We arrived at my mother's building at three forty AM.
James Okafor was still on the steps.
He looked smaller than I remembered from our phone call two weeks ago the voice that had said I hadn't registered that subsidiary with twenty-six years of steady employment behind it. In person, at this hour, he was simply a man in his late fifties with a packed bag beside him and the particular exhaustion of someone who had been carrying something heavier than they were built for.
He looked up when Adrian and I walked toward him.
He didn't run. Didn't stand. Just looked at me with the expression of a man who had made a decision and was sitting inside it.
"I got your message," I said.
"I know." He glanced at the two federal agents positioned near the entrance with the professional neutrality o
