"Good man. A family needs heirs, don't it? Someone to carry on the family name."

Qurban nodded. He agreed with the sentiment, but he would have nodded even if the killer had said Central Park East didn't smell like horse piss.

"Now you gave Marty a gun, dintcha?"

Again, Qurban nodded. Somehow the killer knew not just that but exactly where he'd handed it over. Barclay must have been following him for quite some time now. If so, it was likely he also knew where they lived.

Just the other day he'd jokingly suggested a sequel to Witch Hunter. He had no intention of becoming a character himself, let alone his family. He'd even suggested Barclay might have been hiding in the back of Martin's Lexus, waiting to spring a trap.

Be careful what you wish for, Qurban. It might come true.

"Please," he said, his voice quavering. "I'll tell you everything I know—just don't hurt me. Don't hurt my family."

Barclay sat up, his stink following him. He gave Qurban a lopsided grin. "Well," he said, and exhaled languidly through his nose. "That all depends on if I like what you tell me, my Middle Eastern friend."

The grin chilled Qurban. He was a man of principles. A man of his word. A handshake still meant something. A promise made was a promise kept. Men like Barclay lived to push back against the rules. They were wild cards. A slightly crass Americanism, but the label fit.

A man could never be sure what a wild card would do.

He told the killer everything he knew.

Ol' Gimme Jimmy let the agent's body slump over the console into the passenger seat. The guy didn't know Jack Shit, which was unfortunate for Jimmy but deadly for the agent.

After Jimmy roughed him up as promised, the agent blubbered and begged for his life to be spared and in his final moments he'd even prayed to his God. Jimmy slaughtered him halal, like his people would kill an animal meant for food, severing the jugular, carotid and windpipe with a single swipe of the rusty knife he found in a Dumpster stuck into the side of a hunk of stale bread like Excalibur in the stone.

He'd freed the knife only the day before, striking the stale bread against the brick wall until all that was left was crumbs. Looked like somebody spilled a bowl of croutons on the way to the salad. Like Hansel and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs.

After he pierced the agent's heart to be satisfied the dead wouldn't return with thoughts of revenge in the afterlife, the blade came out much easier than it had from the bread, with a squeak against the ribs and a weak spurt of dark lifeblood.

Jimmy stepped out of the Porsche and wiped the blade on his jeans. Once he'd choked poor, deluded Letitia May Cotton to death and removed her womanly workings to splay on the wall above Marty's bed, he'd run like the devil, knowing the cops wouldn't be far behind. He spent the past three days ducking in and out of alleys and underpasses, sleeping in the day, moving at night.