Page 64 of The Best Trick

“What?” Odin asked, pulling out his phone.

“Does Alfred think we’re showing this painting to people to help them know what a German shepherd looks like? It would be so hilarious if he thought that.”

Odin frowned. “I can’t imagine it.”

“He asked if it was related to the investigation!” I was just laughing now. “Sir, have you seen a dog that looks like the German shepherd in this painting? You have to picture her not hoisting a beer mug, and not wearing a visor.”

Odin called an Uber while I texted Thor and Zeus that we were done with the meeting. “No way.”

“He asked,” I said.

We took an Uber to a midway point, and then slipped through a crowd, careful not to be followed, and caught another Uber, heading back to our Airbnb.

TWELVE

We walked in to find Thor and Zeus at the kitchen counter, tearing through bags of chips like a pair of locusts.

“Get anything?” Zeus asked.

“Yeah, we got that Alfred likes to waste our time, find out what we know, and get a tail back on us,” Odin said, grabbing the sour cream Ruffles from Zeus. “Fucking-g bullshit.”

I set the picture against the wall. “But on the upside, there’s a chance that he thinks the dogs-playing-pool picture is part of our quest to find Doris,” I said.

“Are you shitting me?” Zeus Looked from me to Odin and back to me.

Odin shrugged.

I grinned.

“This fucking case,” Zeus continued. “All I can say is that exculpatory tackle bag had better exist.”

We all sat there munching on chips, dreaming of a tackle bag containing proof that would clear Zeus, Odin, and Thor of that atrocity they were framed for…and hopefully we’d be pardoned for the crimes we’d done since then, being that we had so little choice.

The idea of living free, of not being pursued, of never having to look over our shoulders, of having a place to call home—it felt like a dangerous thing to hope for.

* * *

Our next stopwas the home of Wilson's musician friend, Ferdinand. My guys wanted to get a sense of him. What did he think of Harold? Was there anyone else who could’ve taken Doris? Maybe Ferdinand himself?

Ferdinand lived in a 1970s apartment building on a sleepy dead-end street across from a large homeless encampment.

Zeus stabbed the button on the decrepit intercom, and I was shocked when it actually worked. Zeus spoke into the speaker area and introduced us in the very official way that he had that made us sound official without actually saying we were official.

The door was buzzed open, and we climbed some rickety stairs to the top floor.

Ferdinand was tall and wiry with unusually large hands and gray hair cut in a bangs-and-bowl style that looked very last century if not downright 75 BC.

“It takes four of you to do follow-up questions?” Ferdinand said.

“You should see how many of us it takes to screw in a light bulb,” Zeus joked as we filed into what was basically a giant studio. There was a little eating nook on one side of the big open expanse and a music-playing area on the other side with a collection of instruments, a music stand, and what looked like recording equipment.

He offered us a couple of stools from the music area, but Zeus stayed standing.

“How long have you been playing music with Wilson?” Thor asked, even though we already had that information from Alfred.

“We’ve been jamming together since high school,” Ferdinand said. “An electronica string quartet type of deal. Wilson went off to conservatory after that, but we played summers when he came back. We played a lot of weddings.”

“Weddings?” I asked.

---