On the picture side of the card was the expansive glass-domed Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle. On the address side were my name and address executed in fancy script with a brief note: “Your attendance is requested Thursday evening for a very special dinner. –TA.” Since I’d apparently worn out any friendly familiarity with Bojing, I assumed the “TA” represented his more deadly moniker—the Albino.

“I’m thinking this is his version of the Last Supper,” Tomás said. “Your last supper.”

“I’m thinking you’re right,” I said.

Tomás was sitting at my kitchen island on a December morning. Three inches of snow had fallen the night before, bringing the week’s total to six inches with the promise of another two inches by week’s end. Outside was the persistent whirling buzz of Jimmy Radmon’s trusty Husqvarna ST 427T snowblower clearing the sidewalks of Markham Street. He didn’t do it for extra money. He did it because this was the neighborhood he’d helped rebuild. The neighborhood he called home with love and pride. Folks offered to pay him. Jimmy, being Jimmy, refused payment. A few other neighbors even joined him in a kind of snow-blowing brigade.

I wasn’t one of them.

I was warming six cinnamon-sugar churros in the oven. Both Tomás and I were drinking Mexican coffee, which, for the uninitiated, makes espresso taste like diluted herbal tea.

“You think he’s been using the conservatory as a base?” Tomás asked.

“Unfortunately, I think this time of year people are more interested in staying warm, eating meat loaf and watching the Lions lose than venturing out to see thirteen acres of orchids, lily ponds and palm trees under a glass roof,” I said. “Plus, it’s been closed for reconstruction—the dome’s glass panels are being replaced. That’ll probably happen the first of the year—maybe later. Whatever security there is has to be minimal: a state patrol here and there, DPD drive-throughs every once in a while, a bored DNR officer in a booth at the entrance, maybe. Bojing could hole up with eight, ten guys for a week and nobody’d know.”

“My guess?” Tomás began. “If he’s as dangerous and well-funded as you say he is, he’s probably got switch-out crews of four, five guys. South side, maybe in a Zodiac inflatable from Windsor. Tough to navigate ice floes on the river at night, though, even with HD night-vision goggles.” Tomás paused to slurp some coffee and scrutinize the topographical map of Belle Isle that had unfolded in his head. “I gotta be honest, Octavio—we might be punching way above our weight on this one.”

“So, what’s the solution?”

“Put on more muscle. Fast.” Turning the postcard over like the ace of spades between his fingers, Tomás said, “How come you don’t use your microwave?”