Though it clearly could have, it was not the horrendous smell alone that guided Herb Flay the last block to the scene of the removals. The neighborhood ahead was lit with blazing white flood lights from a fire engine, a ladder truck, an ambulance, two county squad cars, the sheriff"s patrol car, and the coroner"s station wagon, highlighted by the multiple red, blue, and yellow strobes from each, and fractured by the rain into glinting colored diamonds on the van"s windshield. The gang was all there.
His boss, Marlowe Blake, was too.
Flay spotted the funeral home"s gray boat of a Cadillac as he drew near, then saw Marlowe himself on the porch steps outside the house"s wide-open front door. He was alone, of course. Flay spotted a couple of deputies in one of the county squads, a couple of
