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leave me your names and phone numbers, and if this Melody comes back in, I’ll have her call you.”
    â€œStill playing the hero.” The big fella took a step toward me, and I spring-loaded my body.
    The kid beat him to me. I let him get close, then grabbed the lapels of his coat and spun him into his partner. The big one took the impact like a concrete pillar. The kid bounced off him and slammed against the stainless steel wine refrigerator. His boss loomed in front of me filling up my vision, a crooked smile below hard pebble eyes.
    Adrenaline pulsed in the place of blood. I eyed the knife block on the meat-cutting table two steps away.
    â€œHey!” A voice boomed from the other side of the kitchen.
    Everyone turned to see Thomas “Turk” Muldoon standing in the doorway. My partner, my best friend, and the toughest man I knew. He’d put on a couple pounds around the middle since his linebacking days at UCLA, but most of him was still hard and agile. He held a meat mallet in his right hand. Used to tenderize meat. Sometimes the two-legged kind.
    The concrete pillar worked his eyes over Turk. “You interrupted our little talk.”
    â€œBy all means, let’s talk.” The whites grew around Turk’s pale-blue eyes. I’d seen that look before. So had a drunk who once insulted Turk’s sister. Right before unconsciousness.
    The head tough moved his eyes from Turk over to me and finally rested them on his partner. “Let’s go.”
    The younger one held his ground for a second and then walked toward the kitchen door, eyeballing Turk with each step. The leader followed him, but stopped at the exit and turned to face us.
    â€œYou two be careful, now.” He grabbed a water glass off the shelf opposite the dishwasher and held it with his palm over the top. He squeezed and it exploded into shards and crashed down onto the cement floor. “Life can be dangerous. Even in La Jolla.”
    He gave us one more tough-guy look and then went through the door.
    Turk followed him through the restaurant like a controlled avalanche flowing down a mountain.
    I rode his wake.
    It wasn’t the first time Turk had covered my ass. Back in the early days after Santa Barbara, there were always a few latent frat boys brave on booze who wanted to test the “murderer.” I tried to hide in public under a low profile. The first year back, I even grew a beard. But when challenged, my anger was quick and punitive. I rarely needed Turk’s support, but he was always there. No matter what.
    After the tough guys left, I closed the front door behind them. The backsplash of adrenaline twitched in my hands.
    â€œWhat the hell was that all about?” Turk sat down on the couch in the hall and ran his hand through a tangle of red Chia Pet hair that hadn’t felt a comb since the ’80s.
    â€œThey were looking for a woman who had dinner here last night.” I sat down next to him and let go a sigh.
    â€œThey had a funny way of looking.”
    I replayed the night for him, leaving out the sex and Stone wanting to buy Muldoon’s. The former was between Melody and me. The latter would come out soon enough.
    â€œSo, those two assholes were Stone’s boys?” His eyebrows rose.
    â€œSo, you know Stone.” I stood on my anger and waited for Turk to come clean.
    â€œNot personally, but I know of him. Everybody does.”
    â€œI don’t.”
    â€œDon’t you ever read the newspaper?” He looked at me like I was the dumb kid in school.
    â€œNot in the last eight years.”
    â€œOh. Yeah.” He squeezed my shoulder with his massive hand. “Sorry.”
    My anger throttled down. Turk was the man who’d given me a life after my old one had died. No one would hire me after SBPD pushed me off the force. Not in Santa Barbara, not down here. Then Turk called and offered me a job as kitchen manager at Muldoon’s. He took some heat