Page 104 of Lion & Lamb

“Yeah, funny, boss,” Victor said in a way that made it plain he did not find Cooper’s joke even remotely funny. “No, these pages were heavily protected in the first place, top-notch encryption, then scrubbed from the internet.”

“How did you find them?”

“Avid fans collect this stuff in the hopes of catching someone famous on their way down,” Victor said, “or on their way up.”

“There’s always a screenshot.”

“Funny you say that. This is why I had you pull over.” Victor turned his laptop so that Cooper could see the screen. If Cooper had been watching himself, he would have seen a classic Hollywood double take.

“Is that Maya Rain in a slutty Halloween costume?”

“No,” Victor said. “This is Vanessa Harlowe in her work clothes.”

“A long way from West Virginia,” Cooper mumbled, staring at the image and trying to square it with the flesh-and-blood woman he’d come to know. She was gorgeous in real life. On-screen, she looked like a CGI character, like someone had attempted to capture her natural beauty but produced a cheap caricature instead.

“What does that mean?” Victor asked.

“Nothing. So she was a hooker.”

“Five years ago, in AC. Based on what I’m seeing, Vanessa Harlowe was at the top of her game. Fifteen hundred an hour, ten grand for the night. She worked with someone else you know—Rosalind Cline.”

“Let me guess. Her madam.”

“They don’t call it that anymore, boss.”

“Well, she’s not a madam anymore either.”

Chapter111

12:27 p.m.

FOR MAKINGa discovery this huge, Janie Hall thought she deserved lunch at the Sansom Street Oyster House.

While waiting for her boss, Janie sat at the raw bar and ordered a dozen assorted oysters from up and down the East Coast. Wellfleets from Cape Cod; Glidden Points from Maine; stormy bays and sugar shacks from Jersey.Anda double shrimp cocktail.

This was just for starters.

The food was its own reward, but Janie also enjoyed knowing that her reporter’s instincts were still strong. When something nagged at her, it was the reporter inside her brain urging her to follow up, ask another question, keep pushing.

The ring. Like a Tolkien fantasy novel, it all came down to the ring. In this case, the missing Super Bowl ring.

It bothered Janie and fit none of the narratives Veena had been entertaining (professional hit man, personal grudges). A stolen ring made no sense with any of those. Why would a hit man take a Super Bowl ring when that would serve as a blinking red arrow pointed right at him? Maybe someone with a grudge would take the ring as a trophy, but again, to what end? The moment someone discovered it, the killer was as good as exposed.

No. A stolen ring meant a robbery.

As her boss and Cooper Lamb took a trip down to the shore, Janie called up one of the useful individuals in her life, this one from about five years ago.

The name he’d given Janie was Travis, but she knew it was fake. Travis was a kind of dark alternative-universe version of Cooper Lamb—a fellow shamus, but completely amoral and perfectly at home in the underworld. (Janiedidenjoy the occasional bad boy.)

She had been writing a piece on high-profile art heists on the Main Line, and her reporting led her to Travis, a private eye who specialized in recovering stolen goods (for a steep fee), as long as the police were kept out of it. Only one of his quotes—on background—made it into the piece, but Janie and Travis had ended up downing more than a few martinis at the Continental over the years.

Which was where they’d met up the night before.

“Tell me who would try to fence a stolen Super Bowl ring,” Janie said.

“Somebody really stupid,” Travis replied.

And she would have left it at that if Travis had not followed it up with “You know, it’s funny you say that. Last week I had some idiot reach out through one of my associates trying to sell Archie Hughes’s ring. Even if it was real, the ring is radioactive. I can’t imagine who would buy it. If someone is selling it, it’ll be on the street, for crackhead prices.”

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