“Yeah,” Tom said. “Work is killing me.”

The man chuckled, shook his head. He folded his napkin, set it on top of his half-eaten sausage. Looked over his shoulder. “Work is killing him.”

Andre smiled, wet lips parting to white teeth. Something in Tom went very cold.

“Here’s the thing.” The man pushed his food aside, set his hands on the table. “Even if I believe you, that only gets you so far. Because if you’re not on a side, then you’re not on my side.”

Tom swallowed hard. Stared across the table. Tried to force his mind to order. Finally he said, “What can I do for you?”

“Now see, that’s a good question. I knew you were smart.” Fingers slow-tapping the wood like piano keys. “Without getting specific, I sell a product the police would prefer I didn’t. Will Tuttle had a sizable quantity of my merchandise. I’d like it back.”

Merchandise. The tabloids had whispered the Star was buying drugs. It all came clear. This guy wasn’t one of the thieves. He wasn’t chasing the money – he was chasing the men. The men and the drugs they stole from him.

“Now, if you were to find what I’ve lost, well…”

“You’d know which side I was on.”

“Exactly.”

Tom nodded. The guy must believe the drugs were in Will’s apartment. Which meant that all he had to do was find them. For half a second he had hope. Then he remembered the break-in earlier that week. The place had been searched. The drugs were probably gone.

On the other hand, he’d been given a possible out. The guy had made it clear he was willing to kill them even if they were innocent. If he rejected the one lifeline thrown his way…

Besides, maybe whoever broke in had missed the drugs. There was no way to know how long they’d had to search. And Tom knew the building better. “I understand.”

The man in the suit nodded. “Good. Andre?”

Standing, Andre wasn’t as tall as Tom would have guessed, maybe just under six, but moved like a boxer, his sleeves tight with muscle, hands held ready. He reached into an inner pocket with two fingers and pulled out a slim business card, which he set on the table.

Tom hardly noticed. Hardly saw the man opposite him stand, the two of them walk out. Because as Andre had opened his jacket, Tom had seen something inside. A shoulder holster and a big black gun.

HE DIDN’T MAKE his meeting.

With traffic, it took almost thirty minutes for the cab to deliver him home. Thirty minutes of staring out the window, fingering the business card. It was elegant in its simplicity: heavy stock, textured cream, with a phone number embossed. No name. Thirty minutes thinking of that gun. When he arrived, he didn’t bother going up to their place to drop his bag. Just opened the door to the bottom unit and went to work.

He wanted to tear the place apart, yank boxes from cabinets and overturn them, throw books off the shelf, bang at the bottoms of drawers and the hollows of walls. But if the place looked like a tornado had hit, Anna would assume they’d been burglarized again. He’d have to explain about the bodyguard who looked like he was hoping Tom said the wrong thing, and the drug dealer who knew Anna’s name. The memory brought bile to the back of his throat. He wasn’t a violent guy, but if he’d had a gun, a weapon, even a baseball bat, he’d have-

You’d have gotten yourself killed, is what you would have done. You work in Corporate America. They sell drugs. What do you think the odds on that one are?

He turned and kicked the La-Z-Boy, the impact jarring up his leg, rocking the chair up a couple of inches to pause, hesitate, and then fall back down. He kicked it again, then again, then stepped forward and grabbed the back of it and threw it sideways, the heavy chair tipping, then crashing down.

For a second, he imagined it breaking open to spill bales of cocaine across the floor. But all that happened was that it landed with a muscular whoomp, kicking up a cloud of dust and revealing cigarette butts and a patch of grimy hardwood. He sighed, sat down on the edge of the overturned chair. Rubbed his forehead, closed his eyes.

Then he stood up and went to work.

MARSHALL LEANED AGAINST THE TREE, hands in his pockets. A woman passed pushing a stroller, and they exchanged smiles. He checked her figure as she went by, then returned his attention to the brick two-flat. The angle of the sun off the windows made it hard to see any detail, but he could make out the man’s silhouette.

Marshall took out his cigarettes, pulled one free. When he’d decided to quit, nine years ago now, he’d gone out of his way not to be around smokes or smokers. Shopped at the Whole Foods because they didn’t sell cigarettes, stopped going to bars. Then one night, it had hit him – he wasn’t beating the addiction. He was just avoiding it. The smokes were winning.

After that, he started carrying a pack, always. Fuck them.

He drew the cigarette under his nose, smelled the tobacco. Originally, he hadn’t planned to get out of the car. But after he saw Tom Reed not only come home in the middle of the day, but go into Will’s apartment instead of his own, it’d seemed worth a look. He was considering the risks of getting closer when he heard a heavy thudding sound from the house, like something dropped from a height.

What the hell. He tucked the cigarette behind his ear and started forward. A path ran between the building and the one next door, and he started down, head facing forward but eyes on the window. The reflection kept him from making out detail, but he could see that the man had his back to the world.

Careful to be quiet, Marshall leaned against the window, one hand shielding his face so he could see inside. The La-Z-Boy was on its side. Beyond it, Tom Reed squatted in front of a cabinet. He was going through it, hands moving fast. As Marshall watched, Tom closed one cabinet and moved to the next, and then the one after that. When he finished, he stood and started rifling the shelves. The guy was clearly oblivious to everything else, and Marshall felt safe watching for several minutes.

Finally, he turned and stepped away, retraced his steps to the car. He sucked air through his teeth. Glanced around the interior: the coffee cup in the holder, the stack of mail in the passenger seat, the cherry air freshener dangling from the mirror.

Tom Reed hadn’t just been going through a former tenant’s belongings. He hadn’t been cleaning, or considering what was worth selling and what was trash. What he’d been doing was searching for something.

Marshall fired up the car and pulled away.

TOM CHECKED EVERY CABINET, every cupboard. Fingered the contents of every drawer, then pulled them out and looked behind. Flipped the mattress up, stripped it, checked for slits. Felt the pockets of every item of clothing. Opened and closed the freezer, then opened it again and checked each container.

He took the lid off the toilet tank to see if anything was suspended within. Aimed a flashlight up the narrow chimney. Braced the extension ladder against the top of the rear stairs and climbed through the trapdoor to the roof. Fetched his toolkit and opened the back of the oven. Peered into the hollow behind the medicine cabinet.

Think.

If the drugs had been here, then whoever came earlier had found them.

Think, man. Try and see the big picture.

Okay, the corollary, then: If the drugs hadn’t been here, that meant Tuttle had hidden them somewhere else.

That thought gave him a fresh burst of energy, and he returned to the unit, looking for clues, starting with the mailboxes. Their own was completely empty, kind of odd, but the other was crammed with catalogs and junk mail, all in the name Bill Samuelson. In the kitchen he found a grocery list (eggs, olive oil, smokes) and a week-old Tribune. Dog-eared delivery menus. A copy of Perfect 10 in the bathroom, the cover proudly proclaiming “The world’s most beautiful natural women!” Ten or twelve matchbooks from ten or twelve bars.