“Just tell me where to find the man who used to work here, the one with the glass eye, the scar on the ear.”

“First the mystery girl and now you.”

“No bullshit,” Dunne said. “You told her you weren’t the owner when he worked here. That’s not what the liquor board says.”

“Very good, Dick Tracy. And if I don’t cooperate you’re going to blow me away? I don’t think so. That would make this a very bad month for you, seeing how about a dozen witnesses would send your black ass away.”

“You’re smart for a former government man,” Dunne said.

He lowered the gun. Lopez waited for Dunne to say more.

“It’s amazing what you can find out when you ask a few friends in the bureaucracy to check a name … . Born in Wilmington, Delaware. Marines. Then U.S. Army. Special Forces. Detailed to South Korea. Then the Philippines, counterinsurgency. Then to Afghanistan. A TDY for the Agency, I’m guessing. Trained the mujhadeen. Distinguished write-ups. But there was one problem. The Hekhtabar clan you were advising developed a creative method for financing its war against the Soviets. They learned that a supply line can work in both directions—in and out. And a DEA agent was paying attention. He tracked a supply from Mexico to Paris to Peshawar and to the Badakhshan hills controlled by Hekhtabar. He even turned a courier, who told him about an American—a very big American—who was helping out back home. The agent forwarded the case to Justice and waited. Nothing happened. Most DEA agents learn not to push inconvenient cases. But this guy was a real ballbuster. He kicked and screamed. He didn’t get his way, and it was suggested that his career might flourish elsewhere. He took the advice—but not before making sure there was a paper trail. It was classified, but at least it was there. And his last accomplishment: finding out the name of that American he never got to question—Ernest Ivan Lopez. I bet your Afghan friends got a kick out of the Ivan. But they probably didn’t know your real name anyway.”

Lopez’s jaw was clenched.

“I wasn’t involved in no heroin shipments,” he said.

“But you knew,” Dunne said. His tone was between that of a question and a statement.

“I wasn’t involved, I said. You go to the end of the earth and help some rag-heads who are up against the second biggest military power in God’s entire fucking universe. I was sent to help them kick Moscow butt, not to examine every package on every stinking mule train.”

“Fair enough. But don’t you think Mr. Hekhtabar might have thought your presence meant they had a degree of protection?”

“No one ever told them that. I sure as hell didn’t.”