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finger. Investigating the first case they’d caught that morning hadn’t proved fruitful either. Two men had gotten into a knife fight over a woman. The loser had expired on the spot. The winner, one Freddie Jackson, had been wounded, too, with a strike to the belly. But he hadn’t turned up at any of the local hospitals seeking treatment, returned to any of his usual haunts. No one had heard from him, not even his mother. Jonathan suspected the only way they’d find this man was when his body, wherever he’d holed himself up, started to stink.
    So, for today he was batting 0 for 2. From the sudden racket issuing from the Stadium, someone was doing better than him. He could find out who if he got the TV, but lacked the will to bother. The cell phone clipped to his waistband rumbled. He unclipped it and looked at the display. Mari’s number, plus he’d missed another call.
    â€œWhat’s up?”
    â€œI tried calling you before. Where were you?”
    â€œIn the shower, probably.” He heard the excitement in her voice and the chastisement for keeping her waiting in her words. “What did you hear?”
    â€œWell, to quote Samuel L. Jackson, hold on to your butt. The Jane Doe in the alley was none other than Amanda Pierce.”
    If Mari expected him to know who that was she was going to be disappointed. “Who?”
    â€œAmanda Pierce, celebrity biographer, Amanda Pierce. Years back she did a book on Sinatra that made Kitty Kelly’s book look like a love letter. You watch, Stone. This is going to be big.”
    Just what he was afraid of. How’d you find out?”
    â€œMissing persons got back to me. The housekeeper at her East Side town house reported her missing. Yesterday was payday and Pierce didn’t show up to hand out the check. The housekeeper waited twenty-four hours then called the local precinct.”
    â€œAny relatives?”
    â€œOnly a brother, some sort of movie type. He’s flying in from the Coast tomorrow morning.”
    So what was a woman like Amanda Pierce doing in the South Bronx? Maybe she hadn’t been. Maybe she’d been dumped far from the scene of the crime to confuse the investigation even more. “Any clue so far what she was doing so far from home?”
    â€œThat’s the question of the hour, amigo . I guess we start on that tomorrow.”
    Jonathan clicked off the phone and sat back against the iron railing, remembering his earlier feeling of unease about this case. So far his suspicion that this investigation wouldn’t be an easy one had proved true. What remained to be seen was how gruesome this thing could get. The victim’s celebrity changed things.
    The press would dog him, wanting to know who’d slain one of their own. They’d be working under a public microscope—never a fun prospect. For all he knew, Manhattan would want the case if it could be proved that she was killed on their soil. He’d gladly give it up, except there was something about that battered, broken body that called to him, that whispered she wouldn’t rest until he’d found out who’d killed her.
    Until then, neither would he.
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    He sat in his study, a half-full tumbler of scotch at his elbow, looking at a picture of them from years ago. Leather jackets and wild hair and restless spirits. They’d had nothing then, no one. They’d run the streets as only those who have nobody waiting at home to question their activities could. They’d gotten into their share of trouble, but never paid the consequences until the night Father died. They’d gotten away with his murder, but they’d lost the only person who’d ever given a damn about them. He took a quick swig from the glass trying to counteract the taste of bile in his throat, with no success.
    That night, the night the church went up in flames, they made a pact. They would stick together. They’d watch each