The place was near Back O?Town, a row house that had been converted into pleasant apartments
facing the small river they called Hampton Run. Flat roof, fancy front door; a classy-looking place.
There were a lot of police cars parked haphazardly in the narrow street in front.
Cowboy Lewis was standing by the door, looking very unhappy.
“I fucked up,” he said tightly. “They got by me.”
“Who got by you, Cowboy?” I asked.
“Whoever did them in,” he said, looking at my feet.
“Them?” Stick said.
“There?s two of „em,” he said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder toward the building. “Second floor
in the front.”
“Who else?” I asked as we headed for the door.
“Della Norman,” he said.
A new name!
“Should that mean something to me?” I asked.
“She was Longnose Graves? favourite lady,” said Stick.
“Yeah, but she was in bed with Logeto „when he got hit,” Lewis added.
I whistled through my teeth.
The mess was in a second-floor bedroom.
“The singing rope,” I said, looking at the man?s neck.
Dutch?s “Huh?” told me he had never heard of the trick.
“That?s what the Vietnamese call it, the singing rope. A knock-off of the Thuggee knot.”
It was also known among the British s the Bombay Burke— Bombay because the Thuggee stranglers
operated in India, Burke being British slang for strangulation, named after an Englishman who tried to
kill Queen Victoria, failed, arid had his neck stretched for his trouble.
It had been more than a dozen years since I had last seen that particular kind of bruise. It was blood
red and about the size of a half dollar, in the soft place at the base of Logeto?s skull on the back of his
neck. The deep, gnarled, bloody ring around his throat filled in the picture.
“Anybody else here?” Stick asked Dutch.
“Salvatore,” Dutch answered. “He?s out checking the neighborhood.”
“I haven?t seen a mark like that since Nam,” I said.
“Beautiful. What in hell next?” said the weary lieutenant.
Cowboy Lewis filled the doorway, the handle of a Cobra .357 looming from the front of his pants,
right over the fly.
