the girl ready to face it all—ready for war. Wolfe told the pack of lawyers she was going to do to the boys what they'd done to the girl. Only it was going to last a lot longer.
Then Wolfe got taken off the case. In fact, they pulled the whole thing right out of her unit. Gave it to a kid who'd never tried a sex case before. A kid who'd gone to the same school where it all happened.
Wolfe told them they were tanking the case. They told Wolfe to shut up. Wolfe told them where to stick it and went to the papers.
Accusations flew.
Wolfe got fired.
The case went to trial.
The boys were acquitted.
Wolfe was the best sex crimes prosecutor anyone had ever seen. Every cop in the city knew it. They all said if Wolfe had handled the Simpson case, O.J. would be working on a life sentence instead of his golf game. But nobody would hire her after the unpardonable sin of standing up. If you work for the D.A.'s Office, you can be a drunk or a fool, a moron or a pervert. You can be late to work, screw up cases, have sex with your secretary…it doesn't matter, if your hooks are good. But you have to go along to get along, fall to your knees when the bosses snap their fingers.
Wolfe wouldn't do that, so they threw her whole life in the garbage for payback.
The rest of the staff got the message. None of the others in her old unit stood up except her pal Lily, the social worker, who only worked there as a consultant anyway. Wolfe formed a new crew. Started working campus investigations: date rape, sexual harassment, stalking. The schools hire her on a per–job basis—she'll never have another boss besides herself.
But there was something else. Something I'd picked up from the whisper–stream that flows just under the city's streets. The word said she'd gone outlaw after being fired, running her own intelligence cell, picking stuff up from the deep network she'd established when she was head of City–Wide…and selling it.
You can't trust everything you hear from the underground—the whisper–stream vacuums up everything, gold to garbage.
But I knew who to ask.
'I can place the face,' the Prof said to me out of the side of his mouth, 'but the crew is new.'
We were on a bench in the park next to Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. A beautiful fall day, late September but still warm enough for the 'Look at me!' crowd to display a lot of skin. The Prof was looking across to a parking lot where a tall woman with long dark hair was getting out of a battered old Audi sedan. She was wearing a white jumpsuit, a white beret set on her head at a jaunty angle. It was a good fifty yards away, but I could make out the distinctive white wings in her hair. I recognized the barrel–bodied Rottweiler she held on a short leash too. Wolfe. And the infamous Bruiser.
'You got them all?' I asked.
'One on the left,' the Prof said. 'With all the kids.'
I took a glance. A small girl with long straight dark hair, surrounded by a pack of children. She was wearing a baggy pair of red–and–white–striped clown pants and a white T–shirt with some writing on the front. Big words, red letters. A beret on her head too; red. She had the kids bouncing around in some kind of snake dance, all of them laughing and waving their arms, following her lead. Black kids, white kids, Latino kids, Oriental kids…dozens of them, it looked like. The girl took a quick run–up and launched into a cartwheel, bounced up and clapped her hands. The kids all tried it at once, a riot of color tumbling over the grass. Adults stood back and watched, respectful of the magic.
'Catch the backup?' the Prof asked, tilting his chin at a big rangy–looking man in jeans and a cut–off black sweatshirt, his long light–brown hair tied in a ponytail. He had an athlete's build, stood with his hands open at his sides. Moving to the back of the watchers, rolling his shoulders, his hands empty, the man never took his eyes off the girl in the clown pants.
'Karate man?' I asked.
'Or boxer,' the Prof replied. 'Something like that. He ain't strapped, but he's got the broad wrapped, no question.'
A young woman came down the path, a mass of dark–blonde hair spilling out from under a purple beret. Lemon–yellow bicycle shorts were topped by a white T–shirt with red lettering, same as the girl in the clown pants. She had a cell phone in a sling over one shoulder, a vanilla ice cream cone in the other hand. At her side was a light–tan dog with a white blaze on its chest—looked like a pit bull with uncropped ears. The dog moved with a delicate, mincing gait, its big head swiveling to watch anyone who got close.
The blonde stopped, dropped to one knee, held the ice cream cone inches from the dog's snout. The beast didn't move a muscle, feral eyes somewhere in the middle distance so it wouldn't be tempted to break the command. Then the blonde said something and the dog snapped the entire head off the ice cream cone in one happy snatch. The blonde stood up and kept walking, nonchalantly munching on what was left of the cone.
The girl got near enough for me to read the lettering on her shirt: the same DON'T! BUY! THAI! I'd seen on the woman at Boot's joint. I knew what that was about—I'd seen the same shirt a dozen times since. There's been a boycott going against anything made in Thailand for a while now. They sell babies for sex in Thailand. 'Kiddie sex tourism,' they call it. A whole lot of folks figured it out a long time ago: they sell babies for money, you choke off their money, maybe they'll stop it. Me, I'd rather choke off their air supply, but their neck's too thick.
The young woman stopped a few feet away from us, the dog halting next to her, regarding us with that flat disinterested stare that all the really dangerous ones have. The dog's short, muscular body was wrapped in one of those layered workout shirts, pink on top with just a hint of white around the neckline. When she sat up, I could read what was printed on the chest of the jersey. 'IF YOU CAN READ THIS, CALL 911.'
'What kind of dog is that?' I asked her.
'She's an AmStaff,' the woman said. 'An American Staffordshire Terrier.'
'Looks like a pit bull to me,' I told her.
'They were originally the same,' she said, like she had all day to explain. 'Petey, you remember, from the Little Rascals? He was the first AmStaff. They're like the show version of the pits. Sweeter too, right, Honey?' she cooed.
The dog responded to her name with a soft snarl. The woman stepped closer. Her face was lovely: huge eyes, peaches–and–cream skin. But her mouth was straight and serious—I didn't need the beret to tell me she was with Wolfe.
'You have something for me, Mr. Burke?' she asked.
'Just a message,' I said, not reacting to her knowing my name. 'For Wolfe. You can do that, right?'
'Yes.'
'I'm interested in somebody. Man named Kite. Think she could help me?'
'That depends.'
'On…?'
'We're in business, Mr. Burke. Just like you.'
'I'll pay what it costs,' I said. 'When can you do it?'
'Maybe now,' she answered. 'I have to make a call. Just stay here, all right? Pepper will come over and tell you.'
'Pepper?'
'You already spotted her,' the young woman said, glancing over to where the girl in the clown pants was showing the kids how to twirl long thick ribbons on sticks.
I opened my mouth to say something, but the young woman walked off. The dog she said wasn't a pit bull looked over her shoulder at me without breaking stride, a clear warning.
It was another fifteen, twenty minutes before the girl in the clown pants broke away from the mob of kids, waving goodbye. Half of them tried to follow her—it took her a few minutes to get clear. The guy in the black sweatshirt stayed right behind her, about twenty feet back. I watched Max pick him up on an angle, moving fast but so smooth you couldn't tell unless you referenced him against the stationary trees.
She rolled up on us with a springy dancer's walk, flashing a smile bright enough to light up a suicide ward. 'Hi!' she called out.
