I exhale smoke through my nose and watch it curl against the window. "So the man wasn't lying. Just incompetent at explaining."
"He was scared," Viktor says. "Fear makes people stupid."
"Fear makes people predictable. There's a difference."
Viktor doesn't respond to that. He's known me long enough to know when I'm thinking out loud and when I'm actually asking for input. This is the former.
We drive in silence for a while. The city slides past the windows—neon signs and empty streets, the occasional taxi, the occasional group of people huddled outside a bar, smoking and laughing and pretending they're not cold. I've lived here my whole life, and I still don't recognize most of it. My world is smaller than this. More contained. A network of warehouses and offices and private clubs, connected by routes that never appear on any map.
"That diner," Viktor says, and something in his tone makes me look up. "The one on LaSalle."
"What about it?"
Viktor's eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. He's careful—always careful, always measuring his words—but there's something in his face that I don't see often.Concern, maybe. Or curiosity. "Your father has been visiting it. Frequently."
"And?"
"And nothing. Just an observation."
I know Viktor well enough to know that nothing is never just nothing. He's been watching my father's back for thirty years. If he's mentioning the diner, it's because he thinks I should know about it. Because he thinks it matters.
I put out my cigarette in the ashtray—Viktor hates when I do that, but he never says anything—and lean back against the seat.
"Tell me about this diner."
The diner is exactly what I expected.
Cheap. Tired. The kind of place where the coffee tastes like it's been sitting since the Carter administration and the pie comes from a box. The neon sign buzzes overhead,EATin cheerful blue letters, and I stand across the street for a full five minutes before I cross, just watching. Just waiting. Just letting the place tell me what it is.
It tells me nothing. It's a diner. They're all the same.
The door chimes when I walk in—cheap and cheerful, the kind of sound that's supposed to make you feel welcome. The woman behind the counter looks up, and for half a second, I think she might be the one. But she's older. Forties, maybe. Gray streaking her hair, lines around her eyes, the kind of face that's seen too many late nights and not enough sleep.
"Take a seat," she says. "I'll be right with you."
"I'm not here to eat."
She raises an eyebrow. "Then why are you here?"
I glance around the diner. It's midafternoon—the lull between the lunch rush and the dinner crowd—and the place is almost empty. A man in a hard hat reads a newspaper in the corner. A woman in scrubs stares at her phone. The cook isvisible through the pass-through, flipping burgers with the kind of mechanical efficiency that comes from doing the same thing ten thousand times.
"I'm looking for someone," I say. "She works here. Young. Dark hair. About this tall." I hold my hand at shoulder level, approximating. "Her name is Monika."
The woman behind the counter goes still. Just for a moment—just a flicker of something in her eyes—and then it's gone, replaced by a pleasant, professional blankness that tells me more than any answer could.
"She's not here right now."
"I can see that. When does she work?"
"Why do you want to know?"
I smile. It's a good smile—I've been told that, many times, by many people. Charm is a weapon like any other, and I've spent years learning how to wield it.
"I'm an old friend," I say. "We went to school together. I'm in town for a few days and I wanted to surprise her."
The woman doesn't blink. "She went to school in Pennsylvania."
"That's right."
