“It’s all on the website. I really need to go. There is a plane to Athens departing tonight and I have not yet packed.”

“Rebuilding the Acropolis?”

Kotsos guffawed. “That would be a nice challenge, but no. I am traveling for Mama’s cooking. Tomorrow is her birthday, she hates restaurants.”

“Spanakopita, keftedes, skordalia?”

Kotsos’s eyelids half lowered. “You are a gourmet, Lieutenant?”

“More like a gourmand.”

Kotsos regarded his own paunch. Two sumos, facing off. “I agree, Lieutenant, there is no substitute for the occasional bacchanalia. Nice talking to you.”

“One more thing.” Out came the death photo.

Markos Kotsos narrowed his eyes. Placed gold-framed pince-nez on the bridge of a meaty nose. Frowning, he reached into a pant pocket, brandished a white remote the size of a matchbook.

Nothing on the face but a single red button. He jabbed. The glass door clicked open.

“You had best come in.”

We followed Kotsos’s bouncy waddle up a Makassar ebony corridor lined with mural-sized photos and renderings of Masterson’s projects. Resorts, office complexes, government towers in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Emirates, oil-rich sultanates like Brunei and Sranil. Despite all the talk of harmony, the buildings were an ominous collection: looming megaliths, shark-nosed sky-eaters, crenellated monsters armored with steel and gold plating, slathered with quarriesful of marble, granite, onyx. In some cases the design aesthetic began by recalling classical motifs but shifted quickly to a cold, brutal forecast of a Darwinian future.

Spoils to the victor, higher and wider is better, audacious is divine.

Against all that, for all its palatial presumptions, the house on Borodi was puny classical pretense that didn’t fit. Neither did a confidentiality agreement to recover fees that would pale in comparison with Masterson’s typical commissions.

Kotsos picked up his pace, Jane’s photo still in hand, flapping against his hip. We hurried past a dozen unmarked office doors. Silence behind each one. Maybe good soundproofing, but it felt more like no-one-home. At the end of the hallway blocking straight access to Kotsos’s corner suite sat a young, straw-haired woman wearing a formfitted, plum-colored suit from the thirties. Black desk, pink laptop. Her fingers kept moving before she deigned to look up.

“Elena,” said Kotsos, showing her the picture, “what was this woman’s name?”

Not missing a beat, Elena said, “Brigid Ochs.”

Milo said, “You’ve got a good memory.”

“I do,” said Elena. Brassy Slavic voice, edged with disdain.

Kotsos said, “She is dead, Elena.”

“So I gather.”

Milo said, “Tell us about her.”

“What’s to tell? She was a disaster.”

“How so?”