The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle

and their families want justice, they have to hire a Certified Retribution Specialist like me—Angel Baker, CRS. I don’t mete out vengeance myself. I simply haul in sorry-ass criminals so victims can have at it themselves. And the government looks the other way. It’s cheaper than building new prisons.

      So I shouldn’t complain about all the jerks, creeps and sociopaths I have to deal with. Without them I’d be out of work.

      Then again, I’m not in it for the money. But that’s another story.

      I knew this was going to be a tricky job. I had invited a ROVOR to meet me at a secluded green lot on Roscoe in the old Wrigleyville neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. I live close to Southport in a charming redbrick two-flat with a walled-in garden on a double lot squeezed in on either side by apartment buildings. I picked it up for a song—a mere two million—when the neighborhood went downhill. That was right after the Cubs relocated at the end of the twenty-first century to a TerraForma stadium in the middle of Lake Michigan.

      ROVOR stands for Restraining Order Violator. A ROVOR is usually an abusive man who repeatedly violates court orders to stay away from his wife and/or kids until he kills them. I handle all kinds of criminals—rapists, thieves, white-collar criminals—but I feel especially sorry for domestic abuse victims and have taken on more than my share of cases to try to prevent tragedy.

      I was doing this latest one pro bono. Call me a sucker, but I hate men who treat their loved ones like punching bags.

      The ROVOR was Tommy Drummond, a ham-fisted laborer who liked to show his love for his wife and kid by breaking their bones in drunken rages. The family was hiding in an abuse shelter. Drummond had found out where they were and had violated his restraining order twice. I planned to let him know in no uncertain terms his visitor pass had expired.

      It used to be that a job like this involved the usual tricks of the trade—some hand-to-hand combat, threats, smoke and mirrors and a little luck. All that changed two months ago when Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Able T. Gibson, started giving retribution specialists warrants to execute ROVORs who were repeat offenders. Instead of three strikes and you’re out, now it was three strikes and you’re dead.

      Problem is, I’ve never killed anyone, even accidentally, and had no intention of starting now. Sure, I carry a semiautomatic pistol on occasion, but that’s just the show part of my show-and-tell act. If retribution specialists were going to evolve into assassins, I would retire. Meanwhile, I wasn’t above using the threat of a Gibson Warrant to my advantage.

      The question I hadn’t quite answered in my mind was how good of a liar I could be. In the past, my biggest challenge usually was figuring out how to scare the hell out of a man twice my size without shooting his nuts off. Now I had to confront Tommy Drummond and pretend that I had a Gibson Warrant with his name on it, then convince him to leave his wife and kid alone. Forever. And all this without ever showing him the warrant I didn’t have. He had to think I was willing to kill him when I wasn’t.

      My door buzzer rang, jerking me out of my thoughts. I had no time for visitors, not when I only had fifteen minutes before I met up with Drummond. I raced down the stairs and opened the door to find none other than Lola the Soothsayer. She looked like a cross between a bag lady and the twentieth-century comedian Lucille Ball on a really bad hair day.

      This I knew because I was a huge fan of old movies. While the jury was still out on how my own Technicolor life would turn out, I usually could count on a happy ending when I watched a classic film, especially those shot in black and white.

      “Ah, Angel!” Lola said in that electrifying way of hers that always made me think she’d just discovered I was a reincarnation of Cleopatra or Catherine the Great. “Angel, Angel, Aaaaannnnggggeeeellllll.”

      “What do you want? I’m meeting someone, and he’ll be here any minute.”

      “Someone?” Lola adjusted the gold-lamé turban that was tilting to the right on her nest of brassy dyed-red hair and gave me a suggestive wink. “Glad to hear it, honey. It’s about time you settled down.”

      I gripped the doorjamb instead of Lola’s throat. “No, not that kind of someone. He’s a ROVOR.”

      “A ROVOR? That means he’s married, right?”

      “Not always, but in this case, yes.”

      “He could always get a divorce.”

      “Lola! This is business. The guy is seriously dangerous.”

      Her red lips thinned in a grimace, revealing a lower row of tobacco-stained teeth. “O-oh, I don’t like the sound of that, honey.”

      “It’s all part of my job. And I can’t be late because I don’t want him to see where I live.”

      “If this guy is breaking the law, you should let the cops handle it. They don’t like you horning in on their territory, believe you me. You’ll have trouble on your hands.”

      I crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame. “You know more about trouble with the police than I do, Lola. You’ve got an arrest record longer than a roll of toilet paper.”

      “That’s not my fault! Can I help it that the cops hate psychics?”

      “They hate con artists.” I started to close the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

      She stuck the toe of her scuffed boot in the doorway, stopping it with a thud. “Please, Angel.” When I shook my head, she whimpered, “Please. I’m in trouble.”

      “With the cops?”

      She shook her head. “They don’t scare me. It’s much worse than that.” Instead of eyeing me cunningly, as usual, she looked at me as if I were some kind of savior. It creeped me out.

      “Come on, Lola, it can’t be that bad.” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and pulled out a thousand-dollar bill. “Here. Take it. It’s all I have right now. Just don’t drink it away.”

      Thankfully, her eyes hardened and she put her hands on plump hips exaggerated by a floor-length, confetti-colored gown. “I’ll have you know, young lady, I’ve been sober for six months.” She snatched the bill and stuffed it into her creped cleavage.

      “Six months? Great.” She could have taken a Z580 pill twenty years ago that would have stopped her drinking cold, but she’d refused. She said it would stifle her creativity and she wanted to sober up the old-fashioned way. Unfortunately that had never happened. “Congratulations. Now, goodbye, Lola.”

      “Please, honey.” Tears puddled in her eyes, dripping over her garishly lined lower eyelids. She stole a nervous glance over her shoulder. “I’m in big trouble.”

      “What else is new?”

      “Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice.”

      “All right,” I growled. “Come in, but make it quick. I have to dress fast.”

      There was no way I could face Drummond in blue jeans and a T-shirt. I breezed past the first floor entrance to my studio and bounded up the stairs two at a time to my living quarters, telling Lola over my shoulder to help herself to iced tea.

      I dashed to my large bedroom in the back of the oblong flat, which faced the garden. I tore through my wardrobe, looking for the perfect costume. It was customary for retributionists to wear elaborate outfits on the job. That tradition was established in colorful New Orleans, where the first CRSs set up shop and established standards for the profession.

      Most of us learn our trade on the street, and most come to the job with a background in martial arts or street fighting and a burning desire for justice. Actual certification is granted by a board of retired professionals. We’re not recognized by any state or national organization, but so far no one has outlawed us, either. Government officials know that as long as the justice system is broken, someone has to make sure crime doesn’t pay.

      Enter moi—a five-foot-four chick with