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There were half a dozen spent shells on the ground near the bodies. The shooter had reloaded. Joe bagged two of them and left the rest for forensics.

Up ahead of them was the bathroom, a mess of smashed tiles and blood stains everywhere. Madeleine Cajuste had been shot at least five times in the torso and once through her right hand. The bathroom door had been dead-bolted from the inside.

The window was unlocked and opened out from the side onto a view of the garden — a small strip of lawn, rose bushes and a palm tree at the end.

Max noticed small scraps of white fabric stuck to splinters at the edge of the sill. He plucked one and showed it to Joe.

'You said she had a baby? I think she dropped it out of the window. When the shooting started she ran in here, bolted the door and put the kid out of the way of the bullets.

Maybe she screamed for help too. Either way, they took the baby. Let's take a look at the other rooms.'

Joe went to the kitchen. Dry dishes and cudery on a rack by the sink, rotting and withered fruit in a large bowl on the counter. Everything in the refrigerator had gone off.

Max looked through the bedrooms. Ruth Cajuste's was nearest the bathroom. She'd slept in a double bed, with a liible and a wind-up alarm clock at her side. The curtains

were drawn. There were bars on the windows. Next door was where the teenage girl had slept. Her name was Farrah Carroll. She was fifteen. He found her Haitian passport and return-flight ticket for 5 June. In two days' time her parents would be expecting her home. By her bedside was a photograph of her, Ruth and Mickey Mouse taken at Disneyland.

She had kept her room neat and tidy.

Max made for the front door.

He went and stood where he'd been when they'd first come in and scanned the scene of slaughter one more time, first casually, then body by body, trying to find what he'd missed.

The bugs were crawling up Farrah's right leg but not her left.

He looked at her feet. There was a small pile of dead beedes by her shoe. He bent down and studied the sole.

There were white stains on it, absent from the other shoe.

She'd trodden in something, maybe slipped. He turned around and looked behind him.

There, that was it: a small circle a few feet away, clearly defined by the crust of dead black beedes all around it. It was a white splash with scraps of dark green matter in it, shredded leaves or herbs, and something small, shiny and dark brown, but unmistakeably part of a bean.

'I think the shooter puked here,' Max told Joe.

Joe went back to the kitchen, got a knife and spoon which Max used to scrape the dried mess into an evidence bag.

Then they left the house, turning off the light as they went.

'I'll call it in from a payphone,' Max said.

'Say you heard gunshots,' Joe suggested. 'Otherwise it'll be another year before they send someone round.'

34

'You're a piece a dogshit on wheels.' Carmine sighed as he drove his new ride — a white Crown Victoria — down North West 2nd Avenue. It was a cop car, an honest cop's car; only kind of ride pigs could afford on the minimum wage they made outta being' pigs. The pigs on the cocaine payola drove flashier autos: fresh-off-the-ramp sports cars and rides they'd seen in James Bond movies.

There was method to his downshifting in the style stakes, because today, and every day until he got a location on Risquee, he, Carmine Desamours, was playing at being a cop. He wasn't just driving this shitty ride, he'd changed his look too. He was wearing ugly straight-off-the-rack clothes from JCPenney — a grey sports coat, shitty black slacks that itched the inside of his thighs, a white shirt and scuffed black wing tips. He had himself an authentic-looking fake ID and a pearl-handled .38 snubnose on his hip. He was a regular Richard Rowntree motherfucker. OK, that wasn't strictly accurate - RR was a private dick not a cop, but he couldn't think of no black cops he wanted to be in the image f, so Shaft did him just fine.

He wasn't the only one out looking for Risquee. He'd put Clyde Beeson on her trail. Beeson said he'd tried every dentist and hospital in Florida and none of them had any record of her. Beeson said he'd asked around on the streets loo. He was sure she'd disappeared; most likely left the state.

It would've been the sensible thing to do, what he would've clone himself if he'd almost been killed, but Carmine didn't buy it. He knew Risquee: when she was pissed any common sense she possessed went out her ears. And she'd be real

pissed at him. She'd think he'd sent that creep who'd tried to kidnap her outside the store. If Risquee had read any of the papers, she'd know her attacker's name was Leroy Eckols, out of Atlanta, said he had 'criminal connections'.

Eckols had been killed by the driver of the car he'd shot at.

She'd want payback. And he didn't blame her, the way things looked.

So, he was out here, searching for her himself too.

He passed a stretch of dismal row houses and had to slow down for an ambulance that was pulling up outside one of them. Looked like a lot of death had happened there. Another ambulance was already in place, doors open, plus three prowlers and a blue version of his own ride with a red light on the hood. The front door was open and medics with masks on were stretchering out a stiff in a bodybag. There was a whole lot of commotion, as a heavy crowd of onlookers jostled for a view. Uniforms told them to stay back.

This kinda shit always happened around O Town. When he made proper money in Nevada, no way would he be living in the nigger towns of this world. No, he was gonna get himself a condo in a fancy high-rise block with white folks for neighbours and security at the door, kind that said 'Good morning' and 'Good evening, sir' and told you who your visitors were.

Today, he might've been a pretend cop, but he still had pimp business to attend to for Solomon. Apart from recruiting and breaking in new Cards, today was when he collected from the two street Suits - the Spades and the Clubs.

He turned onto North East 6th Street and saw a Spade called Frenchie getting out of a tan Olds. He waited until the car had disappeared and let her get a good stride in her step. She had on a red vest, red heels and a pair of Daisy Dukes so small and tight they squeezed her big fat wobbly ass cheeks half down her big fat wobbly thighs. She was forty or fifty, something around that — he didn't properly

know because she was full of shit, always lying about the time of day — dark skin, hard face, shitty teeth, shitty reddish brown wig she either wore up or all the way down to her elephantine behind. When she was far enough into her walk, he drove up and hit the brakes hard, squealing to a stop right next to her. She scoped out the car in an instant, turned around and started heading in the opposite direction.