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bumping titties, you’re gonna lose.”
    Ahead of her plainwrap sedan, closer to the intersection, cars began to move. Whether or not they could see what was happening in their rearview mirrors, the drivers sensed the shakedown had ended.
    As the cars around them began to roll, the young entrepreneurs decided there was no point to lingering when their customer base had moved on. They whidded away like walleyed horses stampeded by the crack of thunder.
    Under her foot, the windshield-washer couldn’t quite bring himself to admit defeat. “Hey, bitch, your badge, it said
homicide.
You can’t touch me! I ain’t killed nobody.”
    â€œWhat a moron,” she said, holstering the pistol.
    â€œYou can’t call me a moron. I graduated high school.”
    â€œYou did not.”
    â€œI
almost
did.”
    Before the creep—predictably—took offense at her impolite characterization of his mental acuity and threatened to sue for insensitivity, Carson’s cell phone rang.
    â€œDetective O’Connor,” she answered.
    When she heard who was calling and why, she took her foot off the gangbanger.
    â€œBeat it,” she told him. “Get your sorry ass out of the street.”
    â€œYou ain’t lockin’ me?”
    â€œYou’re not worth the paperwork.” She returned to her phone call.
    Groaning, he got to his feet, one hand clutching the crotch of his low-rider pants as if he were a two-year-old overwhelmed by the need to pee.
    He was one of those who didn’t learn from experience. Instead of hobbling away to find his friends, telling them a wild story about how he’d gotten the best of the cop bitch after all and had punched out her teeth, he stood there holding himself, ragging her about abusive treatment, as though his whining and threats would wring from her a sudden sweat of remorse.
    As Carson concluded the call, pressed END , and pocketed the phone, the offended extortionist said, “Thing is, I know your name now, so I can find out where you live.”
    â€œWe’re obstructing traffic here,” she said.
    â€œCome jack you up real good one night, break your legs, your arms, break every finger. You got gas in your kitchen? I’ll cook your face on a burner.”
    â€œSounds like fun. I’ll open a bottle of wine, make tapas. Only thing is, the face gets cooked on the burner—I’m lookin’ at it.”
    Intimidation was his best tool, but she had a screwhead that it couldn’t turn.
    â€œYou like tapas?” she asked.
    â€œBitch, you’re crazy as a red-eyed rat on meth.”
    â€œProbably,” she agreed.
    He backed away from her.
    With a wink, she said, “I can find out where
you
live.”
    â€œYou stay away from me.”
    â€œYou got gas in
your
kitchen?” she asked.
    â€œI mean it, you psycho twat.”
    â€œAh, now you’re just draggin’ me,” Carson said,
draggin’
meaning
sweet-talking.
    The gangbanger dared to turn his back on her and hobble away fast, dodging cars.
    Feeling better about the morning, Carson got behind the wheel of the unmarked sedan, pulled her door shut, and drove off to pick up her partner, Michael Maddison.
    They had been facing a day of routine investigation, but the phone call changed all that. A dead woman had been found in the City Park lagoon, and by the look of the body, she hadn’t accidentally drowned while taking a moonlight swim.

CHAPTER 3
    WITHOUT USING HER SIREN and portable flasher, Carson made good time on Veterans Boulevard, through a kaleidoscope of strip malls, lube shops, car dealerships, bank branches, and fast-food franchises.
    Farther along, subdivisions of tract homes alternated with corridors of apartment buildings and condos. Here Michael Maddison, thirty and still single, had found a bland apartment that could have been in any city in America.
    Bland didn’t bother him. Working to the jazz beat and the