“Very little,” he answered. “It itches, though.”

“Going to be tough with this heat today,” she said, crossing the hall with him to an adjoining room where the medics had set up a small examining area. Gersten stood aside and invited him through first. That close, she was impressed again by his height and size. He carried himself effortlessly.

“You are a runner?” he said, pausing in the doorway.

“A little bit,” she answered, realizing he was referring to their earlier encounter, when she saw Maggie leaving his room.

“Ever marathon?”

“No, never,” she said. “Not for me. Triathlons are more my cup of tea.”

He nodded approvingly. “You are obviously in excellent shape.”

Gersten smiled at the compliment and at the obvious flattery behind it.

Jenssen held up his cast. “A triathlon is out, unfortunately. But maybe you will join me for a run before we are through here.”

Again she wanted to smile, now at the apparent shamelessness of his flirtation, but could not. She hoped he couldn’t see the lightness in her eyes. “I don’t think so,” she answered, polite but firm.

A crooked smile undercutting his Scandinavian attractiveness. That close, his ice-blue eyes acted like mirrored lenses. Behind them, she realized, was a mischievous little boy. “I’m just looking for a good workout partner,” he said.

“I thought you’d already found one,” she responded.

“I like to vary my workouts,” he said, then continued into the room.

Gersten returned to the hospitality suite, flattered but puzzled by Jenssen’s sudden interest. Perhaps it had to do with her seeing him in the aftermath of his night with Maggie. She had caught him at something. He had revealed himself to be a bit of a cad, in contrast to his outward behavior. Maybe that was a turn-on for him.

The others were filling out their forms in silence, the occasional clinking of a coffee cup and silverware the only noise. Gersten stood against the gold brocade wall, shaking off the odd feeling after her exchange with Jenssen. When he had taken his blue eyes off her, she had felt released. His magnetism was unsettling.

Gersten checked her phone again, but still no update from Fisk. She texted him then, one word, “Hello?” realizing only afterward that it made her sound like a neglected girlfriend.

Chapter 30

Fisk was back in his car and pulling away from the Capricorn Hotel with the air-conditioning cranking when he got the call. He was at the intersection of 116th and Seventh in minutes.

A resident had called 911 after seeing, from the window of the bathroom in her second-floor apartment, what looked like a child trying to drag a man across a small, fenced yard full of junk below. The boy, she said, was struggling to pull the man’s body toward a garage. The man appeared to be dead or unconscious.

A few minutes before police had arrived, 911 received a second call from the cell phone of a man waiting outside the Meme Amour barbershop on 116th Street. The man reported that there was a line of customers waiting to get in for their Saturday morning haircuts, but that the shop was locked. He said that in his sixteen years of coming there for weekly haircuts, the shop had never failed to open, and the customers were concerned.

Arriving officers could do nothing about the closed shop, but quickly gained entry into an adjoining door that led, through a narrow, tunnel-like corridor, to the yard in back. There they met a four-foot-one-inch-tall, thirty-seven-year-old Senegalese dwarf named Leo, who made his living as a barber. He was sweating and red-eyed, and upon seeing the officers raised his stubby arms.

He showed them to the garage, which was locked. Then he showed them to the west corner of the yard, where he had dragged the dead body of the obese Senegalese man who managed the building and rented the garage. Leo had covered him temporarily with cardboard boxes, completely exhausting himself in the process.

Fisk, arriving soon after, learned from Leo that the fat man had last been seen alive late in the previous afternoon, when the barbershop closed for the night. Leo had discovered his body upon his arrival in the morning.

Leo admitted that he believed his friend, who he knew as Malick, was involved in some slightly shady activities, but insisted that he was overall a good, good man.

A homicide detective arrived to catch the murder, and Fisk wasted a few minutes explaining his presence as an Intel officer on the scene, without really explaining anything. He asked Leo what was inside the locked garage. Leo, his short, burly arms barely long enough to cross, said he did not know, but that Malick always carried the key with him.

Fisk was ready to pull on gloves in order to search the dead man’s sweat suit pockets when Leo admitted that he had already looked for the key and that it was gone.

The homicide detective agreed with Fisk that they had probable cause to enter the garage. Fisk found a length of discarded rebar in the junkyard and used it to pry off the dead bolt plate, forcing open the door.

The sight of neat workbenches inside surprised him. Machine tools hung on the Peg-Boards over electronics in various stages of repair. Fisk pulled on gloves before entering, ordering everyone else back from the entrance. He was wary of booby traps, though the morning light allowed him a clear view of the interior.

He went in alone. The shop did not appear to have been ransacked, though a lockbox sat open upon the counter, a cloth bag cast to one side of it. Fisk examined the bag, which was empty. He raised it to his nose and smelled polish and solvent. He placed the scent immediately: handgun maintenance.

Fisk went back outside to where Leo was sitting cross-legged on the ground, smoking a cigarillo while he answered the detective’s questions.

Fisk crouched down on his haunches. “Here it is, Leo,” he said. “I need straight answers, and I need them fast. You tried to cover up a murder and apparently interfered with a crime scene. For all we know you killed this man.” Fisk knew this wasn’t true—the dwarf’s emotions were all too plain—but he needed to cut right to the chase. “Why did you try to hide his body?”

“I . . . I panicked. I don’t want any trouble. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Most people call an ambulance, or 911.”

Leo nodded, agreeing with him. “I’m not most people.”

“You guys roommates, lovers, what?”

“None! Neither. We worked here.”

“His death, his murder—it doesn’t surprise you.”

Leo took a deep drag on the cigarillo. “He wasn’t the sort of man you can warn.”

Fisk nodded. “Your late friend Malick—what kind of weapons did he deal in?”

Leo looked surprised but not shocked. “He was a tinkerer. He could take apart anything and fix it up again better than before.”

“But I’m not talking about electric razors here,” said Fisk. “Malick was killed by someone he met here after-hours. Someone who either didn’t want to pay for something or couldn’t pay. Malick sold guns. What else?”

Leo shook his head, teary-eyed. “I know nothing about that. Truly. I cut hair.”

Fisk believed him, which made him even more frustrated. “What was the last thing he said to you yesterday?”

Leo thought back. “It was ‘Au revoir.’ He had his mouth full. He always had his mouth full.”

Fisk said, “Last question. Answer me directly. Did you ever see any chemicals coming through here? Any strange smells?”

Leo shook his head again. “No. Just food.” He stubbed the cigarillo into the ground and began to cry. “Am I going to be taken away?”

Fisk said, “No. Nothing’s going to happen to you, you’re not going anywhere. So long as you tell us every little thing you know about Malick and his associates.”

“I told him he would find trouble.”

“It found him,” said Fisk, straightening and walking back to the dead man in the black sweat suit. Fisk looked around the junkyard, hands on his hips. A homicide just two blocks from the only confirmed sighting of the disguised Baada Bin-Hezam. This was no coincidence.