Karasek turned on his heel and took three or four quick steps back to the table. Finn didn’t see him pull his gun, heard only the guy shouting out some plea, the deafening report of the shot. The guy’s face burst open and those around him cried out, not in shock or in anger at their boss, just in irritation at having been soiled with the blood and viscera that sprayed out of their unfortunate colleague, as if Karasek had done no more than spill a drink across the card table.
For a moment, the body looked as if it might topple over backward, but the chair held in place and he fell to the side. The guy next to him pushed back, and the bloodied face fell onto the table with a soft thud. A couple of the guys stood now, but one was quick to reassure Karasek, perhaps telling him that they’d clean up the mess.
Karasek turned back to Finn, gun arm swinging wildly, as if he didn’t know what to do with the weapon now. He used it to gesture toward his office with the look of someone who’d just had to reprimand a secretary in front of a visiting client.
Finn took one last look at the subdued hive of activity around the table, and followed Karasek into the trashy opulence of his office—white leather, gold, mirrors. He dropped the envelope onto the desk in front of him and sat down.
Karasek still seemed unsure what to do with the gun, but the sight of the envelope focused his attention and he slipped it back beneath his jacket. He pulled the photograph free and studied it for a long time in silence, a slight smile creeping onto his lips as he spotted the girl’s legs, almost but not quite hidden as she walked alongside the man.
He looked up. “You’re sure this is him?”
Finn nodded. “Look at the time and date. I assume that tallies with when your man was killed? Besides, we’re certain. What we don’t know is his identity—that’s what we were hoping you might be able to help with.”
Karasek didn’t look down, saying instead, “Why do you need to know?”
Finn smiled but didn’t answer. Karasek shrugged and looked at the photo again, holding it up to the light, studying the figure of the man in it.
“I don’t know him.” He looked more closely still, and Finn knew he was focusing on the tiny visible details of the girl, either to reassure himself it was her, or perhaps out of that same longing Finn had spotted earlier.
“This girl means a lot to you, doesn’t she?”
He looked up at Finn. “It’s not what you think.”
“It’s not really my job to think anything. I was ordered to help you get her back if you could help us to identify the man in the picture.”
“You know where she is?”
“We have a lead. But you don’t know who he is so—”
“I can ask around.” It was odd seeing him this compliant. From what Finn understood, Karasek had never had any direct contact with the girl, and yet he’d clearly seen enough of her to become completely smitten. That didn’t mean it would be any easier to work him over, though.
Finn stood up. “Well, you know where I am.”
Karasek stood, too, and walked with him to the door, but instead of showing him back into the green room, he led him along the corridor, heading for the side door.
Finn said, “If it’s not in the next couple of weeks, it might be better to contact Harry Simons—you know Harry.”
Karasek nodded, uneasy in some way with this new spirit of collaboration, then something clicked and he said, “Of course, you’re leaving. I heard you were leaving.”
“Did you?”
Karasek smiled, trying to look superior, coming across as a precocious but unpopular schoolboy.
“What will you do?”
Finn shook his head, making a show of looking at a loss. They took a couple of steps and Finn stopped, his expression betraying the desperate calculations he wanted Karasek to believe he was making.
“What is it?”
“There might be something else I want to discuss with you. Something unofficial.”
There was a pause—Karasek reading him, Finn making a show of being on the verge of changing his mind.
“Okay,” said Karasek with a shrug. “We go back into my office.”
“No.” Karasek was surprised by the urgency of Finn’s response. “Is there another office? I’ll explain.”
Karasek looked him in the eye, making calculations of his own, then said, “Okay. This way.”
They walked through to the general office, less ostentatious than Karasek’s private space, but still plush by most standards. Finn sat down and waited for him to do the same.
Karasek made a show of finding the office chair uncomfortable, then looked Finn in the eye again and said, “Why not my office?”
“What I have to say is private and unofficial.”
There was that fragile, superior smile again as he said, “My office is clean—the whole club is clean.”
“No,” said Finn, enjoying seeing the smile crumble. “You found what we wanted you to find. Don’t make a big thing of it—maybe in a couple of days you can decide to redecorate your office. In the process, you’ll find a total of five devices, including two cameras. They’ve been there for over a year.”
Karasek was staring at him hard now, his face full of questions, and Finn guessed that chief among them was the question of why Perry hadn’t told him about this. The answer was that Perry didn’t know, because they’d actually been there less than a week.