Shadow of the moon

I was a pretty average police detective until he claimed me as his own. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I should hate or love him for that. It doesn't matter now. It's done and I have to live with it.

My story starts on the night of my big change. I worked in a large city of a couple million. We had our usual skyscrapers in the financial district, the industrial with its black smoke, and the wrong side of the tracks with its gang violence. The whole place was ringed by suburbia for those who could afford the commute, and apartments in the older neighborhoods for those who couldn't. I couldn't, so my place was uptown in an old apartment building built before my grandparents were born.

At that moment I wished I was back in that dreary place. Instead I sat in my parked police car. At my side was a grande coffee, cold and lacking in taste, but not the precious caffeine I needed to keep myself awake.

"Maria, you read me?" a male voice called over my car's intercom.

I rolled my eyes and picked up the receiver. "That's Detective Marie Selena, Randy," I reminded him.

"And that's Officer Randy to you, but why are we being formal at this hour? Nobody's listening," he pointed out.

He was probably right. The hour was near midnight, and the night was a Tuesday. Nothing ever happened on Tuesdays, even in a big city like this one. The criminals almost had an unwritten rule that Tuesdays were the days to lay their feet back and enjoy their ill-gotten loot and plan their next law breaking scheme.

As a detective I should have had a cushioned desk job in the department where I worked a nine-to-five shift, but the precinct was short on cash at that time. Well, it was always short on cash. That meant I had to do double-duty as a street cop.

I rolled my eyes. "Because somebody might be, now what do you have for me?"

"Nothing much. Got a call in a minute ago about some suspicious behavior around one of the clubs in your area."

"Which one?" "The Wolf's Den."

 I snorted. "Sounds like something from a bad horror movie. Is it a strip club?"

"Nope, that's the funny thing. It's one of those hush-hush places where the place is always crowded but most of the people don't come in through the front door. The clientele's pretty rich, too, or so my sources tell me," he informed me.

"Did your source tell you how I can get into this place without alerting these suspicious guys?" I asked him.

"Nope. He knows a lot, but not even he can figure that out. As for the call, they were in the alley behind the place. Got dropped off by a black car that sped away."

"This the club owners reporting it?"

"Nope. A passerby on the street waiting in line to get inside noticed it and called us. Said he thought we ought to know."

I sighed and started the engine. "I guess I'll go check it out. You got that address?"

"Yep, 11 Lupine Street," he told me.

"Got it. Don't leave the lights on for me," I quipped.

He chuckled. "I won't. Good luck."

"Over and out."

I hung up the receiver and pulled out of the parking spot. Lupine street

was two blocks down in the red-light district of the city. People went there for a smoke of something more than tobacco and stayed for the illegal commercial moonshine. Both sides of the long, colorful street were lined with ads touting beautiful women, drinks, and oftentimes both. The doors to the establishments were wide open, and some of the wares called down from the second story windows to the prospective patrons below. Music drifted from one building to the next and mixed into something not even dub-step could create. The streets were crowded with pedestrians and cars. People shouted at each other and the single-finger salute flew high above some of the less patient taxi drivers.