Trix and I gave the cops an edited version of our reason for being there. The attending officers from homicide were a couple of old bulls of the type that I’m always comfortable dealing with. Macabre as it may have seemed, I needed to get a look around the house, and I laid it out for them.

We got to talking, and they in turn laid things out for us.

They knew Alexis was a hooker. His/her pimp was well known to them. Tim Cardinal, Teflon Tim, from whom all useful charges slid. He was a common-or-garden pimp with extraordinary luck. You get old bulls like these two talking about the ones who got away and it’s like asking your grandfather about the war. Trix and I were lucky we had nowhere to be.

After a while, and the potted history of Teflon Tim and the five murders he’d wriggled out of, the pair agreed that we could do a quick sweep of the house for the book. The case was as clear-cut as it got, we weren’t going to mess with the investigation, and they got a favor in New York City owed them in the future. Connections and under-the-desk favors count for a lot.

Alexis didn’t have a lot of stuff, and it was a small place. After an hour, we were certain that the book wasn’t there.

“This thing’s valuable, right?” said one of the detectives.

“Kind of,” I said. “Very old. A collector would pay top dollar.”

“Well, you know who’s got it, then. Teflon Tim.”

“You think?”

“Sure. He’s not dumb. Talks like a lawyer. And for a pimp, he’s not an absolute fucking prick, you know? I bet he took the book in return for paying her rent for six months or something.”

“Yeah,” said the other. “Freeing up the cash for her to pay her buddy to shoot her ass full of caulk.”

“That makes a disgusting kind of sense,” I said. “So where do I find Teflon Tim?”