Ian

My wit, charm and good looks can get me into most places – at least, most of the few places I can't get into by skulking or picking locks – but at the RPSF building I press the porch intercom button politely, show my detective's license, and wait. The building is a modest concrete cuboid, deeply unglamourous if you look at it from across the drab grey car park, but full of people you don't mess around with.

Fortunately, the man I was there to meet was the sole exception. As he came out to the heavy, reinforced-glass main door, a cute little smile on his elfin cheeks, Ben Birchwood's hair glowed. It always seemed to, as if he stood under some hidden spotlight. I'd long since come to the conclusion he was either an angel or descended from one.

He swiped his card on the door release and swung it open for me. "Ian, nice to see you. What can I help you with?"

As he led me down the drab, broad corridor to his office, I said, "I've got a case getting a little too close to the mob. I think it's the Castelloros. Wanna check a description, see if he's known to you, maybe we can compare notes."

We entered the office, which was mostly the utilitarian nest of a police special forces captain, except that on his desk was a six-inch-high figure of a sitting capybara, a small pink plush mounted on its back that I realised on closer inspection was a cuttlefish. I tried not to stare at it too hard as I took the seat he gestured me to.

He listened carefully as I described the man I'd seen going in to an obvious mob connection with Brynna Hynafol, manager of idol and rumoured Phoebe Tenryuu paramour Thessaly Pantelleria. I kept their names out of it and Ben didn't push me on the details of my case. I came to him, like I always did, because the poor sap earnestly believed that information shared freely was to everyone's benefit. As far as I could tell he didn't even think there were any restrictions on what a rozzer could tell a private investigator.

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"Jesse Elfran." He didn't hesitate when I'd finished. "Yeah, he's a Castelloro man. Runs a few different rackets, holds some debts for the family, that sort of thing."

That tracked. I wondered if the debt was Hynafol's or Pantelleria's, and whether the idol even knew about it. "Does he have any friends down south?"

"Down… south?"

I watched his puzzlement from within a moment of my own. "You haven't noticed the Calabrians around the place lately?"

Ben's entire posture changed. His shoulders squared up and he leaned forward on the desk. For the first time I felt I could see why he held rank and respect in the RPSF's nasty little hierarchy. He said, "Nosa Costra?"

"The very same." I couldn't resist stretching, making a show of casualness. "I spoke to our mutual friend Gavin… must've been a couple of months ago now, he said suits have been crawling all over the place. They really haven't done anything to get on your radar, yet?"

"Not at all." He paused, his frown turning inward for a moment. "It's been quiet, if anything."

I got the faintest tickle at the base of my neck, just inside the back of my collar. My attempt at playing it cool tripped over the fresh stiffness in my throat. "I think they've cut some sort of deal with the Castelloros. Elfran might be one side of the contact."

Ben took a long, slow breath, and I remembered that in scripture, angels were as likely to deal out vengeance as healing. "Thanks, Ian, that's very helpful. We'll keep our eyes peeled. Keep your phone on you and don't take any stupid risks."

He probably honestly believed the advice meant something. I let him show me out, trying not to let any more slip, but as I did so, ice was seeping steadily along my arteries. If the RPSF hadn't seen any of the Nosa Costra vanguard meeting with any of the crooks they had under full-time surveillance in the month since Gavin's warning, then they probably weren't working with Castelloro. That meant either they were doing something else completely, something unrelated to Phoebe Tenryuu and her dragon, or they were here for Tenryuu and about to figure out who her mob connection was. One of those options was much too good to be true.