“You’re bluffing.”

“Then call.”

He watched her. She didn’t blink.

He asked himself why she wouldn’t do it. And couldn’t think of a single good reason.

“All right,” he said, “we need to visit a private investigator in Orlando. But your pals Bob and Drew stay behind, got that? They need medical attention, for one thing. For another, I don’t want to have to worry about one of them stewing over what happened, and doing something stupid to get his mojo back. They don’t strike me as the bygones-be-bygones type.”

“No, they’re not. So, yes, we’ll make it just the two of us. But give me their guns first.”

Ben looked around. “Hand me your purse.”

She did. He held it under the table and slipped Drew’s and Bob’s weapons inside it, then put it on the table. She went to take it back, but he didn’t let it go.

“I’m still armed, Paula,” he said, looking into her eyes. “And I’d hate to have to shoot you just as we’re getting to know each other. I really would feel bad about it.”

She smiled and patted his hand. “I’ll bet you would, sugar. I’ll bet you would.”

Harry McGlade’s office was located in Orlando ’s Parramore district, home of the Amway Arena, a U.S. federal courthouse, police headquarters, and a number of other state buildings. The area was awake and bustling when Ben and Paula arrived. At nightfall, Ben knew, the daytime population would roll away like drops of mercury, revealing a sad substratum of winos, whores, and madmen beneath.

Paula had called McGlade from the road and told him she had a case, that he was highly recommended though she couldn’t say by whom, that she needed to see him right away. McGlade was amenable.

The building was a ramshackle second-floor walk-up with a stairway that smelled like someone had been using it for a toilet. Paula went in first. McGlade was just beginning to stand from behind an enormous metal desk when Ben followed her in. Crestfallen would be too strong a word for the look on his face, Ben thought, but not by much. His age was hard to guess-ballpark, sixty-and he was overweight in a way that looked more liquid than fat, with Gollum-pale skin that suggested this squalid room was as much a cave to him as it was an office.

“Didn’t realize there were two of you,” he said, in a nasal voice.

“I’m sorry,” Paula said. “I didn’t want to say too much over the phone.”

Ben looked around. The place was like an experiment in entropy. Papers so scattered that but for the settled-in stink of sweat and tobacco you’d think a wind had blown through. Two overflowing ashtrays. An algae-covered aquarium with no fish that Ben could see. It was hot, too, and Ben realized the guy must be too cheap or too destitute to use the air conditioner.

There was a pair of metal folding chairs in front of the desk. McGlade came around, swept up the piles of paper on each, and made a show of stacking them neatly on the floor. “Here,” he said. “Have a seat. Coffee?”

Ben and Paula both said, “No,” simultaneously and equally emphatically.

McGlade circled back to an incongruously fancy leather office chair Ben suspected he’d stolen. “All right,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

“It’s not what you can do for me,” Paula said, reaching into her purse and taking out her credentials. “It’s what you can do for the FBI.”

McGlade examined her ID, his expression suddenly sewn up tight. “All right. What can I do for the FBI?”

“You can tell us about a case you were working on a little over three years ago,” Ben said. “Guy named Daniel Larison. His wife thought he was having an affair.”

McGlade’s face lost a drop of color. “I’m sorry, but all my client matters are entirely confidential.”

Paula smiled at him. “Mr. McGlade,” she said, her tone exceptionally sweet, “we’re very busy, so I’ll get straight to the point. Tell us something useful, and you’ll have a contact and friend inside the Bureau for life. Fuck with me, and I’ll crawl up your ass and chew my way out.”

Ben thought, What? He had to clamp his jaw shut to keep from laughing. At the same time, he was beginning to realize McGlade would have to be a fool to think she was bullshitting him.

There was a long silence while McGlade assessed the probabilities. Then he said, “All right. Three years ago, a woman in Kissimmee contacted me, told me she thought her husband was having an affair.”

“Marcy Wheeler?” Paula asked.

“Yeah. Wheeler. Happens all the time. Usually it’s a wife who calls me, but sometimes a husband. Ninety percent of what I do is domestic. Anyway, I get what I need from her-photograph of the husband, car registration, that kind of thing-and I go to tail the guy, see where he’s going. SOP. Except, it turns out the guy is almost impossible to tail.”

“Watching his back?” Ben said.

“You could say that. Now I see a little of this kind of thing all the time. People who are up to no good can be jumpy, sometimes they pay more attention than your average honest citizen. I’m used to it and it’s not a problem for me. This guy was way beyond that. His wife told me he was some kind of military spook, but when I saw how surveillance conscious he was, I knew he was something really special. Counterterrorism, Delta, something like that. I told Wheeler this one could take awhile, he was too watchful and I couldn’t get close. I quoted her a long-term rate and she was okay with it.”

“A little annuity for you, huh?” Ben said, and he realized he felt weirdly protective of Marcy. “She the first client you fed that story to?”

“As a matter of fact, smart guy, she was. I don’t charge by the hour. My business is about results.”

“Okay,” Paula said. “So you backed off. But you stayed on him.”

“That’s right. His wife would tell me when he was traveling. Now here’s the interesting thing. Most times, even though I couldn’t stay on him long, I could confirm he was going to Patrick Air Force Base. Figured from there, he was getting a military flight to wherever he was going. But other times, I confirmed he was going to Orlando International. When I’d get the word from the wife, I’d set up at the airport in Orlando, wait for him there. Didn’t matter that he was watching his back if I could get set up in front of him, right?”

Ben popped a knuckle. “You figured the civilian flights were the illicit ones.”

“Exactly. So twice in Orlando, I watched him board a flight to Miami. Next time the wife told me he was traveling, I went to Miami, started staking out the arrivals gates for flights from Orlando.”

Wheeler leaned forward in her chair. “And?”

“And twice I saw him boarding a flight to Costa Rica. San Jose, the capital. I told Wheeler it looked like he was up to something in Costa Rica. As it happens, I have a contact there, someone who could pick Larison up when he arrived. She said do it. So I did.”

Wheeler said, “Who?”

“Guy who goes by the name Taibbi. I know him from the service. He’s a surfer, or was when I knew him, anyway. Now he owns a bar in Jacó, near Playa Hermosa, a big surfing beach. Freelances in this and that, if you know what I mean.”

“No,” Ben said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Look, Jacó’s got three draws: surfing, drugs, and whores. You get it now? I asked Taibbi if he wanted to be my local liaison on this case. Follow a guy, confirm whether he’s got a mistress, I get a finder’s fee, he gets the balance. I warned him the guy was military, surveillance conscious. Taibbi says don’t worry, I’ve got a crew.”

Paula glanced at Ben, then back to McGlade. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, exactly. All Taibbi told me was that Larison did one of his crew. Cut his throat.”

“My God,” Paula said.

“Yeah. Whatever happened, it spooked Taibbi bad, and Taibbi, let me tell you, has seen his share of shit.”