if Stephen rats you out to save himself."

Pike said, "Oops. Strike three."

Dana suddenly pushed up from the couch, and dropped the phone.

"It's Stephen. It isn't us. We don't blackmail anyone-it's Stephen!"

Thomas made a grunting sound to warn her to shut up, but she shouted at him.

"I'm not the one who told him about the car! I wasn't gonna say anything, but you had to say about the car!"

I waited for Thomas, and watched the resignation settle into his eyes.

"You going to talk to me if he lets go?"

Thomas croaked a sound like a yes. Pike released the pressure, and Thomas staggered sideways, coughing, with his right arm hanging limp. Dana kept shouting.

"You hadda say! You hadda tell him about the car!"

Thomas glared at Dana, but there was more hurt in his eyes than anger.

"It was my ass with the three strikes! Stephen already told him we were there. That bastard gave'm our names. I hadda give the man somethin', else they'd think we were holdin' out!"

I said, "Show me Reinnike's picture."

"I can't. I sent those pictures to Stephen."

Those pictures. More than one picture of George Reinnike. More than one chance to see his license number.

I picked up the phone and punched in Pardy's number.

"Listen, I'm telling you the truth. I sent'm to Stephen. After I sent them, I deleted them. He has them. I don't keep incriminating shit like that on my computer."

I lowered the phone. I studied him, then glanced at his computer. Thomas was probably telling the truth, but I couldn't be sure.

"What does Stephen do with the pictures?"

"A lot of johns use credit cards, and expense the charge to their companies. Stephen's girlfriend has a brother works at a credit bureau, something like that, so he can get contact information. These guys go home, a few weeks later they get a copy of the picture. A lot of them, they cough up an extra grand to make Stephen go away. Stephen doesn't push it; he don't ask for too much or keep after them. Stephen ain't no hard-core badass; he's just looking for an easy dollar."

"Reinnike paid with cash."

"Here's this dude with all this cash, hiring all these girls- Stephen said it was worth a shot. I didn't get any sex stuff. Just them out in the parking lot. That was all I got, and I ain't even got that anymore. I sent'm to Stephen."

I walked over to his computer. A screen-saver pattern had appeared. A ball slowly bounced between the four sides of the screen, the ball trailing an expanding wake that overlapped and consumed itself. Thomas might be lying, but I believed he was telling the truth.

"Here's my problem, Thomas. Those pictures could be sitting right here, and I couldn't find them. The experts at LAPD can turn this thing inside out."

"I'm telling you they won't find nothing. I pick out the best shots, send them to Stephen, then get rid of the evidence. I don't keep that shit on my computer."

"You e-mailed the pictures to Stephen?"

"I sent the best three. The rest weren't so good. He got them. I know he got them-he wrote back and said."

Pike said, "When?"

"Five days ago, I guess. It hadda be five."

Dana said, "The day after I saw him."

I glanced at Pike, and Pike nodded. We were both thinking the same thing.

I said, "Have you gotten an e-mail from Stephen in the past three days?"

"No."

Pike's mouth twitched. Stephen had been working at a laptop when we saw him three days ago. It was the only computer we saw, and we took it. George Reinnike's picture was in my car.

I pushed Thomas's computer out of the way, put Stephen's laptop on the table, and turned it on. Thomas came over to see.

"If you had Stephen's computer, why didn't you just ask him for the goddamned pictures?"

Pike said, "Shut up."

The screen filled with a dark blue desktop. The DESKTOP FILES icon opened the hard drive, but revealed nothing more than a long list of files with meaningless names. I knew the list of call girls and business records were somewhere in the files, but nothing was labeled BLACKMAIL or JOHNS. We would have to make Stephen show us, but Stephen had already told his lawyer that we had taken his computer. If Stephen turned up beaten to death, the lawyer would probably suspect.

Pike said, "Anything?"

"Nothing obvious. We'll have to go back to Stephen."

Thomas said, "Let me ask you something. What's so important about me taking his picture? What you expect to see?"

"Reinnike's license plate."

Thomas seemed vague for a moment, but then his right eye flickered. Thomas was working on something.

"I think I got that. You can see the back end of his car pretty good in one of the shots I sent."

I said, "Do you know his password?"

"You think he wants me checkin' his mail? Would you?"

I waited. I didn't have to wait long. Thomas saw a way out and he was spooling up to make his offer.