When I reported back to Louie, he wasn’t happy in the least. It seems the boys in blue had a slight case of amnesia, forgetting to mention that the kid wasn’t really Louie’s. Maybe they were trying to take all the glory for themselves, or perhaps they just wanted to torment a mourning father; either way, the cops had just bought an eternity of never-ending torment.

I reached out in the info stream, using the names I had to garner new ones: known associates, common allies, the works. When I was done, I had everything I needed. I knew who was where and what was what. There were twists and there were turns. If this was a game of chess, it just went three-dimensional.

After catching up with the snatch ‘n’ grabbers, the surviving ones, they folded like a house of cards. They weren’t tough, never tried nor true. Their lives had been simple compared to mine. And once I turned them over to Louie, they wouldn’t have lives to contemplate anymore.