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record of calls and actions that didn’t warrant a formal police report. The log meant the responding officers didn’t believe the caller or didn’t care.
    I removed a single sheet of paper from the envelope that Raul Delgado had given me. Tremont’s physical description and address.
    “He lives in West Dallas with his grandmother.” I gave her the street and number.
    She squinted at the screen. “Yeah, that’s the address they used. The projects.”
    I nodded. “So why’s a deputy chief interested in a kid from the hood?”
    “He’s a deputy chief,” she said. “Everything the brass does is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma.”
    I folded the piece of paper Raul Delgado had given me and put it back in the envelope.
    “Lysol Alvarez,” Piper said. “That’s his turf.”
    Lysol was a street thug who had the IQ and work ethic of an investment banker. At one point he controlled a large swath of South and West Dallas.
    “He’s still alive?”
    “Hard to kill somebody that mean,” she said. “I’d start with him.”
    Neither of us spoke for a few moments.
    “I’m not asking for your help,” I said.
    “Then why did you come here?” She slid from the booth. Tossed a few bills on the table.
    I watched her walk away. After a few steps she turned and looked at me.
    “Don’t be late this afternoon.”

- CHAPTER FIVE -
    T HE P IMP
    Tink-Tink Monroe surveys his empire.
    A parking lot behind a two-story apartment building on Audelia Road by LBJ Freeway.
    He stands on the balcony of the upstairs unit he’s currently using as an office, a Swisher Sweet in one hand, a Schlitz Malt Liquor in the other.
    A feeling of contentment washes over him. He is the master of his domain, the captain of his destiny. The King.
    Life is good here in Dallas, so is business, much better than either had been in the Ninth Ward before Katrina blew through New Orleans.
    Beyond the rotting wooden fence that surrounds the parking lot hums the commerce the city is known for, a ball of energy unlike any he’s ever experienced in all his thirty-four years.
    Even the air smells rich, a pleasant aroma that is a combination of the Popeyes Chicken next door and his cigar.
    Tink-Tink Monroe is an entrepreneur, a man determined to escape his humble origins and make something of himself. He is the youngest of five children, his mother a working girl in one of the hot-sheet brothels in Algiers, across the river from the French Quarter. He never knew his father.
    Now, he is the King.
    In the parking lot of the Dallas apartment are six campers, registered under the name of his number-one lady’s grandmother. Each trailer has a girl who’s earning for him. Ten, twelve hours a day, six days a week.
    Below his feet, on the ground floor, he has a half dozen two-bedroom apartments, a girl to each room. Across Audelia, there is a massage parlor that he controls, too. Another three or four girls there at any given time.
    The Empire of Tink-Tink Monroe.
    His ladies are quality, clean and healthy for the most part. A class operation all the way.
    The word on the street is that he’s the biggest pimp in Dallas, certainly the biggest in Little NOLA, as the area where the Katrina refugees have settled is called.
    One of his guards steps onto the balcony. He says, “Pizza’s here, boss.”
    Tink-Tink tosses his cigar onto the asphalt below. He points to the far end of the parking lot, where a navy-blue Crown Victoria sits nose-out, under a leafless elm tree.
    “You see dat car ovah in da corner?”
    The guard nods.
    Tink-Tink drains his beer. “Find out who’s parking in my parking lot wit’out axing me first.”
    “Yeah, boss.” The guard grabs a baseball bat from the corner and leaves.
    Tink-Tink pitches his empty beer can off the balcony, too, and steps inside the apartment.
    The place doesn’t have much furniture, a black leather couch from Rent-A-Center, a glass coffee table, and a flat-screen TV.
    In the middle of the coffee table sits a