Whisper gives him a look that neither of us seems to be able to decipher. Is it tolerance? Is it . . . affection? I think it’s acknowledgment, personally, but before I can dwell on the subject, she turns away from us both and spreads herself across the floor.

“Any more tails yesterday?” I ask.

“No. And I was paying attention.”

We mull that over. Brazuca seems well-rested. His eyes are no longer bloodshot, and when I go into the kitchen for some coffee, there’s at least half a pot left. He’s pacing himself today. I think he can handle a surprise or two, so I tell him about my conversation last night with Nolan. Before I get to Vidal, he interrupts.

“Damn it, Nora,” he says. He buries his face in his hands. “We were supposed to talk to him together.”

“Where did you go yesterday? After you dropped me off.”

He looks away, and I see now that it’s back. The ability I used to have, the one that let me figure out when people are lying, has returned in full force. Brazuca was the one man I could never read, but he has changed. He has become transparent to me. Whatever pedestal I’d put him on when he’d been my sponsor has crumbled to dust, and now here he is. Limping along with his secrets.

“You went to Nolan’s house, didn’t you?” I say.

“Yes, okay? I did. I started to doubt the tail, so I drove around for a while to clear my head, and then I found myself back on the highway.”

“And at his house.”

“He wouldn’t talk to me, though.”

It’s because he still looks like a cop, even though he isn’t anymore. He just has that face. I don’t say this, though. There’s something unbearably fragile about him right now. “You ever hear of Peter Vidal?” I say.

“I worked a security detail for him once at WIN Security. Some economic forum. Why?”

“That’s the name Nolan gave up. Said he saw Vidal with Fang, getting cozy at a restaurant.”

This gives him a pause. “Peter Vidal is rarefied company for the likes of those two.”

“Now he is. But maybe he wasn’t so high and mighty back then.” And maybe he’s still not all that high and mighty. Maybe he’s just gotten better at faking it. “According to Nolan, he married well. Though that doesn’t mean his past is clean. He was a lawyer, after all.” I decide not to tell him about the woman on the boat. He doesn’t look like he could handle it.

He puts up a hand, which tells me I might be right. “Okay, we’re doing this wrong. Vidal may have something on Fang, but the Jimmy-Fang-and-Three-Phoenix line is only one part of getting to Dao. The second has to be Dao himself.”