I’d heard the Needhams had invested in Neptune Premium Seafood a couple years ago. There’s not much inside worth stealing except pallets of dead fish, so the incident report Cunningham shared with me—a man in a black car outside, in the middle of the night—sounded less like a thief casing the place and more like a fed checking it out.

I had no idea, until Billy told me, that members of the Needham family had ever made threats of violence against anyone.

And I definitely didn’t know some were part-owners of the restaurant where Farzat used to work.

Could all this be a crazy coincidence leading me down a dead end?

Absolutely.

Or, maybe not. The only way to find out … is to find out.

And maybe—thankfully!—Special Agent Morgan and the rest of the feds are wrong. Maybe this isn’t an upcoming terrorist attack on Mardi Gras. Maybe it’s a familial civil war, one branch of the Needham family finally settling old grudges and scores with a shattering act of violence.

I’m up before dawn the next morning, with only a minor hangover from all the wine and champagne I had at Petite Amie. But I can’t leave Marlene entirely in the lurch. She’s probably still asleep, so I shoot her a text as I’m walking to my car. I’ll be “running errands” all day, I tell her, using our code phrase for “don’t ask.” But I explain I’m heading to the truck extra early to do food prep for the day’s brunch, lunch, and dinner shifts. Hopefully she’ll understand. If not, well … it’s not like she can divorce me twice.

The sun is just peeking above the horizon when I turn onto Canal Street, heading southeast. It’s usually a busy thoroughfare, but I’m practically the only car on the road. I keep following it toward the French Quarter, passing a few temporary, ominous police barricades as I get closer. In just a few hours, this whole area will be bumping with music and tourists and the day’s extravagant parades. But right now, it’s almost eerily quiet. Gutters are clogged with colorful beads and empty plastic cups. Streamers drift down sidewalks like tumbleweed. I guess even the craziest party animals on the planet have to sleep sometime.

I make a left onto Burgundy Street and start looking for a parking spot. The truck is parked just a few blocks away. Just as I find one, my phone rings. Great. Marlene’s about to ream me out for ditching her all day and for waking her up early. Putting my car in Reverse and backing into the space, I answer my phone on speaker.

“Mar, I’m sorry, but there’s a lot going on right now and I need you to—”

“Caleb?” comes a man’s voice. “It’s Gordon. Did I wake you?”