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“If I’d been made, Brancati wouldn’t have let me leave Cortona.” “What about this hostel Naumann stayed in? In Cortona? The
    Strega?” “I tried to get a look at it again last night. They’ve got two cops
    on the entrance. I can’t get anywhere near it until they release it.” “And when will that be?” “Tomorrow, I think.” “You in Venice now?” “Yes.” “Why not wait in Cortona?” “Brancati. The cop. He wanted me to go. I went.” “Why did he want you to get out of Cortona?” “I made the mistake of asking him if I could help out.” There was plenty of dead air in his earpiece now, so he managed
    a quick pull at his wineglass. He even had time to light another cig
    arette. “You did what ?” “Yeah. I know. Thing is, he’s going to lay this down as a drug-
    related accidental death. I think partly so Naumann can get into
    Heaven.” “You’re kidding.” “No. He asked me if Naumann was a Christian.” “He was an Episcopalian. They don’t believe in God. If it wasn’t
    a suicide, then what are they calling it?” “Death by misadventure. An accidental overdose or some sort of psychotic episode. They’re going to look for a brain lesion too.”
    “They’re doing an autopsy, they’re gonna see those old bullet holes in Naumann. And I hear he got marked up pretty good last year in Syria.”
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    “Brancati’s already seen that stuff. Naumann was pretty much naked at the scene. Brancati was military too. He even made Nau-mann’s Air Assault tattoo. So all in all we’re lucky he’s playing it for a simple OD.”
    “Okay. No murder. Drug overdose. What’s wrong with that?”
    “Naumann didn’t do drugs,” said Dalton with a resigned sigh.
    “As far as you know. Anyway, what do you care? Your job is to clean up after our field guys. Not figure out what the hell happened to make them go out on the high side. We lose field guys to drugs or suicide all the time, and when we do, we send in a cleaner. We’ve already looked into the backstory and nobody here thinks that anybody in our game had a reason to kill him. Turn him, maybe. Or pay him off. But taking him out in the way you saw? No, it wasn’t company business. You stick to cleaning, Micah. That’s what you do. Field operators lead complicated lives. Now and then they lose it and take themselves out. Naumann’s domestic life was a swamp. I’ve heard all about his zombie-bitch daughters. And you knew he had prostate surgery two years ago?”
    “Prostate surgery! The guy was fifty-two!”
    “Didn’t tell you that, did he? Welcome to my world. It was real invasive. You know what that means. Guy like Naumann, no sex. He’d hate living like that.”
    “I thought it was some kind of kidney thing.”
    “Well it wasn’t. Only way I knew was Personnel sent me his medical claim for a signature. It’s not the kind of thing guys bring up over a beer. So he’s maybe looking at wearing a diaper for the rest of his life and his dick might as well be a sock full of sand for all the good it’s gonna do him. Plus his marriage was in the tank. I’d say he had some reasons for taking himself out. You know, Micah, sometimes a thing can be true even if I think it. I have the tiniest feeling one of my people died from enemy action, I’ll send in the metal-meets-the-meat boys. That’s why you’re a cleaner. That’s your job.”
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    “Don’t you want to know why it happened?” “Repeat after me: ‘I’m a cleaner. That’s my job.’ ” “Where were you all this time? I called in sixteen hours ago.” “On the Hill having a séance with some punts. People of Utterly
    No Tactical Significance. They’re not at all amused about Naumann.
    So how the hell did he die?” “You want it in the clear?” “Just draw me some pictures in the air.” While Dalton was giving Jack Stallworth the gruesome essentials,
    a red-cheeked waiter-boy in a fur-lined jacket arrived radiating sulk.