The top was open and he went to it, smelling it suddenly. Someone had poured acid onto the turntable, and the velvet inlay had been eaten down to nothing. He opened the cabinet to find all of Federico’s beloved record discs smashed into shards. His first instinct was that they must have been murdered; the old man would have never left this behind or allowed anyone to vandalize it so obscenely.

Then he noticed the note. It was glued to the right cabinet door. The handwriting was Federico’s, identical to that on the note he’d left inviting Danny to dinner that first night; Danny suddenly felt nauseated.

Policeman,

Is this wood still a tree?

Federico

“Aiden,” his father said from the doorway. “Good to see you, boy.”

Danny looked over at him. “What the hell?”

His father stepped into the apartment. “The other tenants say he seemed like such a sweet old man. Your opinion of him as well, I assume?”

Danny shrugged. He felt numb.

“Well, he isn’t sweet and he isn’t old. What’s the note he left you all about?”

“Private joke,” Danny said.

His father frowned. “Nothing about this is private, boy.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

His father smiled. “Elucidation awaits in your room.”

Danny followed him down the hall to find two men waiting in his apartment. They wore bow ties and heavy rust-colored suits with dark pinstripes. Their hair was plastered to their skulls by petroleum jelly and parted down the middle. Their shoes were a flat brown and polished. Justice Department. They couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d worn their badges pinned to their foreheads.

The taller of the two looked over at him. The shorter one sat on the edge of Danny’s coffee table.

“Officer Coughlin?” the tall man said.

“Who’re you?”

“I asked first,” the tall man said.

“I don’t care,” Danny said. “I live here.”

Danny’s father folded his arms and leaned against the window, content to watch the show.

The tall man looked over his shoulder at the other man and then back at Danny. “My name’s Finch. Rayme Finch. Rayme. No ‘ond.’ Just Rayme. You can call me Agent Finch.” He had the look of an athlete, loose-limbed and strong of bone.

Danny lit a cigarette and leaned against the doorjamb. “You got a badge?”

“I already showed it to your father.”

Danny shrugged. “Didn’t show it to me.”

As Finch reached into his back pocket, Danny caught the little man on the coffee table watching him with the kind of delicate contempt he’d normally associate with bishops or showgirls. He was a few years younger than Danny, maybe twenty-three at the most, and a good ten years younger than Agent Finch, but the pockets beneath his bulging eyes were pendulous and darkly pooled like those of a man twice his age. He crossed his legs and picked at something on his knee.

Finch produced his badge and a federal ID card stamped with the seal of the United States government: Bureau of Investigation.