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take the cure, so she stabbed me with a knife coated in the stuff. Yeah, it hurt. And yeah, I’m glad she did it.
    I throw up my hands.
    “You win. Take our lands and gold but leave me my virtue.”
    “Those are my only choices?”
    “If you’re going virtue hunting, you better bring a backhoe and dynamite. You’re going to have to dig deep.”
    “I’ll bring a strap-on.”
    I look at Vidocq in the front seat.
    “Make her stop. I’m hungover and she has a robot. It’s not fair.”
    “Life is fair only in the grave and in the bedroom. This, you will notice, is neither.”
    “That’s why I don’t take cabs.”
    I look out the window. The cabbie takes us down Hollywood Boulevard for a few blocks and then U-turns on Sunset and heads back the way we came.
    “Where are we headed?”
    “The Bamboo House of Dolls.”
    “What the hell, man? It’s just a few blocks. We could have walked.”
    “But then you might have walked away. You’ll notice I told our driver to take the long way so that I could talk to you. The woman we’re going to meet thought you’d be more comfortable discussing business there.”
    “What woman?”
    “Julia Sola.”
    “Never heard of her.”
    “Marshal Julie, you used to call her. One of Marshal Wells’s agents. You liked her. You said she was the only one in the Golden Vigil who treated you like a human being.”
    I sit up.
    “Are you fucking kidding me? Just cause she didn’t ice-pick me doesn’t mean I want to work with her. Or any other Homeland Security. Stop the car. I’m getting out.”
    “Keep going,” Vidocq says to the driver. He turns back to me.
    “Stop behaving like a child. The Vigil is dead and Homeland Security isn’t here anymore. You kn
    “With who? Your little thief pals?”
    “Who better to know who works for law enforcement and who is a free agent?”
    I’m not sure what to think. Vidocq has a nose for cops. He knows how they think, how they work. A hundred years ago he taught the French police forensic analysis techniques he’d picked up from his science and alchemical books, and transformed them from a bunch of medieval thumb breakers into actual cops that could do real criminal investigations.
    The cabbie has the radio on. Patti Smith is singing “Ask the Angels.”
    Pounding devotion, armegeddon, and rock and roll. A song to die to.
    “This situation is total bullshit.”
    Candy looks at me, presses the button, and her robot glasses are singing over the radio. I’m back in Hell.
    W HEN WE GET to the Bamboo House of Dolls, Vidocq comes around to my side of the car and opens the door fast like he thinks I’m going to bolt. Hands the driver a twenty and doesn’t wait for change. The three of us go inside, where it’s dark and cool. Carlos is behind the bar setting up glasses for the night’s business. He nods at me when we walk in. It’s weird seeing the bar at this time of day with no music playing. The tiki dolls and coconuts look as bleary as I feel.
    Carlos says, “Funny seeing you awake. I thought you’d melt like the Wicked Witch if someone tried to wake you up before dark.”
    “You, too. Are you part of this conspiracy, too?”
    “I’m just the hired help. Ask the pretty lady in the bathroom what’s going on. She booked the place at this unholy hour. Is it your birthday or something? You should have told me.”
    “No. This is just me being shanghaied, is what it is. If that’s coffee I smell, I don’t want any. I’m not staying long.”
    Julia comes out of the back. Her dark hair is longer than I remember and she’s wearing it up. She has on a sensible black skirt with a power-color bloodred blouse. She looks like a sexy librarian, but moves like someone who could casually dislocate your knee or crack some ribs with a tactical baton.
    She stops when she sees me. Smiles a little and comes over to the bar.
    The last time I saw U.S. marshal Julia Sola was here in the bar. She told me how Wells had taken the fall for the