hit."

Detective Marc Chastain rubbed his unshaven face, feeling the bristly whiskers rasping against his hand. He yawned and sipped the hot coffee one of the patrolmen had handed him. It was three o'clock in the morning, which meant he'd had not quite three hours of sleep. He was inclined to feel grumpy but pushed the mood away. He was too controlled to let lack of sleep keep him from giving his full attention to the job. He could catch up on his sleep the next night, or the next; the poor bum lying on the uneven sidewalk didn't have that option.

One of the disadvantages of living in the Quarter—other than ancient wiring and even more ancient plumbing—was that if anything happened there, he was usually first on the scene, which meant it became his case. Hell, he had walked to the scene and still beat the next detective who had shown up, Shannon, by a good two minutes.

As bad as he felt, however, he was better off than the homeless man stiffening on the sidewalk. Blinking his gritty eyes, Marc surveyed the scene, scribbling notes on his pad.

The victim was approximately six feet tall, a hundred and eighty-five pounds. Age fifty to fifty-five. Gray hair, brown eyes. He lay twisted half onto his right side, his right arm having caught behind him when he fell; the arm braced him, kept him from falling over. There was a small, neat black hole in the center of his forehead but no corresponding wound in the back of his head, meaning the bullet hadn't exited. A.22, Marc thought. Without the power to punch through the skull twice, the lead had wallowed around in the brain, destroying tissue as it went. No blood to speak of, meaning the victim had died instantly. Professionals used.22s, but they were also the cheapest and most readily available handgun, making them the favorites, the "Saturday night specials" used by punk stickup kids. Despite all the outcry to ban guns completely, Marc figured he had a better chance against a poorly aimed.22 bullet than he would against an eight-inch blade or a studded baseball bat, because when a bad guy got close enough to use one of those, he was dead serious and the results far more brutal.

He couldn't rule out drugs as the motive here, but generally pushers, whether individuals or gangs, preferred greater fire power. They liked street-sweepers because they thought it was impressive to throw out all that hot lead in a couple of seconds. A single neat round in the head wasn't their style, wasn't dramatic enough.

Marc lifted his head and looked around. The blindingly bright lights of television cameras glared at him, and he narrowed his eyes to filter out the light as he surveyed the crowd that had gathered. Four young women, dressed for a night on the town, had been segregated from everyone else; one of the women was weeping hysterically, and a medic was trying to calm her. Those four had discovered the body. A patrolman was talking to the three who were coherent, getting names, taking notes. Marc would get to the witnesses in a few minutes.

All the other people had been drawn by the screams of the young women, and the crowd had drawn the television cameras. He sighed. Usually, the murder of a homeless man barely rated a mention in the newspaper, much less television coverage. If a patrolman had discovered the body, there wouldn't be any circus. But New Orleans was a tourist town, and anything that involved tourists was news. Now the newspapers and television stations would be full of more stories about New Orleans's horrific murder rate.

Never mind that most of the murders were in the drug community, that the average citizen was as safe in New Orleans as anywhere else, assuming said citizen had brains enough to stay out of certain neighborhoods; a statistic was a statistic and therefore worthy of being intoned again and again by solemn talking heads. Under pressure from a now-frightened citizenry, perhaps more frightened by the threat of losing tourist dollars than any perceived danger to their own lives, the mayor would come down hard on the police commissioner. The commissioner would then come down hard on the chief, and the shit would filter down to every detective and patrolman in the city.

Wonderful.

He looked back down at the victim, committing every detail to memory. This time, he noticed a strange fold in the victim's shirt, a funny lump in the small of his back. Squatting beside the body, he used his pen to carefuly lift the shirt tail and expose the weapon tucked into the bum's waistband.

"Jesus," Shannon said, standing beside him. "Looks like an awful expensive piece for a bum to be carryin' around. Wonder where he stole it."

Marc shifted his body to block the television cameras. He took the evidence bag and, again using his pen, eased the pistol from the victim's waistband. "Glock 17," he murmured, studying the beautiful weapon. If a Glock had been stolen locally, the owner would have reported the theft, assuming he even knew one had occurred. A lot of people bought guns and put them up, and months would go by before they took the gun out again. Careless shits. If people were going to own a weapon, they owed it to themselves and their family to become proficient with the weapon, to practice regularly and keep the weapon in good condition, and to know where the hell it was.

He lifted the weapon and sniffed. It hadn't been fired; he didn't smell the stench of burned gunpowder, only the sharp, clean scents of metal, plastic, and gun oil. The weapon was in excellent condition, well cared for and maintained. He didn't check the clip, because he didn't want to blur any fingerprints, but he would bet it was full.

"Has it been fired?" Shannon asked.

"No." Marc deposited the weapon in the evidence bag, all the while studying the victim for other interesting details.

Possessing a Glock definitely raised the victim's status from ordinary street bum to unordinary street bum, which raised Marc's curiosity in direct proportion. Why would an ordinary street bum be packing a Glock? Drugs? Not likely. Street bums were users, not dealers. That was how they got to be street bums in the first place. So, say he stole the Glock, maybe to sell for drugs; why was he still packing it around? A Glock would be easy to unload. Maybe he had felt he needed the protection, for all the good it had done him.

Why would he need protection? People who were worried about their safety made an effort not to live in the streets.

As he studied the victim, something… a memory… some sense of recognition… nagged at him. It wasn't the victim himself, but something about him. He let his eyes unfocus a little so he was seeing the entire body, not one detail at a time, and it hit him. Dirt.

The victim was dirty, the normal condition for street bums. But his face and hands looked as if they had been deliberately smeared. An image flashed in Marc's mind, and his head lifted sharply.

"What?" Shannon asked. He squatted beside Marc, dark eyebrows pinching together. He was a lean young black man, recently promoted to detective, sharp and tough and eager to learn.

"I think he's ex-military." Carefully, he began patting the victim's pockets, feeling for identification, but all the pockets were empty.

"Why's that?"

"Take a look at his face and hands."

Shannon studied the victim. He had done four years in the Army, so he had some experience himself. "Camouflage," he said with faint astonishment. "He was hiding."

"Probably from whoever did him." Marc studied the sidewalk and street around them. Nothing in the Quarter was new; everything was stained with age. If the television cameras hadn't been there, he might not have seen it, but the bright lights lit up the scene like daylight. Even so, the dark splotches some ten feet away blended in with the wet sidewalk so that they were barely distinguishable.

"Take a look at this." He stood and moved over to the spots, and Shannon followed.

"More blood," Shannon said.

"Yeah, but I doubt it's the victim's. The head shot killed him instantly; he didn't bleed enough to fill a thimble."

Shannon looked over at the body. "But you said his weapon hadn't been fired. Where did this blood come from?"

"Did you read the patrolmen's notes?"

"Yeah, what about them?"

"They found four shell casings, all twenty-two caliber. And the victim has how many holes in him?"

"One. But he could have been fired at four times and been hit the last time."

"He had a Glock seventeen in his waistband. If someone was shooting at him and had already missed three times, don't you think he would at least have tried to shoot back? He wouldn't have just stood there while the first three shots were fired, so he was killed by the first one, second one for sure; any more than that, and he would have had time to react."

"So we have two, maybe three shots unaccounted for, and blood in another location."

"Right. It follows that whoever did our victim also shot the unknown blood donor, who may or may not be dead. Another body may turn up somewhere, though I don't see the logic in carrying one body away and leaving the second one here, unless the perps just didn't have enough time to grab the second body."

"Perps? Not one guy, then?"

"He would have to be pretty damn strong to pick up a dead guy. You know how it is. They flop all over the place."

"Plus they're dead weight," Shannon said, his face straight.

Marc hid a chuckle, turning it into a cough so the television cameras wouldn't pick up the image of a callous cop laughing over the body. Cops had to laugh, otherwise they wouldn't be able to bear the carnage they saw.

"Maybe the blood donor walked away under his own steam," Shannon suggested. "There's not much blood."

"Neither is there a blood trail that I can see, though drops would be hard to spot on a wet sidewalk in the dark. What did he do, administer first aid to himself quickly enough, cleanly enough, that not even one drop hit the ground?"

Shannon shook his head in answer to Marc's question. Even a cut finger tended to drip before the blood could be staunched. "So… you think there were two or more perps, and the missing guy was loaded up and carried away."

"You catch on fast."

"What do you think it was, a drug deal gone bad or some bums arguing over a cardboard house?"

"I don't know. There would be at least three parties involved, and that doesn't feel right. Our victim, who was armed, didn't get a chance to protect himself, so that means he was taken by surprise. There aren't any witnesses, any weapons, any known motive."

Shannon glanced at the crowd. "So what do we do?"

"Go through the motions." It was a hard fact of life, but no police department in the country would expend a lot of effort on catching the murderer of a street bum. Marc was ruthlessly pragmatic; the city's resources were limited, so the money and effort should be spent where it would do the most good, protecting the normal, law-abiding citizens who worked and paid taxes and went to their kids' ball games. "If he's ex-military, the way we think, at least we should be able to ID him."

"Yeah." Shannon stood. "Too bad it had to be tourists who found him."

Without the tourists, this would all have been handled without fuss. With the pressure on to keep the murder rate down, there were occasional rumors that a body had been quietly taken across the river to Jefferson Parish and dumped there, so the murder wouldn't show up on New Orleans's statistics. Marc had personally never done that, never asked, so he couldn't say if it really happened or not. In New Orleans, anything was possible. It was just as possible that the rumor was the result of someone overhearing a couple of cops saying they wished they could dump a body somewhere. But the rumor added to New Orleans's reputation and, true or not, had become part of the local lore.

"The fuss will die down," he said briefly. "The press will make a big deal of it on the morning news, we'll identify him as homeless, there'll be a mention of it on the evening news, and then it's history."

Shannon shrugged, accepting reality as readily as Marc did. He looked around at the shabby old buildings. "You live in the Quarter, don't you?"

They walked back to the body. "Yeah, I've got a house on St. Louis."

"How'd you manage that, man?"

"Inherited it from my grandmother."

"No shit? So you're from one of those old Creole families?"

"My grandmother was. My father was shanty Irish." Marc didn't add that he had grown up in the house on St. Louis; he didn't flaunt his background. Making a big deal of his heritage would be stupid. Besides, there was nothing to flaunt. His father hadn't been able to keep a job, so, rather than see her daughter and grandson live in progressively worse dumps until they were finally homeless, his grandmother had taken them in and tolerated, reluctantly, her son-in-law's presence as the price she must pay for peace of mind. His grandmother had always acted like a dethroned queen, but the family money had long since dwindled away, and all that was left was the big house in the Quarter.

Marc didn't think of himself as Creole; he was simply an American. More than that, he was a damn good cop, hard-nosed enough to recognize there were times when he could make a difference and times when he couldn't. This was one of the times when he couldn't, and he didn't waste time beating himself up over it.

Still, as he looked down at the victim, he couldn't help wondering if the guy had any family, where they were, if they would even care that he was dead. Most of the street bums were trash, too lazy to work, into drugs and petty crimes. But some of them were mentally incapacitated, incapable of looking out for themselves, and Marc didn't have any patience with the families who simply turned these people out to shift for themselves. Yes, they were a lot of trouble, a hell of a lot of trouble, but they couldn't help it, and families were supposed to take care of their own. Maybe he was old-fashioned, but his grandmother had put family above everything, and her example had stuck.

Marc squatted by the body again, studying the dead eyes, wondering at the scenario that had been played out here in the middle of the Quarter without anyone hearing or seeing anything suspicious. No gunshots had been reported, though at least four had been fired. Silencer? That made him think pro, and pro made him think organized crime, not street drug dealer. This guy didn't have the look of a user, anyway; under the dirt, he looked to be fairly muscular and well fed. Street bums could eat as well as anyone these days, with all the shelters and soup kitchens, but users weren't much interested in food. And dealers usually weren't homeless; they needed a base of operations.

He rubbed his nose. This didn't feel like drugs. Maybe the guy just pissed off the wrong party; maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and some wiseguy took him down. Likely he'd never know, but damn, he hated mysteries.

The meat wagon boys came over. "You through here, Detective?"

Marc stood. "Yeah." There was nothing else he could do, no other details to glean from the scene. Maybe the medical examiner could come up with a name, but other than that, they likely knew as much about the victim as they were ever going to know.

In the meantime, he had four young women to interview. After watching the body being loaded and carried away, he glanced at Shannon. "You want to do some interviewing?"

The young detective looked over at the women. "As long as I don't have to talk to the one who's squalling. Man, she hasn't shut up since I got here."

"Just do some preliminaries. I'll get in touch with them tomorrow." He could request that they come down to the Eighth District, but he didn't want to make things tougher for them than he had to. The young ladies, all of whom looked to be in their early twenties, had come to the Quarter for a good time. The brutality of murder had never touched them before; he could forgive them a few tears.

"Take it easy on them," he advised Shannon under his breath as they approached. "They need a little petting."

Shannon darted a startled glance at Marc; in case the senior detective hadn't noticed, he was black, and the witnesses weren't. Pet them? Was he crazy?

But though Shannon had been a detective for only a few months, he had heard some things. Chastain kind of kept to himself, but he was well liked in the department. The word was he was the best at interrogating witnesses and suspects alike, because when he needed to be, he was cool and low-key and could calm the most hysterical witness, but he was also a real hard-ass with the bad guys.

"Chastain," one detective had said, "is the type of guy who carries a blade." By that, Shannon deduced, he was referring not to the utility pocket knife almost every man carried but to a knife whose sole function was as a weapon.

Yeah, that described Chastain, all right. A good knife fighter was smooth and controlled, sneaky and lethal.

Shannon also admired Chastain's sense of style. Man, look at him; obviously just out of bed, unshaven, his eyes heavy-lidded, but he was wearing pleated linen slacks, some kind of drapey pullover shirt, and a cream-colored jacket. Even his sockless feet looked cool, as if he'd planned it. Now, that was style.

They reached the knot of young women and introduced themselves. Shannon noticed that Chastain's voice changed, became lower, more gentle. The women subtly moved closer to him, dazed, frightened eyes fastening on his face. Even the one who kept sobbing tried to get control of herself. Smoothly, Chastain separated the group, directing two of the women a few steps away with Shannon. The girl kept weeping, though more quietly now. He heard Chastain making some low, soothing sounds, little more than rumbly whispers in his throat. Before Shannon could gather his thoughts to do more than ask names, he was aware of the girl wiping her eyes and answering Chastain's questions in a clogged, wavering, but much calmer manner.

It was a little after five before the scene was finally cleared. The witnesses were escorted to their hotel by a patrolman, the crowd dispersed, the media fed enough information for them to have their stories without giving them any salacious details, the street tidied for the next human wave. Morning brought a different set of people to the Quarter: shoppers, delivery men, tourists who felt safer during the day or simply weren't interested in nightlife.

Marc silently cursed when he thought of the paperwork he had to do. He would like to go home and fall into bed, but he'd already had all the sleep he was going to get today. He rubbed his hand over his face, beard stubble rasping. The paperwork could wait until he had showered and shaved.

"No sense walking when my car is here," Shannon said, falling into step beside him. "You going home or to the station?"

"Home first, then to the station. Thanks for the ride." They reached Shannon's car, and Marc slid into the passenger seat.

"So, did you do a hitch in the Army?" Shannon asked. "I mean, you noticed the camo."

"Marines. Right out of high school. That way I could go to college."

"Yeah." Shannon had enlisted for the same end purpose. It felt strange for them to have that in common, a tough young black dude from a bad neighborhood and a smoothly sophisticated white guy from one of the old French Creole families.

There was no traffic to contend with, so in less than a minute they reached St. Louis. Shannon slowed. "Left," Chastain said. "That's it on the right, in the middle of the block. The blue gate."

Shannon stopped in front of the blue gate. In typical Quarter fashion, the big gate was set in a solid wall that provided privacy for the courtyard beyond. The old Creole houses were built around a center courtyard, facing inward to their own gardens rather than out toward the streets. Long wrought-iron balconies extended over the sidewalk, the third-floor balcony providing a roof for the one on the second floor. Tall white shutters framed two sets of double french doors opening onto the balcony, and Shannon could see a couple of garden chairs and a small table up there. Two lush ferns hung from the overhang.

"Ferns?" Shannon couldn't quite keep the disbelief from his tone. Chastain wasn't married. Ferns weren't normal for a heterosexual single guy.

Chastain chuckled. "Relax. They were a gift from an old girlfriend. Women like them, so I keep them. They aren't much trouble, I just water them now and then."

Shannon's mama kept ferns, so he knew there was more involved in their upkeep than occasional water. He grinned a little, imagining a slow parade of women keeping Chastain's ferns in good condition, feeding and pruning and watering. Maybe he should get some ferns.

"You want some coffee?" Chastain asked. "Or are you heading home?"

"Naw, there's no point in it now. Coffee sounds good."

"Come on in, then."

A little surprised by the invitation but anxious for a chance to do some more brain picking, Shannon slid out of the car. Chastain unlocked the gate, and they walked into a long, narrow, bricked entry. A single light fixture set into the wall lit their way. A courtyard opened up beyond them, and in the predawn darkness, Shannon got the impression of lush vegetation, and the sweet scent of flowers teased him.

Chastain turned to the right and went up a flight of stairs. "I turned the house into four apartments," he said. "It was the only way I could afford the upkeep. This one's mine."

When he reached the upper balcony, he unlocked another door, reached in to turn on a light, and motioned for Shannon to enter.

Shannon looked around, his interest keen. The ceilings were high, at least twelve feet, the floors bare hardwood except for a few scattered rugs. A lazily whirling ceiling fan hung in the center. Most of Chastain's furniture was so old-fashioned and shabby Shannon thought it had to have been his grandmother's, though here and there a few new pieces had been added. The place was clean and fairly uncluttered, though there were newspapers on the floor beside a big easy chair, a coffee cup left on a lamp table, books scattered around. "No television?" he blurted.

"It's in the armoire," Chastain said, nodding toward an immense piece of furniture. "My grandmother loved watching soaps, but she refused to leave the television out where her friends could see that she had one. The kitchen's through here."

He led the way past a small inset dining room on the left, pushing open folding doors to enter the kitchen. It was a square, functional room, surprising in its normality. Stove, refrigerator, microwave, toaster, coffeemaker—Shannon had kind of expected a food processor or something, because it seemed Chastain was a man who appreciated fine food and would want to have all the appliances on hand for his girlfriends to cook for him. A wooden table for two was set against the wall.

Chastain expertly measured coffee and water and turned on the maker. "Make yourself at home," he said. "I'll be out by the time the coffee's done. You hungry?"

"I could eat."

"There're some pastry things in the freezer. Pop a couple in the toaster."

A moment later, Shannon heard the shower come on. He didn't want to put the pastries in the toaster too soon, so he walked over to the french doors and stepped out onto the balcony. His car was parked just below. To his left, lights were coming from the other set of doors, so he imagined that was Chastain's bedroom.

Shannon thought of his own place, with dirty clothes on the floor and dishes in the sink and dust all over everything. If he had a girl over, he had to rush around shoving clothes under the bed or in the closet, hide the dishes in the oven, try to blow the worst of the dust off, and it took a can of air freshener to cover the smell of dirty socks for a while. Chastain could bring a babe here anytime without worrying about how his place looked.

Man, this was the way to live. Nothing fancy, and just about everything was old as hell, but he bet Chastain drew babes like a magnet. The way he dressed, the way he lived… women liked this stuff.

Shannon settled against the railing, thinking. Maybe he couldn't own a house in the Quarter, but he could take better care of his place, clean it up, maybe buy a few plants or something. No one would have to know he got them himself instead of a girlfriend giving them to him. And he needed some new threads; nothing flashy like the drug dealers, just maybe some good shirts and a nice jacket or two. And maybe a food processor. Hell, why not?

He was so involved with his plans that he didn't hear the shower cut off. A few minutes later, he was startled when Chastain walked out onto the balcony, freshly shaven, his short black hair plastered to his skull. He was buttoning a short-sleeved white dress shirt made out of some kind of gauzy stuff.

"Ah, hell," Shannon said, disgusted with himself. "I forgot about the Pop-Tarts."

"I put them in," Chastain said.

Shannon felt embarrassed into speech. "I was just—man, this is nice, y'know? The house and everything. And I noticed the way you were with the witnesses, like you were gonna put your arms around them and say, 'Now, now,' any minute. Women like that shit, don't they? I mean, thirty seconds of that stuff, and that girl turned off the spigot and started talking. I thought she was gonna throw herself at you."

"They deserved to be taken care of," Chastain said calmly. "They hadn't done anything wrong, and they were upset. They don't see the things you and I see every day." From inside came the sound of a toaster ejecting its contents, and the two men walked in.

Chastain got two cups down from a cabinet and poured coffee into them. He had made it strong, the way almost everyone in New Orleans did, and the kitchen was fragrant with chicory. Next, he placed the pastries on two small plates, dusted them with powdered sugar, and handed them to Shannon while he got two forks out of a drawer. Shannon put the plates on the small wooden table. "These aren't Pop-Tarts," he blurted.

"A girlfriend—"

"—makes them for you," Shannon finished, and sighed.

"Yeah. They're pretty damn good when I don't have the time for a regular breakfast."

"How many girlfriends you got?"

"I have a lot of friends who are women. I don't date all of them."

Shannon got the message. A gentleman didn't brag about his girlfriends.

These few hours with Chastain had been a revelation, Shannon thought. Watching him work, seeing how he was with witnesses, how he lived and dressed and comported himself, struck Shannon all of a sudden as how a man should be. "I bet you open doors for women, don't you?"

"Of course."

Of course. That was it. The attitude. The attitude was everything. Shannon felt almost breathless. When he made a few changes, he could almost see the women lining up to be with him.

"What's your first name?" Chastain asked when the pastry on his plate was almost gone.

"Antonio."

"Well, Antonio, you have to figure witnesses are already rattled; they don't need anyone coming on tough to them. Calm them down so they can think, go low-key so they don't feel threatened and keep things to themselves." He paused to take a bite. "Say you've got a couple of kids who were someplace they shouldn't have been, and they saw something. If they're scared, they'll lie to cover their asses because they know their parents are going to be pissed. Reassure them. Talk to the parents yourself if you have to, so they don't scare the kid into shutting up entirely. You won't get anything if they do."

Shannon knew interrogation techniques: present yourself as understanding, even sympathetic. Maybe you're talking to a guy you know beat his wife to death. You say, "Man, I know how you feel. Sometimes my wife gets in my face, and I just want to punch a hole in something, you know?" Never mind that you're lying; the perp doesn't know that. He's scared, he's upset, he lost control and killed his wife, and he's looking at nothing but trouble. A friendly voice is maybe all he needs to spill his guts. Chastain gave that same friendly, sympathetic ear to witnesses, too. People probably tripped over their own feet to get to him and start talking.

"How much follow-up do you normally do on a case like this?" he asked Chastain curiously.

"As much as the lieutenant wants me to do." Chastain's voice was neutral. "If we can get an ID, I'll notify his family. They probably won't care, but at least they can take care of his burial."

"You think he was a mental?"

Chastain shrugged, indicating the odds were even. "He didn't look like a doper, didn't have that wasted look. Some of the homeless have families who send money to them. It's a lot easier than trying to take care of someone with a mental condition. Just turn 'em out on the streets."

Shannon nodded. The situation wasn't that unusual. Back in the seventies or early eighties, a bunch of do-gooders had gone to court to get patients released from mental institutions on the grounds that they were perfectly capable of functioning in society. Well, they were, as long as they took their medication. Problem was, crazy people took their medication only when they lived in a controlled environment, like a mental institution. Put them in the real world, a lot of them went off their meds and became more than their families could handle. When the stress became too much, a lot of the mentals ended up on the street, unable to hold a job or even carry on a decent conversation. They shuffled around talking to themselves, cursing people, relieving themselves in public. They were sitting ducks for mindless street violence, thrown in as they were with the dopers and the criminal element.

Something in Chastain's voice alerted Shannon, a cold undertone. "You're pissed, huh?"

"Not yet. If it turns out he had a family that could have been taking care of him, then I'll be pissed."

It was said mildly enough, but a chill ran down Shannon's spine. It struck him that despite Chastain's polite sophistication, when he was pissed he could be one mean son of a bitch.

Chastain gathered the dishes, rinsed them, and placed them in the dishwasher. After refilling both their cups with coffee, he said, "We'll take the coffee with us. Let's go do some paperwork." They both sighed.

Marc made a mental note. If he had time, he'd follow through on this case maybe a little more than he normally would. For one thing, he wanted to find out where this guy had got hold of a Glock.17. Little oddities like that annoyed the hell out of him.