The big man’s mouth gapes, and his eyes are rolled back. His banana yellow Stevie Ray Vaughan T-shirt is dyed crimson, and a red pool has seeped beneath his corpse. Later, it will be ascertained that the killer gutted the big man with a classic street fighter’s move: long-bladed knife thrust under the sternum followed by a single upward motion that slices through intestine and diaphragm and nicks the right ventricle of Baby Boy’s already seriously enlarged heart.
Baby Boy is long past help, and the cops don’t even attempt it.
2
Petra Connor, barely out of her no-guys phase, knew the pantsuit had been a stupid idea.
Three-month no-guys phase. The way she saw it, she deserved more self-indulgence than that, but her forgiving nature had taken over, and now she could look at carriers of Y chromosomes without wanting to punch them.
She was the only female detective working nights at Hollywood Division, and pretending to be nice was hurting her facial muscles.
The first month of the phase had been spent convincing herself it wasn’t her fault. Even though here she was, barely thirty and a two-time loser in the Serious Relationship Sweepstakes.
Chapter One: the rotten husband. Chapter Two was even worse: the boyfriend who’d gone back to his ex-wife.
She’d stopped hating Ron Banks. Even though he’d been the one to come on to her, had pursued her gently but unrelentingly. Weakening her resistance by being courtly and caring and tender in bed, a genuine nice guy.
Like so many nice guys, essentially weak.
Some would say Ron had done the right thing. For himself. For his daughters.
Something else that had attracted Petra to him: terrific father. Ron was raising Alicia and Bea while his ex, a Spanish beauty, trained horses in Majorca. Two-year-old divorce, you’da thought it would stick.