Brazuca sits across the desk from her and rubs the ache out of his bad leg. “The police were looking into money laundering and extortion, but the main case against him was based on a shootout in front of an underground gambling den in Chinatown. He was identified at the scene, and his fingerprints were found on a weapon used at the shooting.”

“Who made the ID?”

“Parking lot attendant from a lot across the street.”

“I’m guessing that’s not the snitch.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use that term. Police agents are a valuable source of information,” he says.

“Sorry, who’s the police agent snitch?”

Of course this is a losing battle with Nora. She has never been one for the rule of law. “My best guess is a small-time crook named Joe Nolan. He went to school with Jimmy Fang and was a known associate, but not inner circle. He did some time for assault and was back in the mix as soon as he got out. When Three Phoenix fell apart, Nolan moved out to Port Moody, where his brother lives.”

He gets his laptop from the other office, the one he shares with Stevie Warsame, Leo’s other partner in the PI business. When he returns, Nora is stretching out a kink in her back. She looks tired, he thinks, tired but alert. Her hair is swept off her shoulders. It’s longer than he’s used to seeing it. With her thin face and big dark eyes, she looks like a ragged doll someone has left out in the rain.

She spends a moment scrolling through the photos on the social media account he’s pulled up.

“This is Nolan?” she asks, somewhat incredulously.

“He your type or something?”

She ignores his sad attempt at humor. Pushes the screen back toward him. The man in the photos is over two hundred pounds of pure muscle.

She gets a look in her eyes sometimes, Nora does. As though he doesn’t deserve the air he breathes. He’d been dishonest with her one time, about one thing, and he’ll never live it down. “Jimmy Fang had a huge network of associates,” he says. “All the cops needed to do was find a pressure point in his network and then exploit a grudge. I think Nolan had the biggest pressure point.”

“If he was talking and had this pressure point, as you say, why not go into witness protection?”

“I don’t know. But I have a theory. I think the cops turned him because they had something on him and they threatened jail time. His older brother is high on the autism spectrum. After their mother died, Nolan became his primary caregiver. He couldn’t afford to not be around for another jail stint, and he didn’t want to disrupt his brother’s regular routines by relocating. The case hadn’t actually progressed to trial.”

It all comes back to family.