Over an inexpensive meal, Ghislaine told me about her life, about Shadrick’s father, who was “no longer in our lives,” and about her parents in Dearborn, Michigan, who’d kicked her out of the house when they’d found out she was pregnant with a child whose father was black, so that Ghislaine had to come to Minnesota to stay with a friend. She had a shoplifting bust on her record, but had gotten probation. She told me she wanted to go back to school as soon as she could.

It was a meeting that I’d left rather confused. I had no earthly idea what it was that Shiloh saw in her that he didn’t like. Shiloh was a preacher’s son; if he had a flaw, it was his judgmental streak. Maybe he couldn’t overcome a Puritan’s disapproval of single motherhood at such a young age. For my part, I’d found her chatter infectious and her devotion to her son palpable. If her ambitions to go back to school and “make something” of herself were somewhat generic, who was I to judge?

Tonight, she was late to our meeting at an unassuming little diner. I ordered a mug of herbal tea and sucked on a eucalyptus cough drop. My throat had started to stiffen up when I swallowed.

“Holy shit,” Ghislaine said when she arrived, pushing Shadrick in his stroller. “I didn’t even recognize you.”

She settled into the booth across from me, her eyes widening guilelessly. “So this is what you look like when you’re undercover?” I’d already warned her on the phone about my vice-detail look.

“Undercover’s a strong word,” I said. “This is just soliciting busts. It’s not a complicated sting operation.”

“Wow,” she said, and opened the menu.

The waitress, approaching on crepe-soled shoes, set a mug of tea down in front of me. “You ready, sugar?” she asked Ghislaine.

“I’d like a cheeseburger with curly fries, and a strawberry milk shake,” Ghislaine said, folding up the menu and handing it to the waitress.

“We’ve got booster seats, if you want one for him,” the waitress told Ghislaine.

“No, that’s okay,” Ghislaine said.

“He’s a handsome little guy.”

“He sure is,” Ghislaine agreed.

As if he knew he was being discussed, Shad squealed, a surprisingly loud sound. Ghislaine leaned out of the booth and put her hands on the sides of his face, on his cheeks. “That’s right, you’ve got a fan club, don’t you!” she said cheerfully.

The waitress disappeared into the kitchen. I cleared my throat, and Ghislaine straightened up. “So what’s up?” she asked, turning to business.

“Like I told you on the phone,” I said, “I need some information.”

“Really?” Ghislaine said. “How much?” She was asking how much it was worth.

“Let’s wait and see if you know anything,” I said. “We’ve been hearing some things about a guy who’s practicing medicine without a license,” I said. “Out of a private residence, maybe in one of the projects.”

Ghislaine’s expression turned sour. “Oh, him,” she said. “Cisco.”

Jackpot. That was fairly easy, I thought. I’d only had to ask two informants.

“Cisco who?” I said.

“I don’t remember his last name,” Ghislaine said.

“You’ve seen him?” I asked her.

The waitress reappeared at our side, setting down the burger and fries, then a long tulip-shaped glass of strawberry milk shake and the extra in the silver tumbler. A curly fry fell from the plate.

“Anything else?” she said.

“No,” I said for both of us. The waitress moved off.

“You’ve been to see this guy?” I asked Ghislaine. “In a professional capacity?”

Ghislaine picked up the fallen french fry and leaned out of the booth, handing it down to Shadrick.

“By professional, you mean medical?” she said. “Yeah, I did. I had this thing that wouldn’t go away. In my lungs, like bronchitis.”

I was curious. “Why not just go see a doctor?”

Ghislaine shrugged. “I heard he was good,” she said.

I heard he was good. That was something people said about someone they were looking at for an elective surgery, not someone working for cash under the table. But I let it slide. “Did he help with your bronchitis?”

“I don’t know,” Ghislaine said. “It went away. But I wouldn’t go back and see him again.”

“Why? Did he seem incompetent?”

She shook her head.

“Was his behavior toward you inappropriate?”

She shrugged unhelpfully. “I don’t know, I just didn’t like him.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I just didn’t. Are you going to bust him?” Ghislaine applied her rosebud mouth to her straw.

“If this guy’s doing what people say he’s been doing, then yes, we will,” I said. “Where does he live?”

“You know where the towers are, right?” She named a main thoroughfare in South Minneapolis, referring to a pair of public housing buildings that stood there.

“Sure, I know them,” I said. “What’s the apartment number?”

“I forget,” Ghislaine said. “But he lives on the very top floor. You just get off the elevator and it’s the second door down on that side of the hall.”

“Top floor of which building?”

“The one closest to the street,” she said.

“You’re sure?”

She nodded.

“Don’t I need to call first?”

Ghislaine shook her head, drank a little more of her milk shake. “He’s drop-in, all hours,” she said. “This guy’s an agoraphobic or something, never goes out.”

“Thanks,” I said. I laid several bills on the table. “That should cover the tab, and the help.”

Lust may never sleep, but Sunday night is a slow night in the sex trade, too slow to waste a detective on a prostitution-decoy sting. It left me free to pursue “Cisco.” I even had an excuse to see him: my cold was in full bloom. I was coughing incessantly, congested and sniffling.

Now my problem was this: Cisco might take one look at me and see, if not an undercover cop, a middle-class individual who didn’t need to seek doctoring in a housing project late at night. His clientele probably ran to people with little money and few options in medical care- the poor and disenfranchised, illegal immigrants, maybe criminals.

Maybe hookers, too.

That’s how I ended up, on a Sunday night, wriggling into my vice-decoy clothes: this time, a shiny, sleeveless pink top and tight calf-length black pants. After applying the usual makeup, I looked at the mirror, at my artificially pale face, and felt a chill of anxiety down my spine.

A SWAT veteran had lectured my Sheriff’s academy class about on-the-job nerves. When you feel fear, try to determine its source, he’d said. Sometimes it’s not coming from where you think it is, and sometimes if you know what the fear is really about, you can defuse it.

Was I afraid of Cisco because he was, supposedly, a doctor?

My medical phobia was a specific one. I wasn’t afraid of paramedics, and I gave blood when the blood bank set up shop downtown, in a reassuring nonmedical setting. But I hated going to the doctor: that powerlessness as you waited behind the closed door, with the overhead light bouncing off the instruments and the creepy anatomical posters hanging on the wall. Down to the second, I could identify the worst part: the moment when you heard the door handle start to turn.

But Cisco’s as-yet-unseen apartment wasn’t that place. According to Prewitt, Cisco probably wasn’t even a real doctor. To us, he was a suspect.

Was that in itself frightening? This was undercover work, which is always potentially dangerous.

I nodded, as if someone were here to share my revelation. I’d located the source of my nerves: I was afraid of the unknown Cisco, of being alone with him in his apartment. Maybe I should ask for some kind of backup.

All Prewitt asked you to do was check this guy out, I reminded myself. You don’t even have to identify yourself. You’re just going to go over there and see what’s what. You want help for that?