The man stares at Ellis with a flare in his eyes, but he ultimately relents. “As you wish,” he says. “I shall pass on your inquiry.”

“Please do that.”

We’re back in the car a minute later. “Well, that didn’t take long,” says Ellis. “We’re barely in the door and the guy’s already lawyered up.” He looks at me. “It’s a start, Ben. We’ve shaken the tree. Now let’s see what falls out.”

Chapter 46

“Still nothing on Operation Delano?” asks Ashley Brook Clark over the phone. “I haven’t pulled out all the stops. You still want me to hold off?”

“Could be dangerous,” I say into my cell. I have a limp after the bike wipeout and I’m working on almost no sleep, but it warms me up to talk to a friend and colleague. Ashley Brook’s been with me since I started the Beat five years ago.

“Danger’s my middle name,” she says. “Hey, Ben-tell me this much. How did Operation Delano come up?”

“Jonathan Liu mentioned it to me the other day.”

“The lobbyist Jonathan Liu? The one they just found dead in his house?”

“That one, yes.” By yesterday evening, a few hundred media outlets were reporting the news. Gunshot wound, apparently self-inflicted, according to the reports, but nothing else from the MPD.

“And I got confirmation from one of Diana’s best friends, Anne Brennan. She heard Diana mention it once. Delano, not Operation Delano.”

“Same difference,” says Ashley Brook.

I’ve never really understood what the phrase same difference means. I mean, I get Ashley Brook’s meaning, which at the end of the day is the point of communication-to convey a thought-but same difference never made sense to me.

Anyway. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

“So what is this about the Russians?” Ashley Brook asks. “You said when you called that this Delano thing ties into the Russians.”

I pass a couple making out on a park bench and experience intense jealousy toward anyone who (a) doesn’t have someone trying to kill them and (b) has someone they can make out with on a park bench.

“FDR normalized relations with the Russians,” I say. “He officially recognized them and he gave them a lot at Yalta, when he, Churchill, and Stalin were divvying up the spoils after World War II. He caught a lot of heat for that. It’s something, at least.”

“Not really, boss. It’s pretty thin.”

“That’s why I pay you princely sums to uncover information, Ms. Clark.”

“You pay me princely sums? I must not be reading my paycheck right.”

Everyone’s a comedian.

“Okay, well, I’ll look for a Russian angle,” she says. “Hey, boss? Are you still living out of a gym bag? A different hotel every night?”

“It beats being dead. By the way, if anyone shows up at the office with a submachine gun, tell them I’ve moved to Antarctica.”

“Will do. I’ll tell them you’re studying penguin mating habits. But seriously, Ben-be careful, okay?”

“Careful’s my middle name.”

“I thought Martin was your middle name.”

Don’t remind me. “I’m off to see Ellis Burk again,” I tell her. “We’ve got a date with Alexander Kutuzov’s attorney.”

“That should be fruitful. Lawyers are usually very forthcoming and helpful.”

“I know. I’m going to brush up on my Latin.”

“Okay, well, stare incolumem.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s been a while since high school,” Ashley Brook says. “But I think it means ‘stay alive.’”

Chapter 47

Two hours later, Ellis Burk and I are driving to the law firm of Griffin and Weaver, one of those swinging-dick firms with all kinds of connected lawyers and former politicians who represent major players before courts and legislatures and steamroll the rest of us on a daily basis. But that’s not why Ellis is troubled. He’s been troubled ever since he learned, along with the rest of the world last night, that Jonathan Liu is no longer breathing.

“This is against my better judgment, taking you along,” he says.

“We’re, like, a team,” I say. I mention Castle to him but he doesn’t respond. Most cops I know don’t like cop shows. But team or not, I admit I feel more comfortable in the escort of a DC police detective. Who’s going to shoot at me while I’m hanging with a cop?

Traffic is light today, late morning. The sky is cloudless and the temperatures will hit one hundred today. The dog days of summer. It makes me think of that giant schnauzer waiting for me back at my town house, probably lifting his leg on my walkway as we speak-