Outside, Majid started to walk toward his office, then turned off at an angle, down a small street with tabacs, minimarkets, and bars. He wanted to think before he saw the detectives again. Or wanted to stop himself thinking. Thinking about the last meeting he’d had with Stavro and Ron. Ron who was dead, probably murdered (what else could the detectives’ questions have meant?). In their last meeting with Stavro, how obvious had it been that Ron had sabotaged Stavro’s project? Or tried to, by giving up the firm’s, and thus Stavro’s, anonymity? Not to mention the “research” Ron had conducted into Bouvier Lait and into Stavro’s background and god knew what else. And how had Stavro taken Ron’s snarky comments, in their earlier meeting, about the likelihood of convenient and profitable industrial catastrophes? And about cheese, that idiotic comment about cheese. And, finally, icing on the cake, Majid’s own very long hesitation when Stavro asked who had been responsible for the de-anonymizing “accident.” Why had he hesitated so long? Why hadn’t he just shrugged and said “Clerical error, sorry”? And case closed.

But so what? What if Stavro knew what happened? What if Ron or Majid had flat-out told him what Ron had done? Did that necessarily mean that Stavro would kill Ron? (This is what he was thinking. This is what he didn’t want to be thinking.) Why not just fire Sterling Wealth Management and take his money elsewhere? That’s what a displeased client, a client mécontent, would do. It happened all the time. That would be the likely, the logical, thing for Stavro to do. And so, with that unlikely happy thought in mind—that his partner was dead but hadn’t been murdered by their suspicious client (hooray!)—Majid turned left at a newsstand and resumed heading toward his office. And then hesitated again. Yes, an unsatisfied client would simply change firms, but that would be a normal unsatisfied client. What about a client who had guaranteed the success of an investment by blowing up an African oil field (and Africans with it), and who suspected, correctly, that Ron Mayfield suspected that and had taken a step against him that could be a preface to other steps that would send law enforcement his way and shut down his homicide-based investment program and perhaps him as well? Thus not your normal client. But—shifting gears again—that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Things did explode. Africa was haphazard. And look at Stavro’s second short sale, Bouvier Lait. No catastrophes there. The cows all happy and healthy. The stock price up.