I looked at the name at the top of the legal pad. At what Cleo's grandmother believed, and what my grandfather had documented, and what it meant that the man her grandmother believed had ordered Thomas Reyes's death was currently sitting in the study directly below me.
I thought about what it was worth to be precise.
I thought about what it cost to be wrong.
* * *
Chapter 13: Victor Salas
Dominic left at nine in the morning.
Henri mentioned it in the way Henri mentioned everything, factually, without elaboration, in passing. Mr. Moreau had meetings in the CBD and would return by four. He didn't quite leave after saying it. He stood for a half-beat longer than the information required, in the way of someone who had more to say and had decided not to. Then he went. I thought about calling after him. I didn't. I went upstairs to work on the contract law assignment Arceneaux had set on Friday, which was due Thursday and which I had been finding legitimately interesting in the way that work was interesting when it had unexpected relevance to your actual life.
The question was about consideration in unconscionable contracts, whether the adequacy of consideration could be assessed after the fact, and by whom, and under what circumstances a court might set aside an otherwise valid exchange on the grounds that the bargaining positions of the parties had been so unequal as to render the agreement void of genuine consent.
I worked on it for two hours. Filled four pages. Decided I was probably going to submit something that would either impress Arceneaux or alarm him, and wasn't sure which outcome I preferred.
At eleven, the front doorbell rang.
I heard it distantly, my room was at the back of the house, the bell was old-fashioned, a real bell rather than an electronic chime, and then I heard Henri's footsteps in the front hall, and then voices, too low and brief to make out, and then Henri's footsteps again, ascending.
He knocked twice.
"Miss Callahan. There is a Mr. Salas at the door. He says he was in the neighborhood and hoped to pay his respects."
I set my pen down.
In the neighborhood. The Garden District was the kind of neighborhood people were specifically in, never incidentally. You came here on purpose or you didn't come.
"Tell him I'll be down in a moment," I said.
I looked at my notes for exactly three seconds. Put the legal pad in the desk drawer, face-down. Checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror without vanity, just assessment, the way you checked your posture before entering a room where your posture mattered. Then I went downstairs.
* * *
He was in the sitting room rather than the study, which was either a deliberate choice or Henri's, the sitting room was the front-of-house room, the one used for guests who hadn't yet been granted the further access of the interior. It had good light, floral upholstery, a fireplace that was decorative in November. It was, I understood as I walked in, the room designed to make guests feel welcomed without making them feel admitted.
Victor Salas stood when I entered.
He was exactly as I'd seen him twice now, the gray suit, the lean stillness, the quality of composure that suggested not the absence of feeling but the complete governance of it. He smiled when I appeared, and the smile was entirely convincing.
That was the first thing I caught. The smile reached the right places. A lesser performance would have stopped at the mouth.
"Miss Callahan." He extended his hand. "I hope you'll forgive the intrusion. I had business nearby and I realized I'd never had the opportunity to properly introduce myself. The Vauclain dinner was hardly the place for conversation."
I shook his hand. Firm, brief, neither aggressive nor deferential. "Mr. Salas."
"Please sit." He gestured toward the chairs by the fireplace as though it were his room, which it was not, and then caught himself with a small laugh that was also entirely convincing. "Forgive me, this is your home. I should be asking you."
"Sit," I said, and took the chair nearest the door.
He sat across from me. Crossed one knee over the other. Looked at me with the easy attention of someone who had all the time available and intended to use it for something specific that he would not be naming directly.
"Dominic speaks highly of you," he said.
"Does he."
"He doesn't say much, of course. He never does. But the fact that he says anything at all..." A small shrug. "I've known him since he was seventeen. The absence of complaint, from Dominic, is essentially an endorsement."