I nodded at the lie and began to wonder about the steps that had brought me to this crossroads. There was the German soldier I didn’t kill and a dozen others I had. There was Craig Kilian, who was either the unluckiest white boy I’d ever met or, more likely, a client who was playing me.

Deceitful clients are nothing new in detective work. A PI can’t afford to be too picky. But a man like Eddie Brock was beyond the range of, excuse the term, a few little white lies. If I had known the trouble I was getting into, I’d have turned Kilian away—I might have thrown him out a window.

But the time to cut bait was gone. Taking Craig’s case brought this great white into my office and so I had to assess the damage.

“These people know where she is but won’t tell you?” I asked, reasonably.

“Believe me when I tell you, Mr. Rawlins, these are not people you want to question.”

“If you tell me I can’t talk to them, then why should I believe you?” I said after rejecting two or three more civil replies.

“What?” Eddie managed to pack a good deal of threat into the word.

“I’m a damn good detective, Mr. Brock. I find people, stolen property, and the perpetrators of crimes that the police are too lazy to chase down. You’d be a fool to hire me if I didn’t ask any questions.”

He bristled at the word fool but I had to make a point—before I changed it.

Eddie hunched his shoulders and held out his hands—palms up. He was the kind of dangerous that made police shoot first.

“I don’t get it, Rawlins. It’s like you’re interviewing me for the job.”

“What if I were to say that I’d find this girl, this Donata, but before I told you where she was I’d ask her if she wanted to see you?”

“I could have made up my name,” he said, finally falling into the false banter of our two-sided interrogation.

“You couldn’t make up the way you look, man.”

Once again his eyes turned into pellets. I was reminded that even if he looked blunt that didn’t mean he was stupid.

After a moment his visage softened and Eddie Brock told me this: “I just wanna talk to the girl. She has information I need, that I have to have. If you can get her on a phone with me I’ll pay you a hundred dollars.”

“Five hundred and you have a deal.”

I didn’t want his money. I doubted that he’d pay me even if I could get the good-time girl on a call. No, I didn’t want his money, but he had to think I did.

“No more questions, then?” Brock inquired.