He pours our booze and slides onto a stool beside me. He holds up his glass to clink, but I keep mine on the bar. I swirl it, searching for words in the amber liquid.

“When’s the last time you talked to David?” I ask.

He scrunches his brow.

“My cousin?” he asks. “I don’t know. A couple weeks ago, I guess. Why?”

I say, “I don’t get the sense you two are very close. How well do you really know him? And do you have any idea what he’s really capable of?”

“I’m not sure I’m following,” he says, looking puzzled.

I take my first bracing sip of bourbon, the liquid sharp and hot on my tongue.

“After you and I spoke the other day, I started doing some digging,” I say. “Into your family and its troubles. I spoke to Emily up at her horse farm. I pored over your company’s finances. It kept leading me back to David. All of it.”

“What kept leading back to David?” he asks.

“I was working off a good tip. That a terrorist cell was looking to strike on Mardi Gras.”

Now I’ve got his attention, 100 percent. “Oh, my God … ”

“I wanted to find out who was behind it,” I ask. “What they were planning. Where their money was coming from. Turns out … ”

I swallow another gulp of bourbon.

“It’s a complex web that I still don’t fully understand,” I say. “They’ve got multiple shell companies to hide their cash. Islamic extremists working with white supremacists. I don’t get it. I’ve barely scratched the surface … ”

I take the crumpled photograph of David and Farzat out of my pocket and set it down on the wooden bar top.

“ … but your cousin keeps popping up at the center of it, again and again.”

He blanches. He picks up the photo like it might bite him and looks at it closely.

“This is one of the bad guys?” he asks.

“Was. A radicalized Islamist who was recently tortured and killed. David was secretly funneling money to him through a crooked nonprofit.”

He’s gently shaking his head in disbelief.

“This … this is … insane!” he says. “Have you confronted David about all this?”

“Plenty of times,” I say. “But he’s a slippery son of a bitch. And that team of Israeli bodyguards he’s got doesn’t make him an easy person to get to.”

“Tell me about it,” he says. “Those guys are nuts. I took David hunting about a year ago on some land I own up in Bossier Parish? A few of them tagged along. They make the Secret Service look like a troop of Girl Scouts. They were on high alert, always suspicious, scanning the area, like they couldn’t stand having anyone armed next to their client.”