The owner of the restaurant rushed over to quiet the customer. Once a captain in the special police in Saigon, the owner now served gin to Americans who used to advise him on how to wage war. Some people win even when they lose, Lancette told herself.

She found a listing for a business called the Gauntlet. That was the name on the cap worn by the man in Walters’s story—the man who bore a tattoo similar to the one found on the assassin of President Bob Hanover. There was an address on 5th Street Northwest. It was near downtown Washington, in a desolate neighborhood. She knew there was a police station three blocks away. During her initial orientation at the CIA, she had been told that operations people were required to memorize the locations of all police offices and hospitals in the metropolitan area. As an analyst-to-be, it was not necessary for her to do so. Nevertheless, she had committed the list to memory.

Outside the restaurant, she hailed a cab. She gave the driver an address that would be a block away from her destination. As the taxi headed across the Key Bridge, she watched the local college crew teams rowing on a muddy Potomac. You can never know if a chance is a good one or a bad one, she said to herself.

There was no sign on the front of the building, a four-story brownstone with peeling paint and shuttered windows. Next door was a boarded-up shop. In its brick facade, a few faded painted words remained: Goldstein’s Pawn. On the other side was a collapsing building. Its windows were gone, replaced by bricks and cement. Glassine envelopes were scattered on the sidewalk. Further down the block was a square of land filled with rubble and surrounded by a cyclone fence.

Three young black men were hanging across the street. She knew they were watching her. She walked to the rear of the building. There were several tall oak trees behind it. The trees obscured the view of the balconies attached to the second and third floors. She heard voices coming from the closed-up brownstone and returned to the street.

Next to the front door was a mailbox. A small piece of paper bearing the handwritten word Gauntlet was taped to the receptacle. She pressed the doorbell.

A large white man—about six-and-a-half-feet tall and weighing three hundred pounds—answered the door. He was in his mid-forties and had a curly red beard that came to a point halfway down his chest.

“Don’t open until six,” he said and started to shut the door.

“Wait,” she said.

The door closed with force. She rang again.

The same man opened the door.

“Not open,” he said.

“I’m not here for that,” she said, wondering what “that” might be.

“Then what you want?”

“Can I come in?” she asked.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you want? You a lawyer?”