'No idea. Why?'
'I was just thinking, the two of them riding around in that Lincoln with a million dollars in the backseat.
We know Dani's got a gun. Say he pops Yuri and takes off. We wouldn't even know who to look for, just a Russian guy with a jacket that don't fit him too good. He's another guy with no last name. Must be a friend of yours, huh?'
'I think Yuri trusts him.'
'He's probably family. Who else you gonna trust like that?'
'Anyway, it's not a million.'
'Eight hundred thousand. You gonna make me a liar for a lousy two hundred thousand?'
'And almost a third of it's counterfeit.'
'You're right, it's hardly worth stealing. We're lucky if these two jokers we're meeting are willing to haul it away. If not it goes in the basement, save it for the next Boy Scout paper drive. You want to do me a favor? When you're up there with a suitcase in each hand, you want to ask our friends a question?'
'What?'
'Ask 'em how the hell they picked me, will you? Because it's still driving me nuts.'
'Oh,' I said. 'I think I know.'
'Seriously?'
'Uh-huh. My first thought was that he was in the dope business on some level or other.'
'Makes sense, but—'
'But he's not, I'm almost certain, because I had somebody run a check and he hasn't got a criminal record.'
'Neither have I.'
'You're an exception.'
'That's true. How about Yuri?'
'Several arrests in the Soviet Union, no serious jail time. One bust here for receiving stolen goods but the charges were dropped.'
'But nothing involving narcotics.'
'No.'
'All right, Callander's got a clean slate. So he's not in the dope business, so—'
'The DEA was trying to make a case against you a while ago.'
'Yeah, but it didn't get anywheres.'
'I was talking to Yuri before. He said he backed out of a deal last year because he sensed that some agency was trying to trap him with a sting. He had the sense it was federal.'
He turned to look at me, then forced his eyes front and swung out to pass a car. 'Jesus Christ,' he said.
'This a new national law-enforcement policy? They can't make a case against us so they kill our wives and daughters?'
'I think Callander worked for the DEA,' I said. 'Probably not for very long, and almost certainly not as an accredited agent. Maybe they used him once or twice as a confidential informant, maybe he was strictly office help. He wouldn't have gone very far and he wouldn't have lasted very long.'
'Why not?'
'Because he's crazy. He probably got into it because of a low-grade obsession about dope dealers.
That's an asset in that line of work but not when it's out of proportion. Look, I'm just going on a hunch.
There was something he said on the phone when I told him I was Yuri's partner. It was as if he was starting to say that explained why they hadn't been able to rope Yuri in.'
'Jesus.'
'It's something I can find out tomorrow or the next day, if I can get a hook into the DEA and see if his name rings a bell with them. Or take an unauthorized dip into their files, if my computer geniuses can swing it.'
Kenan looked thoughtful. 'He didn't sound like a cop.'
'No, he didn't.'
'But the guy you described wouldn't really be a cop, would he?'
'More like a buff. But a buff with the Feds, and fixated on the subject of narcotics.'
'He knew the wholesale price of a kilo of cocaine,' Kenan said,
'but I don't know what that proves.
Your friend TJ probably knows the wholesale price of a key.'
'I wouldn't be surprised.'
'Lucia's classmates at this girls' school, they probably know it, too.