Dan cleared out the morgue attendant before he brought me in. The room was cold and smelled like Lysol. It looked exactly you seen ‘em on TV cop shows.

There she was, lying naked and pale on a table under a big bright light.

“Damn. What a waste of great tits,” the fine police chief of Richards clucked.

I ignored both him and the tits. I’d seen enough of them when she was alive.

He just couldn’t shut up, though. “Jesus Christ, her face is a mess.”

“That’s what happens when somebody shoots you in the back of the head,” I said as I walked over and took hold of her cold right hand.

“What’re you doing?” Dan asked in alarm.

“Don’t wet your panties.”

I pulled out the rhinestone-covered phone and pressed her dead finger to the button.

Abracadabra –

The main screen appeared. Thank fuck.

“Where the hell’d you get that?” Dan asked, now clearly agitated.

“Not at the scene of the crime, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said as I checked out her phone calls.

There were the two that had come in last night from ‘No Number,’ along with a couple of others – one from ‘Nana,’ one from ‘Bobby.’ No voicemails from ‘No Number,’ though.

I scrolled down the entire record of her calls. Lots and lots of names – but no more ‘No Numbers.’ Which meant that unless she was hiding her contact in plain sight under ‘Bobby’ or ‘Nana’ or some shit, she’d been deleting every call as she went along.

“Say, Dan,” I spoke up. “You can get her records off the phone company, right? Everybody who called her, or everybody she called?”

“Yeah?”

“That’d be something you’d do in the course of a murder investigation, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Why don’t you make that happen?” I suggested, and ignored his sourpuss look.

I checked her texts next. Tons of names from her Contacts list, too – except one, from a phone number with no name. It had come in at 11:27… just 30 minutes before she died.

Where are you? was all it said.

It was a 310 area code. Los Angeles.

Different area code from the last number she’d called, but still Los Angeles.

I took a picture of her screen with my phone, just in case hers went dead or locked up and I couldn’t get it back. I needed that number.

“You think you can hurry this up, Lou?” Dan asked nervously.

“Hold on, I got to fix it so the phone doesn’t lock up on me. I figure you don’t want to keep sneaking me back in here.”

“Better do whatever you need to do now,” Dan said. “They’ll be releasing the body to the family soon.”

“Huh. Think you can cut off a finger for me before you turn her over to ‘em?”

I kept my face serious just long enough to make him look queasy. Then I broke into a grin.

“Kiddin’, Dan. Jesus, lighten up.”

I went into the phone’s settings and fixed it so it wouldn’t turn off to save power. Now I just had to get it home and plug it in before it died on me.

“Alright, I’m good to go,” I said, careful to hold the phone so I didn’t accidentally switch it off.

Once we got back to my car, Dan cleared his throat. “So… about our continued arrangement…”

“Is five thousand good enough?” I asked.

He looked unhappy. “To sneak you into a morgue, unlock a stolen phone, bury a murder investigation, and get you a list of numbers from the phone company? No, it’s not.”

I wanted to roll my eyes, but politely refrained. “Alright, Dan, what were you thinkin’?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty grand?! Jesus fuckin’ Christ!”

“Something like this could end my career if somebody found out, Lou.”

I didn’t point out that just about everything he’d ever done for the Riders could have ended his career.

“I ain’t Bill Gates, Dan.”

“I’m not either. I got a kid in college, and another one in high school. Kids are expensive.”

“Shit, don’t blame me ‘cause you didn’t pull out in time,” I said.

He didn’t like that too much.

“I can’t do thirty right now. How about five up front, and another ten over the next three months?”

“Ten up front, fifteen next month.”

“This is highway fuckin’ robbery.”

“More like extremely personalized service,” he said.

“Yeah, if ‘extremely personalized service’ means takin’ it up the ass.”

He set his jaw and looked at me angrily.

“I meant me getting’ taken advantage of financially,” I said, though really I’d meant it exactly the way he’d heard it: Buttboy for Hire Dan Peters.

He didn’t say anything, just kept glaring at me.

“Seven upfront, ten next month – ”

“Ten upfront, twelve next month.”

We haggled for a bit until we settled on 19 grand.

“Alright,” I said, pretending to relent, even though I’d figured we’d wind up here based on past transactions. “But I want those phone numbers as soon as they come in.”

“Soon as I get my nine grand up front.”

“You’ll have it by the end of the day,” I promised as I got in my car.