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Dalton lifted his glass and winked at the boy, who stalked away to get another bottle, trailing sotto voce imprecations like willow leaves in autumn.
    “You drinking again, Micah? It’s eleven o’clock where you are.” “What time is it where you are?” “That’s not the point. Are you drinking again?” “ Again implies that at some point I stopped. And I sure as hell
    would be if you’d quit asking me questions. Every time I get the glass up to my lips you ask me something else. The crux is, what you should be asking is, why am I drinking. You didn’t see him. I did.”
    “Toughen up. You were in the Horn.” “That was a straight-up interdiction. This was different.” “Are you saying Naumann committed suicide by ripping his own
    throat out with his bare hands?” “No. I’m not. Brancati thinks he died from a heart attack.” “And what are you saying?” Fur Boy swept in, plunked the bottle down hard. Dalton handed
    him a fifty-euro tip and waved off a newborn Fur Boy with a gladsome eye and birdsong in his shriveled black heart while he thought about his answer.
    “I think it’s possible that some kind of drug was a minor factor.” “You mean like one was slipped to him?”
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    “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
    “This is what I like to hear from my cleaners. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ It gives me a warm glow.” Stallworth paused here.
    Dalton, who knew his man well, wasn’t surprised to hear what came next.
    “I tell you kid, if some kind of drug was a factor in this, and I’m not saying it was, but if, and it was something freaky enough to derail a seasoned pro like Porter Naumann, man, I’d love to know what it was. I mean, the company could use something like that.”
    “You asking me to find out?”
    More hissing dead air from the cell phone. Maybe Stallworth’s heavy breathing in the background. Office noises in the distance.
    Finally...
    “ If I let you poke around in this a little more—and I mean if—I want your word you’re not going to take it any further than finding out whether or not Naumann had any kind of unknown psychotropic drug in his system.”
    “Then all I have to do is wait; Brancati will tell me that as soon as he knows. Was Naumann doing anything for us that would make somebody want to see him dead?”
    “We looked into it. I mean really looked. He and Mandy Pownall were keeping an eye on investment patterns, looking for indications of insider trading, money laundering that might be connected to al Qaeda operations, or the people who fund them. Hard work? Yes. Boring? Massively. Lethal? No.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Damn sure. Whatever happened to Porter, I’m morally certain that it wasn’t connected to what he was doing at Burke and Single. Sometimes things are as simple as they look.”
    “Okay then. On your head, if you’re wrong.”
    “I’m not. What next?”
    “Well, the Carabinieri will do the toxicology. I’ll get the report
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    from Brancati. I was wondering, while I’m waiting around, let me at least do a workup on his room at the Strega. Walk his last walk. See if something stands out. What harm can it do?”
    More pensive silence from Stallworth’s end of the line. He came back in a petulant mood. “With you I never know until it blows my ears off. Somebody has to go to London and hold hands with Joanne. It ought to be you.”
    “Has anyone talked to her lately?”
    “Sally says she’s been pretty silent. Not a call for four days, and she’s not answering her voice mail. My take is she figures Naumann’s gone off on a bit of a bender. He’s done it before.”
    “She’s going to call in soon. What are we going to tell her?”
    “The truth. He had a heart attack.”
    “Joanne’s got money and muscle. What if she digs in a little? Asks for another autopsy, for example?”
    “You’re the cleaner. Make sure she doesn’t.”
    “What if she wants an open casket?”
    “Can’t he be