“I’m wondering what made you believe it was Interpol on the phone besides what the person claimed?” I try that approach next, and I can feel Marino getting stubborn like concrete setting.

Then he says, “I guess the only way I’m going to know is if I try to call the asshole back.”

He picks up his cell phone from his lap. He unlocks it and reluctantly hands it to me as if he’s turning over evidence that will get him into a world of trouble.

“Open it to my notepad,” Marino says with his unblinking eyes fixed on the road, “and you’ll see the number. Just click on the app and you can see where I typed what he gave me.”

“Why? So you could call him back and report what we’re about to find?”

“Hell if I know. He just gave me a number and said to update him, that we’d touch base tomorrow,” Marino says, and this is sounding only more like a taunt, a hoax, with every second that passes.

Throughout my career I’ve worked closely with Interpol. We’ve always enjoyed a close relationship because when it comes to death and violence the world is a small place. It gets smaller all the time, and it’s increasingly common for me to deal with color-coded international notices about fugitives and people who have vanished or turn up dead and nameless in the United States.

I also deal with Americans who die abroad, and now and then a decedent turns out to be undercover law enforcement or a spy. I know how to dance the dance with the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the CIA, the United Nations Security Council and various international police agencies and criminal tribunals. I can honestly say that what Marino is describing to me isn’t at all the way the process works.

“Then you want me to call this?” I look at what he typed in an electronic note, a phone number with a Washington, D.C., area code.

“Why not?” he says, and he’s like a pressure cooker about to blow.

“I don’t want to talk to whoever it is since it’s your phone and not mine.” I look at the phone in my hand, at the number displayed on an electronic message pad.

“Quit thinking like a damn lawyer. Just call it. May as well go ahead, and both of us can listen to it on speakerphone. Let’s see if the investigator answers.”

“You never did tell me his name. Who will you ask for?”

“John Dow. Dow as in Dow Jones.” Marino’s jaw muscles clench.

“Or as in John Doe?”

“I’m pretty sure he pronounced it Dow.” The redness in his face is spreading down his neck.