Forty-Two

The waitress gave him a coffee refill. Lorenzo Wader smiled at her and praised the food, while he scrutinized the man on the other side of the table. Rosenberg was aware that he was being evaluated and felt as if he were on the edge of a cliff.

“Yes, it was very good,” Rosenberg told the waitress, as if he wanted to avoid Lorenzo’s gaze. “Are you new here?”

“I started a week ago. I’m still getting used to it.”

“You are doing a fine job,” Lorenzo extolled. “Slobodan has a real ability to find good staff,” he went on generously.

As she left the table he nodded and repeated how delicious the dinner had been. Rosenberg could not figure him out. One second he looked dangerously ferocious, only to be smiling the next.

“What I don’t understand,” Lorenzo said, “is how Armas could deliver the goods in such a secure fashion. I have trouble imagining him running around town and handing it out himself.”

Against his better judgment, Rosenberg had let slip that Armas dealt with the cocaine, perhaps through a muted need to be of service, to shine as brightly as Lorenzo, who already appeared to know how everything hung together.

“Some people are prepared to do whatever it takes to make a buck,” Rosenberg said.

“Are you?”

The question came quickly and demanded an equally rapid answer.

“It depends,” Rosenberg said, and heard as he said it what a lame answer it was. “If the risks are small and the rewards are good enough,” he added.

“There is always the danger that one ends up with a knife in one’s back,” Lorenzo said and sipped the coffee.

Konrad took an overly large gulp of his drink, and started to cough.

“Give me some names,” Lorenzo said, unaffected by the coughing fit, and put up a hand when Rosenberg made an attempt to protest. “I know that you have been in the industry and I don’t care about that, but if we are going to be friends then you have to help me.”

Rosenberg cursed his decision to accept Lorenzo’s invitation to dinner, and that he had chosen Dakar as their meeting place did not make things better. Not to be friends with Lorenzo would mean trouble, he realized, and the alternatingly jovial and satanic Stockholmer was a considerably greater threat than Slobodan. Was it Lorenzo who had had Armas killed? This thought struck him with full force as he stared at Lorenzo’s slender hands and ring-laden fingers.

“There is a guy,” he said finally. “Still wet behind the ears, but very eager. He wants to make money to save his father, he says.”

“Is he in jail?”

“In Turkey or something,” Rosenberg said, feeling relieved that he could talk about someone other than himself. “He sells to friends and is very diligent.”

“Does he use it himself?”

Rosenberg shook his head.

“What is his name?”

“He is called Zero.”

Lorenzo smiled.

“Now we are starting to get somewhere,” he said and waved the waitress over. “I think we will have cognac.”