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times.
    A man says: “Detective, my name is Mr. Church.”
    Paris closes his eyes, as he often does when speaking to a total stranger on the phone for the first time. He tries to put a physical description to the voice. A little cop game of his. “What can I do for you, Mr. Church?”
    “I think I might have some information for you.”
    “Regarding?”
    “A woman.”
    What a shock , Paris thinks. “I’ll need a little more information, sir.”
    The man says: “She may be missing.”
    Cool. Handoff . “Ah. Okay,” Paris begins, making a mental note to talk to the dispatcher for the ten thousandth time. “That’s a completely different department altogether. If you’ll hang on, I can transfer you to—”
    “I fear for her. She may no longer be among the living.”
    “I’m sure she’s just fine, sir,” Paris says, wondering who uses a phrase like among the living . “But I’m afraid the Homicide Unit doesn’t get involved with missing persons.”
    “Although it is necessary, I suppose,” the man continues. “Like deadheading a flower. Orchids, lilies, roses.”
    Somehow, Paris had known this conversation was blasting off-planet. After nearly twenty years, you begin to hear the launch take place in real time. “Like deadheading a flower?”
    “Yes. You know something about that, don’t you, officer?”
    “I’m afraid not, sir. Look, if there is something the Homicide Unit can do for you, I’ll be more than happy to—”
    “You will take her place in ofún .”
    I will take her place in no fun ? “I’m sorry?”
    “White chalk, detective,” the man says. Almost a whisper now.
    Right.
    “Okay, Mr. Church. Thanks for calling. I’ll be on the lookout for a—”
    But the line is dead. Seconds later comes the dial tone.
    Like deadheading a flower . . .
    For some reason, Paris keeps the phone to his ear for the moment.
    “Jack?”
    Orchids, lilies, roses . . .
    “Jack?”
    Paris suddenly realizes that the unit commander, Captain Randall Elliott, and a woman he does not recognize are standing in the doorway to his office.
    Paris rises to his feet, sensing an introduction. He also senses a bullshit assignment coming down the pike. He is right on both counts.
    “Got a minute, Jack?” Elliott asks.
    “For you, captain?”
    “This is Ms. Cruz. She’s with Mondo Latino ,” Elliott says, his lips drawn into a tight, phony smile, the one that screams political pitchout. Elliott is in his early fifties, white-haired, bulky in his blues, ruddied by a half-century of Cleveland winters. “She’s going to be spending a week here, watching how the unit operates. I figured you’d be the most likely candidate to show her around. She said she wanted to work with the best.”
    The look Paris gives Elliott at that moment could slice concrete. Thin.
    Paris hates these my-week-with-the-cops things that local reporters do to demonstrate how gosh-awful tough it can be at times for the city’s finest, leaving them free to trash the department the other fifty-one weeks of the year. Mondo Latino is a small west-side newspaper serving the city’s Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican communities. In spite of the fact that the paper always seems to be relatively fair with its coverage of the department, the last thing Paris really wants is to carry around a reporter for a week.
    Ms. Cruz is afloat somewhere in her twenties, plain to an excruciating fault, wearing thick glasses, nylon hiking boots, a bulky burnt-orange sweater set. Her hair, the color of wet tobacco, hangs lifelessly to her shoulders. She seems to be a somewhat attractive young woman who goes way out of her way to subvert any chance of appearing so.
    “Mercedes F. Cruz,” the woman says, almost grabbing Paris’s hand from his pocket and shaking it with royal enthusiasm. “Nice to meet you.”
    “Nice to meet you ,” Paris replies, noticing that Mercedes F. Cruz is wearing what looks like a temporary metal retainer on her teeth and a