“No,” he says.

“How about vengeance?”

“Not that either,” Fat Gandhi says too quickly. “You want Rhys Baldwin. I understand that. He’s your cousin. But there are things I want too.”

There is no reason to ask him what. He will tell me.

“I want my life back,” Fat Gandhi says. “The police have nothing on me. Patrick Moore is back in the United States. He won’t come back to testify. Myron Bolitar may claim to have seen me stab him, but in the end, it was dark. I could also claim self-defense. Someone had obviously attacked us. The hole in the wall proves that. None of my people will talk. All the files and evidence remain locked away in a cloud.”

“The police have nothing,” I agree. “But I don’t think your big worry is the police, is it?”

“My big worry,” Fat Gandhi says, “is you.”

I grin again.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for you to knock on my door, Mr. Lockwood. May I be honest for a moment?”

“You can try,” I say.

“I didn’t know for certain, but when ‘Romavslazio’ put up that challenge, well, after what we had uncovered about you, we realized that it would be a risk. That was when I knew. I knew that I would have to face you directly, so we can put an end to this once and for all. We debated—and I’m just being honest—getting a bunch of men and trying to kill you.”

“But you changed your mind.”

“Yes.”

“Because I would have spotted the men. And I would have brought more men. And I would have killed your men and killed you. And even if you and your group somehow got the upper hand on us—”

Zorra makes a choking noise and laughs out loud. “On Zorra?”

“We are talking hypotheticals,” I assure him. I turn back to Fat Gandhi. “Even if you somehow could kill us, you knew that it wouldn’t end there. Myron would go after you.”

Fat Gandhi nods. “It would never end. I would have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

“You’re wiser than I thought,” I say. “So let’s make it simple. Give me Rhys. I take him home. The end. I never think of you again. I forget you exist. You forget I exist.”

It is a good deal, I think, but I wonder whether I can keep it. Fat Gandhi had tried to eliminate Myron. That was no small matter. I wouldn’t kill him out of revenge for that act—it was, in its own way, quite understandable—but I have to worry about both his mental stability and self-interest. He wanted to show strength to his workers. He wanted to show power. That motive was still present.

His “looking over my shoulder” concern works both ways.

“It’s not that simple,” Fat Gandhi says.

I put a little steel in my voice. “It’s just that simple. Give me Rhys.”