“Jesus Christ,” Larkin muttered in an almost absent, automatic manner. He walked to the front desk and said, “Everett Larkin. I have an eleven o’clock appointment with Mable McClennan.”
A disinterested young man with adult acne, aggressively chewing bubble gum that smelled like artificial cotton candy, didn’t look up from his cell phone. “Sorry—no appointments. She’s in meetings all day.”
Larkin reached into his suit coat, removed his shield, and tapped it against the counter until the receptionist looked up. “Detective Everett Larkin.”
He snapped his gum loudly, studied the credentials, then directed his gaze to Doyle as the latter sidled up to the counter, shoulder brushing Larkin’s as he displayed his own badge. The receptionist snapped his gum again, then said, “I watched a porno that started out just like this—Butt Police Volume Four. The guy in it, he broke his conditions of bail, so two cops show up, right? And they’re gonna bring him to jail, of course, but he’s like,What can I do to change your minds?He’s so hot, too. Total gym bunny. So he goes down on both cops—I swear there’s, like, sixteen…eighteeninches of meat between the two—then they get out their nightsticks—oh my God.” He stood and leaned over the desk to look. “Do you guys have nightsticks?”
“If you don’t call Mable McClennan in the next five seconds and tell her that Detective Larkin is here for their eleven o’clock appointment, I’m arresting you for obstruction of justice.”
Letting out a huff, the receptionist plopped down in his chair. “Rude,” he mumbled, picking up the phone and dialing an extension.
“You know,” Doyle said, his tone conversational as he tucked his badge away, “it makes you wonder.”
“What does.”
“The events of the previous three Butt Police and why they warranted a fourth storyline.”
“—I mean, they have badges, so—” The receptionist popped a bubble and glanced at the two. He whispered into the receiver, “Kind of a jerk, to be honest—”
“That must be you,” Doyle said to Larkin.
“—supercute, though,” the receptionist concluded, drawing out thesuperto emphasize his point.
“That’d be me,” Doyle continued.
Larkin glanced toward a staircase to the left before he said to Doyle, “You were right.”
“About what, being cute?”
“No. I’ll take the dead. You can have the living.” Larkin moved past and started for the steps.
“Sir,” the receptionist protested, but it came off as a sort of melodramatic whine. “Hey, detective!”
“What floor is she,” Larkin asked over his shoulder.
“Third, but—”
Larkin disappeared around the corner to hike the steep set of stairs indicative of the building’s age. By the time he was crossing the second-floor hallway and starting up the next flight, Doyle had caught up with him.
“Larkin,” he called. “Hang on. I think we need to set some out-in-the-field ground rules.”
Larkin turned on the step and was eye-level with Doyle. “I would like to take this moment to remind you I didn’t ask you to join me. If you don’t like how I work, that’s your own fault.”
“Listen,” Doyle said, ignoring the jab. “Rule one: don’t leave me to handle a DP aficionado who’s making googly eyes at your ass and trying to give me his number in a singsong voice like he’s auditioning for Meryl Streep’s character inMamma Mia.”
“There’s a lot for me to unpack in that statement.”
“It’s an important rule, all right?”
“And extremely specific.” Larkin hiked to the next landing, and then asked, “How do you know he’s into—”
“He told me.”
Larkin grunted, then nearly jumped as an office door slammed open, the doorknob cracking loudly against drywall.
A stout, middle-aged black woman, with eyes that cut like knives, stood in the threshold. She tapped a cigarette free from a Marlboro pack in her hand, stuck it unlit between her lips, then asked in that gravelly voice Larkin remembered from the phone call in his car, “Which of you is Larkin?”
Larkin raised his hand. “That’d be me, ma’am.”
