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I snorted. “Yeah—Woody Allen, when Mia asked him why he was bonin’ the kids.”

Mrs. Silas and her guy, some unnamed cult member, standing arm in arm behind Herson. The rest of them in a supportive U around them: Red-robes/low-cleavage. Fresh flowers everywhere you looked, huge holiday wreaths and bouquets—massy, dripping, belled cups of fragrance, spilling sickly-sweet. Red candle shadows flickering on the walls, filtered through taped-together star displays of candy-heart lollipops. Too many smiles, waaay too much smug, quiet tolerance. As though they could read all the pain and rage I ran on at once, but didn’t care enough to give it much cred—just had me tagged as kind of old, kind of sad, and kind of ineffectual, even with my gun bulging out the side of my jacket for everybody to see. Worth a warm and sticky slice of their sympathy, if not their full attention.

An offhand mental group hug from everyone in the room: There there, big man.

It made me so mad my teeth hurt.

Beck watching me, sidelong. My partner, looking for a cue to follow.

No probable cause. No legal grounds to do anything but leave, and tell the Cap we blew his choice assignments—back in the shithouse for another ten years plus, this time with Beck to keep me company. All that energy and effort, gone to waste; all right for me, sure. Par for the course.

But not for him.

To Herson: “You don’t interfere?”

“Never.”

Well, okay.

I nodded, turned to Mrs. Silas. Said, conversationally: “So how about I let you make up your own mind, lady? ’Cause here’s the options. You come home. Or this piece of beef—” I pointed out the Cyprian stud—“eats the rest of his Valentine’s candy through a straw.”

“David,” said Beck.

I started rolling up my sleeves. “Look the other way, college boy. You wanna make Chief by thirty-five, you gotta start getting good at that.”

Beck: “Dave, I don’t—”

“Shut up, Beck,” I said. And I hit Mrs. Silas’ guy full tilt boogie, so hard I popped a vein in his cheek with my high school ring: Pure black/red boom, spurt, all over my nice new tie.

Mrs. Silas was tough. It took cult-boy coughing teeth through his nose, liberally slimed with bloody phlegm, before she finally stiff-legged it over. Telling Beck: “I’m ready now.”

Beck, to me: “We’re leaving.”

A last kick to the stud, flipping him—black/red ebbing, but slow. I gave him one more stomp to the gut, just for luck. Blood on my shoes: I scraped them clean on the floor-mosaic Aphrodite’s bare breasts.

To Herson: “Nice religion you got there, shitbird. Stand back, do nothing. I could get used to this.”

He looked at me then, at last, full on. Light blue eyes—cerulean, they call them. Water on white stone; submerged Greek ruins.

“I’ll remember you said that, Detective Proulx.”

* * *

Beck made Lieutenant two months later, after they threw me off. A week of all-night drunks got me crazy enough to connect the dots—camped outside the Temple, straight-up begged Herson to take this thing off me. His only answer, just what you’d expect: He wouldn’t interfere. Ever.

Mrs. Silas’ curse. Mrs. Silas’ call. I would have crawled ten miles on broken glass to eat her pussy all day, if I thought it’d do any good.

Except I knew, because Beck told me—Silas had already thrown her down the stairs an hour after we took her home, for talking back. Broke her little neck like a twig.

* * *

Lying here. Burning. Tonight and every right.

Beck across town, somewhere. Working, maybe—maybe doing the same. But not like me. Not for me.

I made damn sure of that.

Valentine’s Day night, I woke up at 3:00 a.m., thinking: I gotta apologize. Gotta go find Beck, and apologize for the whole Silas thing. He thinks I was out of line, and he’s right; I gotta tell him. ’Cause he’s my partner, my only friend. And because . . .