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Archie.”
    “You believe him?”
    I nod and that’s all she needs from me. We’re out the door, down the stairs, through the opening and over the wall before the bodyguards tamp out their cigarettes. We’ll get a few more minutes as they mistake the moans of pain upstairs for something else. It’ll be all we need.

CHAPTER FIVE
    A ccidents don’t exist in this business. A hit man dies, a fence goes missing, a mark wanders off the side of a building on his way to plummeting ten stories: none of this is surreptitious. This trade places a premium on precise planning, on exacting detail, and if a player has his ticket punched, more likely than not, a malevolent hand, not an act of God, is behind it.
    The wind has grown belligerent throughout the day, racing around corners and smacking pedestrians in the face like a schoolyard bully. The sun is nothing more than a condemned man held in chains by a wall of dark gray clouds. The sky might rain, or it might just threaten the act, as though it gets some sort of twisted pleasure out of withholding the information. Every now and then, Chicago, as a city, likes to rise up and remind its citizens she won’t be pushed to the background, she won’t blend in behind them, she’s a leading character in their life story and they’d be wise not to forget it.
    The three of us, Smoke, Risina, and I, hurry under the scaffolding of some Gold Coast remodeling project and head toward a simple eatery named the Third Coast Cafe. “Pardon our progress” signs have spread across the city like kudzu. Everywhere I look, another building constructed in the late-19th century aftermath of the Great Fire is in the middle of a facelift. After the housing crash, all those construction workers had to find something to do with their time, so the city funneled stimulus dollars into the hands of no-bid general contractors. Of course, it wouldn’t be Chicago if evidence of kickbacks and greased palms hadn’t already been hinted at by the Times.
    The workers swarm the scaffolding like wasps, the wind only a nuisance. They raise equipment, bang away at walls, scrape, sand, and plaster, ignoring the weather. I guess anything becomes routine if you do it long enough.
    The restaurant is half-full this time of day and customers hunch over coffee and pieces of pie, reluctant to give up their table and head back out into the wind. We slide into a booth in the back corner and order some food. Smoke’s nervousness has reached a new apex; his leg shakes up and down like a piston.
    “We’re in a jam now,” he says. “We’re up against it.”
    “Yeah, we’re at square zero. We haven’t even reached square one. The skull collector was an anomaly in Archie’s files, but not the one who nabbed him or wanted me.”
    “We chased the wrong dog up the wrong tree.”
    “I suppose we could take a look at the file again, see if we can figure out who the client was, see if he’s upset the mark is still alive.”
    “Seems like it wouldn’t have nothing to do with you, though?” He’s asking more than he’s telling. He has a point, but his fidgeting grows even more exaggerated.
    “What aren’t you telling me, Smoke?”
    When Smoke looks up, I can’t tell if he’s surprised by my question or if I caught him by being direct. He swallows and wipes his mouth with his napkin. He looks to Risina for help, but she gives him a hard stare I didn’t know she had in her. I’ll admit it’s disconcerting, coming from her. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that look.
    “What’d’you mean?”
    “You’ve grown more fidgety than a prisoner walking toward the hangman.”
    “I told you, I’m nervous ’bout this whole thing.”
    “Yeah, you told me.”
    “You know . . .” he tosses his napkin down on the table, then points his finger at me, “this is exactly what I was worried about. Exactly. ”
    “What’re you worried about, Smoke?”
    His finger hasn’t left the air. “This! You turning on