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who’s behind the thefts,” I said.
    “Yes, but not in your usual style.”
    “I didn’t know we had a style,” Kylie said, looking at me. “He’s going to have to tell us what it is so we don’t keep doing it.”
    Howard smiled and pulled a newspaper clipping from the folder. It was a picture of Kylie and me leaving the Bassett brothers’ house.
    “The media loves you,” he said. “It’s one thing to be on the front page when you solve a major crime, but last night you interviewed the people whose necklace was stolen, and you made page five of the Post. You guys get ink wherever you go, and my goal—and Muriel’s—is to keep a tight lid on this investigation. She called the PC this morning, and he’s on board.”
    “This is a pervasive crime spree, but it’s the first time we’ve ever heard of it,” Kylie said. “Why is it so hush-hush? And why not tell the public what’s going on? Sometimes they can be our best source of leads.”
    “If you ask the head of any one of these hospitals, he’ll tell you that the secrecy is for the well-being of the patients. People want to feel safe when they check in, but if they hear that criminals have stolen a piece of equipment the size of a refrigerator, they’re going to worry. What else can these villains take? My wallet? My laptop? My newborn baby? The prevailing wisdom at the hospitals is that it’s better to keep it quiet. Less stress for the patients.”
    “What’s the real reason they don’t want to go public with the thefts?” I asked.
    “Because if this shit gets out,” Howard said, a wide grin on his face, “it would put a serious crimp in their fund-raising.”

CHAPTER 8
    “Change our style?” Kylie said as soon as she pulled the car out of the mayor’s driveway. “Is he serious? One of the reasons we get press is because we solve crimes. Riddle me this, Batman: how are we supposed to crack this case if we can’t put out any feelers to the public?”
    “Because we can solve anything, Girl Wonder. That’s why the mayor of Gotham City picked us,” I said. “Why don’t we start by talking to the people we’re actually allowed to talk to? Get on the Drive, and let’s shoot down to Mercy Hospital and talk to their security people.”
    She turned left on 79th, and we headed south on the FDR.
    “There’s only one way to get two million dollars’ worth of hospital equipment from New York to whatever third world buyer is willing to pay for it,” Kylie said. “Big fat shipping containers.”
    “Good idea,” I said. “Let’s give Howard’s list to Jan Hogle and see if she can run it against the manifests of cargo ships that sailed within a few days of each heist. She can cross-check by weight. If they stole x pounds of equipment, she can flag every shipment that weighs about the same.”
    “That wasn’t my idea,” Kylie said. “I was thinking we could go down to the shipyards and talk to the dockworkers. Those guys have eyes and ears everywhere, and a few of them owe us.”
    “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “And then our pictures would be in the paper as the first two cops fired by the Sykes administration.”
    Kylie’s cell phone rang. We were doing fifty on the Drive, so she tapped a button and the call went directly to speaker.
    “This is Detective MacDonald,” she said.
    “This is Mike Danehy at Better Choices,” the voice on the other end said. “Is Mrs. Harrington there?”
    She grabbed the phone and took it off speaker. “This is Mrs. Harrington.”
    She dropped her voice after that so that I could barely hear her end of the conversation, but I could tell by the look on her face that it was bad news. Something was going on with Spence.
    A lifetime ago, when Kylie and I were new at the academy, we had a throw-all-caution-to-the-wind sexually liberating affair that lasted twenty-eight days. And then, like the lyrics to a bad country song, her boyfriend got out of rehab, all shiny clean and sober, and she dumped me