16

Jimmy O’Leary sat at his desk, smoking a cigarette. “You hear what happened to Mike with the whore?” he asked Gordon Winter.

O’Leary chuckled. “Fucking idiot,” he said.

Winter, too, had a laugh at Houston’s expense and said, “Next time I see him, I’m not gonna let him live this one down.”

“Yesterday afternoon I took him to Del Vecchio’s place. Gordon, there’s something weird going on. Hookers been disappearing all over the city.”

“There ain’t anything weird about that.”

“This ain’t the usual turnover, Gordon. Even the pimps are getting uptight.”

“Do you think we got a turf war going on?”

“It doesn’t feel that way. Women that been with their pimps for years have gone missing.”

“And the cops don’t care.”

“To them it’s no big deal. They couldn’t really give a shit—less work for them.” O’Leary ground his cigarette out in an ashtray. “For some reason, this has got me interested. Let’s call a meeting.”

“With who?”

“Mike and Anne need to talk to Shiloh Baines.”