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turtles?”
    Pat flexes the muscles of her bare arm with the octopus tattoo, bulking up the one-eyed creature’s nasty-looking tentacles. “No one will ever catch me. But, hey, you can catch that ecofreak brother of Joan’s. He’s broadcasting illegally over the radio.”
    “Noah broadcasts from outside the city limits. I don’t have jurisdiction on the ocean. That’s for the feds.”
    “I hope his pissy pirate boat sinks in the middle of a shit slick dumped from a thousand crappers off a cruise ship.”
    Pat gazes over at the gleaming white Charger SRT8, taking in its arched rear-end cobra-wing spoiler and the black front grille open-jawed like an onrushing land shark.
    She grins. “You got yourself some unmarked cop car, tricked out like a Cuban Miami pimp-mobile. I know there’s a siren embedded in that grille, and red strobe-lights under those halogen headbeams that you can switch on from inside. How come you got all the flash, when most of Key West’s dumb-dicks poke around in stupid Ford Victorias?”
    Luz grins back. “I have this rocket because I’ll need it to go a quarter of a mile in twelve seconds when I’m coming to bust your ass.”
    “Like I said, no one can catch me.”
    Luz shakes her head and looks long at Pat.
“No hay rosas sin espinas.”
    “Huh? I don’t
habla
the Es-span-yolla. What are you saying?”
    “There are no roses without thorns.”
    Pat twists her Harley’s throttle in a rev and shouts above the engine’s loud growl, “I’ll take that as a compliment. Whenever you get tired of your blond bunny, you come running to me. I’m the only real rose in the garden. With me you get the prick of the thorns and not just the flower’s soft petal. Life on the edge. It’s your choice, brown sugar.” Pat roars off.
    From Luz’s police radio, the droning dispatcher’s voice suddenly crackles with urgency. “Code five at Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower! All Alpha units respond!”
    Luz gulps her coffee and starts her car. She switches on her outside flashing red lights and siren and speeds away.

    L uz skids to a stop in front of the pyramid-shaped bat tower. Behind her, Deputy Detective Moxel pulls up in his late-model Ford Victoria police car. They both cut their engines and jump out.
    Moxel cocks a hand above his eyes to block the sunlight glaring off the tower as he surveys the situation. He puts on his sunglasses. “I don’t see anything going on—place is deserted. Why’d they radio an urgent homicide dispatch? We’re even out of Key West jurisdiction up here.”
    Luz doesn’t answer; she hurries toward the tower. Moxel follows with a scowl. They both step under the massive wooden support struts of the tower’s broad base.Luz looks up into the shadowy interior of the ascending wooden shaft and points. “There’s our customer.”
    Moxel pushes in close to Luz and stares up. At the top of the pyramid’s narrowing peak hangs a human body. He grabs Luz’s arm and pulls her away. “Let’s get out of here and call for backup.”
    Luz shakes loose from Moxel. She grips the first slat of a ladder fixed to the side of the tower. “I’m going up.” She starts climbing the ladder, hand over hand, pulling herself into the higher reaches.
    Moxel watches Luz climbing farther away and shouts: “You crazy? Could be somebody’s baiting a trap with that body. I said we should call for backup.”
    Luz stops climbing. In the stifling air of the narrow shaft, she wipes sweat from her forehead. She looks back at Moxel below. He seems distant and insignificant. She pulls her pistol out of its holster. She continues climbing into even hotter air. Buzzing flies whiz around her. She waves her pistol at the oncoming flies, and the sudden shift of her body weight puts pressure on the supporting wood slat of the ladder beneath her feet. The slat gives way and tears out with a creaking rip. Luz drops her gun and grabs the slat above her with both hands. She hangs suspended in the air, her legs