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Parking six blocks from my office, I accessed the camera security system with my phone. This allowed me to see my office, my apartment, the stairways leading to both, the entrance to the building, and various angles of the street and building parking lot. If somebody didn’t know a thing about me, and then they found out about my extensive spy-camera system, they might conclude that I was paranoid. But if that same person had spent months in solitary confinement on Rikers Island, charged with a crime that could have gotten them twelve years to life of hard time in maximum security; if they’d just walked a block in my shoes, they’d donate to my camera fund.

There was no apparent danger; then again, that’s the worst danger there is. Leaf was sitting at Aja’s desk, reading some paperback book.

“Call Leaf.”

“You outside lookin’ at all your cameras?” she answered.

“No,” I replied.

She smiled and said, “Liar.”

“I’ll be up in ten minutes.”

I’d parked at the corner of Remsen Street and Pierrepont Place. From there I walked up to the French dry cleaners on Remsen that stood behind my Montague Street apartment. There was a walkway between the cleaners and a Catholic retreat for elderly nuns. This lane was blocked by a locked gate, but I had, long before, obtained the key to that lock. I also had a key to the utility entrance at the back of my building.

Down one floor and I was in the garage.

Up three flights and I was at my office door. I used my techno-key on it.

“Hi, baby,” Leaf said, standing at the threshold.

Her kiss was both sweet and tart.

“Grapefruit?” I asked.

“You like?”

I kissed her again. From there we plopped down on the Shabby Chic sofa and continued the tasting process. It was a close and irresistible embrace, but when the office phone rang, I pulled away.

“Mel,” I said because that was the name that appeared on the display of Aja’s phone.

“They’re all safe. I’ll take Miss Mara and her crew out to the church. Aja says that she’ll stay with Roger Ferris.”

“Great.”

“You need anything else?”

“Have you ever heard of a guy named Kenneth Rouche?”

“What’s he look like?”

“A little over six feet. I only saw him once, but I bet he usually wears a suit, shoes and hat, all black except for a pair of bright-colored socks. He’s slim but no pantywaist and wears a wedding ring.”

“A real gangster, huh?” Mel dubbed.

“Most likely.”

“No, I don’t know the name and there’s too many of the type to count. What’s his thing?”

“I think he might be working for the guy that your people helped me with out in LA. If he is, then he’ll want to make sure that Miss Fox and maybe her daughter are dealt with.”

Melquarth and I had phones that, supposedly, couldn’t be bugged, but that didn’t mean that we spelled out everything.

“You need help?”

The question was honest and unnuanced. He didn’t want to stick his nose in my business, but if I needed somebody murdered, he wouldn’t have minded. That was the great challenge of having a friend like Mel: He’d do, or at least try to do, anything you asked. When you’re in a business like mine and somebody offers you a button that whenever you push it somebody somewhere stops breathing, you have to remember to step back from fear and carry your own load; because for every action there’s a reaction, maybe not opposite or equal, but if you don’t know what that reaction might bring down, then you should probably wait and see.

“You’ve already done it,” I said.