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“Is there a perpetrator?”

“Melton Lamming.”

“Don’t know him. Where’s he live?”

“Brentwood, California.”

“Was there a reason for these killings?”

“Benny and Helma belonged to a larger concern and then one day decided to strike out on their own.”

“And Lamming was part of that concern?”

“He was more like a freelancer, called in for a specific job.”

“I take it you’d like me to have gotten this tip from an anonymous source.”

“That would be great.”

“But, between us, who’d you get it from?”

“And that’s the rub,” I chimed.

“You don’t want the snitch known either?”

“Not until you help me with another—and related—problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Type in the name Kenneth Rouche.”

Gladstone didn’t consider himself corrupt, because he was ruled by a different set of laws. The NYPD, for him, was like Vatican City for the pope and his entourage. It was a sovereign entity, defined by the original set of commandments; the ones that Moses shattered before humanity received the Second Wash. He was—Glad was one of the primary custodians of the ultimate rule of law. He felt that he could ignore any foreign ordinance because he was part of the system. When his bosses wanted me dead, he made it so that I was only jailed and then released. After that he made sure that I was fired, blacklisted, and forced into silence. All that was doing me a favor, in his estimation. And now, years later, despite the fact that I was a civilian, he still wanted to help me, to do what was right even though I was no longer carrying a badge.

The article on Mr. Rouche took longer for the dispatcher to peruse.

When he was through, Glad looked at me, holding my gaze.

“What you gotta do with this piece’a shit?” he asked.

“He wants to talk to me.”

“Talk is cheap.”

“Like life… in this guy’s eyes. What does your system say about him?”

“You don’t know?”

“I know how it feels. What I don’t have are the details.”

“It’s like your friend Mel,” Glad said. “Somebody pays and, somewhere, somebody else dies. This guy like that for you?”

“I believe so.”

“You know,” the good sergeant opined, “a guy like this has connections, deep ones. I can’t even tell my own boyos about him without a worry that they’ll tell one’a their friends.”

“So you can’t help me?”

“Oh no, no, no, no,” he crooned. “There’s always somethin’ can be done. I’ll send up some smoke signals and then reach out to you.”