“Nope,” I say. “Not even close.”

I never sleep eight hours straight through anymore. Too many nights sleeping on sand or rock or dirt, always having to keep one ear open for interruptions—the kind of interruptions that can kill you. You never really recover that deep and peaceful slumber.

“So who’s this guy we’re going to see?” I ask Cal.

“He’s a connector,” Cal says. “And he’s a nasty piece of work. You armed?”

I nod. “Always.”

“Good. Me too. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but I’m not sure he’s going to want to cooperate.”

Cal directs me as I drive us down to Riverdale. It’s on the far south side of the city. The neighborhoods seem to get older, poorer, and more rundown the farther south we go. Instead of towering high rises, I see squat concrete apartment buildings, boarded-up businesses, and vandalized bus stops.

Riverdale itself seems sparsely populated by contrast to the downtown core. Most of the area is taken up by rail yards, landfills, and industrial sites, including a massive wastewater treatment plant.

Callum tells me to drive up toward the Union Pacific railroad tracks.

“Right up there,” he says, pointing to what looks like an abandoned warehouse. Every single window is shattered, and the metal sides are layered with what looks like twenty years’ worth of graffiti—color and pattern so dense that it’s hard to tell what any of it is supposed to represent.

“Is the car gonna be here when we get back?” I say skeptically.

“Who knows.” Callum shrugs.

“They still have trains coming through here?”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “A fuck-ton of them. Probably five hundred a day. They get jammed up on the tracks and left overnight. Then guys who work at the rail yard tip off other guys about what’s in the boxcars. And if it’s something worth stealing—guns or TV sets or designer shoes—it goes missing that night. The railways are insured, so they’d rather save money on security versus trying to stop cargo going missing.”

“And your broker here—what’s his name?”

“Zimmer,” Cal says.

“I take it he facilitates the thefts and finds a home for the goods.”

“Right,” Cal says. “Exactly. He’s the middleman.”

We get out of the car, walking across the broken pavement of the empty lot. It’s hard to believe there’s anybody inside the warehouse, but when Cal knocks three times on the metal door, it creaks open almost immediately.

A bouncer both tall and fat silently looks out at us. His head is so big and round that his piggy little eyes are just slits in the flesh of his face.

“Here to see Zimmer,” Cal says calmly.

The bouncer pats us down with hands that are surprisingly small for his huge frame. Even that amount of physical exertion makes him breathe heavily.

“Leave your guns there,” he grunts, pointing to a cardboard box set on top of a stool.

Callum drops his Glock into the box without complaint. I don’t really like disarming in an unknown place, but if that’s the price of entry, I guess we don’t have much choice.

I drop my gun and follow Cal into the dim warehouse.

It’s a strange kind of clubhouse in here. I see several dusty couches and armchairs, and a whole lot of games. A pool table, air hockey, foosball, and three separate TVs with gaming systems. A dozen kids ranging from teens to early twenties are lounging around, killing each other in Call of Duty, and already drinking even though it’s ten o’clock in the morning.

Callum beelines straight toward a guy who can’t be more than twenty-two years old. He’s wearing ripped skinny jeans, an oversized Fila sweatshirt, and a puffy pair of Yeezy boots. He’s puffing from a vape and he looks blazed out of his mind.

“Morning,” Cal says politely.

Zimmer gives him a slow nod.

“Can we talk in private?” Cal says.

“You can say whatever you want to say,” Zimmer tells him lazily.

“It’s for my privacy,” Cal replies coolly. “Not yours.”

Zimmer regards him with narrowed, bloodshot eyes. But after a minute, he hauls himself up from the oversized beanbag chair he was lounging upon and leads us to the back corner of the warehouse. Here we can all sit down on a sectional couch of uncertain age and color. Quite honestly, I’d rather not sit down, seeing as it’s stained with mystery fluids. But those are the kinds of sacrifices you have to make when you’re the guest of a gangster.

Zimmer sprawls out on his side of the couch. Cal and I sit at a ninety-degree angle.

“So?” Zimmer says, taking another long puff off his vape.

Without preamble, Cal says, “I want to know if you brokered a hit against my sister.”

Zimmer lets out his breath in a plume of thick white smoke. It curls out his nostrils and mouth simultaneously. His eyes peer through the smoke, dark and glittering, like a dragon.

“If I gave out that kind of information,” he says, “what the fuck kind of broker would I be?”

“I understand that,” Cal says, keeping his voice measured. “But here’s the thing, Zimmer. We’ve never had any conflict. I stay up on the north end of the city. You run things how you like down here. We maintain a mutual level of respect. If you were to broker a hit against a member of my family, and I were to find out about it . . . I would consider that an act of aggression.”

Zimmer takes another pull off his vape. His relaxed posture hasn’t changed. But I can see a new alertness in his eyes and a tension in his muscles. His face is still, but there’s a gleam of anger in his eyes.

“I would consider it aggressive,” he hisses, “if you came into my house and threatened me.”

The silence stretches between Cal and Zimmer for several minutes. I’m not planning to say a goddamned word. Cal knows this guy, I don’t—but I am watching everyone else in the room, out of the corner of my eye. Keeping track of the big bouncer who’s standing off on our right-hand side, close enough to be summoned at a moment’s notice, and the rest of Zimmer’s people, too, who might be fucking around on Call of Duty, but are no doubt armed—every single one of them.

Finally, Cal says, “I have a piece of information in trade. I know a boxcar full of Rugers went missing from the Norfolk rail yard a couple weeks ago. One hundred and fourteen guns spread out across the city. Mostly here on the south side.”

Zimmer’s face remains impassive. I can tell this isn’t news to him at all.

Cal goes on. “They picked up three of the men involved last night. Bryson, England, and Dawes. Two of them kept their mouths shut. But the third seems to think he can link you to the robbery. He’s making a deal with the DA as we speak. I guess you fucked his girlfriend a couple months back, and he’s holding a grudge about it. He seems to think that, unlike your usual hands-off approach, with this particular shipment you tested one of the guns. The same one used to rob the liquor store on Langley. Remember that? The one where the clerk got shot? Dawes says he knows where that particular Ruger is. He says it should still have your prints on it, along with the prints of the idiot who shot the clerk.”

As Cal speaks, Zimmer sits perfectly still. But his face gets paler, until it looks as gray as the smoke still seeping from his nostrils.