“Holy shit, Khalika must have borrowed them, but why didn’t she tell me she lost one? That night, after we left the club, Khalika took off. I don’t know where she was going.”

He was sure, I could tell, that I was making it up on the fly—never a good idea with a smart cop.

“I won’t speculate about what your sister did or didn’t tell you or where she took off to. But if she pulled this all off, including getting into Harvey’s apartment, well, then you almost have to admire her dedication to her chosen career. But I can’t do that. I’m going to have to hold on to these earrings for a while.”

He pocketed the studs again. I knew I would never see them again—all I had of Mark.

“The night of the alley caper? Either Khalika hit the bricks again after she left you, or you were there. Which is it, Violet? We’re on the same team, but I gotta know.”

“I… I wasn’t there, and if it was Khalika… I don’t know—the single earring… wait! I saw both in her ears that night, I swear to it. She pulled her hair back and I saw them, or what looked like them. Then one turns up in that twisted freak’s apartment?”

Had she done it on purpose? Taken my earring, a gift from Mark, and left it at plunger guy’s place?

“I know this is a lot to take in, Violet. I’m keeping this on the down low for a while until I sort out some more loose ends. My main focus is on this sex ring, and I don’t want to get bogged down in the righteous deaths of human rat shit. But I have no choice.”

Mark’s eyes hardened again, like any cop who has hooked his fish, is reeling it in. Even if his mission took him to one of the outer rings of hell, he couldn’t abandon it.

“How about we talk later? I’ve got some more things I need to check out.”

Yeah, I bet you do. Fuuuck me…

I agreed to meet him later that night. I had no choice. Soon enough, he would come to me anyway, and the screw would turn some more. Then, there was Khalika. I paced around the loft, my breath sour with burnt coffee. I sat down, jumped up, paced some more. I could hardly breathe.

I dialed the Envy and got the bartender, Murph. I told him I was sick and wouldn’t be able to make it. I could almost see his bored expression, his overdone eye roll.

“OK, I guess I’ll dig up a replacement. Try not to do this too much, the bosses hate it.”

I apologized and told him that I’d gotten run down and caught a bug. He grunted, confirmed my next night on the schedule, and hung up abruptly. A new manager had been brought in to replace the dead one. This one, squat and muscled, stalked the bar—up and down—scowling, toad-like, beady black eyes, brick-shithouse build starting to run to fat. Why do these guys always overdo the upper body workouts and forget about the bottom half? Why were such random thoughts muscling to the forefront of my reeling brain? I tried to concentrate again, failed.

I had to get out and walk, figure out what to do next. My head hammered, and my spine twitched on and off like a faulty neon bulb. I could feel Khalika’s rage as if she were physically present. I knew she might show up any minute to rip me several new ones about Mark, about my foray into her writing, about burning her diary of scripts. Maybe something worse. Now, in just a few hours, I’d have to deal with Mark again too. Mark of the quicksilver brain, the yellow-green eyes, the hot silk skin stretched over taut, long… oh shit, stop, you idiot! This was the night I’d have to break it off, say I couldn’t handle anything long term. He’d need to question me just like any other witness—or suspect.

I threw on a hooded jacket, walked fast all the way to 75th and 5th along the wall that separated the oasis of Central Park from the frenzy of the avenue, the shadows of glassed sarcophagi. There, I ran out of steam and took the uptown express. The train was almost empty. When I got to Harlem, I descended at one of the most desolate sections of the green heart that beat amidst the raging steel and concrete holding tank of both the anointed and the hopeless. Like ancient Rome, it fermented in its own putrid juice, bubbled on under a cloud of animal exuberance and misery.

It was still daylight, but that didn’t matter here. The biblical “Abandon all hope, Ye who enter here” should have been printed on a sign at the entrance. But there wasn’t a soul around, not a gangbanger or panhandler to be seen. I was the only survivor of a nuclear disaster where yet another rogue strongman had finally pressed the button, done a Strangelove. I thought of Mercutio, how he probably sensed my panic all the way from Long Island. I thought of riding him through that other leafy oasis, where there was no need to look over my shoulder. He had always been where the heart of solace beat, and now there was none to be found. Solace was dead. I thought of Mark’s muscled back, like a swimmer’s, against the white sheets in the breaking dawn. Both thoughts had served to keep the beast at bay as it strained against the fraying restraints, dripping saliva. Now it was threatening to chew through them and rip my heart out of my chest.