Get a grip, Honey Bear. You’re tightly wound as ever, aren’t you? I thought you said living in Spain was relaxing. It was unusually affectionate for Claudia to call me by her childhood nickname for me; Honey Bear was the nickname of Ava Gardner’s character in Mogambo. I’d let her turn the conversation around, but I hadn’t forgotten what she’d said, and now I wondered about it.

“Are you cold, Lil? Want me to turn up the heat?” Jesse asked, turning a knob on the dashboard. I shivered the rest of the way to Tariq’s building, a beautiful prewar structure that had always reminded me of a castle. “You sure you don’t want me to come on in with you?” Jesse asked. When I shook my head he shrugged. “I’m gonna park her somewhere safe. I’ll be waitin’ in the lobby. Make sure Tariq knows that.” He squeezed my arm and let me go.

One doorman let me inside. Another waited behind a circular counter and telephoned Tariq’s apartment after I gave him my name. “There is a Miss Moore here to see you,” he said. He was silent a moment. “Yeah, that’s what I said. M-O-R-E.”

“Two O’s,” I corrected him.

He repeated this into the receiver. “Go on up, Miss Moore. Top floor.”

I thanked him and went to the elevator bank. I was whisked upstairs so quickly that my ears popped. The doors silently slid open on the twenty-first floor, and I stepped into a broad foyer with an inlaid black-and-white marble floor, not unlike the one at Tariq’s restaurant. A hulking man in a tailored suit glowered by the door. His head was shaved and his nose looked as if it had been broken, casually and repeatedly, in the past. Overall, he was merely the size of a refrigerator. He was wearing a shoulder holster that didn’t do much for the line of the suit, but did a mean job showcasing his gun.

“Good evening, Miss Moore,” he said, in a voice as clear and plummy as a BBC broadcaster’s. He had a laptop computer open on a console table. I suspected that it was for security purposes, but the screen showed a soccer game in progress, though the audio was on mute.

“Evening,” I said.

“Lovely coat,” he added, smiling slightly. He held the door for me. I wondered if Tariq had found him at Harrod’s in London. A heartbeat after the door clicked shut behind me, I heard the roar of thousands of soccer fans. Game on.