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moving.”
    “How many investigators are working it?”
    Peyton leaned back, as if chewing over what he was going to say, then leaned forward again. “Look, you’re a smart guy. That’s not moonshine, that’s the fact of the matter, and you’ve worked with some of our big guys . . .”
    “Louis Mallard,” Howard chipped in. “He says you’re a friend.”
    Lucas tipped his head: Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
    “We’ve got some people up there. Some counterintelligence people,” Peyton said. “They’re working the case, but not as criminal investigators. They’re not homicide cops.”
    “They work with you?” Lucas asked Howard.
    “Yeah.” Howard nodded, smiled, and showed large square teeth. “They’re doing a lot of analysis, looking at people coming and going through the port, that sort of thing. Computer stuff. Looking at people we know who are close to the Russians. We’ve been keeping up with the Duluth police through the office here, in Minneapolis—but when we heard that you were going up there, we thought we’d talk to you directly.”
    “About?”
    “About what you find, if anything. What you think. What you suppose. We’re interested in speculation,” he said. “We won’t interfere with your investigation and if you catch the killer, that’s fine. But if you find anything else that might suggest a Russian intelligence operation—if you find anything at all—we’d like to hear about it before the newspapers. For your protection and the protection of our people up there.”
    “Have your guys picked up anything on the murder?”
    “We poke around and hear all this stuff,” Peyton said. “We hear that the dead guy was an intelligence agent. We hear that he really was a sailor. We hear that he may have had a connection with the Russian Mafia, or that he was operating for his old man in the oil business. We hear all this stuff, and I’d give you even money that he picked up the wrong woman in some beer joint and got himself shot. But we just don’t know. ”
    “The shells that Duluth picked up were older than I am,” Lucas said. “That does sound like a beer-joint job.”
    “But it was one in the heart and two in the head, dead-on, and that sounds like a pro,” Howard replied. “There was no heat-of-passion. He was ambushed. He was hit. ”
    “But if it was an assassination, why’d they roll him?” Peyton asked Howard. “Computer disks? What?”
    “I don’t know,” Howard said. “Could be anything. But if they were planning to roll him, why’d they take him in the middle of the biggestlit-up area out there? The cab driver says he dropped him off in the dark, where that track ended. If they’d hit him there, they might not have found him yet. They could have rolled him in peace.”
    Silence.
    Then Peyton said, “Americans didn’t like nine-millimeter pistols in the fifties, back when the shells were made. I mean, there were war souvenirs around, Lugers and P-38s and so on, but not many Americans were buying nine millimeters as new guns.”
    “What does that mean?” Lucas asked.
    “It means that if an American did it, it was an odd gun to have around. But the Russians had a lot of nines, especially after the war. Maybe one was stashed on the ship, but never used. The ship was almost as old as the shells. That makes some kind of sense to me,” Peyton said.
    “But the shells were American,” Howard said.
    “But the guy on the ship didn’t hear any shots, which suggests the weapon was silenced, which suggests it was a pro job,” Peyton said.
    Lucas was amused. “You guys are arguing both sides of this,” he said.
    “We’re confused,” Howard said. “We keep going around in circles. This killing was weird. That’s why it’d be nice if you’d stay in touch. We’d really like to know what’s going on.”
    Lucas nodded. “Sure.”
    Another long pause.
    “You don’t sound enthusiastic,” Howard said.
    Lucas stood up, took a turn around his chair,