“We can invite the workers,” Daniel said.

“Who is we?” Ada asked.

He corrected himself. “I can ask whether they’d like to meet.”

“Good. And if they say no, your father’s name doesn’t become a reason to pressure them.”

On his way back to the garage he encountered Marcel Orsini leaning against the fence outside a florist shop. He was alone and wore a pale shirt beneath his coat. In daylight he appeared smaller, more human, and more exhausted.

“Following me?” Daniel asked.

“I was hoping you might pass this way. I didn’t want to arrive at June’s shop uninvited again.”

“You could have called.”

“I don’t have your number.”

“That hasn’t stopped your people from finding my workplace.”

Marcel looked away. “You’re right.”

He said one of the men who used to collect payments along the old waterfront had called his home that morning. The caller wanted him to stop asking questions about North Pier and to tell Daniel to stay away. Marcel offered no dramatic account of threats. He simply said he’d hung up, after which someone left a bouquet of white carnations on his doorstep with the flower heads cut short.

“Is that a message?” Daniel asked.

“It’s the sort of message cowards enjoy because they can pretend it’s a joke.”

Daniel told him he wasn’t interested in becoming Marcel’s messenger. The old man accepted that. They stood for a moment watching a city bus pull away from the stop. A passenger ran after it, waving uselessly; the driver stopped ten yards later and opened the door.

“Your father drove me home once,” Marcel said. “After the fire. The doctors had released me and the people I worked with were waiting to collect me. Nathan took me out the back entrance in his old truck.”

“Why?”

“He said my men were as likely to kill me as anybody else. He was right.”

Daniel remembered June’s question about why Nathan had saved Marcel at all. Hearing the story twice hadn’t made the decision less strange.

“He was angry,” Marcel continued. “I saw that. But he could separate anger from the next useful action. I never learned to do that.”

“You learned how to frighten people.”

“Yes. And I let myself confuse that with knowing how to lead them.”

A delivery cyclist rode between them and the curb. Marcel stepped back, wincing as his bandaged hand brushed the iron fence.

“Who is investing in the concession?” Daniel asked. “Not names from twenty-six years ago. Who’s involved now?”

Marcel gave him three company names and admitted that he didn’t know their current ownership. Daniel wrote them in his notebook but refused the phone number of a man Marcel said could obtain more information quickly.