The Amateurs

CHAPTER 12

SOMEONE WAS KICKING THE DOOR. Alex watched through a haze as it bowed and buckled. They’re doing it wrong. You don’t kick the middle. You kick the side. Hadn’t they ever watched a cop show?

Shock. This must be clinical shock. That’s why the pain felt farther away, why he hadn’t panicked at the yelling, at the-

Gunshot.

Jesus!

There had been a gunshot. How long ago? Time seemed strange and elastic. Maybe thirty seconds? He strained to hear, listening for voices. As if on cue, another shot rang out.

What was happening? Who was shooting?

Oh God. Who had been shot?

The thought made him blink and focus, which brought the pain throbbing back. He had to get out of here. See if his friends needed help.

Johnny had made it to his knees. He was trying to shout something, his voice coming out vowels behind the tape. The person on the other side of the door kicked again, and a boot broke through the hollow-core door in a shower of splinters. Someone swore, and then the foot was pulled back and a hand replaced it, fumbling for the knob. A moment later the door swung open, and a figure, someone he knew, who? The other bartender. Chip. His name was Chip. Why had it been hard to get the guy’s name? They’d worked together for years.

“Oh my God,” Chip said. He stood wild eyed, frozen. Johnny made incomprehensible sounds, held up his arms. Chip got it, hurried to him, started pulling the duct tape. “Are you OK?”

Johnny coughed as his mouth was freed, gulped a breath. His face was slapped-red where the skin had been peeled. “What does it look like, you asshole? Do my hands.”

Chip started to unwrap them, then Johnny said, “Scissors. In the drawer.” A moment later he was free. He took the hand Chip offered, stood up. “Call the police.”

“What about him?”

“I’ll take care of him. Go!”

Chip turned and sprinted out.

Johnny groaned, stretched. He knelt beside Alex, pulled the tape from his mouth. “You all right, kid?”

No, I’m fucking not, there was someone shooting out where my friends are. But he couldn’t say that, couldn’t give any hint of concern. “My eye.”

“It’ll be OK. We’ll get it checked out. Hold still.” Johnny leaned over, put the scissors against the bonds holding Alex’s wrists. He started to cut, then stopped. Rocked back on his heels.

“What?”

Johnny held the scissors up, stared at them. “We need to talk.”

The shock wasn’t thick enough to block the sudden fear. Had he slipped up? “What? Cut me free.”

“In a minute.” His boss glanced sideways, then reached over to push the door closed. “We don’t have a lot of time, so listen up.”

Alex moaned, and Johnny leaned forward and tapped his cheek. It felt like a blow from the wrong end of a claw hammer. “Jesus!”

“I said listen. You’ll be OK. It doesn’t look that bad. But in a minute there are going to be a bunch of cops here, and I’m gonna need you to stand up.”

“Stand up?”

“Kid, you’re loyal, but you ain’t too bright. We’re going to get you taken care of. I’ll cover the medical bill. But you need to do something. The cops are going to ask a lot of questions. I don’t know what happened out there, but right this second, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we tell the same story.”

“Johnny, my head really hurts.” He tried to speak calmly, but his body was slicked with sweat, and his voice came out hoarse. He had to get free, had to find out what was going on. Were his friends OK? Had one of them…

“Here’s what you tell the cops-exactly what happened, that two guys came in with guns and robbed us. But don’t mention the meeting or the duffel bag. Other than that, tell them anything they want to know. They ask if you wear pantyhose, you tell the truth. But not about those two things. You got it?”

Alex took a deep breath. The world was wobbling and pulsing. “You want me to lie to the cops.”

“You do this, I’ll get you taken care of, cover the bills, and pay you for the trouble. A lot more than a couple hundred.”

He could hear sirens now, rising and falling. “I-”

“You tell them anything else, then I’ll be forced to say you were in on it. That daughter of yours? Next time you see her, you’ll be wearing a jumpsuit. Get me?”

Everything seemed to be moving at a weird speed, jerky fast, awkward slow, like a projector eating a filmstrip. Someone had been shot outside, maybe more than one person. One of his friends could be hurt, dying. Johnny leaned in, the scissors in his hand, inches from Alex’s good eye. He could see light play off the edge of them.

“I understand.” He forced himself to stay calm. Raised his hands. “Cut me out.”

Johnny nodded. “That’s good.” He worked the edge of the blade beneath the tape.

Footsteps, loud, and then Chip was pushing open the door. “The police are on their way. Are you two OK?”

“We’re fine,” Johnny said. “Alex needs an ambulance, though.”

“What happened?”

“We got robbed.”

“By who?”

“Fuck if I know, kid. But I’m going to find out. You can bet on that.”

The world was narrowing to a pinhole. Alex decided to let it.

FROZEN IN THE DOORWAY, ears ringing from the crack of gunfire, Mitch stared. Trying to put the pieces together.

They had left the office. Gone out the back. A second car had been there, a man standing near it. He had pulled a pistol. Ian had aimed at the guy, his intentions glowing like a billboard. Mitch had yelled for him to stop. The drug dealer had drawn a bead, fast. There had been a blast of light and sound from over by the cars.

Ian must be hit.

Mitch looked down. His friend seemed fine. He wasn’t screaming or clutching his chest. He was just aiming his pistol and tugging the trigger. Nothing was happening. The safety still on. The shot hadn’t come from him, and hadn’t hit him. So who-

Mitch turned to the alley. The man was on the ground, one hand clapped to his shoulder, face twisted in pain. Jenn stared like a zombie, the revolver she’d used to shoot him still in her shaking hand.

No. Oh, no. He slipped the duffel bag and launched himself forward, ran a handful of paces. The man on the ground was moving. Mitch got to him, kicked at a dark metal object on the ground, the man’s pistol, knocked it skittering across the broken concrete.

The guy gasped, one hand flopped up at a weird angle, the other pressed to his shoulder. Blood pulsed through his clenched fingers. His teeth were tight, and breath whistled through them.

“I”-Jenn’s eyes were sick porcelain-“I didn’t. He’s-”

“Hey,” Mitch said. He moved over to Jenn, put hands on her shoulders. “Hey.”

She stared at him. “I didn’t know what to do. He was going to-”

“It’s fine,” he lied. “Everything is fine. Come on. Let me have this.” Gently, he eased the revolver from her hand.

“I-oh God.” She stood over the man she had shot. Ian came up beside her, the three of them staring down. Like kids on a play-ground, Mitch thought, only it’s not a twisted ankle or a skinned knee, and no one can yell time-out. This game keeps going, like it or not.

“What do we do?” Ian’s voice was thin.

“We have to take him to a hospital,” she said. “It’s just his shoulder. He’ll be OK. Right?”

So if this is a game, what are the rules? Mitch stared, let his friends talk around him. There has to be more than what you’re thinking. There has to be.

“And tell them what?”

“We don’t have to tell them anything. Just drop him outside.”

He barely heard the others. Don’t lie to yourself. It’s too late to lie. Lies won’t save you.

“He’ll tell them about us.”

“He doesn’t know anything.”

This is the way it is. You know what you have to do. There’s only one option.

Ian said, “He saw your face.”

“But so what? I’ve never been arrested-”

“It’s not just the cops.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know.” Ian’s voice hysterical. “Christ, I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you put your gun down?”

“This is my fault? I didn’t shoot him.”

“I had to!”

This is the game. These are the stakes.

Do it.

The man was staring at them, his pupils wide but alert. Staring at the two men in masks, and at the woman standing between. Staring like he was memorizing her face.

Or like he already had.

Mitch raised the revolver, looked down the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 13

A SMALL SPACE, VIBRATING, BRIGHT. On his back. Sirens. Movement around him. Cool pressure on his eye. Words. “Male, approximately thirty, blunt trauma to the head and eye, probable concussion…”

“Am I… where?”

“You’re in an ambulance. Lay still.” The figure touching his cheek, his nose, sliding something into his nostrils. “What’s your name?”

“Alex.”

“Alex what?”

“Alex Kern.”

“Do you know what year it is, Alex?”

“Ummm.” For a moment he wasn’t sure. “2008?”

“Good. And who’s the president?”

“Fucking George Bush.”

The technician snorted. “I’m going to put an IV in. It may pinch for a second.” There was a brief sting in his right elbow.

“Am I-”

“You’re going to be all right. The blow tore your skin, but your eye looks OK.”

“What about-who got shot?”

“I don’t know about that. Lay still and try to be calm.”

Calm, Alex thought. Right. Calm. He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slow, wondering what the fuck had happened.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” Jenn sounded like she’d been awake for a week. Mitch didn’t answer. He just leaned back into her couch. His hand tingled, felt very… present. Like the kick of the gun had left an imprint.

“Mitch. Are you-”

“Yeah,” he said. He felt at once powerful and weak, strong and shaky. “Yeah.”

It was his first time in her apartment, and it looked different than he’d imagined. He’d pictured frilly things and too many pillows. Clay-colored walls. The standard midtwenties Pottery Barn space. Instead it was tastefully minimal, with less furniture than he had expected. The walls were painted airy colors, and the windows had soft, sheer curtains that flowed with the breeze.

The last half an hour had been the strangest of his life. Like a Lynch film, everything mixed up and weird. Panic and exaltation coiling through his belly. It had all happened so fast. One minute they were walking out of the restaurant, he and Ian, the job done and a new life about to begin. Cut to him standing over a man, Jenn’s pistol in his hand, only one option, one freaking option, and he’d stared at the guy, first at his eyes, then, when he knew he was going to actually do it, at his chest, staring till he was looking at a pattern instead of a person, and then he’d pulled the-

Stop.

Fast-forward.

– to the sirens tearing the night, drawing closer. There had been a sense of causality, as if by twitching his finger he’d set the world in motion. Hundred-proof power. King of the world.

Not knowing what else to do, he’d rolled with it.

He’d ordered Ian into the rental, then he and Jenn had climbed into the drug dealer’s Eldorado. Originally he’d only planned to move it out of the way, but the sirens were closing in fast, and so he’d spun north, the engine old but still boasting Cadillac power, and he’d had the strongest urge to jam on the gas, open it up. It had taken an effort of will to drive at a steady five above.

Thoughts and images sliding across him like rain on a window:

The good firmness of the trigger.

Her voice asking, “Where are we going?”

An explosion of light and a sound that hurt. The deeper darkness of the shadows that fell after.

“Your place,” he’d answered. “It’s closest.”

Expecting her to argue, but she’d said nothing. The drive was blurry in his memory. The whole time he’d been steering, braking, stopping, he’d been conscious of two things-

Jesus, you shot him, you really fucking shot-

Stop. Fast-forward.

– and Jenn beside him. He could smell her, not perfume, her, the gentle smell of sweat and hair, of girl. Once he’d caught her looking at him, but her eyes slid away before he could read them.

And now here they were, sitting in her tasteful apartment, waiting for the smoke to clear. Wondering if they’d like the view when it did. Mitch coughed, straightened on the couch. “Are you both OK?”

Ian and Jenn looked at each other, then at him.

“I mean, neither of you were hurt.”

“No.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“What about Alex?” Jenn was in the opposite chair, her knees three inches apart. He had an adolescent urge to look up her skirt.

“Of course he’s OK.” Ian was pacing. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

“You hit him pretty hard,” Mitch said.

“I didn’t mean to.” He paused, made a strangled laugh. “It was my first pistol whipping.”

“What?” Jenn straightened. “You hit him with the gun?”

“It was in my hand.”

“What about your other hand?”

“I-look, I just did what we talked about. Mitch was there. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was there.”

Another silence, then Jenn said, “What do we do?”

A fair question. He decided to think about it, and was surprised to realize that he could. That in fact, he felt sharp. “OK. Let’s go through this. That guy.” He had a flash of the man’s face, buried it. “He must have been the drug dealer Johnny was meeting with. Damn. I really figured we’d have time before he arrived. He must have known Johnny-what?” Realizing Jenn was staring at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to get my head around this.”

“Get your head around it? Get your head around what, that you, that we…”

“Yes,” he said.

“Can we look on the bright side?” Ian’s eyebrows high. “The cash?”

Funny. Mitch had forgotten about the money. He straightened, pulled the bag to his lap. Opened the zipper. What he saw inside, less real than raising the gun and pulling the-stop, bury it-was bundles. He reached in, took out a handful, packs of hundreds and twenties.

“Wow.” Ian sounded reverent. “How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m saying, count, man.”

“No.”

“OK, let me.”

“No.” He stuffed the money back in the bag. “We’re not talking about the money now. We have to think first.”

“About what?”

He looked up, met Ian’s gaze, held it. “About how to get away with this.”

“Get away with it?” Jenn made a squeaky sort of sound. “How?”

“One step at a time.” Mitch’s thoughts came clear and clean and logical. Like a machine, a big industrial machine that stamped out part after perfect part. “First. In the restaurant. We were wearing masks and gloves. Ian, you didn’t take your gloves off, did you? Get sweaty, wipe your hands?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.”

“I might have touched something,” Jenn said quietly.

“Touched what?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“In the alley?”

She nodded.

“That’s OK. It’s an alley. Hundreds of people go through it.” His body felt like it was getting low-grade electrical shocks. He stood, cracked his knuckles. Pulled the pistol from his waistband and dropped it on the table. It hit loud and heavy. “This was the only gun we fired, right? So that’s lucky.”

“Why?”

“It’s a revolver. Revolvers don’t leave casings.” He saw Jenn’s expression, said, “The part that comes off a bullet.” He took two steps forward, spun, took two back, feeling muscles in his legs. Stopped, looked at Ian. “What were you thinking, man? Pulling out your gun like some freaking gangster?”

“I was-”

“You didn’t even have the safety off.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the one who shot him.”

“No. You’re just the one who left us no choice.” He glared at his friend, feeling the anger run through him, remembering the guy doing coke in the goddamn car. Ian tried to meet his gaze, then looked away, at the window, his feet. Shuffled them. Looked up again, something in his eyes.

Something like fear.

Strange. Mitch couldn’t remember anyone being scared of him before. “OK. That doesn’t matter now. These guns, the guy you got them from, who was it?”

“Just a guy I know. He runs a private casino. Some other stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“I don’t really know. Prostitutes, I think.”

“Can the guns be traced to him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because he would have worried about us getting caught. He’d have given me ones that couldn’t be traced.”

“OK,” Mitch said again. It felt good to say, to mark off little increments of thought, like ticking off items on a list. “You’re right. And we didn’t leave any fingerprints, and the bullets can’t tie to us. So, then.”

Jenn stared at him. Hanging, he realized, on his next words.

“So then we’re OK.”

“OK? You killed-”

“We. We killed.” He closed his eyes, rubbed at them with his forefinger and thumb. “But he was a bad guy, a drug dealer. And he saw you.” He moved to her, dropped to a squat beside the chair, took her hands in his, not thinking about any of it, just doing. “Jenn, he saw your face.”

She said nothing. Something was happening behind her eyes, though he couldn’t have said what. He kept speaking, talking fast, wanting to make everything better. “But now we’re safe. Things didn’t go exactly how we planned, but we got the money and got out, and didn’t leave anything that would lead to us.”

“But we-”

“Yes,” he cut her off, his patience snapping. “Yeah, we did. Which is just one of the reasons I didn’t want to do this in the first place, remember? You wanted your big adventure? Well, now you’ve got it.”

“That’s not fair.”

“What’s fair got to do with it? It happened, damn it. Do you get me? It happened. It’s real. Do you understand?”

Jenn’s eyes were wide. She nodded yes in a way that meant no.

He sighed, squeezed her hands. “Look, it’s nobody’s fault. But what matters is that there is nothing to point to us. Nothing at all.”

“Sure there is,” Ian said. “The money. The cars. The guns.”

It was a fair point, and it froze him cold. Ian was right. He’d been so focused on thinking about what had already happened that he hadn’t put any thought into what happened next. Still, he was the one holding it together, while the two of them seemed about to come apart, Jenn retreating into herself, Ian’s swaggering a thin veneer over panic. If someone had to be strong, to make the hard decisions, it looked like it was going to be him.

He was surprised at how good that idea felt.

“You’re right. We’ll need to take care of all of that. But first things first. We need to talk to Alex, see what happened on his end. With the shooting, the police will be involved. We hadn’t counted on that. We need to know what they think.”

“I’ll call him,” Jenn said, rising.

“Wait. He’s probably on the way to the hospital.”

“The hospital? How hard did you hit him?” She glared at Ian, who sighed and dropped onto the couch.

“Harder than I should have, OK? I was nervous.”

She shook her head. Straightened her back and ran her hands through her hair. “Which hospital would they take him to?”

Mitch realized she was asking him, him directly. “I don’t know,” he said. “And we can’t start calling around, or dial his cell phone a hundred times. We can’t do anything that would raise suspicion.” His mind still churning steady and strong, focusing on the task at hand. Maybe if you do that hard enough, you won’t have to remember what you-stop.

He took a deep breath. “The idea from the beginning was that there was no reason why anyone would look at us. Far as we know, that hasn’t changed. We need to talk to Alex and find out what happened on his end. He won’t be in the hospital long. Overnight, probably.”

“So what do we do?”

“Leave one message on his cell, something perfectly normal. Tell him that we’re getting together tomorrow morning. Here.”

“And until then?”

“Wait.”

CHAPTER 14

THE CT SCAN hadn’t been a lot of fun. It wasn’t claustrophobia so much as the noise-loud, rhythmic clunking and banging while his head throbbed like an apocalyptic hangover. But worse was just lying there, not knowing what had happened.

Maybe the gun went off accidentally? But there had been two shots.

Were one or two of his best friends dead in an alley right now?

“Mr. Kern.”

“Yeah.” He opened his eyes. An Indian guy in a white coat stood in front of him. Weird. The guy looked younger than him. Alex pushed away his thoughts, struggled to focus. “Doc.”

“How are you feeling?”

“My head hurts.”

“Any nausea?”

“No.”

“Numbness?”

“I wish.”

“Pain in your teeth? Double vision?”

“Huh-uh.”

The man nodded, made a note on a clipboard. “Good. Well, the results are fine. No evidence of fracture or permanent damage. The blow hit just above the zygomatic arch, which protects some important nerves. Sort of like hitting your funny bone, how it shoots through your whole arm?” He took out a pad and began to write. “I’m going to give you some Tylenol-3 for the pain. Don’t take any more than you really need.”

“What about the cut?”

“We stitched that when you arrived. You might have a little scar, nothing too dramatic.”

“You did?” He blinked. “I don’t remember.”

“You have a mild concussion. That can affect your memory.”

“Will it-”

“Be permanent? You shouldn’t have trouble remembering things that happen from now on. If you do, come back immediately. Same with vision problems or severe pain.”

“Come back? You’re saying I should go?”

“You have insurance?”

“I have child support instead.”

The man laughed. “Look, if you want, you can stay. But my advice? You’ll rest better at home, and it’s a lot cheaper.”

“Rest? Am I allowed to sleep? I thought with a concussion…”

“Depends on the level. You’ll be fine. In a couple of days or a week, follow up with your family practitioner.” The man handed him a slip of paper. “Your prescription.”

After the doctor left, a nurse came in, helped him stand up, gave him his clothes, wallet, and cell phone. After he changed in the bathroom, she had him sit back down in a wheelchair. “I can walk,” he said.

“Policy,” she said. “You have someone here?”

“Someone?”

“To take you home. You shouldn’t drive, sugar.”

“I can call a cab, I guess.”

“I got a better idea.” The voice came from behind. Very gently, Alex turned his head to look.

The man in the chair wore a suit and tie. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with short hair trimmed to razor edge. Something about him made Alex immediately nervous. “My name is Peter Bradley. I’m a detective with the Chicago Police Department.” His hand held out.

“A detective?” Alex shook the guy’s hand on reflex while his brain conjured images of the tip of the scissors an inch from his eye. For a moment, he thought about calling for the doctor, saying he sure felt some nausea now.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Umm.” His mouth was dry, his thoughts sticky. We robbed Johnny Love. Ian hit me too hard. Someone got shot, and I don’t know who. “There were men with guns.”

“That’s right. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. I can give you a ride at the same time.”

“Do we have to do this now?”

“Not if you’re not up to it. But the sooner we talk, the more likely we are to catch these guys,” the detective said. He gave an apologetic shrug. “Since you need a lift anyway…”

You have nothing to hide. “OK, yeah, I guess. Sure.”

“Good.” Bradley stepped behind the chair, took the handles. “Don’t you hate this crap?”

“What?”

“This. Everybody so worried you’re going to sue. Cut your finger, leave in a wheelchair.” The automatic doors whooshed open. The night was sticky after the hospital’s air-conditioning. “Here you go.”

Alex put his hands on the armrests, stood up slowly. The motion sent a bolt of pain through his head. He wobbled for a moment, kept one hand on the arm of the chair.

“You all right?”

“Feel like I spent the night slamming tequila.”

The cop laughed. “Doctors say you’ll be fine. At least you probably got some good pills out of it, right?” He gestured. “I’m over here. Where do you live?”

“Rogers Park.”

Bradley reached the car first, a pale blue Crown Vic. He unlocked the passenger-side door and held it open. Alex got in, his eyes scanning the radio mounted to the dash, the switches that controlled the sirens, the handle that moved the spotlight. Bradley climbed in the other side, fired up the engine. “Ever been in a police car before?”

“Nope. Well, once. When I was a kid.” He realized how that sounded, continued in a rush. “Got caught drinking a twelve-pack in an alley. The cop-the officer-put me in the back, drove me home.”

“Ouch. He talk to your parents?”

“No, he was cool. Just put the fear of God into me.” He reached up and gingerly touched the side of his face, his fingers tracing cotton and tape. There was something about the cop that he liked, an easy manner. Under other circumstances, he seemed like a guy it would be fun to have a drink with.

Bradley signaled, then nosed into traffic, heading for Lake Shore Drive. “So. Tell me what happened.” The headlights of other cars flared into stars.

Keep it simple. “I was in the back room with Johnny Lo-with Mr. Loverin.”

A smile danced quick across Bradley’s lips. Alex continued. “Two men came in. They had guns and masks. They told us not to move. One of them was close to me, and I, I guess I took a swing at him. He hit me with the gun. After that, everything is fuzzy.”

“You tried to punch one of them?”

“I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Did better than most. People usually just freeze up.”

“Kind of wish I had.”

“Did you recognize the men?”

“No. Like I said, they had masks on.”

“Anything distinctive about them?”

“Guns.”

Bradley snorted. “Anything else? Scars, tattoos, heavy, tall? Anything about the clothing?”

A memory came, a time two years ago when he’d been mugged. How afterward he couldn’t remember a thing about what the man had looked like. It had been a strangely helpless feeling: all those hours lifting weights, all the standard male fantasies about what he would do, and in the moment, he’d done nothing at all-not even remember what the man looked like. “No. It’s weird, but I guess I didn’t really see them.”

“What about their eyes? Anything unusual about them?”

“Not that I remember.”

“You didn’t notice if one had a black eye?”

Something in Alex went cold. “I’m not sure.”

“What were you doing in the office?”

“Mr. Loverin asked me to come back.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Bradley merged onto the Drive, pressed the gas. There was a party going on in a Gold Coast penthouse, men and women crowding the windows, smoking on the balcony. “Tell me about Johnny Love.”

“What about him?”

“How long have you worked for him?”

“About ten years. Well, at the bar that long. He bought it, I don’t know, six years ago?”

“Did you work with him before?”

“No.”

“You never did anything for him, any side jobs?”

“What kind of jobs?”

“Anything at all.”

“I never knew him until then.” These questions were hitting closer to home than he wanted. He faked a grimace. “Look, Detective, I’m really hurting. Do you mind-”

“Sure. Lean back, relax.” Bradley moved a lane over, sped up. “I don’t want to wear you out.”

Alex felt an absurd surge of gratitude. “Thanks.”

They rolled through the night, high rises glowing on the left, their windows too bright and plentiful. Out Alex’s window, sail-boats swayed in the harbor. “I’ve never been through anything like this before.”

“You’re lucky. Things could have gone a lot worse.”

“Is everybody OK?”

“A bad guy got killed, but none of your coworkers were hurt.” The cop stared forward as they rounded the curve, Lake Shore Drive merging into Hollywood. “Do you know how Johnny Love made his money?”

A bad guy. Mitch? Ian?

“I heard rumors.”

“Bad ones?”

“I guess.”

“So you don’t mind my asking, why stay?”

“I needed the money. I’m divorced, got a daughter.”

“You couldn’t find another job?”

“Johnny was an OK boss. I figured maybe they were just rumors.”

The cop looked over, cocked an eyebrow.

Alex sighed. “Look, I hear you. You and my ex-wife think alike. I probably should have quit years ago. I just… never got around to it. I mean, I never saw anything that made me uncomfortable, so I ignored the rumors.”

“Went along to get along.”

“I guess. I kind of get through life by not thinking too hard about it.”

“I hear you.” Bradley nodded. “What’s your address?”

“There’s a Walgreen’s at Western and Howard. Mind dropping me there? I need to get this prescription filled.”

“Sure. I can wait.”

“You don’t need to. I’m just a couple blocks.” He tried to sound casual as he spoke, to hide the part of himself that was desperate to get out of the car, ASA-freaking-P. At least they were moving fast. Traffic was light. He had a weird memory, how when he’d first moved to Rogers Park he’d been surprised to hear sirens most every night. At first he’d thought it was cops-the neighborhood was rough around the edges-but before long he’d worked it out. It was the old folks’ homes that lined Ridge. Somebody was always dying.

“What about the shots? Tell me what you remember.”

A bad guy got killed… “There were two. One a few minutes after they left. Then a pause, maybe thirty seconds or so-it’s hard to say, my time sense was screwed-and then another.”

“Nothing after that?”

“Sirens.”

The cop clicked his tongue against his lip. “Anything else?”

Alex paused. Tried to remember the scene, to envision it as if he had no greater knowledge. “I don’t think so. They were in jeans, work pants. Ski masks. The masks were black.” Shook his head. “One minute I’m standing there, then the door bangs open, these guys come in yelling-”

“What did they yell?”

“Something like ‘Shut the fuck up, don’t move.’ They were swinging guns around, and I just sort of reacted, went for one of them, and then…” He shrugged.

Bradley pulled the car into the drugstore parking lot. He stopped outside the front door. “Could I see your driver’s license?”

“My license?” His back tensed. “Sure.” He fumbled into his pants, pulled out his wallet, the chain rattling. Passed the ID to the cop.

“This your current address?”

“Yeah.”

Bradley scribbled it down in a pad he pulled from the dash. “How about a phone number?”

Alex gave it to him. “Do you think you’ll catch these guys?”

“Sure.”

Ice slid down his sides. “Really?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” The cop looked at him curiously.

“I don’t know. I just-well, I guess I’m just glad.”

Bradley nodded. “Positive you don’t want me to wait around for you? It’s no trouble.”

“Really, it’s fine. You know how it is, these things can take a long time.” The excuse sounding preposterous.

“OK. I’ll be in touch if we need anything else. Meanwhile.” Bradley pulled out a business card, passed it to Alex along with his license. “Just like on TV. Anything else occurs to you, don’t hesitate. Even if it seems small.”

“OK.” He reached for the door handle.

“And, Mr. Kern, a piece of advice?”

He hesitated, turned back. “Sure.”

“Your ex-wife is right about this one. Might be time to start thinking about getting a new job.”

“I’M GOING HOME.”

Jenn looked up, blinking away the alley. Funny thing, it wasn’t the violence she’d been replaying, the yelling and the fire. It was the part before, when the man pulled up behind their rental car. Those long moments, probably only two or three, when they’d been alone.

As the car headlights had splashed across her, she’d known what was coming. Not specifically, of course, but she’d been able to feel the weight of potential. And with it a chance, a slim and slippery chance to make things right. To change the future that was bar reling toward them. A chance that depended on her being clever enough, quickly enough.

If only she had thought faster. All of this would be different.

“Hello?” Ian pulled keys from his front pocket. “I’m going home.”

From the couch, Mitch said, “Why?”

“There’s nothing more we can do now, right? We just have to wait until tomorrow, talk with Alex. So I’m going to go take a shower and try to sleep.”

“Is that smart?” Jenn looked at Mitch.

“What are you asking him for?” Ian tossed his keys from hand to hand.

“It’s fine,” Mitch said. “It doesn’t matter if he waits here or there.” He looked at Ian. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“Like what?”

“You know what.” The way Mitch said it, that carefully measured tone, made her think he was talking about some specific thing.

Ian made a sound that was part sigh, part frustration. “I told you I was sorry.”

Mitch nodded. “OK.”

Jenn rubbed at her eyes, ran her hands through her hair, pulling it into an unbound ponytail and then dropping it to fall on her back. “All right.” She pushed off the counter she’d been leaning against. “So we get together tomorrow morning.”

“You hear from Alex, you’ll let me know?”

“Of course.”

The three of them walked to the front door. Though there was comfort in hiding here, it was still strange having them in her apartment. Ten years of unsuccessful dating had made her want a sanctuary that was all hers. It was just an apartment, but she’d painted every wall and picked out every piece of furniture, from the thin-legged hall table to the plush rug beneath the bed.

“You need a lift?” Ian asked.

“I’m going to stay in case Alex calls,” Mitch said. “If that’s OK, I mean.” He looked at her questioningly.

“Sure,” she said, realizing she was glad of it.

“All right. See you tomorrow.” Ian started down the steps. Jenn watched him go, Mitch beside her, the two of them standing like the hosts of a dinner party waving farewell to the last guests. When Ian was out of sight, she said, “What was all that about?”

“What?”

“You telling him not to do anything stupid.”

“Oh.” Mitch looked pained for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess you should know. He was high.”

“High? When? Tonight?”

“Yeah. Cocaine. That’s why he was so twitchy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He shook his head. “He told me he did it sometimes. I think that’s what his bathroom breaks are about. But I never thought he’d do it tonight. I about killed him.”

“High. Jesus.” She closed the door. They looked at each other for an awkward moment. “We aren’t very good at this, are we?”

“At being criminals? No. But cut us some slack. It’s our first time.”

Their eyes met and held for a second, and then she started laughing, and he joined in. He had a good laugh, one of those that came deep and unself-conscious. His fed hers, and they kept at it longer than the joke deserved. It felt good. Pushed away the weight of what they had done, reminded her that no matter what, she was alive. That, in fact, she felt more than she could remember feeling in the last ten years. Like her father always said, any day above-ground counted as a good one. She said, “Vodka?”

“Oh God yes.”

She led the way to the kitchen, flipped on the overheads, then pulled Smirnoff from the freezer, the bottle frosted white. Took down two glasses, dropped an ice cube in each, and poured generous doubles. “Cheers.” The first swallow was sharp and cold and real, a pure physical sensation.

The air-conditioning was on, and she was chilly in the dress, her flesh tight with goose bumps. Shopping for it had been fun. Playing the part in advance, life coming into focus, seeming to matter. Earlier in the afternoon, when she’d gotten dolled up, she’d stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom and liked what she saw. Not a woman in her thirties with a shit job and no plans. A heartbreaker femme fatale in a dress cut too low for a bra, gearing up for a robbery. She’d stood and stared, and then hiked the edge of the skirt up, hooked her thumbs in the waist of her panties and pulled them off. The feeling of air at the hinge of her thighs had been electric. Hundred-proof life.

“I like your place,” Mitch said.

“Thanks.” She took another sip of vodka. “Me too.”

He nodded, looked around. She could see him struggling for something to say. “Been here long?”

“About five years. Before I moved here I’d been living with Brian-you never met him, did you?-and before that with some girlfriends. When things fell apart with Bry, I decided, enough; time to have my own space. Do things my way. You know?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t like living alone?”

“It’s OK.” He paused, shrugged. “Lonely sometimes.”

“I know. But there’s a good kind of loneliness too. Where you realize that maybe you are alone, but that it’s better than being someone you’re not.” Thinking back to Brian’s old apartment, the smell of cigarettes, him on the couch on weekend afternoons, goofy-haired, watching football. Something sweet in it at first. But somewhere along the line she’d realized that their present was their future, that Brian, nice as he was, would never change, never be anything else. That he didn’t want to. If he had his choice, it would be fifty more years of football Saturdays and Sunday-morning sex, of workday weeks and frozen pizza. Dropping dead within days of each other, shortly after a visit from the grandkids. It wasn’t long after that she started picking fights.

For no reason but to have something to say, she said, “You know one of my favorite things? Some days I’ll come home, pour a drink, and climb into bed with a couple of magazines. Not real magazines, Newsweek or anything. I mean junk. Celebrity baby magazines. And I’ll lay there in bed and drink and catch up on what crazy thing Britney Spears has done lately.”

He laughed. “Really?”

“Yeah. I don’t take it seriously. I mean, I like to check out the clothes and stuff, but that’s sort of an excuse. I know it’s silly, looking at the lives of these people I’ll never meet, don’t even want to. I just kind of get a kick out of being a voyeur.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” He took a swallow. “I actually know what you mean. Sometimes when I’m on break at the hotel, I’ll go up to the second floor of the lobby, where there’s this big balcony. Lean over and watch people.”

“Watch them what?”

“Just… watch them. Twice-divorced sales executives hitting on each other in the lounge. Tourists with cameras asking directions to Navy Pier. Couples that have been together so long they don’t talk, don’t seem to need to. If you watch long enough, you start to see that everybody looks like they’re missing something. Like we all lost something and we’re all looking for it.”

“True love?”

He laughed. “I read a poem once, had a line that went something like, ‘the heart asks more than life can give.’ I think it’s that, really. We all want everything. But we’d settle for a sense that things matter. That there’s more to it than just getting up in the morning and making it through a day.”

“Do you see anybody who has that?”

“Not very many.”

“But some.”

“Yeah. Some.”

Their eyes met and then slid apart. Without warning, an image hit, the blast of light spitting from Mitch’s hand, the way it seemed like it was the light that hit the man on the ground, that punched him in the heart and brought a dark circle to blossom on his shirt.

She set her drink down, covered her face with her hands. Her heart ached like something was trying to push it through her ribs. She pressed her palms against her cheeks, dug her nails into her forehead.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft. She heard the click of his glass against the counter, and then he had his hands on her shoulders. The warmth felt good.

“Oh God.” She opened her hands, was surprised to see him close, ducking his head down to look up at her, concern on his face. Her voice came out tremulous. “What did we do?”

“What we had to.”

“How are you able to stand there and say that? I mean, you… you…”

Something happened in his eyes, a withdrawal and then a return, like a sea creature nearly surfacing before vanishing into the dark. He breathed through his nostrils. “I did it for you.”

“We can’t take this back. We did this, and we can’t take it back.”

“It’s what we wanted.”

“Not this.” Even as she said it, she heard a voice inside her, asking, Are you sure? If you could go back a week, to the life before, the one where nothing really mattered, where you kept everything at a distance-would you?

Yes, she thought. I would. I think.

“Come here,” he said. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. She stood stiff at first, but it felt really good to have someone holding her. There was a comfort that drove away part of the horror. Jenn slid her arms under his, around his back, and buried her face in his chest. Her eyes were closed, and she could smell him, a faint hint of sweat. Her nose was running and her eyes were wet.

“It’s OK.” His voice was soft. “We’ll make it OK. I promise.”

She gave a hollow half laugh, then sniffed, stepped back. Wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “God, I feel like such an idiot. Some adventuress I turned out to be.”

“Don’t.”

“I just”-she picked her drink up, took a long pull-“I didn’t tell you this before, but when I was in the alley, that guy, he and I talked for a couple of minutes.”

“You talked? What did you say?” The fluorescent lights heightened the contrast between his pale skin and dark hair.

“I was trying to get rid of him. At first I just figured he was a normal person, and asked him to move his car. But when I realized who he was… My mind was just… I was trying to figure out what to do, how to get rid of him. Finally I threatened to scream rape, and that started to work, but you guys came out.” She shook her head. “I screwed up.”

“It sounds like you did fine. It was us that screwed things up.”

“No, but see, I had the chance. If I’d thought faster, he wouldn’t have been there. I mean, my part in this whole thing was small, and I should have been able to handle-I should have been able to help. But when it came down to it, I didn’t do anything.”

“Wait a second. You stood there and talked to this guy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Knowing that he was a drug dealer with a gun. You managed to stand straight, talk to him, and cover our backs. Try to get rid of him. In an alley. Looking”-he gestured up and down her body-“like that.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Sounds to me like you were pretty brave.”

The words caught her by surprise. She raised her head to look at him, expecting a teasing smile, the kind of look Alex might wear, playful from a distance. Instead Mitch looked back with perfect sincerity, his eyes wide and steady.

Without thinking, she went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. His skin was rough with blue-black stubble, and she could smell the remnants of his aftershave. She felt him tense, even though she was barely touching him, like every muscle in his body clenched at once. She froze, then started to lean back. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” He put a hand on her arm, his touch gentle. His face was inches from hers, close enough that it was hard to focus. She could see him wrestling with something. In a bare whisper, he said, “Jenn…”

No one had ever put so much weight into her name. Coming from his lips the single syllable seemed like sweet sad music, something lonely and haunting that she wanted to have, to be, and then he put his other hand on the side of her head, the palm against her cheek, fingers in her hair, and he kissed her lips.

For a moment she stood too stunned to react. A thousand thoughts flickered and danced across her mind, a collection of do’s and don’ts, worry and excitement and fear and the lingering adrenaline of what they had done, that pounding sense of living on the ragged edge of now. And with it the pain of that existence, the fear of it, and the thought that distraction was fine, was what she needed. Then the simplest thought in the world hit, an old and familiar one that said simply, a boy you care about is kissing you. Kiss back.

So she did.

It was awkward for a moment, that first-kiss sensation stronger than usual, but then their tongues touched, gently, tentative, his fingers moving in her hair, and it felt good, so good, to be in the moment, to not feel anything but this. She slid her arms to his side, his back, feeling his body beneath, and suddenly they were locked hard, their bodies thrust together, his belt buckle jamming into her stomach, his hand moving from her hair to her neck. Trailing down her back, fingers touching lightly. Reaching the small of her back and then hesitating, like he was asking permission.

She broke the kiss, a little dizzy. Paused. Asked herself what she was doing, if this was wise. Then remembered the version of herself she’d seen in the mirror that afternoon, the woman who wasn’t afraid of anything, the one who would take the world for all it could give her. How free that had felt. How much better than the standard, everyday Jennifer.

She slid her hand on top of his. Then, looking him in the eyes, slowly pushed his hand down to her ass.

He moaned, almost a whimper, and squeezed, fingers gripping her flesh, digging in, and then it was happening, the two of them tearing into each other, ravenous, electric. She had a faint flash of surprise as she realized that he was a good kisser, soft and firm at once. His beard stubble ground against her upper lip. He stepped into her and she moved with him like they were dancing, let him guide her back against the refrigerator, never breaking the kiss.

His hands found the straps of her dress and slid them down her shoulders. Her nipples hardened in the cold air as the fabric eased past her breasts, her stomach. Caught at the swell of her hips for a breathless moment, and then slipped to pool at her feet. It was intoxicating, the surprise and heat of it, standing naked in her kitchen with this friend, this stranger, pressing against her.

He broke the kiss slowly, letting her lip slide from his mouth, and stepped back. His eyes drank her, top to bottom to top. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said. “You’re so beautiful.”

She raised her lips as he leaned in to kiss her, only he moved lower, his breath hot against the skin of her neck, his tongue darting and quick. He kissed the hollow of her throat, and then the space between her breasts. Ran his tongue down the flat of her belly, lower and lower, until he knelt in front of her on the tile floor. Like an act of worship, she thought, and then his tongue moved lower still, and she stopped thinking.

CHAPTER 15

“I’M TELLING YOU, the only language these people understand is force. I’m sorry if that’s not polite, but it’s true. Iran, Iraq, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, they’re all the same. They still kill people by stoning them. They behead journalists and post the video on the Internet. When the going gets tough, they hide in caves. They’re barbarians, and barbarians only understand one thing. The sword. Or these days, the airstrike.” That got a laugh, and the man played to it, pausing to finish his single malt. He had the gentle pudginess of the very wealthy, not a beer belly but a general swelling, like he was entitled to more space in the world. “We did it right in Afghanistan. Daisy cutter bombs first, questions later. See fifty men carrying AKs and riding camels, assume they’re the enemy. The media loves to make fun of Bush, to question his intelligence, but I’ve met the man, and I stand by him. His policy worked in Afghanistan, and it’s working in Iraq, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t let Iran know that if they want to tangle, we’re more than happy to oblige.”

“Darling.” The woman who slid her arm beneath his had a face that looked thirty and eyes that looked twice that. “You know it’s not polite to talk politics at a party.” She nodded at Victor, said, “Especially when you don’t know everyone’s point of view.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” Victor said. “I find it very informative.” These are the elite? No wonder this country is such a mess. He smiled, said, “Given your position on Iran, and your clear knowledge of the region, you must have very strong feelings about Betin gan Makdous?”

“Umm, well, yes,” the man said, straightening. He coughed, glanced at the small audience staring at him. “Of course, I’m not an expert, but again, I think the situation defines itself. The only way democracy is going to survive is if we give it a safe haven. Liberals go on about schools and roads and hospitals, but if you give the people freedom, they can take care of the rest themselves. If that means showing the barbarians the pointy end of an M-16, well, so be it.”

“You feel that’s the proper way to deal with makdous?”

“Absolutely,” he said, and started to take a drink before noticing his glass was empty. “Show them who’s boss.”

“Really.” Victor shrugged. “Personally, I like to just wrap makdous in pita and eat it. But if you want to shoot your pickled eggplant first, go nuts.”

A woman tittered. The man’s face hardened, but before he could respond, Victor felt his cell phone vibrate. He glanced at the display, saw the number. “I’m sorry,” he said, “rude of me, but I need to take this call. Some of my clients are on the other side of the world.”

“Financial markets?” the man said between clenched teeth.

“More like import-export. Excuse me.” Victor gave a bright, blank smile, then turned away. Opened his cell, said, “Hold on.”

The party was in a magnificent Gold Coast penthouse, the east wall scored with windows framing Navy Pier and the cake-frosting traces of Lake Michigan. A string quartet played in the corner, and Mexicans in uniform wandered the crowd, passing trays. Across the room, French doors opened onto a small balcony, but even through the black-tie-bleached-blonde fund-raiser crowd, Victor could see that it was packed with smokers. A disgusting habit that somehow always got the best real estate.

He noticed a closed door on the far side of the room, strolled over, and stepped inside. The bedroom beyond was dark. He shut and locked the door, then walked over to the window and raised the blinds. A dozen stories below, cars raced up and down Lake Shore Drive, silent behind double-paned glass. He raised the phone. “Go ahead.”

“I think there’s a problem.” A pause, then, “Someone was killed in the alley behind Rossi’s. You know the restaurant I mean?”

“Of course. So?”

“He was killed by men who had just finished robbing the place.”

Victor closed his eyes. Goddamn it. He hated dealing with amateurs. Only pimps and porn stars would willingly adopt the nickname “Johnny Love,” and the man didn’t have the equipment to be a porn star. The business they’d done in the past had been strictly small-scale and very carefully regimented.

So why did you agree to meet with him? Why tell him to make this deal?

Why, for the love of Christ, advance him a portion of the purchase price?

The answer was simple. The deal had seemed worth the risk. Thing about risk was, it was only worthwhile when you won. “Interesting that it happened tonight.”

“That’s why I called.”

He took a deep breath, stared out into the night. Watched reflected light dance across the surface of the glass. Someone laughed in the other room, a loud donkey bray. These people. Some of them were useful, and all of them were rich, and he’d made some even richer in ventures they were careful not to know too much about. But that didn’t mean he had to like them. “What do the cops know?”

“Nothing yet. They’re focusing on the body. Our man in the department says the corpse’s name is David Crooch. Freelance tough guy. Did a bit for stealing cars, a couple of assault charges.”

“What about our friend the restaurateur?”

“No word.”

“No word?”

“No. His lawyer met him at the station, had him out in twenty minutes, and he disappeared.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“When?”

“As soon as you can throw his fat ass in a chair.” Victor rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “And do something for me. Throw hard.”

MITCH WOKE IN THE DARK. Not the usual fuzzy-headed drifting, but wide-awake, just boom: eyes open, mind in gear.

In Jenn’s bed.

It had all been real, then. Warmth spilled through his chest, a sense of possibility. The room was coming into focus, and as he lay on his side with his arm tucked beneath the pillow, he could see the outline of her body through the thin sheet. The memories tumbled happy and disconnected. The softness of her lips. Her hungry sigh as he kissed down her body. The ropy tightening of the muscles in her thigh as he tasted her. The soft, quick moans that echoed from her throat as she came. Standing up, taking her in his arms. Dizzy and happy. The two of them stumbling to the bedroom, giggling at the sheer wildness of it, the improbability, the sense of being in another world. How the giggling turned to full-on laughter as they fumbled with a condom package, until he finally took the edge between his teeth and ripped it.

The perfect connection of sliding into her, eyes locked and inches apart.

Oh God, she’d said. Is this real? Are we doing this?

It’s real.

Are you sure?

Do you want me to stop?

No. No.

And finally, best of all, the melted softness of her body as she fell asleep against him, the cocoa butter smell of her hair, the miraculous sense that against all odds, he’d gotten what he wanted. In the dark of her bedroom, he smiled. It felt like a luxury, smiling just for himself. Smiling for pure joy.

Of course, if that was real, then the rest was, too.

His smile wilted. For a moment he was back in the alley, the smell of garbage and exhaust, the tinny radio playing Spanish love songs. The man staring up at him.

Mitch pulled the sheet off. Slid his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed. Silver light filtering through the blinds painted his pale thighs. He rubbed at his eyes, skin sticky with sleep.

What did you do?

The thought came fast and hard as a shiver. Panic soaked him, cold then hot, a flush that started in his chest. The man on the ground, helpless, teeth ground together in pain.

When he’d been young, Mitch had a BB rifle, spent months plinking away at bottles. One blue day a friend-God, what was his name, blond hair and bright teeth, one of those who would grow up to be a football star-it had been his turn with the rifle, only instead of the Coke can, he’d pointed it at a squirrel, a mangy thing watching them from a branch, and before Mitch could speak, there had been the soft pop of air. The squirrel had fallen. The two of them had stared at each other, horrified not only at what they had done, but at the swiftness of the consequence. The way the world reacted. There had been a moment of silence, total silence, and then they ran to stand over the poor thing. It had squirmed and writhed, tiny legs skittering uselessly, and Mitch had felt this same hot-cold sensation, even though he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger. The desperate desire to take it back, to rewind-

Stop.

He closed his eyes, straightened his back. Took a long, slow breath in through his nose, held it. Released.

Use your brain.

He forced himself to look at things logically. It wasn’t a cute, fluffy squirrel that had been shot, a helpless creature that meant no harm. It was a drug dealer, an armed killer. One who had seen them, who could-would-wreck their lives. End them. His life, and Jenn’s, and the others’, too. There hadn’t really been a choice.

But what were you even doing there?

That was easy. He was taking a chance. Going after something he wanted. The money, sure. But also the respect, from both the others and himself. And he had done what he’d said he would, what he had been afraid he would need to. He’d protected Jenn. If Mitch had walked out of the dinner party the other night, she would have been out there with no one but Ian. As good as alone.

What you did is no different from what people do every day. Not always with a gun. But the people you hold the door for, the ones who tip a couple of bucks before going out to a three-hundred-dollar dinner? You think they aren’t ruthless in going after what they want?

Which is maybe why they aren’t the ones holding the door.

Fabric rustled slightly, and he turned. Jenn mouthed dream words as she rolled to one side. The sheets pulled tight around her, hugging the swell of her hips. Hair slid down her milk-white back, draped across the pillow. Awake she was strong and sexy and dynamic. But asleep, God, she was like a stolen candy or an exotic flower, something delicate and almost unbearably sweet.

What had happened in the alley wasn’t his life. This was. This was real. It was what he wanted, what he needed, maybe even what he deserved. Wasn’t he a good guy? He didn’t hurt people, didn’t break laws and hearts. His action in the alley was the culmination of something. Something that had started days ago, as he began to push back against the world. To not sit still and take shit. To own his space.

And by that simple act, look what he had accomplished. Look where he was.

Put it away. Pack it somewhere deep and don’t dwell on it. What you did is done. What you have, what you are, that’s up to you. And don’t forget. If you hadn’t done it, would you be here with her now?

With the clarity that dwells in the silent heart of night, he knew the answer.

Mitch took another breath, then slid gently back under the covers. Jenn lay on her side, and he eased over, curled to spoon her. Her skin was warm and soft as he wrapped an arm around her, and she murmured something incomprehensible, then pulled him closer.

He was asleep the moment he closed his eyes.

CHAPTER 16

“YOU HAVE… one… new message and… four… saved messages. Press one for new-”

It was after two in the morning, and Alex had finally made it home. He pressed the button, held his cell to his ear.

Jenn’s voice, her tone upbeat, perkily forced, like someone was listening in. “Hey, Alex, where are you? We were all hoping to hear from you tonight. I guess you’re busy. Anyway, the three of us are getting together for breakfast at my place tomorrow. Hope you can make it. We’ve got lots to catch up on. Hope all’s well with you, and see you soon!”

It was like something had been inside of his lungs and chest, some thick toxic fog that had been choking him. He sighed, breathed it all out, felt his body slumping in relief. She’d said the three of them. Whatever had happened in the alley, it hadn’t happened to them. Thank God.

Maybe things would turn out all right after all.

He called her cell, let it ring to voice mail. Hung up, dialed it again. Voice mail. He left a message saying he would love to join them for breakfast, then crawled into bed and collapsed into a merciful, dreamless dark.

When he woke in the morning, the first thing he reached for were the pain pills, swallowing two with a mouthful of tepid water. Then, still in bed, he called Jenn.

“Hello?” She sounded drowsy, half aware.

“It’s me.”

“Alex? Are you OK?”

“I had to go to the hospital, but I’m fine. A couple of stitches and a headache. How are you?”

“I’m-we’re-good. Things went… can you come over?”

“When?”

“An hour? I’ll call Ian.”

“Should I call Mitch?”

She hesitated. “No, I can.”

“All right. See you soon.” He closed the phone, then sat up slowly, the world wobbling as the blood drained from his head.

While the water warmed up, he peeled off the bandage, wincing as the tape tugged the torn skin. He squinted into the mirror. The cut was an inch long, ragged and swollen purple. Black surgical stitches gave it that Frankenstein look. Still, it didn’t seem too bad, considering how it had scared him last night.

He washed his hands, then, very gently, his face. Dried himself, then put on more gauze and taped it in place.

“God, you’re handsome,” he said and laughed. It felt a little manic. He pulled on jeans and a black T-shirt, his boots, and went into the shocking light of day.

By the time he’d made it to her floor, the door was open, Jenn standing in it. Her hair was brushed but not done up, and she wore shorts and a thin tank top. There were dark circles under her eyes, but her cheeks glowed as she stepped forward to hug him. He wrapped his arms around her hard, tugging her to him, inhaling deep.

She hugged back warmly enough, though her body seemed a little stiff, the way she was when others were watching. Over her shoulder, he saw Mitch, wearing the same outfit he had yesterday afternoon.

“Jesus, am I glad to see you.” Mitch held out a hand.

Alex let Jenn go, stepped past her, grabbed Mitch’s hand and pulled him into a hug. “You too, buddy. You too.”

Mitch clapped him on the back, and they both laughed, all of the worry and fear dropping away.

“Oh my God, your face.” Jenn reached for his cheek, stopped short of touching it. “Are you-”

“I’m fine. Just a couple of stitches. Speaking of, where is the scrawny bastard?”

“Right here.”

The voice came from behind. Alex turned, saw Ian climbing the stairs, impeccable in suit pants and a jacket, no tie. The man looked wary, like he might dart away if the floor creaked. “I…” He ran a hand through his hair, dropped it to hang at his side. “Fuck, man, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Alex narrowed his eyes. He curled one hand into a fist, took three fast steps forward-

“Alex, no!”

And threw his arm around his friend’s neck, yanked him into a hug. The guy weighed nothing, felt impossibly thin through his clothing. For a moment he seemed confused, reluctant, but then he wrapped his arms around Alex. “Shit, you scared me there.”

“You think I’m going to hit you?” He shook his head. “I’m too glad you’re OK.” He stepped back, looked at the others. “All of you.”

“We’re more than OK,” Mitch said with a crooked smile. He glanced around, then reached inside the door of Jenn’s apartment and came out with a big freezer bag, the kind that could hold half a chicken. Inside was a thick stack of green bundles.

“Ho-ly shit.”

“There’s three more that size.”

“My God.” Alex stared at it, just stared. There it was, all he needed. His whole life, his daughter, a new job, a new start, all packed into a Ziploc bag. Something pounded through him, hot and happy, exploding in a grin. “We did it. We fucking did it!” He started laughing, and the others joined, the four of them hooting and back-slapping like they’d won the Olympics.

After a few minutes, Jenn said, “We should go inside. We have a lot to talk about.”

At her words, the smiles fell away. The two gun blasts seemed to echo off the bare white drywall. He straightened. Took a deep breath. “Right,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

SHE COULD SEE THE GOOD HUMOR draining from Alex. Everything was shifting, and Jenn found that she didn’t know what to do with her hands, how to cross her legs.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

The hallway reunion had been great, a moment outside of time, but things had started to go south already. Strange enough to have them all in her living room. But then add to that the thing with Mitch last night. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It hadn’t been a planned decision, but it wasn’t nothing, either. Sure, adrenaline had played a part, and the memory of what he had done for her, how far he’d been willing to go. But there had been a connection, too. It wasn’t like the sex she and Alex had shared, a friendly, lusty sort of thing predicated on an understanding of boundaries. Last night felt like maybe the start of something.

In a normal relationship, they would have slept late, made love again, sipped coffee in bed and giggled. Whereas this morning, she had awakened, stretched, and enjoyed five peaceful seconds as her consciousness booted up-then been slapped by the memory of the alley. Her throat had tightened and her belly had gone acid. She’d put a hand over her mouth to catch a whimper. Slipped out of bed and into the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror.

You wanted life to have meaning, to feel real?

Here you go.

She had a desperate urge to cry, to hug her knees in the corner, at the same time she wanted to collapse in front of the toilet and retch. Her body was flame and ice and needles. Jenn had spun the cold water tap on, held her wrists underneath, forced herself to take deep breaths.

What did we do?

Jesus Christ.

What did we do?

Had she really thought that sleeping with Mitch would somehow erase what had happened? It had provided distraction and comfort, and she appreciated both. But the horror was still waiting for her on the other side.

Then the phone had rung, and it was game-on from that point. She forced herself out of the bathroom to talk to Alex in code. After hanging up, she’d found Mitch staring at her, his expression filled with emotions too varied and conflicting to bear a single name.

“Is Alex OK?” he’d asked.

“I think so. He’s coming over.”

He’d been silent for a long moment. “Guess I better get up.”

“Yeah.” She opened her lingerie drawer, saw she needed to do laundry. The absurdity of it almost set her to laughing. She picked up the panties she’d discarded yesterday and stepped into them. “Listen…”

“Please don’t say ‘about last night,’ OK? Please?”

“I wasn’t going to.” She found a bra that was a close-enough match and slid the straps over her shoulders. His eyes traced her breasts as she hid them. “But I think we should be quiet about this. Not tell the others.”

“Not tell them what, exactly?”

She gestured to the bed.

“This wasn’t just sex for me.”

“For me either. It’s just, right now, it will make things more complicated.” Especially between you and Alex. Way to go, Jenn. Nice timing.

“All right,” he’d said. “I understand.” Then he’d pulled on his pants and, threading his belt, said, “Coffee?” with forced cheer.

And now, an hour later, she sat on the comfortable couch that was supposed to be her refuge, a knit blanket over her knees, and watched the boys square off. Sometimes it sucked to be right.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Alex repeated. “You shot him on purpose?”

“You weren’t there,” Ian said. “Mitch did what he had to.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t there. I was on the floor, bleeding from the head. Wonder how that happened, genius? If I had been there-”

“What?” Mitch leaned back. His voice was calm, his manner easy. “What would you have done, Alex? There’s a drug dealer on the ground, shot once, and he can identify your best friend. So what would you have done? Asked him nicely not to hunt her down and murder her?”

“I…”

“Yeah.” Mitch glanced at his watch like an executive late for his next meeting. “Exactly. So how about we knock off the posturing and focus on the situation.”

She had to admit to being impressed. It was hard to reconcile this self-assured man with the wallflower she was used to. Alex looked startled too, said, “So what happened next?”

“Ian drove the rental car, and Jenn and I took the dealer’s Eldorado, this big purple boat-”

“Where are they?”

“Parked separately, a couple of blocks from here. I wiped the Caddy down. Then we came up here, called you, and started waiting. Now, your turn. What did the cops say?”

“They mostly asked questions.”

“What did you tell them?”

“A couple of men in masks came in yelling. I tried to take one of them and got socked for it. After they left, I heard shots.”

“Did they ask what you were doing there?”

“Yeah. I told them Johnny had asked me back, I didn’t know why.”

“Did they buy it?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Mitch nodded. He had one leg crossed at the knee of the other, the foot bobbing. “Good. So it’s like we thought. No reason to tie it to us. We probably won’t hear anything more.”

Was it really that simple? Could it be? Jenn couldn’t think of a reason why not, but somehow she just didn’t believe it. Maybe it was all those Sunday School afternoons. Sunlight filtering dusty through high windows, coloring books with pictures of Jesus and the disciples. Father Mike talking to them about God. God who was always watching, saw everything they did. Every cruelty to a younger sibling, every stolen cookie.

“Not to change the subject,” Ian said, “but how much was there?”

“More than we thought,” Mitch said. “Two hundred and fifty grand.”

The words fell like a change in the weather, a soft snow that muffled sound. Ian broke into a wide grin. Alex gave a low whistle. “That’s… wait…”

“Sixty-two thousand, five hundred each,” Ian said. “Not bad for a night’s work.” He reached for one of the bags, split the top open. Stuck his face in and inhaled hard. “Goddamn, that’s good.”

“Yeah, well, you’re going to have lots of time to smell it,” Mitch said. “We can’t spend it.”

“What do you mean?”

“We can’t. Not yet.”

“Why?”

Mitch sighed. “Would you think for half a second? This was supposed to be untraceable. Johnny wouldn’t even have gone to the cops. He couldn’t afford to. But now there’s a body.”

“So?” Ian’s eyes were wide. “What does that matter?”

“It matters because everything is more complicated. We have to cut every tie between us and the robbery. Dump the clothes, the masks, especially the guns. Return the rental. Get rid of the Cadillac. And go on living our lives just exactly as before. Which means that we have to pretend that money doesn’t exist. Take it home and hide it somewhere.”

They’d talked about that this morning, as they’d broken the stacks up. Mitch had wanted to get a safe-deposit box, something secure, and lock it all away. But she’d pointed out that there was no way the others would go for just one of them having a key. And if all four of them were on record at a bank for a safe-deposit box? Seemed like a big clue.

He’d yielded, but she could tell he wasn’t happy about it. She couldn’t blame him, watching Ian cradle the Ziploc like a favorite teddy bear. “For how long?”

“Probably just a couple of months.”

“No.” Alex shook his head. “No way. We did this because we needed the money. I can’t wait-”

“You have to. Or else you can’t take your share now.”

“Who says?”

Mitch stood up. “I do.”

Oh shit. Jenn supposed on some primal level this should have gotten her excited, strong men fighting for dominance, but instead she just felt tired. Tired of the way they talked and interacted, the way everything was a contest. Tired of the whole idea of men. She was filled with a sudden regret for having slept with either of them.

“I need that money,” Ian said. “I mean, I really need-”

“Mitch, listen, I understand what you’re doing, but-”

“This was your stupid plan in the first place, and now look-”

“Shut. Up.” Jenn made her voice a whip. “All of you.” It was the first time she’d spoken in the last minutes, and the harshness cut the air. The boys wore sheepish caught-by-Mom looks. “Jesus Christ. What’s wrong with you? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in serious trouble right now. Would you stop it with the alpha-male nonsense? Next step, one of you shits in his hand and throws it.”

Ian started to argue, but she bulldozed him. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Alex, you’re going to get rid of the guns. Wipe them off and throw them in the river or a storm drain or something. Ian, return the rental car. Along the way, take all of the clothes to a Dumpster across town. Mitch and I will take care of the spare car.”

“But-”

“No buts. We’ll get it washed and cleaned, and then take it somewhere to get stolen.”

“Why the two of you?”

“Because one of us will need to follow in another car. In the meantime, do not spend a dime of your share. Mitch is right. We don’t know the situation yet. If the cops get on us, or Johnny, or friends of whoever got shot last night, we’re going to need it.”

“For what?” Ian asked.

“Maybe just to stay alive.” Mitch put one hand on Alex’s shoulder, the other on Ian’s. “Guys, listen. I know this isn’t what we planned. But neither was last night. This isn’t a game. If we get caught, we’re going to jail. And that’s only if the police catch us. If it’s Johnny, or someone else?” He blew a breath.

“We’re in this together,” Jenn said. “We get through it together or we go down together. That’s the only way. OK?”

There was a long silence. Ian rubbed his nostrils between thumb and forefinger, and shuffled his feet on her rug. Alex looked like he was thinking of bolting out the door with one of the bags.

“OK?” she asked again.

“Fine,” Ian said, heaving a sigh. Alex only nodded. Neither of them would look at her.

And all of a sudden she had the strongest feeling they were fucked.

CHAPTER 17

“YOU DIPSHITS KNOW WHO I AM? You’re in a world of hurt for this.”

Victor heard the voice through the doorway and paused to listen.

“You think I’m just some restaurant owner you can jack off the street and shake down? Not gonna happen, kid. I’m connected all the way up. I’m done, you’re going to regret waking up this morning.”

The words were right, but the tone rang false to Victor. One of the things that made him good at his work was a nose for fear, and through the bluster, Mr. Loverin was scared.

Good.

The ten-flight climb had Victor winded, and he took a moment to calm his breathing. Then he fastened the top button of his jacket, shot his cuffs, and walked through the open doorway.

The space would one day be suites, another anonymous gray Chicago office building. But now it was an empty room half a city block in length, sitting vacant while the owner wrestled the city council over permits. Coils of wiring hung from exposed girders. The wind whipped through open walls. Dawn was just breaking in the east, painting the sky with a blood-red brush.

Johnny Love sat in a chair at the far end, ten feet from the edge. His hands were cuffed behind him, and a black hood covered his face. Victor smiled. Nice touch.

Slowly, conscious of the theatre of the thing, Victor began to walk over, his dress shoes ringing loud on the cement. The two men standing near Johnny straightened, nodded at him. Ex-Army guys. Real money bred an efficiency that love of the flag sometimes didn’t. Especially after getting stop-lossed once or twice.

“Who’s there? What the fuck is this?”

Victor stood for a moment, let the guy imagine the worst. Then he nodded, and one of his soldiers snapped the hood off.

“What the fu-” Johnny’s mouth froze open, and his eyes went wide. “You.”

“Me.”

“I was going to call you.”

“Oh? When?”

“I was on my way when these geniuses grabbed me.”

“But you were robbed last night.”

His eyes darted. “How did you-yeah, I was. But I was taking care of it. I have calls in, people out…”

“Calls.” Victor nodded. “People.”

“What is this, anyway? We’re partners, for Christ’s sake.” Trying to recover his bluster.

“Stand up, Johnny.”

“What?”

“Stand up.”

Moving like he was afraid he was going to be knocked down again, Johnny rose. Victor gestured, and one of his men moved the chair. “Now. Here are the rules.”

“Rules?”

“Don’t worry, they’re simple. I’m going to ask you questions. Every time I don’t like your answer, I’m going to take a step forward. And you”-Victor gestured-“you’re going to take a step back.”

“What are you…?” Johnny spun, saw the open air and the hundred-foot plummet to broken ground behind him. His skin visibly paled as he measured the distance. “No, hey, listen-”

“Where’s my merchandise?”

“I-I don’t know, really, I don’t know.”

Victor took a step forward. Johnny stared at him. “I’m not going to-are you crazy?”

Victor sighed, glanced at one of the men. The soldier started forward, and Johnny took a hurried step back. “OK, OK.”

“Good. Now. I’m curious. When was the last time you were robbed?”

“I’ve never-never.”

“But you were last night.”

“Yes. They came in wearing masks, waving guns, they-”

“Don’t you find it a little unusual that you were robbed for the very first time on the one occasion we’re doing serious business?”

“It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t do that. You know I wouldn’t.”

Victor took a step forward, his eyes locked on Johnny’s. After a moment’s hesitation, the fat man took a step back. A gust of wind cut through the floor with a reek of garbage and exhaust.

“Where is what I want?”

“They must have taken it.”

“By ‘they’ you mean the men who robbed you, for the first time you’ve ever been robbed, on the exact night that you were getting my merchandise? Merchandise for which I graciously, and in violation of my general principles, supplied part of the purchase price?” He cocked his head. “Do you see my concern?”

“Yeah, totally, but-”

Victor took a step forward.

“Hey, no, listen.” Johnny glanced behind him, his eyes measuring the half-dozen feet between him and the edge. “I’ll get you your money back. Right away. I know how this looks, but it’s not that. I would never do that. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I think you owe me a step. If you make me take it from you, it might be more than one.”

Trembling, the man moved back a scant six inches.

“Johnny.”

He winced and went another foot.

“That’s better. Now. I’m afraid that the money isn’t my only concern right now. I want the materials you promised. I have some gentlemen very eager to take delivery. And I have a reputation to protect. When I say that I have something for sale, I need to deliver. Otherwise, people don’t trust me anymore. And it’s important that people believe every word I say.” Victor curled his fingernails in to look at them. “You, for instance. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s good. Because you have three steps left, and that last one’s a doozy.”

“I swear, I didn’t say anything about you to the police.”

“I know you didn’t, Johnny. I’ve read the report.” He let the words sink in. “I want to know what you think happened.”

“I-” He paused. “Maybe it was an inside job.”

“Did you tell someone?”

“No, of course not. I had a bartender working as security, but no way it’s him. He’s a civilian, kind of a pussy. And he didn’t know what was going on.”

“Then how could it have been an inside job?”

“Maybe someone on your end found out about it. No disrespect,” Johnny added quickly. “Just that the guys who came in, they were pros. And that would explain the timing.”

Victor smiled. “Do you think so?”

“I… maybe.” The man put his hand to his forehead, his eyes widening. “Wait a second. Bennett.”

“Who?”

“Bennett! The guy who scored this stuff in the first place. What if he’s burning us?”

“Go on.”

“He said he wasn’t going to come himself, right? Told me in advance that he was going to send someone to bring me the stuff and take the money. A kid named David Crooch.”

“The body in the alley.”

“Right, right. What if Bennett also sent the guys to rob me, and told them to kill Crooch? That way it looks like he got burned too. Motherfucker!” Johnny straightened. “He ripped us both off, partner.”

“So Bennett set up the meet as a con. He never intended to give us the merchandise. It might not even exist.”

“Exactly. Exactly.” The man hopeful now, his eyes wide. “Sneaky fuck.”

“Of course, you could be doing the same thing.”

“Huh?”

“For all I know, this Bennett doesn’t exist. Maybe you made him up, staged the robbery, and had Crooch killed in the alley.”

“No, I would never-” He shook his head violently.

“Or maybe Bennett does exist, and you decided to burn us both. Keep the money, keep the goods.”

“No, I swear-”

“See, here’s the thing, Johnny. I don’t care. I really don’t. I just want what I paid for, because I made deals based on your word. And I’m holding you responsible.”

“Wait-”

“So you need to understand something.” Victor took a step, and Johnny followed suit, trembling. “Two more steps, that’s all you’ve got. I will walk you right off the edge of this building. And you will do it, staring me in the eyes the whole time. You will walk yourself right out of life. Because you can imagine what will happen to you if you don’t. Because you believe every word I say.” He took another step, and Johnny did too. “Right?”

“Yes!” The man stood six inches from the edge, hands still cuffed, bent slightly forward as though afraid his balance would betray him. “But I swear to God, I didn’t have anything to do with this. I would have come to you right away-I should have come to you right away. I was just trying to handle it on my own. I’ll get you the stuff, somehow, oh Jesus, I don’t want to, please don’t make me.” There was a sharp tang to the air, and the front of Johnny’s track pants darkened. “I’ll get it for you!”

“How?”

“I’ll find Bennett. If he didn’t fuck me, I’ll find the people that did. I swear, I swear I will. I swear on my mother.”

“Your mother, who lives in that lovely converted bungalow in Jefferson Park?”

The man’s head snapped straight up. His face was nothing but eyes and panic.

“You wanted to be big-league, Johnny. Welcome. We play a rougher game.”

“I will get it for you. I promise.” His voice coming from a ragged place people liked to pretend didn’t exist.

Victor stared him in the face. Lifted his foot, watched Johnny flinch. Then he set it back down and broke into a smile. “OK.” He gestured to his men. They flanked Johnny, one standing ready while the other uncuffed him. The man made a sobbing sound, took a quick stride away from oblivion.

“First,” Victor said, “I want to talk to Bennett. Today. Second. You put the word out to everyone that you were robbed. I don’t care what it does to your reputation. Every pimp, every drug dealer, every bookie. Put money on it. Your own, of course. Someone out there knows something. I want to know it too.”

“Yes. Yes. No problem.” His hands shook as he rubbed at his wrists.

“You can go.”

The man sprinted for the exit. Victor let him almost make it before he said, “Oh, and, Johnny?”

He froze. Victor could see the animal part of the man wanting to continue. Slowly, slowly he turned around. “Yes?”

“From now on, let’s keep the lines of communication open, OK? I find business transactions run much more smoothly that way.”

“Uhh… yeah. Sure. I’ll tell you the moment I hear anything.”

“Good. That’s all.” Victor turned away, walked to the edge of the building. He stood with his toes hanging off, hands clasped behind his back. Chicago spread out in front of him, a wave of tall buildings breaking into a dark froth of two-flats and trees that extended all the way to the rising sun. Clean morning wind teased at his suit jacket. He took a deep breath, tasted the air.

From behind, one of his men said, “You really think he had anything to do with it?”

Victor glanced back, surprised. “Thought never entered my mind.”

CHAPTER 18

WHAT WAS IT with women and their showers?

She had ten kinds of shampoo and conditioner, body lotion in tropical flavors, a couple of things of exfoliant, whatever that was, a washcloth, a loofah, two bright pink razors, and a scrub thing. But bar soap? No.

Mitch settled on coconut-lime body gel. You were probably supposed to put it on the scrub thing first, but that seemed like too presumptuous an intimacy. He grinned at that, considering he’d touched and licked every inch of her last night. Still. He squirted the stuff on his hands, rubbed his armpits, his shoulders, his crotch.

He felt better than good, filled with a sense that everything was going to work out OK. He’d always envied that in other people. Happier, better-looking, richer people. They had a basic belief that the world would line up the way they wanted, and it usually did.

Well, now it was his turn.

Don’t get cocky. You’re not out of trouble yet. Standing under the showerhead, hot water plastering his hair, running down his back, he thought through it again. Checking and rechecking, for the hundredth time.

Best he could tell, once they finished what they had to do today, they’d be clear. As long as they stayed cool and everyone did what they were supposed to, nothing should tie them to last night.

Once things had quieted down, they could tell the others about them. Jenn was nervous, he could understand that; hell, so was he. But now that she had finally seen him, he was going to do his damnedest to make sure it worked out.

Starting with them not getting caught. Best get moving. He reluctantly shut off the water, slid open the shower door, and reached for the towel Jenn had left, a big puffy thing. Where was the best place to abandon a car? A parking lot? Or maybe a rough neighborhood would be better. That made sense. He’d do a little Googling, find out where the most cars where stolen. Then run the Caddy through a detail shop to be sure there weren’t any traces, leave it with the windows open and the keys in the ignition. Even if the police found it first, it wouldn’t be a disaster. They’d just trace it back to the drug dealer-

Holy shit.

How had he missed that?

SHE WAS LEANING ON THE COUNTER, drinking a Diet Coke and thinking about that feeling of impending disaster, wondering what it meant. Were they being stupid even now? Should they go straight to the police and tell them everything? A big part of her wanted to, wanted to confess and get absolution, a detective standing in for a priest.

Absolution? You killed someone last night.

The liquid in her mouth went bitter, and she set the soda down, listened to the hum of the hot-water pipes. Mitch had asked if she minded if he showered, and while yeah, she kind of did, she didn’t know how to say that. It wasn’t that she wanted him gone for good or anything. She just wanted a little time to herself. Time to lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling and think about everything, the money and the alley and the dead man and Mitch and Alex. It was a lot for a girl to process.

“Jenn!”

Even muffled by the walls, she could hear his excitement. She started for the bedroom fast and had no sooner opened the door than they almost collided, him naked and dripping, the towel on his shoulders.

“Whoa.” She glanced down, then back up. Smiled at him. “Hello there.”

He actually blushed as he wrapped the towel around his slim waist. For a second, she had a flash memory of Alex. It was hard not to compare their bodies, muscles and tattoos against pale and somewhat awkward flesh. Not that it was awkward last night.

“What’s up?”

“We forgot, we totally forgot about it. How could we miss it?”

“What?”

“The car. We were so caught up in everything-”

“Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“He was there to sell drugs, right? But he wasn’t carrying anything.” He cocked his head. “So where would they be?”

She felt a moment of panic, then a cool revelation. “In his-”

“Car. Exactly.” He ran his hands up through his hair, slicked it back. “I think maybe we better take a look before we get it stolen, eh?”

“ALL RIGHT. Just look normal, like this is our car.”

“It is our car.”

Her morbid joke surprised him, and he laughed through his nose, then opened the door of the Eldorado.

The seats were leather, and the interior spotless. How did people do that? He never meant for his Honda to look like a rolling junk heap, filled with printed directions and crushed soda cans and a tattered map. It just sort of happened.

“Anything in the glove box?”

She opened it, dug around. “Owner’s manual, sunglasses. Registration.”

“Let me see.”

The name on the form was David Crooch. As he stared at it, the letters machine-printed, he had a weird sensation, guilt and fear mixed together. David Crooch. That was the name of the man he had-

Push it down.

He folded the paper, stuck it in his pocket. It was getting easier and easier to ignore the things that tried to claim him. Mitch spun, looked in the backseat. An umbrella on the floor. Other than that, nothing. “Let’s try the trunk.”

A milk crate with emergency supplies: a bottle of tire-repair spray, a coil of rope, and a blanket. A lug wrench. And a black duffel bag, about the size to take to the gym. He’d gone his whole life without giving two thoughts to duffel bags, and now they were popping up everywhere. He started to unzip it.

“Maybe we should do this subtly?” She nodded to a mother pushing a stroller past them.

“Right.” He hoisted it to his shoulder. It was neither heavy nor light, and something plastic clanked inside it. Mitch shut the trunk, and the two of them climbed back into the Cadillac. The silence that fell seemed to radiate from the bag.

“Let’s see what a quarter-million dollars in drugs looks like.” He unzipped the bag and split it open.

Inside were four bottles. He reached in, pulled one out. It was rigid plastic and felt like it might crack if dropped. It was filled with a thick, dark liquid. He passed it to her, took out another. The same. Mitch fumbled around in the bag, but that was it, just the four bottles. “Huh.”

“What is it?” She leaned toward the window, holding it toward the sunlight. “Looks like motor oil.”

“Liquid heroin? Some kind of designer drug?”

“What was that club drug that was really big a couple of years ago? One of the alphabet drugs, not E or K.”

“K is ketamine. Horse tranquilizer. I don’t think it’s a liquid.”

“G, that was it. GHB? Something like that. I remember reading an article that said it was the new roofie.” She rolled the bottle, and the liquid inside moved sluggishly, leaving a trail around the side. “But it doesn’t seem like there’s enough here to be worth that much.”

“Maybe it’s something they use to process drugs?” He unscrewed the top of one bottle. Cautiously, he leaned forward and took an experimental sniff. It had a sharp chemical odor, nothing he recognized. He held it out to her, and she took a tentative whiff. “Any idea-”

Something exploded behind his eyeballs. The pain was sudden and fierce, a slamming migraine that made him clench the armrest. He fought to keep the bottle from slipping from shaking hands. The pain spread, sending tendrils down his neck, his shoulders. His muscles seemed to be tensing, fighting against themselves.

“Shit!” Jenn had her hand to her face, covering her eyes, fingers white. “Shit, oh shit.”

Whatever it was, it was bad. He reached for the top he’d tossed on the dashboard, the sunlight painting his arm in a glowing haze. Scraps of rusty metal tore through the tender meat of his brain. Jenn moaned, the sounds muffled by her fingers.

He concentrated on fumbling for the lid, trying not to breathe. His fingers trembled as Mitch forced himself to take hold of the plastic. He wanted to rush, to jam it down and run away, but whatever this shit was, he didn’t dare spill it. He slotted the lid on carefully and turned until it stopped, then gripped the bottle and gave it a last crank hard enough his forearms jumped.

“Got it. Get out!” Without waiting for her, he opened the driver’s-side door. The fresh air seemed to cut his nostrils. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Come on.” He hurried around the side of the car, slid an arm under her shoulders, began to half support, half drag her along. The block seemed endless, the sunlight sparkling in shards, the world gone watery. They passed a woman who said something concerned, but he ignored her, just hurried along.

“Where-”

“Hurry.”

They stumbled across the intersection, a horn shrieking as a cab passed. He couldn’t tell how much of what he was experiencing was from the drug and how much from the pain, whether his vision was blurry because his pupils had dilated or because he was squinting so hard. It didn’t matter. All that mattered now was getting back.

When they reached her porch, it took more effort than he would have expected to haul his legs up the stairs, the muscles strangely tight and unresponsive. His lungs felt like something was squeezing them. She fumbled with her keys, finally popped the dead bolt.

“We need to wash.” He started for the sink, thought better of it. Pulling her with him, he headed through the bedroom and into her bath. He twisted the water to hot and started to strip off his clothing.

“I can’t.” She clenched her teeth, her hands fumbling behind her back. “My fingers.”

Mitch spun her around and undid the clasp of her bra, yanked her skirt and panties down. Then he opened the shower door and stepped in, held out a hand to help her. They got under the water, the two of them huddling close. A week ago he’d have cut off a finger for this kind of situation, but now he had no thought at all for her nudity. “Soap.” He cursed, fumbling through her stuff. Grabbed the same bottle of coconut crap he’d found before, squirted it into her hands and then his. He lathered hard and scrubbed his hands and face, alternating turns under the water with her.

It might have been the water or the soap or just time, but slowly, very slowly, the muscles in his back and shoulders began to relax. The headache didn’t go away, but at least it stopped getting worse. He let out a long breath. “Are you OK?”

She looked up at him. “Is that a trick question?’

“WE SHOULD GET RID OF IT.”

“How?” They sat at opposite ends of her couch, him back in his robbery clothes, her in a soft bathrobe, knees tucked to her chin. “I don’t think we should just throw it in the garbage.”

“Why not? I mean, whatever it is, it will end up at the dump. Kill some seagulls. Big deal.”

“Maybe someone will get into it first. Maybe a kid.”

She bit her thumbnail. With her hair damp and the robe, the gesture made her look like a little girl, and he had the strongest urge to move to her, wrap his arms around her shoulders.

“Besides,” he said, “this is what Johnny was buying. If something does go wrong-”

“You said it wouldn’t.”

“I don’t think it will. But if it does, this could be valuable. It must be some sort of concentrated chemical. Something for processing serious quantities of drugs.”

“It looked so normal.”

She was right. He could still see them in his mind’s eye, the bottles ordinary, the liquid like thick, strong coffee.

Very damn strong. “We need to hang on to it, at least for a while. If everything goes as planned, we can figure out a safe way to get rid of it then. Maybe, I don’t know, put it in a box, pour concrete around it.”

“Concrete?”

“Whatever. You get my point.” Mitch leaned into the couch. His headache was fading, but the memory was enough to make him wince. “I don’t think we should tell the others about this.”

She looked at him over tented knees. “Why?”

“You know I love them both.”

“But?”

“I’m not sure they need to know. I’m not sure…” He hesitated. It was a big statement, especially considering what they were in the middle of. “I’m not sure we can really trust them right now.”

He expected her to get mad, to call him a hypocrite or worse. But she just nodded slowly. “I know what you mean.”

“You do?”

“Ian with the coke. And Alex… I don’t know.”

The words spread like a warm balm through his chest. It had kept him up at night more than once, the thought of the two of them together, big strong Alex, the sensitive weight lifter with the daughter, the guy who never had trouble talking to women.

Focus. “OK. So we keep it, and we don’t tell them about it. That way we’re covered if something comes up. If nothing does, they never need to know.”

“They’ll think of it eventually. The same way you did.”

“We’ll tell them we got rid of the car.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t we going to?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?

“Because that’s where we’re going to keep this stuff. At a safe distance. Besides, that way if somehow the cops do get involved, search our places-”

“We don’t have to explain it.” She smiled. “You think of everything, don’t you?”

“I’m trying.”

She leaned forward to take his hand. “I’m glad.”

That warmth spread farther.

CHAPTER 19

THE MAN REFLECTED IN THE WINDOW was standard-issue Lincoln Park: designer jeans, faded Cubs hat, and a baby carriage. Somewhere between youth and middle age, in vaguely good shape. He stopped at the north corner of a restaurant called Rossi’s and propped one foot up on the brick base a of the storefront to tie his shoe. As he did, the dark shadow of a limousine slid wa vering past in the glass.

It stopped in front of the restaurant. The blinkers came on. The side windows were opaque, but the windshield framed the driver, square-jawed with restless eyes. For a moment the car idled, and then a door winged open and Johnny Love climbed out. Two broad-shouldered men followed, glancing up and down the street. The three walked to the front door of the restaurant and went inside.

The man with the baby carriage exchanged one foot for the other, carefully untying and reknotting the laces. Then he straightened and headed south, whistling as he pushed the stroller. He smiled down into it, and said, “Beautiful day, huh? How’s my favorite baby boy?”

When the carriage was parallel to the limo, Bennett leaned forward, lifted the fuzzy blanket and picked up the Smith he’d concealed beneath. Then he turned with a fluid motion, opened the side door and flowed in, pointing the gun at the man on the seat opposite, a stylish dude in a beautiful suit.

“Tell your driver it’s OK.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed.

“Sir?” The voice came over the intercom. “Do you-”

Victor thumbed the microphone. “Everything’s copacetic, Andrews. Thank you.” His voice calm.

Bennett nodded and closed the door without looking. “You know who I am?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Good. Now I know that Johnny told you he’d brokered a meeting. But instead of having it in his restaurant with your security watching, I thought maybe we’d have it right here. I hope you don’t mind me changing the plans.”

“Depends what you’ve changed them to.”

“Fair enough.” Bennett leaned forward. “I’ll get to the point. I didn’t burn you. We’ve never met, but I’m coming here with respect.” He spun the gun sideways, then set it in his lap and removed his hand. “This was just a precaution to make sure we had a chance to talk.”

Victor watched him move. His eyes were difficult to read. A poker player. Abruptly he scratched at his chin, and Bennett forced himself not to react to the sudden motion. Victor said, “You’re a careful man.”

“The people who think consequences don’t apply to them end up on the floor. Yeah, I’m careful. You’re Johnny’s buyer, I presume.” Bennett raised his hand. “It’s OK, you don’t have to answer. I know you’re careful too. What did he tell you about me?”

“That you had a specialized product. He also said that you may have been doing the whole thing as a con. That both the people who robbed him and the corpse in the alley might have worked for you.”

Bennett nodded. “I figured it was something like that. You don’t mind my asking, did he volunteer that, or did you have to press him?”

“Why?”

“I want to know how annoyed to be.”

Victor considered for a moment, then shrugged. “I pressed him. But he’s silly putty, not steel.”

“There’s an understatement, brother.”

“My turn for a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you here, Mr. Bennett?”

“Just Bennett. Like Prince, only taller. Two reasons. First, to tell you that I didn’t rip you off. Second, it wasn’t just you that got robbed. Someone made off with my money.”

“So you don’t believe Mr. Loverin was in on it?”

“Johnny?” Bennett shook his head. “Risk screwing me and you both? He’s stupid, not dumb.”

“I agree.” The man paused. “That does put the suspicion back on you.”

Bennett fired a grin. “If I’d stolen from you, we wouldn’t be having this lovely chat. I’d have blown your brains across the back window.” He said it lightly, theatrically.

Victor returned the smile. “Andrews, show Mr. Benn-sorry, just Bennett-what ‘copacetic’ means.”

There was a buzz, and the partition rolled down. The driver was perched on his knees in the front seat, a Colt 1911 zeroed in perfectly steady hands. For a moment, Bennett’s grin faltered. He snatched for it, got it back. “Very nice. The partition isn’t bulletproof, I take it?”

“Just the exterior glass.” Victor turned. “Thank you, Andrews. That’s fine. And you can relax now. I think we understand each other.”

Bennett picked up his pistol, snapped the safety on, and leaned forward to tuck it behind his belt. “So. You know I didn’t steal from you, I know you didn’t steal from me, and neither of us believes Johnny is suicidal. Where does that leave us?”

“Seems unlikely the robbery was random. Someone knew something.”

“No kidding. How are you working it?”

“To start, Johnny is spreading his name and money around, asking for tips.”

“Risky.”

“Only to him.”

“Still.” Bennett cocked his head. “Even if he gets something, Johnny is about as subtle as a strap-on cock.”

“You’re right.” Victor leaned forward. “What I need is someone on the ground who has a brain. Who can operate with a little grace.”

“Uh-huh. And what’s in this for me?”

“I get my goods. You get your money.”

“No deal. The product they won’t know what to do with. But money goes easy. I could find these assholes for you, discover they’ve spent what’s mine.”

“How much did Johnny promise you?”

“I should say three hundred. But two-fifty.”

Victor nodded. “All right. I’ll stake you. Whatever we don’t recover, I’ll make up.”

“Your margin that good, huh?”

“My margin is my business. Deal?”

“Sure. Understand, though, I’m not working for you. We’re cooperating. I work alone.”

“Fine. And I only stake you if I get my goods and they’re intact. Half the product, half the money.”

“Fair enough. I’ll be in touch.” Bennett reached for the door handle. “By the way. You don’t mind my asking, what was someone like you doing slumming with Johnny Love?”

“I could ask the same.” Victor leaned back, crossed his legs. “And, Bennett, you find these people, then this-”

“Could be the start of a beautiful friendship?”

“Maybe ‘profitable’ is a better word.”

“I hear you, brother. Consider them found.”

CHAPTER 20

“I’M SORRY,” the teller said. “I don’t understand.”

“I want to make three deposits,” Alex said. “Separately.”

“To the same account.”

“Yes.”

“So why not…”

“Look, I just want to deposit this money, and then I want a cashier’s check cut for the total amount to Tricia Kern-I mean, Tricia Stevens.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Why do you need to understand?” He hated this dynamic: Give an imbecile a vest and a counter to stand behind, and suddenly they had some say in your life. Banks weren’t nearly as bad as the post office, but still. And it wasn’t like he could explain he was trying to cover up the cash deposit from his robbery. “Why can’t you just do your job?”

“Sir, I don’t have to listen to that kind of talk.”

He started to snap at her, caught himself. “I’m sorry. I’m just having a bad day.” He gestured at the bandage on his face. “My head hurts.” Her face softened some, and he continued. “I know it seems strange. But could you humor me?”

The teller glanced past him at the growing line, all of them checking their watches or glaring. “Who was that check to again?”

Alex understood what Jenn and Mitch were thinking, not spending the money. It made sense if you thought of this as a game. But that was bullshit. This wasn’t about generational ennui for him. Everything he’d done, he’d done for Cassie. If not for her, he’d never have taken the risk. Wouldn’t have gotten clocked in the head with a pistol or had scissors held to his eyeball or had to lie to the police. Wouldn’t have had to lay there on the floor while his nice, simple plan went to shit out in the alley. He hadn’t killed anyone. The Four Musketeers thing went only so far.

“Here you are.” The teller slid the check across the counter. “In the future, I’d appreciate if you didn’t take that tone with me.”

And I’d appreciate it if you’d fucking do what I asked. He folded the slip into his pocket, shouldered past the line, and stepped out the double doors.

The bad mood faded as he left the toxic quiet of the bank. He had a couple of hours to kill before heading out to Trish’s, decided to grab dinner. One of his favorite bars was nearby, a place called Sheffield’s, barbeque and a terrific beer selection. He got the same warmth he always got in a corner bar, that sense of coming home. Once this had all blown over, he’d need a new job. Maybe with his remaining fifty grand he’d see about buying in somewhere.

Or maybe not. He had time to figure it out. Regardless, everything would change now.

He ordered a pulled pork platter and a Jolly Pumpkin bomber. Someone had left the New York Times on the bar, and he skimmed through. The headlines were depressing, full of news of the mortgage crisis, the stock market bottoming, the recession.

Alex was conscious of a certain split in himself. Part of him was feeling good, excited, the other part wondering what they had done, and if they would get away with it. Processing the fact that one of his friends had committed murder.

The thought hit hard, as it had all day long. He’d forget for a while, and then it would hammer him again. What had Mitch been thinking? Aiming a pistol at someone and pulling the trigger?

Maybe that Four Musketeers thing had reached the end. Time to move on. To leave the three of them behind, start fresh. Hell, maybe even move out to the suburbs, be closer to Cassie. Start catching her soccer games more often, picking her up from school. Leave behind late-night drunks and casual gropes with Jenn. He cared about them, he did. But sometimes you got too comfortable in your old life, too built-in, and only an earthquake could shake things loose, show you that you weren’t where you wanted to be.

It might be time to start standing alone.

IAN MADE IT to Wednesday evening.

After leaving Jenn’s apartment, he went to the office and threw himself into work, trying to use it as a drug to distract himself. He hadn’t taken a blast of coke since Mitch had yanked his vial away, and while he was proud of that, he was also ragged and sick. The burn on his balls fired raw, electric jolts every time he shifted position. And worst of all, he could hear Katz’s measured voice in his head:

My money. All of it. By Wednesday. Or…

For you and your friends.

He knew what he had promised the others. If he wanted to keep that promise, he should go home, make dinner, turn on reality TV, and work his way through a couple bottles of wine. Not do any coke, not call Katz, not do a good goddamn.

But if he did, then he was on the line for the debt. They all were. And he had the money, could pay what he owed. Keep all four of them safe.

Besides. They would never need to know.

TRISH HAD BEEN HESITANT AT FIRST, but eventually had told Alex to come out this evening, after dinner. It was typical that she hadn’t invited him to join. Not cruel, just oh-so-practical. Ex and husband do not at the same table eat.

Her doorbell made a civilized ding-dong, nothing at all like the shrieking buzz of his city apartment. He heard the clicking of shoes against marble, and then the door opened. Trish wore a white blouse and a serious expression, hair pulled into a simple ponytail but nails done. She hesitated a moment, then surprised him with a hug. They hadn’t done the hugging-hello thing for years. “Thanks for coming out,” she said, like it had been her idea.

“I needed to talk to you.”

“I know. Come in.” She closed the door behind him.

“Where’s Cass?”

“She’s staying at a friend’s.”

“What? Are you-” He spread his hands. “I wanted to see her.”

“I thought it was better we talk without her for now. Come on. We’re in here.”

We? We who? He followed her, noticing the stack of moving boxes in the corner, the half-empty bookshelf. “Trish-”

“Hello, Alex.” Scott stood beside the kitchen table. His ex-wife’s new husband was the kind of guy who, no matter what he was wearing, always looked like he had a sweater tied around his shoulders. “You remember Douglas, our attorney?” He gestured to a pale, suited man with watery eyes, who nodded, said, “Thanks for coming.”

“Everybody keeps saying that,” Alex said, thinking, attorney? He fought the urge to bounce on the balls of his feet. The kitchen was bright and expensive-looking, with granite countertops and a stove that would have made Ian jealous. “But I asked to see Trish, not the other way around.”

“Sure. Of course.” Scott made brief eye contact with his wife and their lawyer. “Do you want a drink? Some coffee, or a beer?”

“I’m fine. What’s he doing here?”

The lawyer smiled blandly. “Mr. and Mrs. Stevens asked if I could join just in case there were any, ah, legal questions.”

“There won’t be. You can go.”

“Alex.” Trish came up beside him. He’d forgotten how petite she was, a little elfin thing. “Don’t be like that.”

He narrowed his eyes, looked around the room. “I came to talk and to see Cassie. I didn’t expect to get ambushed.”

“Nobody’s ambushing anybody,” Scott said. “We just thought the four of us should chat.”

“The four of us. My ex-wife, her new husband, and the vampire lawyer.”

“Come on. Let’s be adult about this, OK?” Trish pronounced it ad-ult. “Come on, sit down.”

He thought about storming out, couldn’t see what it would accomplish. Reluctantly, he pulled up a chair.

“Now,” Scott said. “I can imagine how you feel about our decision to move.”

“I doubt that.”

He looked pained. “OK. My point is that none of us want this to get ugly. It wouldn’t be good for Cassie.”

“That your big priority, Scott? What’s good for my daughter? Because I would think that living near her father would be good for her. Staying in school with her friends would be good for her.” He leaned into the butcher-block table. “Not moving halfway across the fucking country would be good for her.”

“Cassie will miss you,” Trish said. “And she’ll miss her friends. But you’re welcome to come visit anytime. You can have the same privileges you do now. In fact, if you wanted to move-”

“If I wanted to move? To Arizona?” He shook his head. “I’m supposed to uproot my life because Scottie got a job offer?”

“I’m just saying, we’re still going to be flexible, like always.”

“Flexible? You’re moving to another state.” He fought to keep his voice under control. “You have no right to do this, to take my daughter-”

“Actually, Mr. Kern,” the lawyer spoke for the first time, “they do.” He paused, picked up a sheaf of stapled papers, and leaned forward to set them in front of Alex. “In case you haven’t read the divorce settlement recently, there are clear provisions-”

“For what? For taking a daughter from her father?”

“Clear provisions,” the man said as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “regarding the rights and privileges accorded all parties. Now, it’s my understanding that you have missed a number of child support payments?” He glanced at Trish, who nodded. “Which, I’m afraid, severely limits your rights in this matter. Especially as Mr. and Mrs. Stevens have been providing a stable household for…” He paused, looked at his notes.

“Cassie,” Alex said. “Her name is Cassie.”

“For Cassie. Under circumstances like these, I’m afraid that the situation is quite clear.” He steepled his fingers.

“What Douglas means,” Scott said, “is that while we all want what’s best for her, there are some rules…”

Alex leaned over, grabbed Scott by the hair, and slammed his face into the table.

“That need to be acknowledged. Now, we all know that you love…”

He stood, took the chair by the back, and swung it in a home run arc that caught all three of them in their respective heads.

“Cassie, but the truth is, we are the ones that are raising her day-to-day…”

He snatched the cleaver off the cutting board and spun it in a glimmering arc. Both Scott and the lawyer’s heads tumbled in the air.

“And this opportunity means the best for her. Patricia and I can pay for private schools, soccer camp, her clothes, and her books. We can guarantee she has a family dinner every night. Basically”-Scott shrugged apologetically-“we can do the things you can’t.”

“Motherfucker.” Alex whispered. “You motherfucker.”

Trish sighed. “I knew this wasn’t a good idea.”

“Mr. Kern,” the lawyer said. “Please. Be civil. No matter how you feel, the fact is that you have not maintained your end of the agreement.”

Alex laid his hands on the table, palm down, to keep from clenching them into fists. “Is that right? Well, this should make things simpler.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out the cashier’s check, unfolded it, and set it in front of Trish.

She looked at it, and then at him. “What is this?”

“That, Patricia, is a check. For more than I owe, I believe.” He grinned. “Which I guess changes the circumstances some, eh?”

“May I see that?” Douglas held out a hand, and Trish passed him the check. He looked at it carefully.

“It’s real, you dick.” The table had fallen silent, and Alex smiled, feeling suddenly strong again. “That’s the money I owe. So I’m not in violation of the agreement. So you can’t take her from me.”

The three of them looked back and forth like they were trying to communicate telepathically. He had them worried, he could see it.

Then Trish said, “Oh, Alex.” She sighed.

“What?”

Scott shook his head.

“What?”

“I’m afraid,” Douglas said, “it doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?”

“May I ask where you got this money?”

“No.”

“All right. In that case, it’s a reasonable assumption that your previous failure to pay has not been inability, as you’ve claimed. You’ve simply been holding out.”

“No, that’s not true.” Shit, shit, shit. He spoke quickly. “It’s a bonus. From my job.”

“A twelve-thousand-dollar bonus for a bartender?”

“Well, not all of it. Some of it is money I borrowed.”

“From a bank?”

“From friends.”

“I see. That, I’m afraid, only further proves that you are not capable of supporting, um, Cassie, on your own.”

“No, that’s-” It was all getting turned around. “Look, what does it matter where it came from? It covers what I owe.”

“It matters a great deal, Mr. Kern. But even setting that aside for a moment, I’m afraid that child support isn’t like paying off a football bet. You can’t just come in with the money when you have it. The purpose is to provide a solid household for the child.”

“Listen, you slick-”

“Alex.” Trish spoke softly. “I should have known you’d try something like this. You couldn’t just let things be.” She turned to him, hit him with steady brown eyes. “You always did things the hard way. Always denied what was right in front of you. Ignored the facts that didn’t fit AlexVision.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Please. Can’t you accept reality? Can’t we do this without ruining everything?”

He stared at her, his mouth open. “What are you talking about?”

“I know you think you’re doing this for Cassie. But you’re not. You’re doing it for yourself. And I’m begging you. Please don’t. Please?”

Alex looked around the table. “Do you honestly think I’m going to just sit back and let you walk out with my daughter?”

Trish lowered her head to one hand, closed her eyes. It was a gesture he remembered well, a pose she held while she was gearing herself up for something. The recognition brought a surprising stab of sentiment.

Finally, she raised her head, looked at the lawyer, and nodded.

Douglas said, “Mr. Kern, I’m sorry to have to do this, but in light of your pattern of missed payments, and at the request of my clients, I’m going to recommend to the judge that this settlement be reexamined, and specifically that visitation rights be limited, if not removed altogether.”

“What?” He felt his stomach fall away.

“In addition to which, while this case is being considered, I would ask that you make no attempt to see the child without seventy-two hours’ notice, and only in the presence of one of the parents.”

“I’m one of the parents.”

Douglas sighed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kern. I know this must hurt. Please understand that all of this is for the good of the child.”

“Her name is Cassie.”

There was a long silence, and then Scott said, “It’s time for you to leave, Alex.”

He stared at each of them. The lawyer, bland and lethal, a fountain pen in his hand. Scott marking his territory. Trish seemed like she was about to cry, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. His hands shook, and the pulse in his head seemed loud. “What are you saying? Are you-”

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Trish said to the cabinets. “I tried to warn you.”

HE WAS DRUNK. That much he knew. That much made sense.

It had felt good to key the lawyer’s Lexus on his way out, leaving a wicked scratch across the driver’s side. But that hadn’t erased the memory of what had happened, and the idea of staring at the walls of his shithole apartment was intolerable. So after driving back to the city, he’d gone to the shithole bar at the end of the block instead. It was one of those places no one knew the name of, a too-bright space decorated with neon signs for cheap beer. He’d taken a stool and asked the bartender for three shots of Wild Turkey, done them in quick succession, and gestured at them again.

“Bad day?”

“Fuck you.”

The man had snorted, shrugged, then poured the shots again. “Hope you choke on them.”

“Me too.” He picked one up, knocked it down, then put his elbows on the bar and his head in his hands.

How had it come to this?

Alex was the first to admit that nothing in his life made much sense. Hadn’t since he hit adulthood, really. There was a myth that everybody’s life proceeded according to a larger plan. Where he’d gotten that idea, he wasn’t sure, one of those things picked up in childhood, along with the idea that love lasted forever and that the good guys won and that it was never too late to change everything. It was a lie, all of it. Your buddies didn’t come in at the last second to save you. Things didn’t work out. People weren’t happy. Or if they were, that was just so that when unhappiness hit, it stung worse.

And yet the fabric of the lies was so dramatic, so interwoven into every facet of his life, that he didn’t know where to begin to untangle it. Every story his parents had read at his bedside, every teacher in every school, every sermon he’d ever heard, they all taught that life made sense. That if you tried to live well, and if you looked hard enough, there was a pattern and a plan.

But here he was. Here they all were, he and Jenn and Mitch and Ian. Four people of good health and no major handicap. They should have been happy. Content. Hell, just satisfied. He’d have settled for satisfied.

But was Ian, with his flashy suits and expensive apartment? Mitch, with his won’t-harm-a-fly mentality and quiet daydreams? Jenn, hoping purpose would just land in her lap? They had everything going for them and nowhere to go.

It was close to one in the morning by the time he hailed a cab, drunk, tired, and desperate for comfort.

SHE’D BEEN AFTER the maintenance crew to fix the lock on the foyer of her apartment building for months, but Alex was glad to see they hadn’t yet. He pushed through, climbed the stairs, hesitated in front of Jenn’s door, then rapped three times, hard. He was wobbly on his feet and in his heart, and he just wanted to burrow deep into soft sheets warm from her body, breathe in the smell of her, and let himself fall into the abyss. He banged again. Waited a few moments, and was about to knock a third time when he heard footsteps.

The door swung open. Mitch stood inside, wearing jeans and no shirt.

Alex stared. Spun, glanced around the hallway. Had he somehow given the cabbie the wrong address? What was-this was the right place. He turned back to the door. Mitch said nothing, just crossed his arms. There was a hint of swagger in his pose, bare chested and with messed-up hair, the guy clearly wanting him to do the math.

The corner of Mitch’s lips curled into a slight smile. “What’s up, Alex? What do you want?”

Comfort. Safety. A fresh start.

The life I imagined.

“Nothing,” he said and turned away.

CHAPTER 21

SHE WASN’T MUCH USE AT WORK, but she went. Didn’t really see a choice. So while Mitch was in the shower, she’d gone through her closet, looking for an outfit that didn’t take any effort. Settled on a calf-length black skirt and a fitted tee, thrown lipstick on, skipped the mascara, and told Mitch, over the hum of the water, that she had to run.

Last night had been unexpected. She hadn’t planned to spend it with him, not again, not so soon. But after they had found the chemicals, something had snapped in her. She hadn’t wanted to be alone. If she was alone, she might think about what they had done, and she didn’t want that. It wasn’t a rational thought, but then, the last few days hadn’t been rational.

Again their lovemaking had been intense, the two of them moving well together. In the middle of it, when she’d been on her knees on the bed, she’d cocked her head and looked back at him, a patented move that always drove guys crazy. But when their eyes locked, for a second they’d both stopped. It had been a bad moment, as if all the fear and shame had poured into the room like fog. By unspoken accord they’d both started up again, more furiously than ever, knowing what the alternative to action was. Together they had blotted out the world, screwed it away until they collapsed in exhaustion and sleep seemed possible.

And half an hour later, Alex had come to her door.

“Who is that?” Mitch went bolt upright, his eyes darting.

She knew, from the first knock, but couldn’t think of a way to tell him without explaining more than she wanted to. So she’d shaken her head, said she didn’t know. He’d gotten out of bed, pulled on his jeans, and gone to answer.

When he came back a few minutes later, he said, “Alex.”

“What did he want?”

“He didn’t say. I think he was drunk.” His tone giving her an opportunity to add something. But she had just said, “Huh. Hope he’s OK,” and turned over, wrapping the sheets around her. After a moment, Mitch had lain back down, and they’d drifted into the awkward fugue of bodies not used to sleeping next to each other.

Her workday morning was a blur. She answered e-mails and checked airfares and talked on the phone in a daze. Twice her boss asked if she was OK.

Around noon, she finally made a decision. Yes, her life had gone crazy. Yes, the sky was falling. They had killed someone, and the police were looking for them, and they had a gallon of liquid heroin stashed in a stolen Cadillac. But there were two options. She could either curl up under her desk like some useless soap-opera chick. Or she could deal with it.

So she’d headed home, retrieved her share of the money, and gone to the bank. A politely bored assistant manager had walked her through some forms, then led her into a back room. He handed her one key, and then took one from his own ring, and they turned them together to unlock a safe-deposit box the size of a shoe box.

“You can take it over there,” he said, gesturing to a small alcove screened off by a curtain. “When you’re done, put it back and lock it, and you’re good to go.”

She’d thanked him, then waited for him to leave. She set the box on a small desk, opened her bag, and took out the money in its Ziploc. Hiding it felt right, gave her a sense of moving forward. One item checked off a list. That good feeling lasted until midafternoon, when Mitch called to remind her they had to go to Johnny’s bar tonight.

Ready or not, the Thursday Night Club had to ride again.

WHEN HIS CELL PHONE RANG, Bennett was sprawled on his back across the bed with his head hanging off the edge, the world upside down. His hands were laced over his chest. His phone pinged quietly, a sound like a depth charge. He glanced at the caller ID, then answered the call. “Johnny Love, Johnny Love.”

“Yeah, hi, Benn-”

“Don’t say my name.”

“Why?”

“This is a cellular phone.”

“But you said my-”

“So I had a chat with our mutual friend yesterday.”

“Yeah, I…” The man sounded winded. Nervous, maybe. “I heard about that. I don’t know what he told you, but, kid, you gotta understand, I didn’t give you up.”

“Why, Johnny, I never said you did.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”

“But now that you mention it, you fat fuck, I think I might tear your spleen out.”

“No, hey, wait-”

“Just kidding. He told me he asked you pretty hard.”

“Well, you know, I hope you know that I would never sell you out. I told him you were involved, that’s all.”

“You didn’t mention anything about me running a burn on you both?”

“Well.” A pause. “I mean, what do you want me to say? He was going to throw me off a ten-story building.”

“The more I get to know this guy, the more I like him. So what’s on your mind, Johnny?”

“You know I been putting a lot of money out on the street. Letting people know I got robbed, that I’ll pay for a lead on the fuck ers that did it. Vic-our friend told me I get anything, I’m supposed to give it to you.”

“So what’ve you got?”

“A Jew bookie. Well, more than. Runs a private casino, some girls. Guy name of Katz.”

“Heard of him.”

“Apparently some dude, some yuppie dude, owed him about thirty. Katz was gonna whack him, the dude said that he had a mark he and his friends were going to rob, he needed a couple more days. Anyway, short story shorter, the yuppie came in yesterday with thirty large. Cash money.”

Bennett sat up straight. The blood rushed from his head, and he closed his eyes to fight the world’s wobble. “Katz have a name for you?”

“Yeah. You got a pen? Guy’s name is Ian Verdon, that’s V-E-R-D-O-N. No address, but-”

“I can find him.”

“Right. So should I meet up with you?”

“No. Don’t do a thing. Don’t tell anyone his name, don’t send guys looking, don’t tell anyone about him, don’t do a goddamn thing. Get me?”

“Yeah, sure, kid. Whatever you say.” He paused. “You just tell the big man that I’m doing my part, OK?”

“Sure. By the way, Johnny, when this is over, I think I might shoot you.”

“What?”

“Just kidding.”

MITCH HAD A QUEER déjà vu feeling as he folded his jacket over one arm and climbed on the bus. No, not even that, exactly; déjà vu was more ephemeral, a sort of untraceable feeling that you had done something before, stood in the same spot, seen the same beam of sun. This was different.

It was more like a video game. That was it. Like this was just a level called “The Ride to Johnny’s,” and he’d played through it before. It had that same patent unreality, the way the bus growled and shook, the packed crowd, body odor and averted glances, glazed eyes and headphones. One week ago today he’d hopped on this same bus up from the Loop. Only in that round of play, things hadn’t turned out how he’d liked. He’d been ignored, ridiculed, left hanging by his friends. He’d gone home drunk and alone to dream about a woman who seemed destined never to notice him.

Then, somewhere between then and now, he’d hit the Reset button. Decided to reload the level and play through again. To do it differently.

And would you believe it? The same bored-looking black kid in the same Looney Tunes jacket, his leg aggressively thrown into the empty seat beside him while standing passengers crammed the aisle.

Mitch smiled to himself, fought through the crowd to stand next to the guy. “Excuse me,” he said, the same as last time, and the same as last time, the guy took a look and then turned away, ignoring him. Figuring him for just another scared white man.

Not anymore. Mitch didn’t say anything else. He just leaned down, gripped the guy’s shoe, and pushed it off the seat.

The man sat up fast, his eyes narrowing. Mitch stared back, no smile, no apology. Just a level gaze. His heart was going a bit-not like the guy would do much on a crowded bus, but still-but he didn’t blink. Just stared.

And after a moment the kid sneered, said, “ A’ight,” and turned back to the window. Mitch slid into the open seat.

The rest of the ride, he replayed that moment, how simple it had been. How simple it was all turning out to be. You just decided what you wanted, and you acted like it belonged to you. Why the fuck hadn’t he learned that years ago? Although, it occurred to him, the cooler move would have been to, after brushing the guy’s foot off the seat, turn to someone in the aisle, a woman, and offer it to her. Like, Jack Reacher, at your service. That would have been suave.

Rossi’s looked the same, and he had a claustrophobic moment as he remembered the last time he’d seen it, in the car with Ian, the guy playing weird music and drumming his fingers against the wheel, that manic intensity under skies saddening to dusk. He forced the thought away, replaced it with a memory of Jenn giving him a hug, wearing her Bond-girl dress. The dress he’d later slid off her long, sweet body. That was the world he lived in now.

Yeah? So why was Alex showing up at her place in the middle of the night?

Shut it down.

Thursday night, and the place was busy. The usual suspects, junior-corporate-whatevers, holding martini glasses and pints and longneck bottles, loosening ties and laughing too loud and leaning in to touch one another’s arms. He slid through them to the end of the bar, and was surprised to see everybody already there, Ian slumped on his elbows, Jenn chewing on her plastic toothpick. Alex was in conversation with another bartender, and Mitch nodded in his direction, got nothing in response.

“Happy Thursday,” he said. He stepped toward Jenn, but she pinned him with her eyes, gave the tiniest shake of her head. Fine, OK. He settled for squeezing her shoulder, the skin humming under his fingertips. Ian turned his head without moving his shoulders. Though his suit was as impeccable as always, the man himself looked like he’d been wadded up and slept in. “Hey.”

Mitch glanced back and forth, said, “Somebody die?”

Jenn snorted at that, a quick little sound that he wasn’t sure was amusement, and Ian said, “Funny.”

“Next round’s on me.” Mitch raised his hand, gestured to Alex, but the guy still didn’t seem to see him. “So.” He smiled. “Victory, huh?”

Ian nodded, not looking at him. Jenn said, “Victory?”

“Sure. That was the plan, wasn’t it? That when things were done, we’d celebrate?” He didn’t want to talk too openly, but figured he could risk that much in the noise of the bar. After all, this was the cherry on top, ripping Johnny off and then drinking on his dime. Even if things hadn’t gone quite as planned, it was still a good feeling.

But the others didn’t seem to see it that way. He looked around for another chair, but the place was full, and so he rocked from foot to aching foot, trying to think of something to say, wishing he had a drink. Finally, Alex came over, drying his hands on a rag. He had fresh butterfly bandages on his face and a dark bruise. “Mitch.”

“Alex.” There was a long moment, then Mitch said, “Can I get a beer and a shot?”

Alex reached for a martini shaker. “I heard from Chip over there,” pointing with an elbow, “that Johnny has been going crazy about the robbery.”

Mitch shot him a shut-the-fuck-up look.

“I guess whoever it was”-Alex bounced back a you’re-not-the-only-smart-one look-“they must have gotten a lot of money from the safe. Chip says Johnny came in yesterday afternoon looking like somebody was threatening his mother. That’s a quote.” He shook his head. “He’s been in and out all day, making calls, yelling. Trying to find out who did it.”

“Did you talk to him?” Jenn pushed her glass forward, and Alex poured to the rim, the amount he’d mixed in the shaker precise to the drop. “I hope he’s paying for your trip to the hospital.”

“He said he would. Right now he’s a little distracted.”

“The people that did it are probably in another state by now,” Mitch said, getting into the spirit of it. “Besides, the police are after them. What’s a bar owner going to do?”

“You never know.” Alex grabbed a bottle of single malt from the back bar, poured Ian a generous double. “He seems pretty motivated. I tell you”-setting down the bottle and staring at Mitch-“I wouldn’t want to be the guy who robbed him. If Johnny ever finds out who it was”-he clicked his tongue-“no telling what he’ll do.”

A bloom of frost flowered in Mitch’s belly. He was suddenly conscious of his breathing. Was Alex threatening him? Was that what this was?

Jenn caught the stare and leaned forward, her face anxious. “Let’s not talk about that.” She glanced from one to the other, her bottom lip curled between her teeth. “How about a game? Ian?”

“Huh?” His skin was pallid and sick, and he’d finished half the scotch in a gulp. “Umm. I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a game?” Her tone light as May. “What’s the world coming to?”

“Fuck if I know,” Alex said.

“You have a bad day too?” Mitch put his jacket over the back of Jenn’s chair, unbuttoned his cuffs and started to roll them up. “You guys are about as much fun as a Smiths reunion.”

“I guess I just got up on the side of the wrong bed,” Alex said. “You ever do that, Mitch? Get up on the side of the wrong bed?”

“You mean the wrong side of the bed.”

“Yeah. Right.” Something in his eyes an accusation. What was that? Did the guy actually think he’d be ashamed for being with Jenn?

Question: Who shows up at a woman’s house at two in the morning?

It came in a flash. All the looks between Alex and Jenn that had stretched a half second too long. All those shared cab rides north. The man’s moodiness, the way he still hadn’t gotten Mitch a drink, the way he seemed to be trying to pick a fight.

Answer: Someone who’s sleeping with her.

Something twisted in him. Alex with his broad shoulders and muscles and sensitive stories about his daughter. All this time, even while he knew, he knew, that Mitch was carrying a torch. All that time he’d been fucking Jenn.

He felt dizzy, hot. The air in the bar was close and thick. He had a panicky feeling, like the world was slipping, or like he was. Like he was a little kid again, gawky and shy and falling down in gym class. In just a moment the laughter would start.

That’s not you anymore. It’s not.

“Come on, guys. Let’s not be like this. This is a celebration, remember?” Jenn looked back and forth, brushed hair behind her ear.

“What are we celebrating?” Alex had the look of a man vibrating inside. “Everything is falling to shit.”

“Hey, man.” Ian looked up from his empty glass. “Keep it cool, OK?”

“Cool? Why?” Alex shook his head. “I’m a thirty-two-year-old bartender. I live in a one-bedroom in a crap neighborhood. My ex-wife is taking my daughter away. This is not the way my life was supposed to be.”

“Everybody feels that way sometimes.” Jenn’s voice was pitched low and consoling. “It’s natural.”

“Yeah, well, not everybody has detectives calling to talk to them about a robbery, do they?”

“You saying that’s somebody’s fault?” Mitch asked.

“It’s the Jolly Green Fucking Giant’s fault. It’s whoever robbed this place and shot someone out in the alley’s fault.”

It was like the guy wanted them to get caught, the way he was pushing the envelope, hinting too broadly. If anyone heard this, told Johnny, they’d be in trouble. What was Alex doing? Didn’t he realize he was putting them all in danger? Did he just not care?

“Get back up on the sumbitch,” Ian said in a startlingly realistic Tennessee drawl.

“Huh?”

“Something my dad used to say. He was a big one for clichés, my pop. Cleanliness and godliness, early birds and worms. ‘Son, it ain’t about falling off the horse. It’s how fast you get back up on that sumbitch.’ ”

“That’s what I need. Platitudes.” Alex shook his head. “All due respect, but fuck your dad right now, OK?”

Ian gave a thin smile. “Sure, buddy. It’s your world. We’re just furniture.”

“Guys.” Her tone pleading.

Things were falling apart, but Mitch couldn’t find it in himself to care. A week ago these had been his closest friends, his urban tribe. Only it was all built on bullshit. One of them was a secret cokehead, another had been screwing the woman he loved; and her, she’d lied to him about it. Not to mention that he was the one in the most danger for a risk he hadn’t wanted to take in the first place.

Nothing was what it seemed, nothing was true. So fuck it.

He leaned forward. “We were talking about games. Here’s one. Answer this for me. What’s the worst you’ve ever screwed over someone you said you cared about?” He fixed Alex with a glare. “Ready, go.”

The toxic silence tasted of copper.

Ian stood. “I’m taking off.”

“No, look,” Jenn’s eyes wide, imploring. “This is stupid. We’re just-”

“We’re just done with each other,” Alex said. He straightened, picked up a rag and wiped his hands. “Right?”

There was a stab in Mitch’s chest, and a child’s urge to take it all back. But he said, “Yeah,” then jerked his jacket from the back of the chair, turned to Jenn. “I’m leaving. Are you coming?”

“I…” She looked back and forth. “No. I’m going home.”

“I can take you.”

“Not tonight.” She stood, picked up her purse. Pulled a couple of twenties from her wallet and dropped them on the bar. “It doesn’t have to be like this. But you guys with your egos. You’d rather all crash and burn than get over each other.”

“Yeah, well, you’re certainly the expert on guys, aren’t you, Tasty.” The look on Alex’s face was pure meanness. “All that experience.”

Her face paled and eyes widened. Then she just shook her head. “Well, it was good while it lasted.”

“What was?” Ian asked.

“The Thursday Night Drinking Club.” She gestured with a sad smile. “Us.”

CHAPTER 22

THE VIEW WAS SPECTACULAR, Bennett had to admit. Outside Ian Verdon’s floor-to-ceilings, the city was glowing geometries, the river tinged pink with that shadowless five o’clock light. Magic hour, photographers called it.

He stared for another moment, then turned away, spun in a slow circle. The condo was tastefully modern, with clean lines and low-slung furniture. He walked over to a set of bookshelves, more pictures and knickknacks than books: a shot of a dude against a split-rail fence, face lined as ten-year-old boots; a box of Monte cristos with a broken seal declaring them Cubans; a sleek hourglass with pale blue sand. Idly, he opened the cigar box. Inside was a mirror, a razor blade, and a glassine bag filled with white powder. Lookie lookie. He poured a small bump on the back of his hand and snorted.

Damn.

He packed it back away, careful to put everything in the exact same spot. Addicts were clueless about a lot of things, but never their supply.

There was a cheap phone on the bookcase and a cordless in the kitchen. He chose the cordless. Shit was so easy these days. You could order any damn thing from the Internet. It took two minutes to crack open the phone, do what he needed to, and close it back up. He glanced at his watch: 5:30. On a Friday night, that might be pushing it a little. Best to head out.

Bennett replaced the phone, took one last look around the apartment, then stepped out, locking the door behind him. He strolled down the hallway, the indirect-lighting-and-muted-carpet combo that yuppies couldn’t get enough of, then punched the button for the elevator. As he waited he whistled, badly, savoring that chill ease of quality cocaine.

The doors parted and a gaunt dude in a nice suit stepped out. His hair was gelled and mussed just so, but his eyes were sunken, and the greenish remains of a shiner marked one. “Excuse me.”

Bennett smiled, stepped aside, then climbed into the elevator and rode it to the garage. He stood in the shadows near the gate, and when a black Wrangler pulled up to it, he waited till the Jeep was through, then ducked out.

His Benz was at a pay lot two blocks away. He climbed in, reached in the back and pulled out his laptop. As it booted, he opened his cell phone, dialed *67 to block caller ID, and then Verdon’s phone number.

The man answered on the third ring. “M’ello?”

Bennett said nothing, drew the pause out. Theatre.

“Hello?”

“I know what you did. And I’m coming.” He closed the phone, then turned to the laptop.

The trace program was silent for thirty seconds. Then the transmitter he’d put in Ian’s phone sent the number the guy was dialing. There was a pause as it ran the number against a reverse directory, and a name appeared. McDonnell, Mitchell. Twenty seconds, then the line disconnected. No one home. Ten seconds later, another number appeared, and another name. Kern, Alex.

Bennett smiled.

God, he loved predictable people.

CHAPTER 23

JENN WAS PAINTING HER TOENAILS and trying not to think.

She wasn’t a high-maintenance girl, one of those shiny chicks perpetually ready for a fashion shoot, blushed and mascaraed and highlighted, tanned and toned and bubble-butted. She’d had a girlfriend once who, when a boy would stay over, would set the alarm so that she could get up, put on her makeup, and come back to bed dolled up. Even did it with steady boyfriends, guys she saw for months. Everything about that sounded exhausting to Jenn.

But she liked to paint her toes. It was a summer indulgence, a celebration of sundresses and strappy sandals. She did it with the TV on something low-calorie, Inside the Actors Studio today, Matt Damon up onstage being charming. And she needed indulgence, needed something pleasant and routine to distract her from the steady rhythm of fear and guilt that beat through her. Ever since the robbery, her dreams had been nightmares, bright flashes and dark red liquid, shadows looming and reaching. Then the scene in the bar. And finally last night’s conversation with Ian, the man panicking about a crank call. He’d been breathless and sputtering as he told her, and all she could think of was his coke habit. She’d reassured him it was nothing, but as always, the fear hit in the middle of the night, telling her that it could be more.

Which was why it felt important, justified, to sit calmly on her couch and paint her toes. A way of holding back panic. When the phone rang, she finished the nail she was on before setting the brush in the bottle and reaching for the cordless.

“Ms. Lacie?”

“Yes,” she said, fanning her toes with a magazine and readying herself to hang up on the salesman.

“You’re a friend of Mitch McDonnell?”

Something in the tone made her wary. She uncurled herself, put her feet on the floor. “Yes. Who is-”

“He’s been hurt.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, my name is Paul, I work at the Continental with Mitch. He’s been hurt and he’s asking for you.”

“What do you mean, hurt?”

“My manager just gave me your number and asked me to call.”

“But… hurt how? Like he fell or something?”

“I really don’t know. I just know that he’s asking you to come down here right away.”

“OK.” She stood, looked at the clock on the cable box. A few minutes after one. Saturday traffic wouldn’t help any. “I’m leaving now. I should be there by about one thirty.”

“I’ll tell him. He’s in a conference room on the second floor. The Atlantic.”

“Is there a doctor-”

“I really don’t know, ma’am.”

“All right. Thanks.” She hung up the phone and threw it on the couch. In her bedroom she shucked off cotton pajama bottoms and hopped into jeans, jammed her feet into flip-flops, grabbed her purse off the dresser, and bolted for the door.

Outside, it was a perfect summer day, the kind where nothing could go wrong. She tagged a passing cab, gave him the address, and asked him to step on it. To her surprise, he did, running yellows and weaving through traffic.

What could that mean, Mitch was hurt? It couldn’t be too bad, or they would have taken him to a hospital. It was kind of odd, him asking for her. They’d only just started, and it seemed like already she was getting the girlfriend treatment.

Unless… Did it have something to do with the robbery? Or with the call from last night?

The thought hit cold, and she bit her lip. If Johnny had found out, he might have come after Mitch. God, he might have-

It was a long ride.

Finally, the cab pulled up in front of the hotel. A man wearing the uniform she’d come to associate with Mitch hurried over to get her door. She paid the cabbie, tipping him an extra ten bucks, and hurried out of the car. “The Atlantic conference room?”

“On the second floor, ma’am. The elevator is-”

She didn’t hear the rest. The hotel was gorgeous, the kind of place people had honeymoons and affairs in. She saw a staircase and hurried up it. There was a sign with room names etched in it and arrows in either direction. Atlantic was to the left. Something about the place made the idea of running seem impossible, so she settled for a sort of awkward power-walk. Two heavy wooden doors led into the conference room, and she threw one open and shouldered through-

To see Mitch and Ian beside a long mahogany table, Ian with his hands up like he was describing the size of a fish he’d once caught. They both turned. Ian’s mouth fell open, and Mitch’s eyebrows scrunched in.

“Jenn?”

“Are you OK?”

“What are you doing here?”

They had all spoken at the same time, and froze, then started again in unison, and stopped again. She jumped into the silence.

“Are you OK?”

Mitch looked at her, then at Ian. “What? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I.” She stopped. “I got a call from your friend. He said you’d been hurt.”

“Hurt? What? Who said?”

“Someone named… Paul?”

Mitch shook his head. “I don’t know any Pauls.”

“So-what…” The adrenaline was fading, leaving Jenn’s shoulders tense. She looked at Ian. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m meeting someone.”

“Who?”

“A guy I know.” Ian looked at them, saw that they weren’t going to let it go. Sighed. “Katz. The man I got the you-know-whats from. He called and told me to get over here right away.”

There was a knock on the door, and then it pushed open enough for Alex to stick his head in. “Detective Bradley-” He froze when he saw them. His eyes darted from one to the other, and his face underwent a weird series of emotions, finally settling on a stony mask. “What are you all doing here?”

“We’re trying to figure that out,” she said. “I got a call saying Mitch was hurt. Ian was supposed to meet some guy named Katz. What about you, Mitch?”

“One of the bellmen told me a manager wanted to see me.” He looked at Alex, jerked his chin. The tension crackled between them like electric current. “You?”

Alex stepped into the room, let the door whisper closed behind him. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“What does it matter? The point is that someone brought us all here.”

“It matters, Alex, because we need to figure out who.”

“Guys.” Jenn put all her exhaustion into it.

Alex said, “A cop called and asked me to meet that detective here.”

“The one from the other night.”

“No, the one who was gonna mow my lawn. What do you think?”

“I think you’re an asshole.” Mitch paused. “No, I’m pretty sure of it.”

She shook her head. “Enough. We did this the other night.”

“Gentlemen.” The voice came from behind, and she spun to look. A stranger stood in the doorway. He wore a charcoal suit and an open-collared shirt of subtly textured white cotton, and had the breezy good looks of a cologne model. He nodded to Jenn. “And of course Ms. Lacie.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Alex said in his best bouncer voice.

The man smiled, strolled into the room. Behind him, face hard and red, walked Johnny Love. Two men in suits followed, taking up positions on either side of the door.

Spiders crawled through her chest. Nobody spoke, and she could hear the faint honking of a car horn outside, the hum of the air conditioner. The smiling man strode to the head of the table. Johnny hit Alex with a baleful look.

“My name is Victor. And I believe you all know Mr. Loverin?”

“Motherfucking right they do.” The fat man glared from one to the other. “Kern, you ungrateful prick. After all I’ve done for you, you pull this on me? And you,” his eyes narrowing at Ian. “Still got the shiner, huh? Wait till I get done with you. That’s going to seem like a day at Wrigley.”

“Be quiet, Johnny.” Victor’s voice was calm, but Loverin immediately shut up. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, the tough-guy demeanor not gone, but certainly throttled back.

Which made her throat go dry. Who was this guy?

“Alex, Ian, Mitch, Jenn,” Victor said, looking at each of them in turn. “Let’s not waste time, OK? I know what you did.” He paused, raised an eyebrow. “Can you guess who I am?”

Mitch said, “You’re the guy Johnny was buying for the night we robbed him.”

Victor practically beamed. “Got it in one. Good. I’m glad that you aren’t going to play around. That will make this easier.”

Ian said, “How did you-”

“How did I find you?” Victor stood behind a leather conference chair, his hands resting lightly on the back. “A piece of advice. When you rob someone, you should be careful who you tell about it in advance.”

Ian’s jaw fell, and his face went pale.

“Wait.” Alex turned to him. “What is he-who did you tell?”

Mitch said, “He told his bookie. The man who got him the guns in the first place.”

“Oh, you stupid-”

“Also, showing up to pay your thirty-thousand-dollar debt the day after you steal a quarter-million is something of a dead giveaway.”

“Katz.” Ian had a hand to his forehead. He turned to look at them. “I had to, you understand? I didn’t have a choice.”

“So,” Victor continued. “Mitch, you seem to be on a roll. Why don’t you guess what I want?”

“The money back?”

“As a matter of fact,” Victor said, “no. The money you stole from Johnny. Not from me. Part of it was mine, it’s true. But it was money that was already earmarked for a purchase. Do you understand? I spent my money. But I didn’t get what I paid for.”

“What”-Alex paused, looked around-“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What do you want us to do about that?”

“I want you to get it for me.”

“How? I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

“How old is your daughter, Alex?”

Alex’s shoulders clenched into iron ripples under his T-shirt. “My daughter is none of your business.”

“Cassandra? Sure she is.” He jerked his head toward Mitch. “As is Mitch’s brother, Michael, and Ian’s dad in Tennessee. I haven’t had the chance to check in on Ms. Lacie’s parents yet. But I will.”

This couldn’t be happening. None of it. Her parents? This total stranger, a guy she’d never seen before, was threatening her parents?

She looked at the others, saw them thinking the same thing. Her leg started to shake, and she leaned on it.

Alex stepped forward. “I don’t know who you think you are-”

Moving with uncanny speed, both the men by the door brushed back suit jackets and drew pistols. One lined up on Alex. The other moved from target to target.

Jenn felt the floor shift beneath her, reached for the chair, barely got it.

“Be careful, Mr. Kern.” Victor’s voice was level. “You should all be very careful. Last week you may have been normal people, but now you’re in my day planner. Believe me when I say that’s worth your attention. Right, Mr. Loverin?”

Leaning against the wall, Johnny had the pinched expression of a child facing a bully he knew would make good. He cleared his throat, then nodded.

Alex took a deep breath. Paused. “Listen, I’m sorry about my language,” he said. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. It’s just that this is none of my affair.”

Something in his tone caught Jenn’s attention. His shoulders were down, his hands up and open in a placating gesture. She knew what he was about to say before he opened his lips. It hit her with a sick shame and disappointment.

“I was in on robbing Johnny,” Alex said. “But I was tied up inside the office when your friend came. I didn’t shoot him. I didn’t have anything to do with that part.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mitch looked back and forth. “You’re seriously putting this on us?”

“It is on you. I wasn’t there.”

Mitch shook his head. “You coward.”

“Gentlemen.” Victor’s voice was cold. “A couple of things you need to understand. The man you shot wasn’t my friend. And I don’t care which of you pulled the trigger. All I want is what’s mine. Now. Where is it?”

Jenn’s pulse was pounding. She looked at Mitch, could read his thoughts. He was going to tell Victor that they had found what he was after, that it was in the back of a purple Eldorado parked down the block from her apartment. And maybe that was best. Give it up to him and get on with their lives.

Only, what if that’s not what he has in mind? This is a man who has Johnny clearly terrified. What happens when you no longer have what he wants?

It was all happening too fast, event piling on event. She needed time to think, to figure this out. It was like being back in the alley, that sense that everything hung by a thread, but that she had a chance, a slim, delicate ribbon of a chance, to make things work out. Even just to buy them time to talk and make a plan. Only how? What could she possibly say?

Mitch said, “Victor, sir-”

Suddenly she knew. Jenn cut in. “Before we dumped the car, we went through it. And we found a bag in the trunk.”

Ian and Alex both whirled to look at her. Mitch was staring, and she could see him thinking, God bless him, see him trying to figure out what she was doing. She hesitated a moment, then said, “It had four one-quart bottles in it.”

Victor said nothing, gave no outward sign of menace. Nonetheless, the air seemed to coalesce around him, a subtle hardening and cooling.

“We didn’t know what they were. But we figured that if someone was willing to pay that much for them”-she shrugged her shoulders-“we kept them.”

“Where are they?”

Her palms were moist, her armpits soaked. An old line flitted through her head, something to the effect of women didn’t sweat, they dewed. She almost laughed, fought off the hysteria. She looked at Mitch, tried to beam the thoughts over to him, praying that he would somehow telepathically understand.

“Ms. Lacie?”

“They’re in a safe-deposit box. At my bank.” She managed to say it without her voice cracking.

“A safe-deposit box? Why?”

Mitch said, “We didn’t know what they were. And they were worth so much.”

The urge to smile rose like champagne bubbles, but she fought it away.

“I see. Let’s go get them.”

This was the risky part. She opened her mouth, closed it. Tried to think coolly, to let the panic show but not the calculation. “It’s Saturday.”

“So?”

“The bank is closed.”

“Convenient.”

She shrugged helplessly. “Not to us.”

“Funny, though, isn’t it? What I want is somewhere you can’t get it?”

“Hey,” she said, “you picked the time to bring us here. Not me.”

Victor made a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a hmm.

“Listen, cunt.” Johnny came off the wall. “Stop fucking lying and get the man what he wants, and you do it right fucking now. Or so help me-”

“I have the key,” she said.

“What?”

“The key. It’s in my purse. Can I get it?”

Victor made a why-not gesture. Hands shaking, she dug into the change compartment of her bag. The key was a simple brass thing, unmarked, about the size of the one she used to get her mail. She held it up. “See?”

The room was air-conditioned to January temperatures. She stood with the key out in front of her like a magic totem, like it was something that could protect them from harm. It felt flimsy and small.

“Let me have that.”

“No,” she said, her voice coming out raspy.

“No?”

“None of us meant to steal from you. I wish we hadn’t done this at all. It was stupid. But if we give this to you now, how do we know you won’t…”

“All I’m interested in is my product.”

“We’ll give it to you. Monday morning. At the bank.”

“Because you’ll feel safe there.”

“Yes.”

“You understand I could take it from you now.”

“I could scream.”

“And my people could shoot you.” He gave a small smile. “But I’d rather not do it that way.” He rubbed at his chin, and in the pin-drop quiet of the room she could hear the grating of his fingers against stubble. “You really never have done anything like this before, have you? You’re honest-to-Christ amateurs.”

“That’s for sure,” Johnny said.

“Look, Victor”-she leaned forward-“you’re right. We’ve never done anything like this, and we wouldn’t have done it if we knew what would happen. We don’t want to be any trouble. But we can’t get them today. If we could, believe me, we would. But-”

Victor glanced at his heavy gold watch. “OK. It doesn’t really matter if we get it alone or with you, today or Monday morning.”

Fear’s fingers unclenched a notch on her heart.

“What does matter is that you believe every word I say. For example, when I say that if you go to the police or try to leave town or try to in any way play me, it’s not just your own lives in the balance.” He paused. “I don’t enjoy it, but believe me, I can make some very unpleasant things happen.”

“I believe you. I swear to Christ I do.” Part of her wanted to just give in, tell him where the bottles were, but it was too late now. She forced herself to stare back at him, and let the fear into her eyes.

“What about the money?” Ian had been quiet, and his voice came as a surprise.

Victor shrugged. “The money was allocated for the purchase. It’s not my concern.”

“Wait a second,” Johnny Love said. “You’re going to let them take my money?”

“You let them take it. Not me.”

“We can keep it?” Ian’s voice was level, like he was negotiating a corporate deal.

“You’ve got my word.”

“No fucking-”

“Johnny.” Victor’s eyes flashed like razor wire. He turned back to Ian. “Yes. You can keep the money.”

“What about him?”

“I’ll personally guarantee that Mr. Loverin won’t come after you.”

“How do we know we can trust you?”

“I hate repeating myself. I already told you to believe every word I say. So when I guarantee your safety, believe it. But also believe that if you play around, I will have men visit your father with a ball-gag and a belt sander.”

Ian paled. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“He does. Because what I can do to him will make you do what I say. Understand?”

Silence.

“Look, it’s simple. The four of you are clueless. You found yourself in possession of something that belongs to me. I want it back. If you oblige, there’s no reason for me to hurt you. I mean, what are the four of you going to do?” Victor smiled. “Killing you would be a waste of resources. So yeah, it really is that simple. Give me what I want, and you can not only get on with your lives, you can keep the money. Or don’t, and force me to start doing terrible things to you and yours until you cave and end up doing what I want anyway.”

The silence that fell had weight and texture. Victor held the pause, then brought his palms together like he was praying, and inclined them toward Jenn. “Monday morning?”

She didn’t trust herself to speak, just nodded.

“OK.” He smiled, showing bright, straight teeth. “Have a good weekend.”

CHAPTER 24

WHEN HE’D BEEN A FRESHMAN at the University of Michigan with his whole life ahead of him, Alex had an intense friendship with two girls on his hall. It had started out the way college friendships did: easy. He’d met Tara doing laundry, Stacy in the TV lounge at the end of the hall. Throughout the halcyon days of a Midwestern autumn they’d chatted and laughed and shared bottles of tequila in his cramped dorm room. It hadn’t been a sexual thing. They’d been so young, and free for the first time, and their friendship had revolved around conversation and mutually murdered hours. Back then it had seemed like the whole world was made up of time; hours and hours spent bullshitting in the glow of Christmas lights, playing euchre for cigarettes, sneaking into Scorekeepers with fake IDs. And for a while, it had been great. His first experience with a constructed family.

Around March it started getting weird.

The first thing was Stacy beginning to crush on him a little. It wasn’t a big deal, flattering actually, but he didn’t want to blow their friendship. Of course, after too much to drink one night, he and Tara had ended up in bed instead. They both enjoyed it, but also decided that it wasn’t something they could continue. They agreed not to tell Stacy, but she found out, said she was fine with it. These things happened.

Then money went missing from Tara’s purse. When Tara asked Stacy about it, she got offended, which led to a screaming fight on the Diag. Things got tense on the hall. Someone drew a picture on Tara’s door that showed her doing inappropriate things to a horse. Stacy’s colored laundry ended up bleached. Tara opened Alex’s always-unlocked dorm room door late one night and crawled in with him, and when he refused her-he’d just started seeing Trish-she left in a self-righteous huff that woke the whole hall.

By April it had become a three-front war, and Alex, young and newly in love, opted out. He started spending most nights in Trish’s room, avoiding both girls. Summer came, and then the following year he and Trish moved into an apartment together, and that was that.

But he’d never forgotten the way things had gotten out of hand, that claustrophobic feeling as each turned on the others. The way their erstwhile intimacy had become the fuel for rage. He’d never before realized that the best friends could turn out to be the worst enemies. And now, standing in an overcooled conference room in a hotel where he couldn’t have afforded breakfast, he had a stab of that old feeling.

For a moment after Victor left, the four of them stared at one another in silence. His muscles had the shaky tension of near violence. Like things hadn’t been bad enough before, when his little girl was being stolen from him and his ex-wife was hiring lawyers and the closest thing he had to a girlfriend had taken up with a friend of his.

“Why didn’t you tell us you found something in the car?” He looked from Mitch to Jenn. “And don’t say there wasn’t time.”

Silence.

“Goddamn it.” He gripped the back of the nearest chair and rocked it hard on its casters. “We’re supposed to be in this together.”

“That’s rich,” Mitch said.

“Hey, fuck you. He was after my daughter.”

“And my brother, and Ian’s dad, and Jenn’s parents.”

“I don’t give a shit about them.” The words came before he could think.

Mitch made a sound of disgust. “Yeah. You don’t give a shit about anybody, do you?”

“Like you’re better.” He turned to Jenn. “What exactly did you find?”

“What I said. Four plastic bottles. Some kind of dark liquid. We opened one and smelled it.” She shuddered. “Got a headache you wouldn’t believe, and it made my muscles ache like I’d worked out way too hard.”

“You didn’t think that made it worth discussing with us?”

“Things have gotten complicated. So we just hid them-”

“At the bank,” Mitch cut in. Jenn cocked her head, the two of them staring. Alex couldn’t tell what it was about, didn’t much care at that moment, their lovers’ quarrels not his problem.

“What do you think it is?” Ian asked.

Alex turned savagely. “Who cares? The man wants it back. That’s all that matters.”

“I was just asking.” Like a whipped dog.

“Yeah, well, I’m not too interested in you asking anything right now.” The anger in him turned like a hurricane, a spinning buzz saw that cut everything in its path. “What were you thinking?”

Ian pulled out a chair, slumped in it. “Will you let me explain?”

There was a long moment, and then Mitch sat down across the table, and Jenn followed suit. Finally Alex took out a chair. The four of them sat around the polished conference table like junior executives. Under any other circumstances the thought would have made him laugh.

“I… I might have a wee bit of a gambling problem.” Ian tried a wry smile that withered as the faces of the others told him charm wasn’t going to cut it. “Long and short, I owed this guy Katz some money. About thirty grand.”

“Jesus,” Jenn said. “How? Aren’t you rich?”

He laughed through his nose. “Two years ago, maybe. I made a killing on this one deal, a biotech company. That’s when I bought the condo, the suits, the car.” He shrugged. “And around then I discovered high-stakes poker.”

“So, the eye,” Mitch said, tapping at his own.

“Yeah. I fell behind, and that was Katz letting me know that the bill was due. So when the plan of taking down Johnny came around…” He shrugged.

“Gee, Ian,” Alex said. “That’s a real hard-luck story, what with you blowing a fortune while the rest of us were working hourly. But I’m still missing the part where you told your bookie what we were doing.”

“I know. And I’m sorry, believe me. I didn’t plan to. But after I talked to him about needing guns, he had his bodyguard hold me while he”-Ian looked down-“It doesn’t matter. Point is, he thought I was working for the police, and I had to convince him otherwise. But I didn’t say anything about who we were robbing, nothing. I swear.”

Mitch said, “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Ian nodded. “He said that since you were helping me, you were all responsible too.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“That’s why I paid him. If it was just me, I would have risked it.” The man’s face was scrunched like a baby’s, his voice coming fast and earnest. “Don’t you see? I did it for you.”

Alex snorted. “You haven’t done any of this for us.”

“Look, I had a cigar held to my nuts, OK? Besides,” anger coming into his voice, “what about you? You just tried to dump everything on us.”

“That’s because I wasn’t fucking there.”

“No,” Mitch said. “You were just the one who pushed us into it.”

“Bullshit. Everybody was in equally.”

“Yeah? That how you remember it?” Mitch met his gaze unblinking. Something had shifted between them. A week ago, he could have stared Mitch down in a second. Now, he found himself wanting to look away. His friend had become a dangerous man.

“Enough.” Jenn’s voice broke the moment. “We’re missing the point. What are we going to do about Victor?”

“What we promised,” Mitch said.

“You believe he won’t kill us?”

“We’re white taxpayers. If he kills us, the police, they’re going to start digging. There’s no reason he would want the hassle.” Mitch reached out, laid his hand on top of Jenn’s. Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t pull away. “Monday morning, we give him what he wants.”

It was too much. The robbery, the dead man, Trish, Jenn, Victor, all of it. Alex felt that narrowing tension he’d had back in college, the sense that everything that had seemed safe and fun had become sour and hurtful. Only now there were men with guns involved.

No. No way. He had one responsibility, and that was to Cassie. “Not me. I told Victor, and I meant it. I had nothing to do with this. You guys did the killing. You found this stuff. You hid it. You’re on your own, the three of you.”

Jenn wrinkled her lips like she’d bitten something foul. Mitch only nodded. “Fine.” He turned to Ian. “But it’s not the three of us.”

“Huh?” Stick-thin and hunched, the man looked like a bird as his glance darted around the table. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a fuck-up, Ian.” Mitch spoke calmly. “I know it’s not your fault. But you are. We can’t trust you.”

“Look at the boss man,” Alex said. He didn’t know why he bothered, what it mattered whether Ian was included or not. It was more the change in Mitch that he was reacting to. “Telling everybody how it is.”

“He’s right,” Jenn said, her voice emotionless. “I’m sorry, Ian.”

“But-” The trader looked around the table, his expression so pathetic Alex had an urge to hug him. “This is stupid. The four of us are best friends. We need each other.”

Mitch shook his head. “Not anymore.”