He proceeded to explain about how white truffles from the north of Italy and black from central and south were extremely valuable, though the former more so. A single truffle could be worth a thousand euros.

He continued to tell her a story about his search for a local truffle counterfeiter, passing off Chinese varieties for Italian. “A travesty!” The Composer case had derailed his hunt. A grimace. “The furfante…the villain escaped. Six months of work gone.” He scowled and finished his wine in a single gulp.

He received a text, read it, then replied.

Sachs lifted an eyebrow.

“Ah, not about the case. My friend. The pigeons I mentioned, he and I race them together. There is a race soon. Do you know anything about birds, Detective Sachs?”

“Amelia.”

The only ones she had experience with were the generations of peregrine falcons that had nested outside Lincoln Rhyme’s Central Park West town house. They were beautiful, striking and perhaps the most efficient and ruthless predator, pound for pound, in the world.

And their favorite meal was the fat, oblivious pigeons of New York City.

She said, “No, Ercole. Not a thing.”

“I have Racing Homers. Mine compete at fifty to a hundred kilometers.” A nod to the phone. “My friend and I have a team. It can be quite exciting. Very competitive. Some people complain that the pigeons are at risk. There are hawks, bad weather, man-made obstacles. But I would rather be a pigeon on a mission than one that sits all day on a statue of Garibaldi.”

She chuckled. “That’d be my choice too.”

Pigeon on a mission…

They’d taken a long-enough break. Sachs called for the check. He absolutely refused to let her pay.

They resumed their own mission.

And, curiously, the delay for lunch—the delicious lunch—paid off.

At the next town, they stopped at a restaurant in which the server had just come on duty; had they not taken their meal in the previous town they would have missed her. The waitress in Ristorante San Giancarlo was a slim blonde, with her grandmother’s flip hairstyle and very up-to-date tats. She looked at the picture Sachs proffered of Ali Maziq and she nodded. Ercole translated: “The man in the picture was dining with a man who was Italian, though not from Campania, she believes. She herself is Serbian so she couldn’t place the accent but it was not like the people in this region talk.”

“Did she know him? Had she seen him before?”

“No,” she said to Sachs, and spoke some more in Italian.

Ercole explained, telling Sachs that Maziq seemed uncomfortable the whole meal, looking around. The men spoke English but would fall silent when she approached. Maziq’s companion—she didn’t think they were friends—was “not so very nice.” The big man, with a dark complexion and thick dark hair, complained that his soup was cold. Which it was not. And said the bill was wrong. Which it was not. His dark suit was dusty and he smoked foul cigarettes, not caring who was offended.