“For chicks who want to get wasted off a milkshake. No, I’d remember that one.”

“I really need that credit card information. You can run it past Scott if you have to-”

Vanessa didn’t require convincing. She walked directly to the cash register behind the bar. She hit a button to open the drawer, flipped through a few pieces of paper, and returned with an American Express Black Card bearing the name Capital Research Technologies.

Ellie didn’t need to check the list of credit card accounts in her purse to be certain, but she made the comparison anyway. Same card. Same club. One night earlier.

J. J. ROGAN WALKED through the front doors of Pulse a mere fifteen minutes later.

“Nice outfit,” Rogan observed. Rogan was sporting the same suit he’d worn to work during the day, and Ellie wondered if he’d been out himself when she’d interrupted. “Don’t you ever sleep, Hatcher?”

“That’s what my body double’s for.”

“Hold on a sec,” Rogan said, his attention pulled away by something-or someone-behind him. “I thought you said you were going home.”

An attractive woman in her mid-thirties with caramel-colored curls and alabaster skin flashed a perfect smile. “I had second thoughts. How could I resist a peek?”

“Do I even want to know what you said to the bouncer to finagle your ass in here?”

“I’m heading out now,” she said, jingling a set of BMW keys. “I know you’ve got to work. Are you the partner?”

“That’d be me. Ellie Hatcher.”

“Sydney Reese. He’s been good to you so far?”

“The best.”

“A-hem,” Rogan said pointedly. “I hate to interrupt the girl talk, but we sort of have a homicide investigation going here.”

Sydney waved good-bye and blew Rogan a kiss before leaving.

“What have you got so far?” Rogan asked.

Ellie led the way toward the rear of the club. With the help of two uniform officers from the Tenth Precinct and the cooperation of Scott Bell, the assistant club manager, she had gathered everyone from the Capital Research Technologies VIP lounge into the back office. She had also called Chelsea’s friends, Stefanie Hyder and Jordan McLaughlin, and asked them to come down right away.

In the process, she’d lost her unofficial partner. Once the amateur sleuthing had been replaced by official police work, Jess had given up all interest in Pulse and left to meet an ex-girlfriend in SoHo.

“We need to interview these people fast,” Ellie said. “Some of them are already talking about lawyers and their rights and when they can leave.”

“Rich folks are so difficult,” Rogan said.

At best, Ellie had only enough suspicion to justify a brief detention of the customers in the VIP room. Anything beyond that would require probable cause.

“I’ve already talked to the guy who set off my radar in the first place.” She pointed to the blond guy with shaggy hair. “His name’s Nick Warden. It’s his Am Ex holding the VIP room. I saw him connect one of the club’s bouncers-that guy Rodriguez-and some model for a drug deal, then take a piece of the profits afterward. And, you’re gonna love this. He’s twenty-five years old. Has his own hedge fund company.”

The look on Rogan’s face made it clear he knew the type but didn’t have to like it.

“He’s of course denying the drug deal, but he admits he was here last night. He tells me these two”-she pointed to two men whom she had separated on opposing sides of the small office-“were here with him last night as well. The big one’s Tony Russo, a financial analyst. The skinny guy, Jake Myers, works with Warden at his hedge fund. Warden insists the rest of these folks weren’t around last night, at least not with him.”

“And Chelsea?”

“I showed him the picture we got out of Jordan’s cell phone. Our Nick said right away he remembered her. At least he knows not to pull any obvious bullshit. ‘The party girl’ is what he called her.”

“A girl from Bloomington struck this guy as a party girl?” Rogan asked. “She had to be a bigger player than her friends let on.”

“Or more so than they realized.”

A quick and dirty test of Nick Warden’s credibility was to ask everyone else in the room whether they’d been at Pulse the previous evening. Ellie had separated the VIPs quickly, so there’d been no time for them to sync their stories.

They started with the friends who, at least according to Nick, had not been partying with them the night before. To a person, they denied having been at the club. After getting their basic contact information and head shots for good measure, Ellie and Rogan had cut them loose. They had to. No choice.

With one exception. The model. Her name turned out to be Ashlee Swain. Ellie had requested consent to search her purse, but she refused. Swain’s fortitude earned her a pair of handcuffs, her Miranda warnings, and a search incident to arrest.

“Word to the wise,” Ellie said, removing a small ziplock bag from Swain’s purse. “There’s always an easy way and a hard way.”

“Whatever,” Swain said. “I want a lawyer.”

Ellie held the bag up toward the office’s overhead fluorescent lights. She recognized the crushed tan crystalline substance as a snortable form of crystal meth. Same euphoria, agitation, and sexually compulsive behavior. None of the mess and paraphernalia required for smoking. None of the hypodermics that came with slamming.

“What’s the matter? Afraid of needles and fumes? You sure you don’t want to corroborate my testimony that the bouncer over there sold to you?” Ellie took a look at Jaime Rodriguez, who was playing it cool. “Remember: easy way and hard way.”

“Are you sure you’re supposed to be talking to me? Because what I remember is that I’m a two-L at Cardozo Law School who has read the Supreme Court’s opinion in Edwards v. Arizona, and I know I just asked for a lawyer. And for a first-time buy, the hard way, as you call it, is a heartfelt apology, a stop at drug court, and a clean record once I’m done.”

The woman was six feet tall, drop-dead gorgeous, and knew her legal rights. At that moment, Ellie really hated her. But Ashlee Swain’s recreational drug use was not her current priority. She turned the woman over to one of the uniformed officers to process the drug case.

“Two VIPs to go,” she said, looking at Tony Russo and Jake Myers. “You want the financial analyst or the hedge fund dude?”

“I’ll take the hedge fund prick,” Rogan said.

TONY RUSSO HAD a thick body and a square head that was losing its black hair. Combined with his large facial features, he might have been typecast as a Brooklyn butcher were it not for the wardrobe, a black sports coat over a sky blue dress shirt and dark gray pants. Ellie began by asking him when he was last at Pulse.

“What do you mean? I’m here right now.”

“Before now,” Ellie clarified. “When was the last time you were here before tonight?”

“I don’t know. I come here all the time. Wait. Last night. That’s how much I’m here. I was here last night.”

“Who was with you?”

“A bunch of people. What is this about? What do you mean, who was with me?”

“I’m just asking you who generally you were with.”

“Well, the same people who were with me are the same people I was with. How’s that for esoteric?”

“You’re making my head hurt, Tony. Who was in your company last night?”

“It’s always Nick’s friends. Nick was here. Jake-that dude over there, Nick’s partner-he was here.” Russo looked around and saw that the others were all gone from the office or leaving. “That was it, I guess. Most of those other people, they were just girls Nick waved in from the dance floor, you know? Or maybe he knew a few of ’em, I don’t know. You gotta ask him. He’s always the ringleader, you know?”

“But you didn’t just get waved in. You and Nick are friends?”

“Yeah, tight. Him and Jake, too. Are you gonna cut me loose here pretty soon, babe?”