He called back not five minutes later. He had the bracelet. I could pick it up anytime I wanted, he said. In fact, that very afternoon, when he’d be out, would be ideal. I bit my lip. No one can make my Mitch do anything he doesn’t want to do.

“Wonderful,” I said. “I’ll be sure not to mention that it’s jewelry I left in your car the other night.”

There was a long pause. I could almost hear his brain clicking through the optics. “On second thought,” he said, “I’ll come to you. Is tomorrow afternoon good?”

I pinched my inner thigh until it welted, until I was sure I could control the excitement in my voice. “It’s perfect.”

When I got to the office, there was no sign of Jackal or Lou. But the office wasn’t empty.

The door was cracked, and someone had closed the blinds so that thin ribbons of sunlight cut into the ugly orange rug but shaded the corner of the office. A pair of loafers edged out into the sunlight. I gave a little yelp. MacLeish sat in a chair next to a potted plant, reading Attorney at Law Magazine. Lou’s idea of a little joke. I craned my neck, looking down the hallway for Escobar.

“Planned to go to law school once,” MacLeish said to me. The chair’s leather creaked under him as he shifted.

“That door was locked.” I was almost sure of it.

MacLeish focused one eye on me and kept the other on the magazine. An unnerving trick. “One of my skills that wouldn’t have been put to good use as a lawyer,” he replied.

“You didn’t have to break in,” I said, my mind working in overdrive. He wouldn’t break in alone to serve me a warrant. This had to be extracurricular, coming to collect on the cash.

I took a gamble, tried to throw him off-kilter. “How does it happen that your partner on the force is younger than you and already higher-ranked? It doesn’t take a genius to see you’re the better cop.”

MacLeish tossed the magazine onto the table next to him. “You can lose stripes as easy as you earn ’em.”

“Ah,” I said. “Because you made a mistake? What kind of mistake?”

“Did you know Hiram Klein had dozens of complaints filed against him over the years?” He stood up, adjusting his belt. Mac-Leish put his hands on his hips, dipped forward so we were closer to eye to eye.

The abrupt switch threw me. Now I was the one off-kilter. “No, I didn’t know that,” I lied.

“Mean shit,” he said. “And he looked like such a nice grandfatherly type.”

“You’re here to tell me about Hiram Klein’s casting-couch preferences?”