Catling lit his cigarette with a sleek-looking silver lighter and looked out the window again while he took a few slow drags. It was like the cameras were rolling, and he knew his lines, but he was just waiting for someone to say “action”. In fact, the whole situation—the nonsense about the payphone; the man in the natty summer suit; the odd, hazel cigarettes—struck Keegan as made for TV.

Keegan wasn’t in the mood to play along. He glanced at his wristwatch and then folded his arms in front of him. “I’m not sure what you want from me, Mr. Catling, but I’m a busy man.”

Catling nodded, still facing the window, and blew out a stream of cigarette smoke. If Keegan was busy, it was no concern of his. “I need your utter and absolute confidence,” he announced in precise, unhurried syllables. He turned to Keegan and eyed him imperially.

“Copy that,” Keegan said. “Confidence is what they pay me for.”

Catling raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment and took another pensive draw on his cigarette. “I find myself in a most delicate situation,” he said, “the exact details of which I cannot divulge.” He leaned to one side and pulled a black leather folio from a flap in the car door. He propped it on his knees, holding his cigarette in his lips. He opened the folio and pulled out a plump brown letter-sized envelope, encircled with a twice-wrapped beige rubber band. He held it out to Keegan and gave it a little wave in the air between them. Keegan didn’t move to take it, so Catling tossed it across the gap onto the seat beside him.

Keegan didn’t acknowledge the envelope in any way. It was clearly stuffed with cash—yet another TV cliché—but Keegan wasn’t ready to talk about payment. He had no idea what this man was about, and it would be a mistake to even hint that he was agreeing to anything.

“In that envelope is ten thousand US dollars,” Catling said. The cigarette bobbed in his lips as he spoke around it. “One hundred hundred-dollar bills. A down payment of one-third of the total fee I propose.”

Ten thousand dollars riding on the seat beside him. Keegan resisted the temptation to glance over at the envelope. Thirty thousand total. It was a hell of an offer—more than Keegan could expect to make in a couple of busy years, and the last few years had not been busy. “That’s a hell of a paycheck,” Keegan admitted. “It makes me worry what you’d want me to do for it.”

“I just need you to locate someone,” Catling said. “I need you to find a young woman.”

It sounded so easy, uncomplicated, which only made Keegan warier. “What’s her name?”