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heavy traffic near the state capitol and its oval of dimly lit trees and paths. The area was now known as Sod Circle because of the male prostitutes who strolled these paths to pose and smile at the cruising cars. A monument to Colorful Colorado and the equality and majesty of the laws Wager was sworn to uphold. He turned onto East Colfax, one of the few corners of the city that still held life after dark, and joined the slowly moving cars nosing down the tunnel of neon and pin spots that made headlights unnecessary. Colfax Avenue was one of the longest sex strips in the country.
    The west end went four miles toward the mountains and was dotted with drive-in restaurants, a plentiful scattering of bars, and a line of motels that did business by the hour rather than by the night. It was mostly the teenie’s drag strip. The east end was called adult—adult films, adult bookstores, adult arcades, adult live shows. It went across the prairie in the direction of Kansas, leaving Denver around mile eight, and then staggering on as far again before fading into the bug-spattered neon of all-night truck stops and cut-rate gas stations with their scratched and scarred “adult dispensers” on the grime-streaked walls of men’s rooms.
    At this, the lower end of the strip, a short walk from the capitol, the Cinnamon Club’s glowing pink-and-green sign hung out over a sidewalk crowded with night people. The car glided past a Laundromat, half-filled at one-thirty in the morning with customers hunching their shoulders against one another. Across the street, a dark-colored van sat in the unlit parking lot of a small group of closed shops. Around the van half-a-dozen men of various ages clustered wearing the street uniform of the dope world: tattered fatigue jackets, Levi’s, hats of several styles, vests. One, standing at the open door, carefully counted out his money while the driver, glancing anxiously at Wager’s unmarked car, snapped his fingers.
    “You recognize that dude?”
    Axton craned his neck. “No. New pusher in town.”
    Wager tried to see the plates on the van, but they had been bent and smeared with dirt; besides, it was an item for Vice and Narcotics. If they had the time, if they had the manpower, if they had the interest, Vice and Narcotics might set the dealer up for a buy-and-bust. Had Wager and Axton swung around to arrest them for what was plainly a rolling dope market, the money and the dope would disappear into the vehicle, and so would the case—in some kind of constitutional infringement. It wasn’t enough anymore to witness a crime in progress; you had to get a warrant to investigate a homicide if it was on private property. There was a lot of talk about some pendulum swinging back toward law enforcement, but Wager hadn’t seen it yet.
    He pulled into a yellow zone near the corner, half-aware of the cautious eyes slanting their way from the strolling crowd. Their car caused a subtle undertow among the people walking or standing and talking, or alone and watching the action along the street. A teenaged whore in white shorts turned away abruptly to wander toward the other end of the block, her legs awkwardly thin and bony on tall sandals. From the shadowy landing of a stairway leading up to the cheap apartments above the stores, a figure withdrew into the darkness. Wager and Axton locked the car’s doors and walked toward the glare of light. Along the curb, eyes slid away from them, and a grimy pair of panhandlers eased out of their path.
    The Cinnamon Club advertised its shows as Sweet-n-Spicy. A glass case at the brightly lit entry showed a fly-specked collection of nude girls standing at the edge of a stage, smiling regally down at the camera. At the top, near the center, stood one who looked like Annette Sheldon; it was hard to tell, though, because the stiff poses and the harsh light made them all look alike, except for the various hairstyles.
    “Let’s get some culture,” said Max.
    The white glare