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The first photograph is from Bushwick, the packing house. My men have spent three nights sitting outside it. A heavyset man stands at the loading door with a clipboard. It appears he’s checking boxes off against a list. Then Rafe swipes to a second photo, taken tonight in bad light.

“Somebody posted this?”

Rafe grunts.

Same man, corner booth in a bar somewhere, jacket off, sweating, a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket in front of him. There's a crowd around him laughing, maybe at something he said. He looks like the one footing the bill, and that bottle of Brut looks expensive.

"Ferro's transport manager," Rafe says. "Signs on everything that leaves their building."

"And guess where he is right now." Tomek abandons the ball entirely and comes around the desk. "Marek's cousin pours drinks at this place down by the river, yeah? Texts Rafe an hour ago—this guy's been in there since nine o'clock buying rounds for the whole room. The whole room, Boss. Champagne. Plural champagne."

"On a transport manager's wages," I say.

"A year ago Ferro's couldn't cover their fuel bills," Rafe says.

"And tonight their paperwork man is throwing money around like he owns the place." I turn the phone toward the light and study the sweating, generous face of a man spending money he shouldn't have. Somebody has been filling his pockets, and I'd dearly like to know whose name is on the envelope.

"I want an hour with him," Rafe says. "The caskets. Whose bodies. Who books the flights. Which boxes customs never opens."

I haven't heard Rafe say that many words in a row in years. He must really want this man.

I look at the photograph for a long moment, and then at my own phone, lying face-down beside the pen tray where it's been punishing me all evening.

Somewhere across this city my wife is drinking cocktails or whatever she wants to drink with somebody, and I've just been handed a legitimate professional reason to leave the house and go hunting in cocktail bars. God has a sense of humor. He and I have an understanding.

"Get the car," I say. "And listen to me, both of you. We're talking to him and nothing else. He walks out of that bar tonight in the same condition he walked in, minus whatever he tells us. We're following the money up, not spreading him around the furniture."

"And the pierogi?" Tomek asks, wounded.

"After. Work first, dumplings after. That's how empires are built."

The bar, when we find it, has a neon flamingo over the door, and the decor doesn't improve from there. Inside, everything is pink, gold and wicker, the music is louder than anywhere like this I've ever been, and the cocktail menu taped to the door is entirely puns. There’s even a small dance floor, unoccupied at present.

After seeing the picture, I assumed this would be a fancy place that would appeal to women. The latter seems true as it’s in a respectable area and I see them sitting here in groups, but how in hell would this outfit have thousand-dollar bottles of champagne on the menu? Maybe that’s the appeal. Luxury dressed up as comfort, much like those torn up T-shirts designers love to sell for hundreds of bucks.

I'm the only man in the building in a black suit, which works fine for a meeting but here makes me look less like a respected businessman and more like somebody's disappointed father arriving to take them home. Tomek looks around like he's arrived in heaven. Rafe looks bored, but that's just his permanent expression.

I spot our man almost immediately. He's sprawled across the booth, ice bucket beside him, his hair matted to his face, and his audience looks exhausted because he keeps talking.

I'm studying the layout of the place when I hear something that empties my head of Ferro, the caskets, the money, and every other thought I've ever had.

Her laugh. I'd know that laugh through a wall. I'd know it underwater. It cuts straight through the music, and my whole body turns toward it like it's been trained. Because it has. And there she is, my wife, on a barstool with her shoes hooked over the rail and her hair down, holding an enormous blue drink with a paper umbrella in it. Unless my eyes are failing me, there’s also a small plastic monkey hanging off the rim. Beside her, a stunning redhead I've never seen in my life is telling a story with lots of hand gestures, and Manon is laughing so hard she has to set the drink down on the bar.

I didn't follow her here, and this needs to be noted somewhere before she knows I'm here. After all the engineered coincidences and carefully purchased information about her, the one single night I stay home and behave myself like a domesticated animal, fate walks me into her bar with two armed men and a photograph of a smuggler in my pocket. She's going to think I tracked her phone. I've made a lot of effort teaching her exactly what kind of man I am, and tonight, the time it finally matters, I'm innocent.

"Boss," Rafe says quietly. He's seen her too. "I didn't know."

"I know you didn't."

"Is that Mrs. Novak?" Tomek is already lifting his hand to wave, and I catch his wrist on the way up.

Too late. Manon turns around.

For half a second she looks surprised, almost pleased even, and I'd pay serious money to have that half-second frozen in time. Then her expression changes because her husband, who has a documented history of obsessive stalking, is standing by the door with two of his men. Her eyes narrow. She says something to the redhead without taking her eyes off me, slides down off the stool, and walks toward me with the face of a woman planning a homicide.

"You," she says, "have got to be kidding me."

"Manon—"