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Officer.”
    “Detective.”
    “Detective. Just what was in there.”
    Torres looked around the bar a bit. “So if I was to ask around, I wouldn’t hear anything about anyone making book here or, I dunno”—he looked at Marv—“providing safe passage for purloined items?”
    “Fucking what items?”
    “Purloined,” Torres said. “It’s a pretty word for stolen.”
    Marv acted like he was giving it some thought. Then he shook his head.
    Torres looked at Bob, and he shook his head too.
    “Or moving a bag of weed every now and then?” Torres said. “I wouldn’t hear nothing about that?”
    Marv and Bob embraced the Fifth without actually invoking it.
    Torres rocked back on his heels, taking them both in like they were a comedy skit. “And when I go through your register tapes—Rita, make sure you grab those, ’kay?—they’ll line up exactly with the amount of money got took?”
    “Absolutely,” Marv said.
    “You bet,” Bob said.
    Torres laughed. “Ah, so the bagmen already came by. Lucky for you.”
    It finally got to Marv and he scowled. “I don’t like what you’re, you know, insinuating. We got robbed.”
    “I know you got robbed.”
    “But you’re treating us like suspects.”
    “Not for robbing your own bar, though.” Torres gave Marv a soft roll of the eyes and a sigh. “Marv—it’s Marv, right?”
    Marv nodded. “That’s what the sign above the building says, yeah.”
    “Okay, Marv.” Torres patted Marv’s elbow and Bob got the feeling he was trying not to smirk. “Everyone knows you’re a drop.”
    “A what?” Marv put his hand behind his ear, leaned in.
    “A drop,” Torres said. “A drop bar.”
    “I am not familiar with that term,” Marv said, looking around for a peanut gallery to play to.
    “No?” Torres played along, enjoying himself. “Well, let’s just say this neighborhood and a couple others around the city, they got a criminal element.”
    “Hush your mouth,” Marv said.
    Torres’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, I’m serious. And so the rumor—some call it urban legend, others call it fucking fact, excuse my French—the rumor is that a criminal collective, a syndicate if you will—”
    Marv laughed. “A syndicate!”
    Torres laughed too. “Right? Yeah, a criminal syndicate, yes, made up mostly of Eastern Europeans, those would be your Croatians and Russians and Chechens and Ukrainians—”
    “What, no Bulgarians?” Marv said.
    “Them too,” Torres said. “So the rumor is—You ready?”
    “I’m ready,” Marv said, and it was his turn to rock back on his heels.
    “The rumor is that this syndicate takes bets and does drug sales and runs hookers all over the city. I mean, east to west and north to south. But every time we in the police try to bust those illicit gains, as we call them, the money isn’t where we thought it was.” Torres held up his hands in surprise.
    Marv mocked the gesture, adding a sad clown face for good measure.
    “Where’s the money?”
    “Where?” Marv wondered.
    “It’s not in the whorehouse, it’s not in the drug den, not at the bookie’s joint. It’s gone.”
    “Poof.”
    “Poof,” Torres agreed. He lowered his voice and gathered Bob and Marv to him. He spoke in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “The theory is that every night, all the money is collected and”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“‘dropped’ in a preselected bar somewhere in the city. The bar takes all the money from all the illegal shit going on in the city that night and sits on it until the morning. And then some Russian in a black leather trench coat and too much aftershave shows up, takes the money, and runs it back across the city to the syndicate.”
    “This syndicate again,” Marv said.
    “And that’s it.” Torres clapped his hands together so sharply that Rardy looked over. “Money gone.”
    “Can I ask you something?” Marv said.
    “Sure.”
    “Why not just sit on the bar in question with a warrant and