A further pair of men were sitting there.

“Is that them?”

Beau nodded. “Remember — I’ll do the introductions and, for God’s sake, show them a little respect. You’re not on home territory here and I don’t care how tough you think you are, they won’t give two shits about that. Wait here. I’ll go and speak to them.”

Milton sat down at the bar. One of the televisions was tuned to CNN. They had a reporter out at Headland Lookout, ghostly in the thick shroud of fog that alternated between absorbing and reflecting the lights for the camera. The man was explaining how the police had charted out a search area, breaking it down into eight four-foot sections of maps they kept in a mobile command centre. The item cut to footage of the search. The narrow road he had driven down four days ago was marked with bright orange arrows, pointing south to the two spots where remains had been found. Fluorescent orange flags were planted in the scrub and sand on each of the sites. Officers were weeding through the bramble, fanning outward from the flags.

Beau came back across. “Alright,” he said. “They’ll see you. Remember: play nice.”

“I always do.”

Milton approached. One was older, wrinkled around the eyes and nose. He had a full head of hair, pure black, the colour obviously out of a packet. There was a beauty spot on his right cheek and his right eyelid seemed to be a little lazy, hooding the eye more than the other. He was wearing a shirt with a couple of buttons undone, no tie, a jacket slung over the back of the chair. The second man was younger. He had a pronounced nose with flared nostrils, heavy eyebrows and beady eyes that never stayed still.

Beau sat down on one of the two empty seats.

Milton sat down, too.

“This is Mr. Smith,” Beau said.

“How are you doing?” the older man said, nodding solemnly at him. “My name is Tommy Luciano.”

He extended his hand across the table. Milton took it. His skin was soft, almost feminine, and his grip was loose. He could have crushed it.

“And my friend here is Carlo Lucchese.”

Lucchese did not show the same hospitality. He glowered at him across the table and Milton recognised him; he was the one who had been on the intercom to him, one of the four who had come to kill him.

He didn’t let that phase him. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“Beau said it was important. That wouldn’t normally have been enough to interrupt my afternoon but he told us that you were very helpful with a small problem we had in Juárez.”

“That’s good of him to say.”

“And so that’s why we’re sitting here. Normally, with what you’ve done, you’d be dead.”

Lucchese looked on venomously.

“Perhaps,” Milton said.

“You had an argument with one of my men.”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“Want to tell me why?”

“I have some questions that I need to have answered. I asked him, and they seemed to make him uncomfortable. He threatened me with a gun. Not very civil. I wasn’t prepared to stand for that.”

“Self-defense on your part, then?”

“If you like.”

Beau put a hand down on the table and intervened: “John’s sorry, though — right, John?”

Milton didn’t respond. He just kept his eye on the older man.

“He don’t look sorry,” Lucchese said.

“Carlo…”

“This douche broke Salvatore’s face. Three ribs. Messed up his knee real good. And we’re talking to him? I don’t know, Tommy, I don’t, but what the goddamn fuck?”

“Take it easy,” the old man said, and Milton knew from the way that he said it that he was about to be judged. The next five minutes would determine what came after: he was either going to get the information he wanted or he was going to get shot. “These questions — you wanna tell me what are they?”

He didn’t take his eyes away from the older man. “There was a party in Pine Shore three months ago. September. I drove a girl up there.”

“You drove her?”

“I’m a taxi driver.”

Luciano laughed. “This gets better and better.”

Milton held his eye. “Something happened at the party and she freaked out. She ran and she’s never been seen since.”

“Pine Shore?”

“That’s right. Near where the two dead girls turned up.”

“I know it. And you think this girl is dead?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“And what’s any of it got to do with us?”

“Fallen Angelz. She was on the books.”

He looked at him with an amused turn to his mouth. “Fallen Angelz? That supposed to mean anything to me?”

Milton didn’t take his eyes away. “You really want to waste my time like that?”

Beau stiffened to Milton’s right but he said nothing. The younger man flexed a little. Milton stared hard at Luciano, unblinkingly hard. The old man held his glare steadily, unfazed, and then smiled. “You have a set of balls on you, my friend.”

“Aw, come on, Tommy — you can’t be serious. You said—”

“Go and do something else, Carlo. I don’t need you around for this.”

“Tommy—”

“It wasn’t a suggestion. Go on — fuck off.”

Lucchese left the table but he didn’t go far. He stopped at the bar and ordered a beer.

Milton didn’t relax, not even a little. He was very aware of the two bodyguards at the table across the room.

“Alright,” Luciano said. “So suppose I said I do know about this business. What do you want?”

“A name — who booked the girls that night.”

“Come on, Mr. Smith, you know I can’t give you that. That business only works if it’s anonymous. We got some serious players on the books. Well known people who would shit bricks if they knew I was letting people know they took advantage of the services we offer. They need to trust our discretion. I start spilling their names, there are plenty of other places who’ll take their money.”

“You need to think bigger than that, Mr. Luciano. Telling me who booked her that night is the best chance you’ve got of keeping the business.”

“That so? How you figure that?”

“One of your drivers told me that the girl was sent by the agency. You could say he’s had a crisis of conscience about it. He knows he ought to be telling the police. So far, that hasn’t been strong enough to trump the fact that he’s terrified that talking is going to bring him into the frame. That’s his worst case scenario.”

“No, Mr. Smith. His worst case scenario is that I find out who he is.”

“But you won’t find out, not from me.”

“So what’s his worry?”

“If he goes to the cops? That he gets charged with procuring prostitution.”

“So he’s not saying anything.”

“Not yet. But you know the way that guilt is. It has a way of eating at you. I’m betting that he’s feeling worse and worse about what happened every single day, and the longer the police dig away without getting anywhere, the harder it’s going to be for him to fight off going to them and telling them everything he knows. And if she turns up dead? I reckon he calls them right away. The first thing that’s going to happen after that is that Salvatore gets a visit about the murders. The second thing is that he gets arrested and charged. The police need to be seen to be doing something. They’ll go after the low-hanging fruit, and three dead prostitutes linked — rightly or wrongly — to an illegal agency like Fallen Angelz would be a perfect place to start. And, without wanting to cast aspersions, Salvatore didn’t strike me as the kind of fellow with the character to stand up to the prospect of doing time when there’s a plea bargain on the table. I don’t need to go on, do I?”

“You sure Salvatore flips? Just like that?”

“Are you sure he won’t?”

“You saying you can help me?”

“I’ve got a few days head start on the police. Maybe that’s enough time for me to find out what happened. Maybe my girl isn’t linked to the other two. Maybe something else has happened to her. And, maybe, if I can find some answers, the driver decides he doesn’t have to say anything.”