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at last.’
    ‘Bad day.’
    ‘Can you remember when you last had a good one?’
    ‘Not really. Gin and tonic. Hendrick’s, if they have it.’
    Holt called the order, and the bartender asked if he wanted it with cucumber. Ross declined. He thought the gin tasted just vegetal enough as it was.
    ‘They were going to give away our table,’ said Holt.
    ‘Did you tell them who you were?’
    ‘I thought charm might work better.’
    The Hendrick’s arrived. Holt settled up as Ross took his first sip, and a hostess appeared with menus and led them to a table at the back. Despite the noise at the bar, and the earlier threat of being bounced, they found themselves by a window with no neighbors for the time being.
    ‘I don’t even know why I still look at the menu here,’ said Holt. ‘I always have the same thing.’
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘Fried chicken. Steak tips for an appetizer, if they’re on. Mostly the chicken is enough.’
    Ross didn’t care much for fried chicken. He was a red meat man, regardless of his physician’s admonitions to the contrary. Not that Dr Mahajan would have signed off on fried chicken without wincing either, but it wasn’t as if Ross was about to Snapchat him a picture of whatever ended up on his plate. The waiter came to take their order. Ross settled for the brisket, with fries on the side. Dr Mahajan would just have to up the dosage on his cholesterol medication. Holt, meanwhile, ordered the fried chicken, with a side of collard greens.
    ‘I saw the Ormsby memo,’ said Holt, once the waiter had disappeared.
    ‘He refused counsel,’ said Ross. ‘He had his rights read to him. It’s clean.’
    ‘Clean once the details of how Parker and his friends got to him were airbrushed from it.’
    ‘Clean is relative, but we’re being careful.’
    ‘So you say.’
    Holt finished his Bloody Mary, then called for a glass of wine. Ross stuck with his gin. In retrospect, he should have asked the bartender to make it a large one, and easy on the tonic. He’d managed to keep the arrangement with Parker under the radar for months, but he knew that it couldn’t last. Ormsby’s crimes were too serious and vile for the details of his apprehension to pass unexamined at Federal Plaza, and Holt was nobody’s fool. It was not yet common knowledge that Parker was on a federal retainer, with a degree of protection that also covered his friends, both of whom were criminals and one of whom was a professional killer, albeit semi-retired, or so Ross hoped. He needed Holt – to whom he answered, technically at least – to support what was, by any standards, an unorthodox and risky piece of business.
    ‘How did you redirect the money to pay Parker?’ asked Holt.
    ‘Fax paper and typewriter ribbons. I like to think of sections of the stationery budget as a discretionary fund.’
    ‘Do we even still use typewriter ribbons?’
    ‘If anyone asks, I’ll tell them that we type up sensitive documents.’
    ‘And faxes?’
    ‘The War on Terror takes many forms.’
    Holt nodded. ‘God bless unwinnable conflicts.’ His wine arrived, but he didn’t touch it.
    ‘How long did you think your deal with Parker would go unnoticed?’
    ‘Not as long as it did.’
    ‘There’s a part of me that wishes I still didn’t know. Why did he consent to it?’
    ‘He didn’t. The approach came from him. He offered.’
    ‘Again, why?’
    ‘I think,’ said Ross, as Holt took a tentative sip of his wine, ‘that he intends to be more proactive in his investigations.’
    Holt almost choked on his chardonnay.
    ‘ More proactive?’ he said. ‘Jesus, he’s practically shitting dead bodies as it is. And you’ve signed us on to his crusade?’
    ‘I thought that it might allow us to direct his energies when the situation required it.’
    ‘Seriously? You think you can control him?’
    ‘He’s a tethered goat. On a long chain, admittedly, but tethered nonetheless.’
    Holt looked doubtful.
    ‘Does he need the money that