I walked quickly through the living room into the kitchen. Opened the drawer I wanted, threw out the false bottom, and took out the Ruger. Loaded it, slowly. Walked back into the living room with the Ruger heavy in my right hand. Grabbed Trix’s hand with my left, yanking her up off the sofa.

“Where’s Brom working?”

“What?”

“Now, Trix.”

I dragged her into the hallway, where we heard the clicking of a keyboard. There was an expansive home office at the back of the house. Brom was working at a big black desktop computer on a big black desk. He spoke without looking around. “Anything you need?”

I hit him in the back of the head with the butt of the Ruger. He slid off the chair like a sack of hammers.

Trix punched me in the shoulder with her free hand. “What the hell? Mike!”

I looked at her. She got scared in a way I didn’t like. But I didn’t have time for anything else.

“Get up,” I said to Brom. Blood was trickling out of his hair onto the back of the T-shirt.

“Christ,” he groaned. “I’m sorry I had sex with her, all right? I’m sorry. Fucking lunatic.”

“Trix, you need to tell me you had protected sex with this man.”

“Of course I did. Mike, we can talk about this. Don’t, don’t do whatever’s in your mind. We can fix this.”

“Brom, you need to tell Trix all about this party at Islip tonight.”

He twisted around on the ground to face me. “Fuck you.”

I stamped on his balls. As he convulsed forward, I kicked his head to the ground and put my foot on the side of it. Going down on one knee, I pressed the Ruger to his temple and pulled the hammer back.

“I don’t particularly like having turned into all the assholes I’ve been dealing with since I started this case, Brom. But you’ve done it to me. All of you. All of you monsters. So now I’m like you. Now either you can tell her what these parties are, or I can put a bullet through your brain, have the White House chief of staff sanitize your murder and this location so it becomes like you never even existed, and then tell her myself. Tell me what happens next, Brom. Tell me if I’m killing you.”

“They’re sex parties.”

“What kind of sex parties, Brom?”

“Sex parties with…with teenagers.”

I screwed the muzzle of the gun into his temple until the skin broke. “Stop fucking with me.”

“With kids. Okay? With virgin kids. Kids who don’t have HIV.”

“Yeah,” I said, mostly to myself. “Falconer. That goddamn Falconer was right. Who’d’ve thought it?”

I felt Trix go cold in my hand. “Brom. What are you talking about?”

“The upper ranks of power in this town…You try getting laid in this town without having a current HIV test. You can’t. Sex parties, forget it. Once you’ve been around a while, herpes is the best you can hope for. If you like group sex, unprotected sex, hurting people…Look, it’s something I have to be part of, okay? If I want the power in this town to be able to change anything, I have to be part of the system.”

“They call them roulette parties, Trix,” I said quietly. “They get two or three pretty kids, drug them to their eyeballs, and then everyone at the party screws them. And then they place bets on which of the kids will end up HIV positive. That’s why I needed to know if you had protected sex. Because I doubt that this is the first invite Brom’s gotten.”

“I’ve only been to three! Three!” Brom shrieked.

“Now, Brom. My life is a mess of shitty coincidences. So you tell me now: Is there anything special about tonight’s party? I didn’t like your reaction when you told me Frank Islip would never traffic in stolen goods. Because I didn’t give you a name. I gave you the firm’s title. And when I gave you an out, you took it so fast I couldn’t see your ass for dust.”

“They bought something. An antique. Something that’ll give the community political leverage in Washington. I don’t know what it is. They’re showing it off tonight.”

“And we know what that is, don’t we, Trix?”

I let go of her hand. She didn’t move away.

“Yeah. We do. Your ticket’s plus-one, Brom?”

Brom didn’t answer.

Trix’s hand reached for my gun. Our eyes met. I slipped the gun into her hand.

She moved the gun muzzle around his face, and slowly pushed it into his eye.

She ground out the words. “Plus-one?”

“…yes.”

“Well, I’d love to come to the party with you, Brom. But we need to figure out a way for Mike to get in, too.”