“And now we’re taking down one of the Carrigans, together—Jo, it’s like a dream. That name’s everywhere, and it’s going to be us who topples him.” She sounded gleeful. “It’s like we’re really the ones running this city.” Lou smiled at me and shook her head, cheeks glowing in happiness.

Carrigan still made me uneasy—No one can make my Mitch do anything he doesn’t want to do—and I had too much over my head to be excited about a new case. But I couldn’t burst that bubble. Instead, I said: “I guess we are.”

We studied the joint. His firm was located on the ninth floor. It wasn’t like we could see anything from the outside, and Lou was a little bit nearsighted anyway, so she mostly alternated between squinting at Carrigan’s office, waiting for him to come out, and flipping through photos of him I’d saved on my phone.

Sometimes, the things you don’t find are the most interesting. Like the fact that Carrigan’s office had hung no billboards, posted no signs, made no announcements about his campaign. That didn’t square to me. A man who would take his wealthy wife’s last name for clout didn’t seem like a man who was ashamed of self-promotion. It might mean something. It might not.

But one of Lou’s rules was to assume nothing. Making assumptions was a fast track to making a mistake.

For example, assuming that I knew exactly how far I could push Ellen. Assuming that she was too chickenshit to ever call my bluff. That had been a mistake. An expensive mistake.

After twenty minutes, Lou stretched and yawned. I was about to suggest we move on, drive to Carrigan’s house, when she said: “You never did tell me how it went with Jackal the other night.”

I choked on the cooling coffee, splashed some up my nose. Jackal’s photographs were my first thought. “The other night?”

“You know. When you left me at the tiki bar.”

My stomach twitched. On the radio, an old jazzy standard made new by a woman with the voice of a thunderstorm. I looked at Lou from the corner of my eye—she hadn’t moved her head at all, and even parked, her hands were stuck on two and ten like they were glued, but she had a mischievous little smile on her face.

“What exactly did you want to know?”

“Did he . . . learn his lesson? To bring backup next time?”

She’d never asked for details before. I fluffed my hands through my hair—an old nervous habit, from the days before I’d drowned my tells in gimlets. I knew she noticed. “You want to know what Jackal’s packing?”

“Hey, you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me.”

“He learned his lesson.”