Phoenix Talon straddled a chair backwards. "Okay, boys. My name is Phoenix Talon, this is Albert. You may have seen him on TV. You may have seen me on TV."
    "Hey, yeah! You have that television show!" one of the Alley Cats said.
    "Yes, I do," Albert acknowledged.
    "It sucks. They used to have reruns of Starsky and Hutch...."
    "Yeah, that ruled," the other agreed, as the first one started making weird faces and sounds, his tongue protruding slightly. It's never a good idea to insult Albert.
    "Ask away, they can still listen," Albert nodded at Talon.
    "They need to be able to talk." Phoenix Talon looked at the one making the faces uneasily.
    "He can talk," the mesmerist nodded to the one who remained normal.
    "I can talk! What's the matter with him?" He eyed the other youth with a faint expression of panic.
    "First question: where's the main Alley Cat hideout? Where does Tybalt normally stay?"
    "If I tell you that he'll kill me," the Cat protested. "He will, he just kills people!"
    Albert sighed and folded his hands over his cane. "Young man. Your friend currently does not remember that he has a tongue. In a moment, I'm going to make him forget how his diaphragm works." He had clearly just surpassed his subjects' vocabulary. "Perhaps I'm being too technical."
    Phoenix Talon leaned forward and took over. "Let me make this real clear: you're fucked. Within a week, the Alley Cats will not exist. Tybalt is going to be just as fucked as any of you. You understand that? What happened tonight is just the beginning."
    "But—Tybalt's a major badass, man! He's got plans!" The Cat stuck by his leader.
    "I have plans," Phoenix Talon informed him ominously. "Okay. The degree to which you two specifically are fucked is going to be determined tonight."
    "You can't do anything to us man, we have rights!"
    "I think it's time for a demonstration." He looked at Albert.
    "Hey, this is police brutality!"
    "I'm not a member of the police, young man, and there won't be a mark on your body," Albert said coolly. "I'll make sure that you won't remember how to use your hands, so that you can't try and remove those bugs from your arm."
    He looked down. "What bugs—" And screamed.
    "Let me try this again: where's the main hideout?" Talon demanded.
    The Alley Cat panted in shock. "They're gone!"
    "They can come back...."
    That did it. "The only place I've ever seen him is an abandoned building down on the east side, whole area's due for demolition. He's got a couple of hideouts in there, I saw him in one of the buildings, but I mean he's got guards around him all the time!"
    "How many guards?"
    "Three, four guys, guns."
    "What kind of guns?"
    "Guns, guns." He waved his hands vaguely. The Alley Cats were armed with whatever they could scrounge.
    "Would you like your tongue back?" Albert asked the other one, who nodded rapidly.
    "I have a tongue!"
    "Use it wisely," the mesmerist advised.
    "Why is it we can never find you guys?" Talon asked next.
    "Tybalt tells us where to go and where not to go."
    "How? Does he send you messages, or verbally, how does this work?"
    "He'll send out runners, 'cause he knows where you guys are. He knows where the cops are, he knows everything, he probably already knows we're here! You're right, we're fucked! There's a guy who was the watcher when you beat the other people up, he just shot him! The guy's in a wheelchair now, and he's a member of the gang!" The kid was visibly breaking down.
    "The watcher? What d'you mean, the watcher?"
    "When you, and the—he was on lookout, when you took out the guys robbing the store."
    "Is there always a lookout?"
    The Cat nodded, getting a grip on himself. "Yeah. He's very thorough."
    "How do the lookouts pick their spots?"
    "Block, block and a half away, usually up on a fire escape or something so they can see what's going on."
    Talon shifted subjects. "You guys go out at night, do you ever notice cats?"
    "Oh yeah." They both nodded. "There's lot of cats, he's got cats all over the place."
    "So he definitely uses the cats."
    "Uses the cats?" The kid looked confused.
    "You said he's got cats all over the place."
    "Yeah, in the base. There's like twenty or thirty of 'em wherever he is."
    "When we picked you guys up, did you notice that the cat was there? The one Needle threw the rock at," he prompted. Blank looks. "Guess not." So they didn't know about their leader's powers.
    "She threw a rock at something? I thought she just threw the rock, and we figured she was trying to hit a window."
    "Yeah," his companion nodded. "Make some noise and have someone come rescue her."
    "No, there was a cat there, watching you."
    "Wow. We're fucked," the Cat realized, awed.
    "Well, there's no cats in here," Talon pointed out. They looked under the table. "How many people are in the gang right now?"
    "What was the last count?"
    "I don't know, hundred and forty?" the other replied.
    He asked about hangouts. Lookout positions near the hangouts.
    "This morning, four Blood Boards got gunned down," he told them. "Who was there?"
    They looked at each other. "I don't know, man."
    "You are very poor liars, gentleman," Albert said quietly. "Now, please understand there are certain restrictions we have to operate under, as members of law enforcement. I don't like those restrictions, and I am generally not a very nice man. And he," he glanced at Talon, "is just upset. Now... talk." His steady gaze communicated worlds of threat. Silence. "Fine. Officers, take them away," he said to no one.
    "Hey!" one of the Cats protested, looking at something only he could see. Whatever he saw, his expression changed to pure terror. He screamed and fainted.
    "What's he talking about....?"
    "He's gone for now. Do you remember?"
    The Cat nodded unhappily. "Yeah, the boss was gloatin' about it, he made the phone call, he wanted to tell everybody... he was the one who pulled the trigger on everybody! It was him, I swear, that's what he told everyone!"
    "Start from the beginning. When you get to the end, stop," Talon ordered. "What did he say happened last night?"
    "H-he was sick of you guys and the Blood Boards thinkin' they were gettin' too good and startin' to move in on our turf, so he set up something where there were a bunch of Blood Boards and lured 'em into an alleyway with some of our guys, and once they were in the alleyway he—killed all of 'em."
    "Who was bait?" He wrote the names down. "Okay. Does every Alley Cat carry a gun?"
    "Yeah, pretty much. That's how we rule."
    "Did you a fuck of a lot of good tonight. Is there a depot, a storage place anywhere?"
    "Nah, they got 'em split up in the different hideouts. He does a lot of advance planning," the kid added.
    "Is there anything in the tube right now that's being planned?"
    "He said something about a night of fire."
    "When?"
    "Soon."

    Back in Reilly's office, the blob asked his question. "There anybody in from the gang unit that covers the Latin gangs?"
    "Yeah, who do you want to talk to?"
    "I don't know who to ask for."
    "Fair enough, let me get somebody for you."
    Officer Hernandez appeared quickly.
    "So," Scott began. "Here's what I'm looking for. If you were down in the neighborhoods where the Alley Cats work out of of, is there someone down there who people probably respect but everybody thinks is a bruja?"
    "There are a couple," he nodded. "Let me get you names." He thought for a moment, wrote down a list. "Some of them take this somewhat seriously, others of them take it really seriously. I don't know how many of them actually have abilities, I didn't used to believe in any of that, and then Brooklyn disappeared."
    "Right. Who on this list does nobody screw with, to use Phoenix Talon's vernacular?"
    "Aunt Ramirez," was the immediate reply. "She's the head bruja in the area. It's almost like she's part of the magical mafia. People come to her with problems, and things get done."

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