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spewing pus. When he got to the home address, I left Max standing next to him. Pulled the mobile cellular phone from the front seat. A gift from a nujack whose nine–millimeter automatic wasn't as fast as Max's hands. Punched in the number, hit the Send button. McGowan was right there. I gave him the address. "The kid's not going to want to go," I told him.
    He sighed into the phone. I cut the connection to McGowan.
    I walked back over to the freak. Looked down and let him hear the truth. "You're square now. Somebody did something to you, you did something to somebody else. It's over, okay? You're gonna need a lot of help now, understand? You got some real decisions to make. You'll find some phone numbers in your pocket later. Those people, they can help you, if you want the help. You don't want the help, that's up to you. There's another number. Wolfe, over at City–Wide. You want to testify against Monroe, she'll handle it. Set you up with anything you need. But this other stuff, it's over. You go back to your old ways, you re coming back here. Understand?"
    He nodded, watching me from under long eyelashes, trembling slightly.
    "You come back here, you're coming back to stay."
    I nodded at Max. He did something to the kid's neck. We put him back into the trunk. He'd wake up later with a bad headache and five hundred bucks in his pocket.

12
    I MET MCGOWAN and Morales early the next morning. At the diner where they hang out. They hadn't been to sleep yet.
    "You found him?" I asked.
    "Yeah." McGowan's voice was dead.
    "Get him home?"
    "He said he
was
home. His name is Lucas. A special boy, he told us he was. A special boy. He's a poet. You wanna see his poetry?" He slid a slick magazine across to me.
Boys Who Love
it said on the cover. Picture of a kid sitting astride a BMX dirt bike, sun shining behind him.
    "Page twenty–nine," McGowan said.
    The poem was entitled "Unicorn." All about little buds needing the pure sunlight of love to bring them to full flower.
    "You lock the freak up?" I asked.
    "Yeah. He's got his story ready, this Monroe. He found the kid wandering around a shopping center. The kid told him he was being sexually abused at home. This Monroe, he saved the boy. Raised him like his own kid. Spent a fortune on him. Private tutors, the whole works."
    "And the kid won't testify, right?"
    "Right. We took him home. Saw his mother and father. Looked right through them."
    "What's next?"
    "Lily talked with him. She says he's 'bonded' to that devil. Harder than deprogramming a kid caught up in one of those cults. Gonna take a long time. We ran it by Wolfe at City–Wide. She says she's got enough to indict Monroe even without the kid.
    "And Lucas said there was another kid. Older than him. Layne. Wolfe wanted to know, maybe this Layne, he'd testify against Monroe…"
    His voice trailed off, making it a question. I shrugged.
    "I fucking
told
you," Morales said.
    "And the ten grand's gone too?"
    "Yeah."
    "Wolfe's the best. She was standing by. Got a telephonic search warrant. There was enough stuff in the house…pictures and all…Monroe goes down for a long time even without the kid's testimony. Wolfe says they can use that DNA fingerprinting, prove this kid is who the parents say he is. She asked if you were in this."
    "And you told her…"
    "No."
    It wouldn't fool Wolfe. She wasn't asking McGowan for information, she was sending me a message. The beautiful prosecutor played the game right to the edge of the line, played it too hard for the degenerates to win.
    But they kept coming. Tidal waves from a swamp the EPA could never clean up.
    Morales ground out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. Hard, the way he did everything. "Whatever he gets, it's not enough. Next to him, a rapist's a class act." His eyes held mine, waiting.
    "What're you saying?"
    "He's not saying nothing," McGowan snapped. "Just frustrated, that's all."
    "You think the
federales
will play Let's Make a Deal with this freak?"
    "They could. He