I sat for a moment before finally replying, “I need to talk to a lawyer first.”

O’Connor grunted, then slowly sat back in his chair, staring at me the entire time.

“How deep are you?” he asked. “Over your head?”

“I haven’t lost sight of land.” That was a hope more than an answer.

O’Connor gave me a long, appraising look before he finally said, “Good. Don’t lose sight of land. You’ve got your foot in a door I haven’t even found yet. You work with me, you stay legal. You don’t, you might drown.”

“Can you get me that kind of deal?”

“For this I can. I can clear it by this afternoon.”

“What’s this?”

O’Connor reached into his desk and took out a black binder. He handed it to me.

Balancing it on my lap, I opened it. I didn’t know what to expect, and it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing. I slammed the binder shut. Then I took a deep breath and, prepared this time, opened the cover again. I quickly looked through the pictures, glancing hurriedly at just the faces.

“She’s not in here,” I said, closing the binder against those young faces with their false smiles.

“Your friend with the matches in her pocket?” O’Connor asked.

“She’s not there,” I repeated.

“Not yet.”

I put the black binder back on o’Connor’s desk, a faint unsettled queasiness rolling in my stomach.

“You okay?” O’Connor asked me.

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled. “Didn’t eat breakfast.”

“You want something? Coffee? Donut?”

“No, no thanks.” Neither sounded like they would do my stomach any good.

“You don’t have to do this. Say good-bye to Joey, stay out of my way, and you’re out.”

“I want to do this.”

“You sure?”

“How many more girls are going to get their pictures taken, or worse, while you try to find the door I’ve got my foot in?”

O’Connor nodded slowly. “We haven’t got a lot. Copies of these pictures have shown up in places as far away as Miami and New York. NYPD iced some of the distributors and they pointed back this way. Someone’s working out of Heart’s. It could be a lone operator selling it, it might be just another distribution point, or it could be more.”

“How’s Joey involved?”

O’Connor shrugged. “Don’t know. He’s got a few arrests, no convictions. Soft stuff. May have been a pimp, but nothing solid. He might be involved, he might know someone involved.”

“In other words, reel him in and see what we’ve caught.”

“We want the head of this snake. A few years back, it was coming out of Philly. Cops up there got his tail once, but it’s grown back. I don’t want that to happen here.”

“Can you tell me anything else?”

“Concrete? Not much. We could bust the small fish, but that’s all.”

“All right, I’ll work Joey.”

“Think about it. Go home and get some sleep and think about it. You’ll be real far out. Your best protection will be how hard it is to trace you back to the cops.”

I nodded.

“It might get messy and it might get dangerous. Two of the little girls from Philadelphia disappeared. No one believes they’re alive.”

“All the more reason to get them, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I think. But I still want you to go home and sit around for a couple of hours before you say yes or no. Call me later this afternoon. Use a pay phone. I’ll get something official so you can stay out of trouble.”

I stood to go. “I’ll call you this afternoon, but I’ll do it.”

O’Connor nodded, then added, “You’ll be safer if you stay away from your friends, Sergeant Ranson and Danielle Clayton. A cop and an assistant DA might concern the wrong people.” The last time our paths had crossed, I had made it a point to let O’Connor know who my friends were. It hadn’t made much of a difference to him.

I shrugged. “I don’t think that will be a problem.” Not after last night, it wouldn’t.

I walked out of the police station, the queasy feeling still roiling my stomach. Those pictures were slick, professional. It was the intimation I had glimpsed behind the makeup and camera angles, that disturbed me. The faces of the men were never seen, only the girls were fully exposed to the camera. Some staring at it with a frightening coyness that would have been out of place in a twenty-one-year old; others seemed placid, compliant, as if it were the only coin they knew to trade, and no one had ever told them how to say no or struggle. And, finally, there were the faces of those who had fought back and lost, the look of the vanquished whose will has been taken from them.

What O’Connor had hinted at, but not directly said, was that pictures of Cissy existed. I reached my car, bracing myself against it, waiting for a dry heave to pass.

Could I do this, I wondered. It was unlikely I would get to the head of the snake without passing more of these pictures, and perhaps the young girls themselves. Could I just walk by that and pretend it didn’t sicken me?

It would cost me a lot to will myself into the kind of monster who moved easily in that world. Just looking at those pictures brought up a pounding anger. Can I hold it and direct it, or will I lash out at whoever is within reach?If I wanted to attempt to salvage my relationship with Cordelia, I would have to do it now. But this case could take weeks or months, and the distraction and resonances of working through the rough areas of love and sex would be impossible in the face of it.

I got into my car. But whatever the cost, it would cost me more to walk away.

I frittered away the afternoon, starting several things that I had neither the concentration nor patience to finish. I put off calling O’Connor, delayed making the irrevocable commitment. Finally, the afternoon was slipping out of the workday into early evening. I drove to a drugstore with a pay phone in the parking lot. I called O’Connor.

“You still sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m still sure.”

“Okay, take it easy, don’t push. Drop a few hints that you’re real poor and would do anything for money.”

“How do I reach you if I need to?”

“I’ll give you three numbers. Home, work, and beeper. I’ll keep the beeper with me at all times, I’ll sleep with it, I’ll take a crap with it, and when I take my wife out on our anniversary dinner, I’ll have it.”

“How many years?” I asked.

“Next Tuesday, it’ll be twenty-three.”

“Congratulations.” I couldn’t even make three months.

“I’ll be wearing the beeper. Call if you need. My wife’s used to it. We got married right after I got out of the police academy.” Then O’Connor admonished me to, “Memorize them,” as he gave me the phone numbers. He continued, “This is the part I hate—if something happens to you, who do I contact?”