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old man with a cloud beard, seemingly decades older than the ancients in the living room. He sat unmoving at the breakfast table, holding a fork and staring at a plate of dark meat and browned vegetables. He didn’t look up when I entered.
    A woman stood at the kitchen sink, gazing out through the window at the backyard. She wore a cobalt blue jacket with a wide black belt, black high-heeled boots, a gauzy black head scarf like an afterthought. The boots alone had to cost five grand.
    “I so want those,” Dr. Gloria said.
    The woman turned toward me. She was holding a cleaver. Dr. Gloria’s wings rustled in warning.
    “Why don’t you have a phone like a normal person?” she asked me angrily.
    “I mean to buy one soon,” I said—doing my best impersonation of a person who was not talking to a drug lord holding a gigantic blade. She was seventy, maybe seventy-five years old, with pale skin. But her face was made up, and the brown hair under the scarf showed aggressive highlights. “Put together,” as my mother used to say. Give me that in thirty years.
    “My name’s Lyda Rose.”
    “I know who you are.” She turned and put the cleaver on the wire dish rack. “If you don’t want me to use junkies to find you, join the twenty-first century.”
    The old man still hadn’t moved, and neither had the plate. A battle of wills.
    Fayza walked to the back door and said, “Come this way.”
    I hesitated. My only backup was a make-believe angel and a brain-damaged kid who believed that his soul lived in a plastic box. I suspected that if I left this house, no one would find me.
    Fayza looked back at me. “I want to show you my garden.”
    “Garden,” however, was too gentle a word: It was a horticultural brothel. The yard stretched beyond the boundaries of the lot, creating a lush, shared park that ran the length of the block. Every flower and fern seemed improbably voluptuous, especially for this time of year. Naked and half-dressed statues watched coyly from behind the trees.
    “It’s a lot to take in,” I said.
    Fayza led me past a structure that was technically a gazebo, in the same way that a five-layer wedding cake was technically a dessert. She was heading for the back porch of the house across the way. A young Afghan man in a red hoodie held the door open for us.
    “I have someone I want you to meet,” Fayza said. “They’re waiting inside.”
    I held up a hand. “Fayza, please…”
    She turned, frowned. “What is the matter with you?”
    My brain chattered like a playing card in a bicycle wheel. Had I already pissed off the drug lord? Who was waiting in that house? And would I get out there alive? I had left the House of the Grannies, crossed through the Valley of the Statuary, and was being led into the Tomb of the Unknown Hoodie.
    Jesus Christ I wish I’d taken something before coming here. Screw the pellet in my arm.
    “You don’t need any of that,” Gloria said. “You have me.”
    *   *   *
    The young man on the couch was skinny and black with an Abe Lincoln beard. He was dressed in layers like a street kid, but his clothes were clean and his black trainers were spotless. So, either new to the street, or on his way off it. I bet on the latter.
    He nodded at me with great solemnity, and Fayza said, “You know each other?”
    “Never seen him before,” I said truthfully. We were in a basement rec room outfitted with cheap carpet, Arabic movie posters under glass, and chrome furniture. A terrible place to die, in my opinion. “Who is he?”
    “Nobody,” the boy said matter-of-factly.
    “His name is Luke,” Fayza said. “He’s an addict.”
    Gloria bent to look more closely at the man’s eyes. “The pupils are slightly dilated,” she said. “Though that could be from the excitement of being trapped in a drug lord’s basement.”
    “What’s he on?” I asked.
    Luke looked surprised. “Nothing.”
    Fayza said, “A month ago, he was one of my most faithful customers. Not