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politely, raises the buff-colored folder in his free hand. The W-E of Wilson Entertainment is embossed, surprisingly subtly, on its face. “If so, you’ve got a lot of impressive people willing to lie on your behalf. Take a seat.”
    Bell does, and Marcelin follows suit, dropping into a warship-gray Aeron chair behind a chrome-bordered desk. Bell puts him in his early forties, but he can’t be certain—that age thing again. The man is balding, bespectacled, and wearing a suit that puts the one Bell is wearing to shame, and Bell’s suit isn’t poorly made by any stretch. Marcelin sits with his back to the floor-to-ceiling tinted window, and through it Bell can see glimpses of Irvine and the profile of WilsonVille itself, the park visibly active even from this distance. The crests of two separate roller coasters, their trains of cars whipping in and out of view. There’s the point of a pyramid, and something that looks suspiciously like the summit of Mount Everest. A stretch of green, the canopy of some faraway and make-believe forest. Heat haze distorts it all, a sliver of the Pacific in the far distance, shimmering in the July Southern California sunshine.
    Marcelin flips the folder open with one hand, uses the other to slide his mouse along a Gordo, Betsy, and Pooch mouse pad, clicks without looking at what he’s doing. Glances up at Bell with the briefly pained expression of a man who’s forgotten his manners.
    “I didn’t ask: Would you like something to drink, Jon? Is Jon all right? Or do you prefer Jonathan?”
    “Friends call me Jad.”
    “Then I’ll take the invitation. Water? Soda? Coffee? We can do you a latte, if you like. There’s a barista in the lobby; I’m sure you passed the stand on the way in—no trouble to send someone down for something.”
    Bell did indeed see the barista, a woman who in no way looked to him like the one at the Black Bean, the girl in Skagway, and yet by her presence brought her immediately back to mind. Steaming milk in a metal pitcher beneath a lobby-wide mural of the Flower Sisters and their friends, serving a line of Bluetooth-wearing executives, and Bell could swear they were all half his age.
    “I’m good, thanks, Mr. Marcelin.”
    “It’s Matt, please.”
    “I’m good, thanks, Matt.”
    Marcelin nods, drops his eyes to the folder again. His eyeglasses slide down his nose, and he uses his thumb to push them back into place, not his index finger. Bell notes it, hates himself for doing so, for thinking the gesture odd, for wondering what it might mean when it doesn’t have to mean anything. Marcelin is still reading, so Bell goes back to looking over the office.
    It’s a big office, a corner office, but pretty much what Bell had been led to expect. Park memorabilia, statues of Pooch in various poses, some of Gordo and Betsy, too. A movie poster of the latest Flashman feature film, this one featuring Dread Flashman, pirate-rogue and Scourge of the Mirror Sea. A powered-down television set, and a remarkably modest glory wall of only three photographs. Bell takes that as a sign of Matthew Marcelin’s restraint, because Matthew Marcelin is chief of park operations and at a guess is pulling down seven figures annually, easy. A man like that is going to have more than just a photograph of himself with the current First Family; another with the assembled Friends of WilsonVille, taken—Bell assumes—outside the park gates; and another with the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
    “You talk to David Gonzalez recently?” Marcelin sits back in his chair as he asks the question, conversational. He’s got a good manner, and though they’ve only spoken once prior, by phone, he’s relaxed with Bell, as if he’s known him for years.
    “You know David?”
    “He does some consulting for us now that he’s left the Bureau.”
    “Haven’t talked to him in two, maybe three years.”
    “I gave him a call about you, you know. He tells me I can’t do