I nearly jumped out of my skin, because 1) nobody ever visited me here, and 2) it was 2:00 a.m. I walked to the door in my panties, grabbing the shotgun I keep by the door, racked it and looked out the peephole. It was a man, but not the one from the subway platform.

“Whoever you are, you better have a damned good reason to be here.”

My visitor held up a badge. “Lieutenant Mark Vincente, Manhattan Vice,” he informed me with his cop delivery. His eyes were the color of the sea around Bermuda. Except where the pink sand would have been, there was caramel.

“You can’t come in now. What do you want? I’ll meet you tomorrow at the coffee shop downstairs. I’m not dressed for company.”

I put the shotgun back.

He laughed, a nice, easy laugh, said he realized that it had been a while since the first interview, but wondered if I remembered DB telling me that they might need to interview me about my stepparents’ murder.

“I wanted to call first, but Detective Bruno said you don’t have a phone. And I tried to come a couple of times earlier, but you weren’t here. Sorry about the hour. Did somebody follow you?”

“I keep irregular hours, and nobody followed me, just something weird happened. Never mind, I can’t explain.” I was beat, I realized, needed a drink and sleep.

Green Eyes said he was looking into some homicides that might be connected to some unsavory doings and that his investigations so far seemed to point to Naked Envy as one of the origins of this malfeasance.

“Wow, that sounds like some heavy shit. I bet you don’t get much of that going on in these places, huh? Hard to tell if it’s party in the front, business in the back, or vice-versa, is it?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, not missing a beat, “they need to put some kind of warning up at the entrance, like ‘Vice is Us.’ ”

This time, I laughed.

“I wonder if these guys ever open actual laundromats to sanitize the loot.”

He laughed again.

“Detective Bruno was kind of surprised to find out you’re working in that place. You must need money really bad.”

“Girl gotta do what she gotta do. It only bothers me when I see the place with the lights turned on. And you’re right: I’m not doing this for shits and giggles.”

I’d dropped a bundle on rent and security—made major withdrawals from the cash stash, with Khalika’s full approval. The last affordable loft in Soho, apparently. I’m cleaning up in that gilded shithole, so I figured I’d do it as long as I could stand it.

“Uh-huh,” he said, putting his face closer to the peephole. His eyes were the brightest green I had seen on a human. They were like Nimrod’s.

“I apologize for barging in on you like this, but your late stepfather was chin deep in some major sewage I’ve been wading around in. I thought I’d fill you in on a few things too, things you might be able to further clarify. I mean, I can share some things that aren’t already out there. Your former stepfather was part owner of the bar you’re dancing in, but it’s not against the law, as long as you’re over eighteen.”

This wasn’t news to me.

“I’m assuming they have no idea who you are?”

“Nope—no clue—and I like it that way. My sister got me the job. She’s a better talker than I am, I mean, when she decides she needs to talk.”

“OK, I’ll meet you tomorrow, say around noon at that coffee shop. I mean if you’re free?” He started to say something, went silent, then realized what I’d just said. “Wait, you have a sister?”

“Yep, a twin. I’ll tell you about her tomorrow.”

The words came out before I could stop them. I clapped my hand over my mouth. Well, we were free agents now—I guess I didn’t need to keep hiding the existence of my vagrant twin from the authorities anyway.

He agreed, said goodnight.

“Hey, you gonna report me to the IRS?”

He smiled and nodded his head yes before he disappeared from the peephole and walked away.

Good sense of humor so far.

I popped another beer, took a bath, and fell into bed. I thought about those eyes, that voice. It took a while to get to sleep. I didn’t dream at all—at least not that I remember. When I thought back on that first meeting, through the peephole, I realized I was giddy, and didn’t even know why. Something made a decision for me, but it wasn’t my head.