I twisted from doing dishes at the sink, looked and saw Mr. Kumar and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Salim, enter the store.

They were regulars. They were also (kind of) part of our posse.

Mr. Kumar owned a corner store on Tex’s block and he’d been dragged into two Rock Chick Rides, Indy’s and Ava’s. He was a good guy who, against the odds, kept his little store open. I helped by shopping there occasionally, even though it was out of my way.

I didn’t know much about Mrs. Salim except that every time I saw her, I feared she’d keel over and quit breathing, she looked that old. And this wasn’t being mean. Seriously, she looked that old. Just saying, the woman’s wrinkles had wrinkles.

I also knew she liked to read.

As usual, Mrs. Salim shuffled to the books.

Mr. Kumar came to the coffee counter and, weirdly, had his eyes on me.

He stopped and looked at Tex. “Did you speak with her?”

I turned from the sink, grabbing a towel to wipe my hands.

“Talk with me about what?” I asked.

“No,” Tex answered Mr. Kumar “I talked to Hank.”

“But the police aren’t doing anything!” Mr. Kumar suddenly cried, and the skin on the back of my neck prickled.

I moved to the espresso counter, jamming in close to Tex. “Talk to me about what?’

“Hank says they’re lookin’ into it,” Tex told me.

“Looking into what?” I asked.

“And I’m keepin’ an eye out,” Tex went on, still not answering me.

“Keeping an eye on what?” I snapped.

“The rash of burglaries on our street,” Mr. Kumar finally answered me.

“You’ve had a rash of burglaries?” Indy asked, coming up to the counter, hands full of empties.

“Yes,” Mr. Kumar answered.

“I’m keepin’ an eye out,” Tex stated.

Giving big eyes to Tex, Mr. Kumar then turned to me. “Tex looks out for the neighborhood, but he’s not finding anything. I talked with some of my customers and we got a… what’s it called?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about so I couldn’t tell him what it was called.

Luckily, he found the word and stated, “Kitty. To pay you.” He dug in his pants pocket, pulled out a card and turned it to me. “We’re hiring a Rock Chick.”

I looked at the card, a card I’d asked Brody to make for me way back in the day when Indy and I were searching for Rosie.

Mr. Kumar had kept his.

Righteous.

What was not righteous was, as much as I wanted the business, I had to make coffee, continue my stripper education and robberies happened at night, the same time as stripping did. And last, there was only one of me. Brody was strung out finding out about the books and he never worked in the field, unless that work required him to be in a surveillance van. Darius worked for Lee and was on the stripper case with me.

I couldn’t take the case.

And that sucked.

“I’m sorry Mr. Kumar,” I said. “I have another case I have to work at night and I can’t be two places at once.”

His face fell. “But we’ve had nine cars on our streets broken into,” he told me. “Stereos stolen. Glove boxes rifled through. Windows smashed. All this in less than two weeks. People are worried.”

Crap.

“I’m keepin’ my eye on it,” Tex repeated, sounding more than his usual grumpy.

“Tweakers,” I muttered, and Mr. Kumar looked at me.

“I’m sorry?”

“Tweakers,” I repeated. “People who need to steal car stereos and fence them to buy drugs.”

Mr. Kumar nodded.

“No one would hit one neighborhood repeatedly in that time unless they were stupid or desperate, and tweakers are both,” I told him.

Mr. Kumar nodded again.

It was then it occurred to me that no one would hit Tex’s street because he did keep an eye out. He did this by sitting on his porch randomly, but often, with a shotgun across his lap and night vision goggles on his head. The presence of a sleeping cat also in his lap was not unheard of.

This was a weird thing to do, but this was also Tex we were talking about. And except for when Rock Chick business leaked into their ‘hood (because Ava lived with Luke now, but she still owned the pad she used to live in there; not to mention Indy’s business brought us there, repeatedly), crime was nil. Probably because Tex lived there and sat outside in night vision goggles with a shotgun.

Shotguns were definitely deterrents. Wild men wearing night vision goggles having shotguns were much stronger deterrents.

This meant the culprits likely knew this, kept an eye on Tex and when he went off duty, they did the deeds.

In other words, locals.

I looked up at Tex. “You got a house in the ‘hood that’s home to a bunch of meth heads?”

“Only about every other one,” he replied.

Fuck.

Door to door action.

Hector.