“I’d love to stay and chat,” Frank says, “but I’ve got work to do. Three years is a long time. It’ll take awhile to get back into the swing of things.”

“You’ll manage,” I reply confidently, then call him back as he heads for the door. “One last thing. There’s a photo I’d like you to look at.”

“This the guy you were asking about before?”

“Yes.”

The weekend before I was killed I called Frank, having guessed what Gico Carl and his companions were planning, to check that he was willing to return as head of the Troops. While on the phone, I tested his memories of Paucar Wami — Dorak’s most sinister and singular Ayuamarcan apart from me. I asked if he recollected a famous serial killer who’d terrorized this city and worked for The Cardinal. He didn’t, but maybe the photo will jog something inside him.

“This was taken last Saturday,” I explain, digging through my drawers for the photo and tossing it across the desk. “He stood close to a security camera out back and stared straight at it for a full minute.”

The photo’s of a tall, lithe, extremely dark-skinned man.

Bald. Strange green eyes. Tattoos of colored snakes adorn both his cheeks. He’s dressed in dark pants and a black leather jacket.

Frank breathes out heavily through his nostrils, then looks at me warily. “That’s a photo of Al.”

“Al Jeery?”

“Yeah.”

I shake my head. “No. It isn’t.”

I know Al Jeery as intimately as you can know someone you’ve never actually met. I became interested in him when he chose the name of Paucar Wami and adopted his guise. I’ve had him shadowed, researched and photographed in any number of compromising positions. This isn’t him.

Frank studies the photo again. “Sure looks like Al. Jerry?” Jerry and Frank were both colleagues of Al Jeery’s long ago.

“I’ve seen it already,” Jerry says. “I thought it was him too, but Capac’s right — it’s someone else.”