18

MONDAY, 11:08 PM

SIMON HAD BEEN AWARE of the two vehicles. The blue-and-white Crime Scene Unit van nestled against the side of the row house, and the Taurus parked down the street, the Taurus containing his nemesis, as it were: Detective Kevin Francis Byrne.

When Simon had broken the story on Morris Blanchard’s suicide, Kevin Byrne had waited for him one night outside Downey’s, a raucous Irish pub on Front and South Streets. Byrne had cornered him and had thrown him around like a rag doll, finally picking him up by the collar of his jacket and slamming him up against a wall. Simon was no bruiser, but he did go six feet tall, eleven stone, and Byrne had lifted him clean off the ground with a single hand. Byrne had smelled like a distillery after a flood, and Simon had prepared himself for a serious donnybrook. Okay, a serious beating. Who was he kidding?

But luckily, instead of punching him flat—which, Simon had to admit, he might have had coming—Byrne just stopped, looked at the sky, and dropped him like a spent tissue, letting him off with sore ribs, a banged up shoulder, and a knit shirt stretched beyond all attempts at resizing.

For his penance Byrne had gotten another half a dozen scathing articles out of Simon. For a year Simon had traveled with a Louisville Slugger in his car and an eye over his shoulder. Still did.

But all of that was ancient history.

There was a new wrinkle.

Simon had a pair of stringers he used from time to time, Temple University students who had the same notions about journalism that Simon had once held. They did research and the occasional stakeout, all for a pittance, usually just enough to keep them in iTunes downloads and X.

The one who had some potential, the one who could actually write, was Benedict Tsu. He called at ten after eleven.

“Simon Close.”

“It is Tsu.”

Simon wasn’t sure if it was an Asian thing or a college thing, but Benedict always called himself by his last name. “What’s up?”

“That place you asked about, the place on the waterfront?”

Tsu was talking about the dilapidated building under the Walt Whitman Bridge into which Kevin Byrne had mysteriously disappeared for a few hours earlier in the night. Simon had followed Byrne, but had to keep a discreet distance. When Simon had to leave to get to the Blue Horizon, he called Tsu and asked him to look into it. “What about it?”

“It’s called Deuces.”

“What’s Deuces?”

“It’s a crack house.”

Simon’s world began to spin. “A crack house?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Simon let the possibilities wash over him. The excitement was overwhelming.

“Thanks, Ben,” Simon said. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Bukeqi.”

Simon clicked off, considered his good fortune.

Kevin Byrne was on the pipe.

Which meant that what had become a casual endeavor—following Byrne to get a story—would now become a grand obsession. Because, from time to time, Kevin Byrne had to score his drugs. Which meant that Kevin Byrne had a brand-new partner. Not a tall, sexy goddess with smoldering dark eyes and a freight-train right cross, but rather a skinny white boy from Northumberland.

A skinny white boy with a Nikon D100 camera and a Sigma 55-200mm DC zoom lens.