I let the silence stretch, listening to Marcus breathe on the other end of the line. He was still insisting he was in Boston, still asking for money, still convinced I knew nothing. So I decided to hand him one fact he could not talk his way around. “Marcus,” I said, “how is the view from Room 612?”

The line went completely dead for three full seconds. I could almost hear the floor dropping out from under him. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost every trace of the confident man who had kissed my cheek and told me he was leaving for a business trip. “How,” he whispered, “how do you know that room number?” And in that single cracked question, the last piece of his story collapsed.