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personnel files, Tracy."
    She smiled, quite possibly in that moment adding to global warming.
    "Thing is, Turner here's been away a while. We don't want him getting lost. Show him around, help facilitate his reentry."
    "Ride shotgun is what you mean," Tracy Caulding said.
    "I don't need protection, Sam."
    "I know you don't, old friend. What I'm thinking is, with you back, maybe we do."

CHAPTER SIX
    HAD A WONDERFUL BARBEQUE dinner that night, Tracy Caulding and I, at Sonny Boy's #2 out on Lamar: indoor picnic benches, sweaty
     plastic pitchers of iced tea, roll of paper towels at each table. There was no Sonny Boy's #1, Tracy told me—not that, after
     a bite or two, anyone was likely to care. Amazing, blazing pork, creamy cool cole slaw, butterbeans and pinto beans baked
     together, biscuits. "Biscuits fresh ever hour," according to a hand-lettered sign.
    For all its cultural razing, Memphis remains one of the great barbeque towns.
    Tracy lowered a stand of ribs she'd sucked dry onto her plate and, tearing off a panel of paper towel, wiped her mouth as
     lustily as she'd taken to the barbeque. She picked up another segment of ribs, held it poised for launch, told me: "Stan Dimitri
     and I had coffee together this afternoon. From organized crime? He filled me in on the Aleche network."
    "That what they're calling them now? Networks? To us they were just gangs."
    "Then for a while it went to crews. Now it's networks. This one's responsible for much of the money that gets dry-cleaned
     through Semper Fi Investments. Run by, if you can believe it, a Native American who passes himself off as some sort of Mediterranean.
     Born Jimmy McCallum, been going by Jorge Aleche for years now."
    "He the one with the nephew?"
    "Stan thinks so."
    "Stan thinks—that's the best you have?"
    Shrugging. "What can I say?"
    "Well . . . What I think is, it's time for a massive rattling of the cage."
    The second portion of ribs dropped onto her plate. A third or fourth paper towel wiped away sins of the immediate past. Older
     sins took a bit longer.
    "And here Sam thinks you're out of touch." She held up her beer, tipping its neck towards me. "I know who you are, Turner."
    "I'd be surprised if you didn't. However big the city, the job's always a small town."
    "I started hearing stories about you the day I first hit the streets."
    "And I remember the first time I looked in a car's rearview mirror and saw the legend 'Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear.'"
    "What the fuck's that mean?"
    "That you can't trust stories."
    "Yeah, but how many of us ever get to have stories told about us?" She drained her beer. "You notice how these bottles keep
     getting smaller?"
    From the breast pocket of her blazer she took a narrow reporter's notebook. Found a free page, scribbled addresses and phone
     numbers, tore the page off and passed it me.
    "Consider it part of your orientation package."
    "You memorized all this?"
    "Some people have trick joints, like their thumbs bend back to their forearms? I have a trick memory. I hear something, see
     something, I've got it forever."
    "Buy you another beer before the bottles get too small? Alcohol kills brain cells, you know—could help wean you off that memory
     thing."
    "Worth a try."
    I got the waiter's attention, ordered another beer for Tracy, bourbon straight up for myself. He brought them and began clearing
     plates.
    "Speaking of stories, I remember one I read years ago," Tracy said. "I was into science fiction then, and new to reading.
     Every book I opened was a marvel. One of the older writers—Kuttner, Kornbluth, those guys. People lived almost forever. But
     every hundred years or so they had to come back to this center where they'd plunge into this pool and swim across it. To rejuvenate
     them, I'm sure the story pointed out. Symbol of rebirth. But what I got from it was how the water of that miraculous pool would take away their memories, wipe them clean, let them go on."
    I took a fond, measured sip of