Noah stopped.
He stood completely still for a moment, the way an animal freezes when it hears something unexpected, and he looked at the wallet without moving toward it.
He looked at the diner.
The windows glowed warm yellow. Through the glass, he could see figures, big men in dark vests, filling the booths and counter stools.
His eyes went back to the wallet.
Then to the diner again.
Then down.
He walked over and picked it up.
The weight of it was immediate and substantial.
Not the weight of leather.
The weight of content.
He held it for a second without opening it, feeling the thickness of it between his fingers.
Then he flipped it open.
The cash was right there, folded into the bill compartment in a way that suggested the owner did not spend a lot of time worrying about it.
Large bills, organized not by denomination but simply by direction.
All facing the same way out of what looked like personal habit.
Noah’s eyes moved over the money without touching it, doing the quick arithmetic that hungry people become involuntarily skilled at.
His brain arrived at a number somewhere above five thousand dollars before he even got through the first fold.
He stopped counting.
He looked at the ID card instead.
Jackson Callahan.
A face stared back at him from the small plastic rectangle.
A man in his fifties, heavyset in the way that came from muscle that had settled but had not gone soft. Gray hair cropped short. A beard that was more gray than anything else. Eyes that were pale and direct and seemed to be looking at something slightly beyond the camera.
The address was local.
The birth year made him fifty-four.
Noah read the name again.