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was gray with the early morning smog that passed for sunrise in L.A. Better smog in L.A. than hogs in Mississippi where he grew up, he thought. Back then, he’d been expected to follow in his daddy’s shit-filled footsteps and take over the family’s hog farm, but in 1969 a football scholarship to Ole Miss saved him from a life of stink and slaughter, and he never looked back. He was fifty-five now. Over the years, he’d put on some weight and maybe his blond hair wasn’t as thick as it had been back at Ole Miss, but thanks to the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals, he was still a stud, or at least that’s what he told himself, and so did the women drawn to his bed by the scent of money and power. He liked them young, big breasted, and blond. It didn’t matter if they were dumb as artificial turf as long as they had IQ enough to spread their legs.
    He’d owned the L.A. Grizzlies for five years and had yet to see a profit. Owning a football team was every sports fan’s dream, but as his granny often said, be careful what you wish for. The first season, the combined costs of salaries, uniforms, equipment, and a thousand other expenses might have sent him to the poor house had he not had his fingers in other pies. A less confident man might have sold the team, but he stuck it out, convinced the fledgling league would be worth millions one day because they played good old-fashioned, back in the day, smash mouth football. Not that lethargic, rule-bound sorriness the older league passed off as sport. In the new league there were no half-assed rules like ”in the grasp” or spiking the ball by the quarterbacks. End zone celebrations were encouraged, and the fans loved it. The only things outlawed were chop blocks, leg whips, and helmet-to-helmet contact. There was also no instant replay—if the officials got it wrong, cry in your beer. The human element had been returned to the game, as had the weather, because the eight teams played outdoors.
    All in all, Big Bo Wenzel knew he should be happy. And he would have been if the league would hurry up and start paying off. The newly signed agreement between the league and one of the cable giants to televise the games helped his bottom line, but it wasn’t enough. With the losses he’d incurred, his other pies were no longer able to keep him afloat. The cash flow problems were keeping him awake at night. His four ex-wives were hounding him about their alimony, he’d gotten a foreclosure notice on the condo he kept in Vegas, and a few days ago he’d watched an old man get blown away not ten feet in front of him.
    The memory of that haunted a man even as jaded as himself. In hindsight, he should have known better than to get mixed up in what he had, but the broker had promised big profits in exchange for a small investment, and no businessman, no matter how ethical, would turn down a 150 percent return. With that in mind, he’d thrown in on the deal, thinking it would be easy, and it had been until the janitor Gus Pennington showed up. The pressure of being linked to this mess was even greater than having to face the grand jury in Texas twelve years ago. He’d beaten that rap thanks to friends in high places, but if he was brought up on murder charges now, he knew that friends were going to be as scarce as a hog with a condom.
    At the stadium, Big Bo parked the Escalade in the space reserved for the owner, then walked across the empty lot to the entrance. With any luck, he thought, the whole thing would disappear. The police seemed to think the janitor’s death was tied to a robbery gone bad. He hoped they stuck with that theory—he couldn’t afford the truth.
     
     
     
    JT felt good when she walked into work that morning. On the drive in from her condo in San Francisco, the rolling fog covering the bay had burned off to reveal a sunny, blue sky day. She felt light, buoyant and apparently it showed.
    “You look awful happy this morning,” Carole said from behind her