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encounter with Corso had left him feeling peevish and unfulfilled, and thus Ivanov had an inkling of what was to come next.
    “Tonight,” was all Balagula said.
    “I’ve had to make alternative arrangements,” Ivanov said.
    “Oh?”
    “Our customary provider has refused to continue.”
    “There are others, I’m sure.”
    “He objects to the condition in which the goods were returned.”
    “Surely there can be no shortage.”
    Ivanov shrugged. “Your tastes are difficult.”
    “Tonight,” Nicholas Balagula said again.

5
    Tuesday, October 17
    4:09 p.m.
    S he pulled the olive from the red plastic sword, popped it into her mouth, and chewed slowly. “So, what is it about the Nicholas Balagula saga that so captures your attention, Mr. Corso?” she asked, when she’d finished.
    “What do you mean?”
    They sat on opposite sides of a scarred oak table, four blocks west of the courthouse. Twenty years ago, Vito’s had been the favored watering hole of Seattle’s movers and shakers. These days it was just another remnant waiting for the wrecking ball. Seattle at the millennium. If it wasn’t glitzy, it was gone.
    Renee Rogers downed the final swallows of her second Bombay Sapphire martini and wiped her full lips with her cocktail napkin. “You’ve been following this case from the beginning.” She ate the other olive and gestured to the bartender for another drink. “I remember you sitting in the first row of the balcony during the San Francisco trial. I’d see you up there every day and wonder who you were.”
    “Balagula offends my sense of the natural order of things.”
    “How so?”
    Corso thought it over. “I guess there’s a part of me that believes something corny like What goes around comes around. That things are intended to be a certain way, and if you deviate too far you suffer the consequences.”
    “A moral order.”
    “Something more organic. More like a river, maybe,” Corso said. “One of those rustbelt rivers where they poured so many toxins into the water it finally caught fire. And then—you know—all they had to do was to stop the dumping, and a couple of years later it went right back to being a river again. Nothing Balagula touches is ever the same again. It’s like he spreads pestilence or something.” He made a face. “Sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
    “I understand,” she said. “I know the type. I’ve spent the last seventeen years putting them behind bars.”
    “Not guys like him. Most people kill because they don’t see any way out, or in the heat of passion, or because they’ve got a blood lust. Balagula’s used murder as a business strategy from the beginning, even when the stakes were small.”
    “Since the day he arrived.”
    “All the way back to when he first surfaced in Brighton Beach fifteen years ago, claiming to be a wholesale jeweler. Next thing you know, the four biggest wholesale jewelers in Brooklyn go missing within the same six-month period and Balagula ends up with all their business.”
    When she smiled, he could see the lines in the corners of her gray eyes. He wondered if the color was natural or contact lenses.
    “Do I detect a streak of self-righteousness in the famous writer?” she asked.
    “My mama used to say I had enough moral indignation for a dozen preachers.” Corso took a sip of beer and checked his watch.
    “I understand you’re a year late with the book.”
    Corso raised an eyebrow. “A book needs an ending.”
    She leaned back in the chair, rested the base of the martini glass against her sternum, and shook her head sadly. “The end to this one’s been a long time coming.” She sighed.
    “I’m pretty sure my publisher would agree.”
    “You’ve got enough clout to make them wait.”
    “It’s not about clout,” Corso said. “It’s not about the quality of your work or the love of words. It’s about money, pure and simple. If you’re making them money, they’ll put up with you. If you’re not,