Three weeks later, The Rusty Anchor smells of salt, stale beer, and old sins. Dallas sits in a booth with cheap whiskey and a borrowed patience, his hat low, Murderbone silent at his boots.

A dockhand at the bar keeps glancing his way. On the back wall, a little blackboard advertises a delicate collection job, cash up front, no questions. The kind of ad a man like Councilman Voss uses when he wants muscle without witnesses.

The dockhand finally leaves a business card on the table. One glance is enough. The number routes to a private line tied to a shell company, and the name on the corner is a courier alias Dallas has seen in Bell's papers.

Dallas lets the whiskey sit, stands, and walks out wearing a new skin. By the time he reaches the payphone on the corner, he is not a detective anymore, he is a loan shark looking for men who can move heavy things and keep their mouths shut.

A beat of static answers him, then a low voice gives an address near Pier Nine and a time after midnight. Dallas has his lure. If Voss is fishing for hired knives, the line now runs back toward the man who ordered his daughter's death.

Dallas lays the relay-office papers beside the bar receipt and scans the courier alias against the copied route marks. The same shell company, the same private line, the same hand that keeps Voss off the books.

One notation jumps out, a dock pickup code tied to Pier Nine and a second name scribbled in the margin, buried under a transfer time.

Dallas folds the pages once and spots the courier alias’s real anchor, a dispatch clerk at the harbor office who stamps the line after midnight.

Murderbone lifts his head at the question, staring toward the door as the dockhand’s nervous smile starts to crack.

The new name and the dock pickup code sit plain in Dallas’s hand now, and the courier line points straight back to Voss’s muscle.