They took the unmarked car assigned to Jeff and cruised slowly up Broad Street for several blocks. He pulled up next to a newsstand and got out, fishing in his pocket for the price of a daily paper. Dema joined him on the sidewalk.

Dema saw Jeff slip a bill into the folds of the newspaper the vendor handed him before he rolled it up and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. "I don't even read this rag," he quipped to Dema, "But we've got to keep the lumberjacks employed."

The vendor grinned. "You're out of touch, detective," he said. "They laid off all the lumberjacks long ago. I hear they cut down the scrubby stuff they make newsprint from with a giant lawnmower now."

"Mick, this is Dema. She's here from Chicago to give us a hand."

"Welcome to the City of Brotherly Love, Miss Dema," said Mick.

"Thank you, Mick," said Dema, smiling and shaking his hand.

"Dema's not looking for brotherly love today, Mick," said Jeff. "Does Stewy still buy his smut mags from you?"

"The little rat-faced guy? Yeah, why, you lookin' for him?"

"You know where he might be hanging out?"

"He's probably sittin' under a tree up in the park, droolin' over his mag and hopin' some good-lookin' joggers will come by."

"Thanks, Mick. You mean Hunting Park, right?"

Mick nodded. "I hope you find him. You show up there with Miss Dema it'll make his day."

As Jeff drove on up Broad to the park, Dema had time to notice how the outskirts of the city looked much like the outskirts of Chicago. This brought back more thoughts of Kore and the girl in the photo. 

She tried to focus on the details of the surroundings, let them distract her. The space opened out as the typical buildings changed from high-rise offices to two or three story structures, and trees began to appear along the roadsides. 

On this early autumn day the leaves were already beginning to yellow, and she knew the air would be refreshingly crisp in the park. Hunting Park. She could imagine a day, long past, when the park really was used for hunting, probably men on horseback with their baying hounds, pursuing some luckless fox. Now, she knew, a different sort of hunting went on there, with men like Stewy ogling joggers, perhaps innocently, and addicts and dealers hunting each other, not quite so innocently.

They left the car in the lot in the middle of the park, and walked across the traffic circle to one of the shaded paths. As Mick had predicted, there were a number of joggers out putting in their miles. They spotted Stewy on a bench not far away, his eyes locked on a young jogger wearing shorts and a halter rather than sweats, blond pony tail bobbing. 

As the jogger passed in front of Dema, Stewy's attention shifted. When he saw she was looking back at him he averted his eyes, then quickly shut his magazine and sat on it. He really was a bit rat-faced, eyes beady and darting. Somehow Dema already anticipated a timid but predatory nature, driven by a bright but extremely cautious inquisitiveness.

"Hey, Stewy, I brought you a paper," said Jeff. "Thought you might want to check the stock quotes." Stewy grabbed the paper Jeff held out to him and put it on top of the magazine. Then he stood up all google-eyed and bobbed his head at Dema.

"Hi, Stewy, I'm Dema," she said, smiling and holding out her hand. He took it like it might be made of glass, held it for a long moment, then quickly let go.

"Stewy, Dema here is helping us track down some bad guys. We came up with a couple of names you might recognize."

"I don't know, Jeff," he said. "You know I don't do that anymore."

"There was a girl we talked to down near Roosevelt," said Dema, dropping her voice to a more intimate tone. She stepped closer to Stewy and looked into his eyes. "She mentioned a guy named Tonio who hangs out down there. Have you heard of him, Stewy?"

"Well, yeah, maybe," Stewy paused and swallowed. He seemed to have stopped breathing. Then he inhaled briskly and continued. "There's a Tonio I heard hangs out down there, got a boat on the river, you know."

"Do you know who he works for, Stewy?"

"I hear the name Miguel sometimes."

"Miguel, that's another name we've come across. Latino, right?"

"Colombian I guess, or maybe Mexican."

"Did you ever see this Miguel?"

"No, but I seen his limo around. Real fancy stretch job. Wouldn't want to be his driver. Must be hell handling it on those curves."

"Curves?"

"You know, in the mountains. Miguel spends most of his time in a camp up in the Poconos."

"Thank you, Stewy. Do you know what dock Tonio keeps his boat at?"

"No, sorry Miss Dema, can't help you on that."

"It's okay, Stewy, you've helped a lot." Dema gave him a big warm smile, and Stewy blushed scarlet. It seemed like almost more than he could handle.

"Dema, he'll be talking about you for days, you know that," said Jeff as they walked back to the car.

"Ours is a risky business, Jeff," she grinned. "What do you know about the boat thing?"

"Yeah, that. Guys like Tonio go down in the bay and load up from bigger boats, then drop their stuff off somewhere in the Jersey swamps. Then he or someone else will drive over and pick it up. There's hundreds of miles of shoreline in those swamps, impossible to patrol. We see them go and we see them come back, but the boats are always clean by then. If we try tracking them when they head out they just stop and hang out a fishing pole or something. Drives us nuts."

"Maybe we should go down to the river and see if we can find where Tonio keeps his boat. Maybe we can learn something there."

"Okay, we can try that."

So Jeff took Dema down to the docks and they started asking around about Tonio and his boat. They finally located a little run-down marina on the Schuykill where he kept it, but neither he nor the boat was there. Dema charmed a little information out of the marina's manager, but all they really learned was that Tonio's movements were unpredictable. So other than a good seafood lunch, they didn't have a lot to show for the rest of the day. Jeff tried to apologize for that, but Dema wouldn't let him. They drove back to the station in frustrated silence.

Finally Jeff looked at Dema and said, "Care to join me for dinner a little later?"

She didn't respond at all for a moment, then glanced at him briefly. "Huh? No, another time maybe," as if he had just asked her about the weather.

"What is it, Dema? I mean, you were focused before, but now it's like you're totally preoccupied."

She turned to him and gave him half a smile. "I suppose I am. Maybe it's from seeing that picture this morning, or something we saw that I haven't put my finger on. But I have a feeling this case is about to crack for me, and I can't let go of it right now."

"In the zone, huh? I know the feeling." He didn't say he'd never seen anyone quite this intense. It made her mere physical presence incredibly compelling, and he didn't want to let go of that feeling. But she was already too far away for more conversation. When he pulled in at the station she went straight to her car and drove off without a word.