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of the women, then killing every person on board—and they agreed on a plausible scenario to fit all of the facts.
    “Lacking any defense wounds and the great care taken to place the tiny needle hole in the most obscure location possible, this is how they think it went down: probably two killers gained access into Decklin’s apartment without having to resort to forced entry. One of them—probably Mazurkiewicz—got behind our victim and put him in a Brazilian jujitsu choke hold called the mata leão [kill the lion]. Are you familiar with it?”
    “Yes. I have had some Brazilian jujitsu training myself,” I reply, fully riveted by the scenario I can now envision all too well.
    “The evil beauty of the hold is that it is quick. The victim does not strangle; so, he does not thrash around. He goes to sleep within half a minute and is rendered insensate and unable to defend himself. The hold leaves no marks. Mazurkiewicz then pulled down his pants, felt for the femoral artery pulse, and injected the sophisticated TTX solution directly into the arterial flow. With a presumably very large dose, Decklin likely did not wake up or suffer. He probably had a fatal ventricular arrhythmia almost immediately. Mazurkiewicz then made sure that there was no sign of blood, redressed Decklin, and put him on his couch; so, anyone but a highly suspicious expert forensic pathologist having access to a very sophisticated laboratory would come to the conclusion that this was some sort of fluke death—a cardiac arrhythmia in a healthy young man. It does occur, especially in athletes.”
    “Thanks a million, Sybil. We will get on this today. Fortunately for us the Marcuses are made of money, which enables us to do whatever is necessary to get the answers.”
    I arrive home late that evening after putting together a full report to give to the Marcuses. I am tired enough just to sit with my wife and watch Jay Leno for an hour then the late news before nodding off to sleep. The Marcuses can wait until tomorrow.
    The rest is restorative, and I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I walk into my Manhattan office at seven thirty in the morning, ready to round up the troops and get them headed in the directions I need them to go.
    My office manager is the only other member of the staff in the office that early. She looks anxious and not like herself.
    I look into her face, squint, then ask, “Hey, Vera, what’s up? You look like you just lost your puppy.”
    Vera does not answer—just angles her head and body toward my office and raises her hands in a gesture of surrender. That cannot be the harbinger of anything good, I think.
    As soon as I step into my private office, four men in dark suits, white shirts, red power ties, sturdy soft-soled black shoes, and opaque aviator sunglasses march into my path. They all have short military cuts; they are all big and altogether fit; and the nerves to create a smiley face appear to have been surgically removed. They are obviously clones manufactured by the federal government. They could be more obvious if they had “FEDERAL AGENT” tattooed on their foreheads.
    “What?” I ask.
    I was about to ask, “Who?” as well, but the oldest of the clones peremptorily and impatiently interrupts me.
    “We’ll ask the questions, Mr. McGee. As a matter of fact, we’ll do almost all of the talking in this brief little get-together we are going to have.”
    I am still feeling put-off and feisty; so, I ask the “Who?” question anyway.
    He ignores me.
    “This is the way it’s going to be, McGee. I talk, you listen. I learn, you stay in the dark. First thing, you tell me everything there is to know about Decklin Marcus and what you have dredged up about that unfortunate boy who died of natural causes and nothing else. Second, you give us all of your records and then you stay out of the Marcus affair … way out … and forever. Third, you don’t share anything with the Marcuses, NYPD, or any federal office. Did