He got out, went around back, opened the rear driver’s-side door and pulled the pack off the seat as Grigor exited from the opposite side.

“Ah, heavy!” he laughed, carrying it in both hands. “Guess you have a long trip!”

Grigor smiled and raised the trunk lid for him. “You’re very kind, Terrence.”

The driver leaned forward to put the pack inside.

Moving swiftly up behind him, Grigor grabbed a fistful of his hair with his left hand and pulled his head back so hard that it almost met his collarbone. Then he slammed the lead sap in his opposite hand sideways into his right temple—three rapid blows with its edge. Grigor felt the driver’s skull crunch in, its bones splintering sharply to rupture the underlying temporal arteries.

The driver’s eyes rolled up in their sockets as Grigor struck his shattered skull twice more to be thorough. Then he shoved his body forward into the trunk, jamming in the legs. The hemorrhage of blood drowning his brain would kill him within minutes if he wasn’t already dead.

Grigor quickly attended to the rest. He felt in the driver’s pocket for his key chain and snatched it out. He lifted his pack up from the ground, tossed it back inside the car and got in behind the wheel. He pulled the driver’s cell phone off its cradle and logged him out of GoRide. Then he took the paper clip out of his pocket, used it to eject its SIM card and flicked the card out into the grass. The phone was now off-line, along with any tracking applications that might have run in the background.

Grigor shut the Mazda’s door but did not immediately pull from the driveway. He had one last thing to take care of before he left here.

Reaching into a pocket for his satphone, he placed his call.

Moments after the paramedics finished with him, Musil stood outside the EMS vehicle, staring dully down the block toward the taxi stand. Carol Morse was now with the police talking to the cabbies and other witnesses on the sidewalk.

“Agent.”

He glanced around toward the voice, saw Kali suddenly alongside him. She appeared to have come from the direction of the crosswalk.

After a second, he realized she was carrying his dastār. She held it out to him, folded in her upturned palms, like an offering.

“I believe this is yours,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said and took it from her.

Kali nodded. “In Sikh tradition, the color black represents the surrender of one’s ego. Isn’t it so?”

He looked at her.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’ve noticed you always wear a black dastār. Without exception.”

A beat of silence.

“Yes,” he said.

She dipped her head slightly.