I PUT IN a call for help to my friend Avie Glazer, who headed up the Gang Intervention Project in the Third District. I told Avie why it was important to me.

    “ 'Course I'll help. You know me, Alex. I'm more tapped into La Mara R, Vatos Locos, Northwest gangs. But you can come over here and ask around Seventeenth and R if you want. See if anybody's tuned in.”

    “Any way you could meet us?” I asked him. “I'll owe you one. Buy you a beer.”

    “Which makes it how many total? Favors and beers?”

    That was his way of saying yes, though. Bree and I met Avie at a shitty little pool hall called Forty-Four. The owner told us that was how old he was when he opened the place. Avie already knew the story but listened politely anyway.

    “Seemed like as good a name as any,” the owner said. His what-ever attitude struck me as that of a long-term stoner.For sure, he wasn't making his nut on billiards and sodas. His name was Jaime Ramirez, and Avie Glazer had advised me to give him room and a little respect.

    “You know anything about the murders in Georgetown last night?” I asked Ramirez after we'd chitchatted some. “Multiple perps?”

    “That was some awful shit,” he said, leaning on the bottom half of a Dutch door, a brown cigarette held between stubby fingers and tilted at the same angle as his body.