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“I imagine it must be stressful to be a citizen of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and have to do your part every day to ensure that the state and city live up to those honorable titles. Mr. Aaron Kolshak’s father died when Aaron was eleven, perhaps from the stress. The boy became something of a delinquent, and his mother sent him off to the academy in Mattoon, Illinois, when he was thirteen.”

“I guess the family was wealthy, huh?”

“As usual, your suspicion serves you well. Mr. Kolshak had been a most successful real estate developer, and his widow proved to be equally adept at the family business.”

When he paused to savor his coffee and left me sitting in an expectant silence, I began to suspect that Mr. Yoshioka had once aspired to be a storyteller of some kind, perhaps a novelist, before fate had made of him a tailor.

He resumed: “Mrs. Renata Kolshak, the widow, greatly enjoyed vacationing on cruise ships. I assume, Jonah Kirk, that you have never vacationed on a cruise ship.”

“No, sir.”

“Neither have I. A year after Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy suffocated in their sleep, Mrs. Kolshak was aboard a Caribbean cruise when she went missing and was eventually determined to have fallen overboard and drowned. Lost at sea. No body ever found.”

“Holy Jeez,” I said and accused myself of profanity and quickly made the sign of the cross and said, “Jeez,” again, and had to do it all a second time. “I bet no one thought to ask where Lucas Drackman was.”

“If he was aboard the same vessel, sampling the delights of the Caribbean, he most likely was wise enough to travel under a false identity. But poor Mr. Yabu Tamazaki of the Daily News has become so curious that he is looking into that.”

My host was intent on my reaction, but I gave him some of his own medicine and savored my coffee for a minute. Finally I said, “So in return for Cassidy and Kolshak giving Lucas an ironclad alibi on the night he murdered his parents, he must’ve made a pact with them to murder theirs, you know, after enough time passed not to raise suspicion.”

“We can spin up all kinds of theories, but under the law, the suspect is always presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

I remembered Manzanar and said, “Maybe not always. Shouldn’t we go to the police?”

“Ah, but which police? None of these crimes was committed in this city or state. Police here have no jurisdiction. Two murders occurred in Illinois, two more in Indiana, and Mrs. Kolshak was out of the country when she was perhaps thrown overboard.”

“Maybe it’s an FBI thing.”

“Maybe it is indeed. But I believe that it would be most unwise to approach the authorities until it can be proved that Mr. Lucas Drackman was on that cruise ship with Mrs. Kolshak or in Indianapolis around the time that Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy died.”

“Why wouldn’t it be wise? The police, FBI, all those guys know how to prove things.”

“Inevitably, Lucas Drackman would be alerted that he was being investigated for some reason. He is not likely to think it is about all those killings, because that is behind him. Criminals think only in the short term. They live in the now, not in the past or future, which is why they always think crime pays, for in the now they are still free.”

I looked in my coffee mug again. Then I pushed it aside. “Do you know Mr. Moto?”

“I am sorry to say that I have never made his acquaintance. Who might he be?”

“Never mind.”

He folded both hands around his coffee mug, as if to warm them. “The danger is that if Mr. Drackman were to be alerted, he might put two and two together.”

“What two and two?”

“Miss Fiona Cassidy believes that you were suspicious of her. She warned you off. Now you turn up across the street from The Royal when Drackman is leaving there with your father.”

“He didn’t know it was me.”

“If he describes you to Miss Cassidy, she will confirm that it was you.”

“He won’t remember anything but my red-and-white toboggan cap. All little black kids probably look alike to him.”

“But if they do not all look alike to him, then once he has been put on alert by an investigation, he might come looking for you.”

I recalled Drackman in the dream, his eyes wide and wild, his tongue ceaselessly licking his full lips, and I thought of him on the farther side of the chain-link fence, his breath smoking from his mouth as if, should he wish, he could breathe fire.

“If we don’t report him to the cops or the FBI, how would we ever prove that he was on the cruise ship or in Indianapolis?”

“We must wait for Mr. Tamazaki of the Daily News and hope that in his obsession he can find proof.”