also helped. The station had a huge supply on tap in orange ten-gallon coolers, prepared by Wilcox's wife, Eileen. It was just what Milo's hangover had been pleading for.
Manny Wilcox wiped perspiration off his temple. "I will have to get your signature, understand."
"I'd expect nothing less," Milo said. "Maybe you can tell me how you caught him."
Wilcox lifted his glass to stare at the condensation, then sniffed. Milo hadn't showered in two days; the proof was all over the sheriff's face.
"Wasn't us. His girl--Kathy Hendrickson. A N'Orleans working girl. Apparently she didn't like his kind of lovemaking. Called 911. Said the man was a killer. Was beating on her."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Picked him up late last night. I guess that's how you guys got it, from the 911 dispatch. The hooker had a few bruises, a bloody lip. They were fresh. Verified his name with the passport. Israeli. Then we found another passport in his car. Eye -talian."
"Fabio Lanzetti," said Milo.
Wilcox opened his calloused hands. "There you go. We'd just squeezed him into the cell when your people called us."
It was about two inches beyond belief. Six years ago, unbalanced and living under a different name, Milo had first run into the Tiger in Amsterdam. Over the ensuing six years, the man had been spotted and lost in Italy, Germany, the Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Israel. Now, he'd been trapped in a last-chance motel near the Mississippi border, turned in by a Louisiana prostitute.
"Nothing more?" he asked the sheriff. "No one else tipped you off?
Just the woman?"
The flesh under Wilcox's chin vibrated. "That's it. But this guy, Sam Roth . . . is that even his real name?"
Milo decided that the sheriff deserved something for his hospitality.
"Manny, we're not sure what his name is. Each time he pops up on our radar, it's different. But his girlfriend might know something. Where's she now?"
The sheriff toyed with his damp glass, embarrassed. "Back at the motel. Had no cause to keep hold of her."
"I'll want her, too."
"Leslie can pick her up," Wilcox assured him. "But tell me--your chief said something about this--is that boy really called the Tiger?"
"If it's who we think it is, yes. That's what he's called." Wilcox grunted his amusement. "Not much of a tiger now. Pussycat, more like. He walks funny, too, kind of weak."
Milo finished his lemonade, and Wilcox offered more. He could see how the police got hooked on Mrs. Wilcox's homebrew. "Don't be fooled, Sheriff. Remember last year, in France?"
"Their president?"
"Foreign minister. And in Germany there was the head of an Islamist group."
"A terrorist?"
"Religious leader. His car exploded with him in it. And in London that businessman--"
"The one who bought the airline!" Wilcox shouted, happy to know at least this one. "Don't tell me this joker killed him, too. Three people?"
"Those are the three from last year we can definitely pin on him. He's been in business at least a decade." When the sheriffs brows rose, Milo knew he'd shared enough. No need to terrify the man. "But like I said, Sheriff, I need to talk to him to be sure."
Wilcox rapped his knuckles on his desk, hard enough to shake the computer monitor. "Well, then. Let's get you talking." 2
The sheriff had moved three drunks and two spousal abusers to the group cell, leaving Samuel Roth alone in a small cinder-block room with a steel door and no window. Milo peered through the door's barred hatch. A fluorescent tube burned from the ceiling, illuminating the thin cot and aluminum toilet.
To call his search for the Tiger obsessive would have been, according to Grainger, an understatement. In 2001, soon after he'd recovered from his bullet wounds in Vienna and retired from Tourism, Milo decided that while his coworkers devoted themselves to finding the Most Famous Muslim in the World somewhere in Afghanistan, he would spend his time on terrorism's more surgical arms. Terrorist acts, by definition, were blunt and