Milton’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Smith?”

“Speaking.”

“It’s Aaron Pogue — from this morning.”

Milton put his hand over the microphone. “Trip!”

He paused and turned. “What?”

“It’s Aaron.”

The boy came back towards him.

“You there?” said Pogue.

“Yes, I’m here. Hello, Aaron.”

“I’ve been thinking, about what you said.”

“And?”

“And I’ll tell you what you need. The agency, all that.”

“That’s good, Aaron. Go on.”

“I don’t have a number for the agency — the number they use when they call, it’s always blocked, so there’s nothing I can do to help you there. But Salvatore, the guy who runs it, I know he owns the pizza house in Fisherman’s Wharf. That’s just a cover — the agency is his main deal, that’s his money gig, he runs it from the office out back. That’s it.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll keep my name out of it?”

“I’ll try.”

“I hope you find her.”

Milton ended the call.

“What did he say?”

“He told me where to find the agency.”

The thought of confronting Brady seemed to have left his mind. “Where?”

“Come on,” he said. “It’s in the city. Want to come?”

24

Milton parked the car on the junction of Jefferson and Taylor. He had explained his plan to Trip during the drive back into the city and persuaded him that it was better that he go in alone. He had objected at first but Milton had insisted and, eventually, the boy had backed down. Milton didn’t know what he was going to find but, if the agency was backed by the Mafia, what he had in mind was likely to be dangerous. He had no intention of exposing Trip to that.

“I won’t be long,” he said as he opened the door. “Wait here?”

“Alright,” Trip said.

Milton stepped out and walked beneath the huge ship’s wheel that marked the start of Fisherman’s Wharf. He passed restaurants with their names marked on guano-stained awnings: Guardino’s, The Crab Station, Sabella & LaTorre’s Original Fisherman’s Wharf Restaurant. Tourists gathered at windows, staring at the menus, debating the merits of one over another. A ship’s bell clanged in the brisk wind that was coming off the Ocean, the tang of salt was everywhere, the clouds pressed down overhead. It was a festival of tacky nonsense, as inauthentic as it was possible to be. Milton continued down the road. The Classic Italian Pizza and Pasta Co. was between Alioto’s and The Fisherman’s Grotto. He climbed the stairs to the first floor and nodded to the maitre d’ as he passed him as if he were just rejoining friends at a table. It was a decent place: a salad and pasta station, tended to by a man in a chef’s tunic and a toque, was positioned beneath a large Italian tricolour; string bags full of garlic and sun-dried tomatoes hung from a rack in the area where food was prepared; a series of tables was arranged on either side of an aisle that led to the bar; the tables were covered with crisp white tablecloths, folded napkins and gleaming cutlery and glassware. Two sides of the restaurant were windowed, the view giving out onto the marina beyond on one side and the Wharf on the other. It was busy. The smell of fresh pizza blew out of the big wood kiln that was the main feature of the room.

He went into the kitchen. A man in grimy whites was working on a bowl of crab meat.

“I’m looking for Salvatore.”

The man shifted uncomfortably. “Say what?”

“Salvatore. The boss. Where is he?”

“Ain’t no-one called Salvatore here.”

Milton was in no mood to waste time. He stalked by the man and headed for the door at the end of the kitchen. He opened the door. It was a large office. He surveyed it carefully, all eyes. First, he looked for an exit. There was one on the far wall, propped open with a fire extinguisher. There was a window, too, with a view of the Wharf outside, but it was too small to be useful. There was a pool table in the middle of the room and a jukebox against the wall. There was a desk with a computer and a pile of papers. A man was sitting at the computer. He was middle-aged, burly, heavy shoulders, biceps that strained against the sleeves of his t-shirt, meaty forearms covered in hair. Both arms were decorated with lurid tattooed sleeves, the markings running all the way down to the backs of his hands and onto his fingers.

The man spun around on his chair. “The fuck you want?”

“Salvatore?”

He got up. “Who are you?”

“My name is Smith.”

“And?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“You think you can just bust into my office?”

“We need to talk.”

“Then make an appointment.”

“It’s about your other business.”

The man concealed the wary, nervous turn to his face behind a quick sneer.

“Yeah? What other business?”

Milton looked at him with dead eyes. He had always found that projecting a sense of perfect calm worked wonders in a situation like that. It wasn’t even a question of confidence. He knew he could take Salvatore, provided there were no firearms involved to even the odds. Milton couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost a fight against a single man. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost a fight against two men, either, come to that.

“Your escort business, Salvatore.”

“Nah.”

“Fallen Angelz.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It would be better to be honest.”

“I don’t know nothing about it, friend.”

Milton scanned for threats and opportunities. There were drawers in the desk that might easily contain a small revolver. No way of knowing that for sure, though, so he would just have to keep an eye on the man’s hands. There was a stack of cardboard trays with beer bottles inside, still covered by cellophane wrap, but Milton wasn’t worried about them. Bottles made for poor weapons unless you had the chance to smash them and it would take too long to tear through the plastic to get at these ones for them to be useful. No, he thought; the pool table was the best bet. There were the balls, hard balls made up of six ounces of phenolic resin that were good for throwing or for using as blunt weapons in an open fist. There were half a dozen cues held in a vertical rack on the nearest wall. A pool cue was a good weapon. Nice and light and easy to wield, balanced with lead shot in the fat end, long enough to offer plenty of range.

Milton watched the Italian carefully. He could see from the way that the veins were standing out in his neck and the clenching and unclenching of his fists that it would take very little for things to turn nasty.

So — let’s talk about it.”

“Don’t you listen? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So I wouldn’t find anything in those papers if I were to have a look?”

“Reckon that’d be a pretty dumb thing to go and try to do.”

Salvatore reached down slowly and carefully pulled up the bottom of his t-shirt, exposing six-inches of tattooed skin and the stippled grip of a Smith & Wesson Sigma 40F. He rested the tips of his fingers against it, lightly curling them around the grip.

“That’s not the first time I’ve seen a gun.”

“Could be your last.”

Milton ignored that. “Let me tell you some things I know, Salvatore. I know you run girls out of this office. I know you distribute drugs on the side. And I know you sent Madison Clarke to a party at the house in Pine Shore.”

“Yeah? What party was that?”

“Three months ago. The one where she went missing.”

He stared at him. A flicker of doubt. “Madison Clarke? No. I don’t know no-one by that name.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You think I care what you believe?” He stood up now, his right hand curled more tightly around the grip of the handgun. He pointed to the telephone on the desk with his left hand. “You know who I’m gonna call if you don’t start making tracks?”