The red rose snoozed on a cushion. In the blissful realm of morning TV, the perennial grin of Cameron Diaz brightened the world as the hosts and nutritionist continued to sing the praises of soy milk.
Xander’s Taurus BA-44 waited for someone to remember it and pick it up.
And the killer obliged.
Gun in hand, the hooded figure tipped Xander’s face up with a punt to the ribs before peeling the balaclava away. Xander squinted through sweat beads, trying to distinguish the sun-haloed face over the gun barrel.
With difficulty, the unfocused picture began to resolve into black hair, electric-blue eyes.
“Y…Y-you…”
And he scowled. And his bloodied lips blurted out:
“Who the fuck are you?”
The last vivid sensation he enjoyed was the weight of an innocent flower gently landing on his once unblemished Renaissance chest.
The bullet through the brain a second later, he didn’t notice.
But it did wake up Danny. At a perfect time to cash in that half ounce.
* * *
—
Back in the stairwell, Kimrean, incidentally wondering about the fate of that Desert Eagle they’d borrowed from Danny, heard the gunshot. They voted against the door-bashing, time-stopping, pants-soaking entrance they were envisioning and instead tiptoed up to the penthouse door. The foyer was empty. The pause allowed them to consider how the killer had sneaked into the room. His first plan must have been to bring the flowers himself, but the receptionist barred him, so he’d left the flowers downstairs, taken another elevator and then the stairs to the rooftop, and dropped from the rooftop to the awning over Xander’s terrace. Meanwhile, Kimrean had brought the rose upstairs for him.
It made Zooey feel used. And it scandalized Adrian: so many things could have gone wrong with that plan. There could have been guards on the rooftop. Any sentryman could have spotted the rose and stopped him. He had bravado, but he wasn’t doing bad in sheer luck either.
That notion conflicted Zooey as well: it transgressed her own brand of logic—that of aesthetics. Why would the killer be so lucky? Villains don’t rely on luck; fortune favors the heroes. It’s a principle as sacred as the femme/thug alternation.
Adrian swatted that ridiculous thought off their mind and listened at the door.
* * *
—
The killer pulled the balaclava back down and glanced at the terrace: Danny was staying put like a good boy against the rail, rope keeping his head up, eyes closed.
He pocketed Xander’s handcannon and proceeded to search the body of the dreadlocked giant. He had fallen facedown; it would prove tricky to reach the gun under his jacket, but a more accessible pocket in his pants hid a better jackpot: a key card to the hotel’s parking and some car keys. With a Jaguar emblem.
He took everything and headed for the door, which just opened by itself.
“Hi!” Zooey greeted.
Before she could utter another syllable, she was staring into the barrel of the Taurus. Adrian peeked over it, tried to make out the little portions of a face that the balaclava exposed. Dark skin. Dark hair. Cyan eyes, scintillating with rage.
And some more movement beyond, way in the back. A black blob stirring on the terrace.
Oh, he looked good. For someone who’s been undercover for eighteen months, carries a gun under his jacket and another one on his ankle.
Danny Mojave, micromanaging every molecule of air squeezed into his lungs, pulled the gun from his ankle holster and aimed through the broken screen door at the killer. A most commendable sense of sportsmanship made him give a warning call before shooting someone in the back.
“Hey!”
* * *
—
That was truly a waste of a second.
Because it was the one second somebody five floors below chose to grab the other end of the rope wrapped around Danny’s neck, put his full weight on it, and start climbing.
The nylon dug into Danny’s throat with 140 pounds’ worth of deadweight, pulled him back against the rail, and severed any new attempt to shout.
Xander’s killer and A.Z. checked each other’s eyes—brown-green asymmetry on one side, lightning blue on the other. There was little to discuss: the killer was holding every ace: the gun, the car keys, a finished job, and the certainty of not being Kimrean’s priority. That was the end of the negotiations.
The killer darted out for the stairs, and Kimrean sprinted to the terrace where Danny, his face going from red to purple, squirming for a chance to scream, strove for a grip on the rope sinking into his flesh, well aware that this time around he would not be strangled: he would be decapitated.
Kimrean leaned out from the balcony in time to see the ninja hanging by the rope and instinctively moved their head away at the first glimpse of him flinging something shiny upward. The shuriken swished by their right ear and bored into the concrete ledge above.
Kimrean glared back at the enemy, left hand smearing a warm trickle of blood oozing out of the gash in their cheekbone.
KIMREAN: (Softly.) Mouthbreather.
Zooey retaliated by grabbing a large flowerpot bunking a ficus and flinging it over the rail.
She didn’t hit him. Instead, the ninja checked his suit for the most recent addition to his exotic arsenal: the Desert Eagle.
“Oh,” Zooey said. “There it was.”
They fell back from the rail to dodge the bullets, all while Danny sat against it, immobilized, fingers bleeding under the rope’s pressure only to stop it from slicing his jugular. He was starting to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger when his helmet breaks on the surface of Mars.
Kimrean scanned the terrace for more projectiles: Deck chairs. Table. Broken glass. Broken glass!
They grabbed a large shard of what had been the screen door and tried to saw the nylon rope. A bullet flew past, then another, millimeters away from their hand and Danny’s skull.
And then they saw it: another forgotten element sitting on a planter box some floors below.
Adrian writhed to unpocket his cigarette pack, retrieved the Detective Kit™ inside, picked out the magnifying lens, and held it at an angle while his other hand held up the shard of glass against the sun. All that was left was to cheer for solar energy, keeping their pulse as steady as they could, funneling all the heat off the glass and through the lens into one single point.
The assassin averted his eyes from the gleam, then squinted to follow the beam falling vertically a few feet to his right, on another balcony. On a planter box on the balcony. On an alien object in the planter box on the balcony.
On a 9mm Beretta in a planter box on the balcony, glowing under the spotlight, the concentrated heat piercing through the grip and into the magazine, heating it up to 100ºC. 150ºC. 200ºC.
And then it exploded.
A dozen bullets were shot at once, in every direction, chopping plants, piercing glass, splashing concrete.
The ninja clung to his rope, curled up like a caterpillar for a few seconds, before he dared open his eyes.
He felt his legs, torso, and head.
Not one.
Not a single bullet had grazed him.
He looked up.
A nutritionist pouring soy milk into Cameron Diaz’s latte approached him at 200 m/s.
* * *
—
On street level, the valet in the double-breasted overcoat, while fending off the rubberneckers from the death scene of a suicidal ficus in front of the hotel door, was lucky enough to have a front-row view of the meteorite composed of plasma TV and ninja assassin blasting through the marquee and smashing into the solid ground, sending chunks of glass and cement flying across the avenue.
Kimrean had to settle with a cheap thirty-seventh-floor seat.
“Ah, kids. Always gl
ued to the TV.”
They dropped next to Danny as he got rid of the rope, swallowing air before someone or something else curtailed his right to oxygen.
“Who…” he wheezed. “Who the fuck was that?”
“That? That was Yu Osoisubame, the Phantom Ninja,” Kimrean answered, panting as well from hauling the TV all the way to the terrace. “Turns out the yakuza did declare war on you after the shoot-out. They tried to kill off your major pieces too, but somehow they were always late.” Adrian took notice of Xander’s body inside, gore censored by the sofa blocking that angle. “Someone got to them before him.”
“No kidding. Who?”
“I don’t know. I know your men downstairs won’t get him. He had the Jaguar keys on him when he left.”
Neither of them could speak except between deep, coarse breaths. Zooey touched their cheekbone: hopefully the gash wouldn’t need stitches.
“Someone really good. And with beautiful eyes,” she added. (Checking Danny’s profile.) “Did you almost die asphyxiated, or are you happy to see me?”
Danny laughed, sputtering a little blood and saliva. “I’m very happy to see you, Zooey.”
Zooey kissed his lips and leaned her head on his shoulder. The howling of police sirens came up from the avenue.
9
“A fucking mess!” plot-summarized Deputy Chief Carlyle, banging the desk hard enough to make the diplomas on the wall shudder.
Greggs, Demoines, and A. Z. Kimrean lowered their heads and weathered the storm. Kimrean had just driven back from San Carnal, checked into headquarters, and reported on the events of the last forty-eight hours with the other two detectives removing the pictures of cartel actors from the case board as Kimrean pronounced them dead. All that while, Carlyle, leaning on a radiator and chomping on his cigar, had been hoarding energy for the expletive-rich monologue at the end of the scene. It was his big moment, and he was giving it everything he had.
“Two years we’ve been working this case! Eighteen months Mojave’s been undercover, and for what?! For one goddamned loose cannon to undo everything in one week! And you! (Pointing at Kimrean.) Is there anything you do well, apart from dropping people off buildings?”
Adrian recognized the question as rhetorical, but Zooey answered: “Well, I’m a decent pianist.”
“A fucking mess!” Carlyle rounded off, finally knocking out Greggs’s desk with the last hammer-punch.
After that, the storm subsided. Timidly the voices of fax machines and typewriters from the bullpen ebbed in again. Kimrean swept the commissioner’s spittle off the rim of their hat.
“Heartbroken though I am for the futility of your efforts, am I the only one who is kinda okay with a drug cartel being annihilated?”
“Who cares about the cartel!” Carlyle grunted in a tantrum like an earthquake aftershock.
“We need a big shot alive to help bring down the badappletroika,” Greggs explained. “If the cartel just dies out, another will take its place. Villahermosa is already in line. As long as they keep the badges and the gavels happy, nothing will change. And there’s no reason to think the killer will stop until he reaches the guy at the top, Victor Lyon himself.”
“There is one, actually,” Kimrean commented. “He’s been to Villa Leona already; he could have killed two Lyons then, and he didn’t.”
“Not a very solid point,” Carlyle judged.
“Yeah, I think so too,” said Adrian.
“My point is, we should try and salvage what we can,” Greggs resumed. “Danny, for instance. We should pull him out yesterday.”
“After the Lyon has lost his three sons, you want Danny to vanish?” Demoines objected. “You know how that will look?”
“Who cares about appearances—the Lyon will be dead in a week.”
“Suppose he isn’t. Suppose he’s spared. Then what’s left of the cartel will hunt down Danny like a dog.”
“How do we help him then?”
“Cast the net,” Kimrean said. They read the room, then continued, chin-pointing at Carlyle: “You said it, the case is coming undone. After two years coordinating, eighteen months undercover, you gotta have something. Just raid in, bring them to court, take all you can. Victor will cooperate now; he has barely anything to lose, and he wants something you can offer: protection.”
“The question is, protection from whom?” Carlyle cued.
Kimrean scowled, biting a colorless lip.
“Shit, you love to hear me say it, don’t you?” Adrian jeered. “You all want me to say it.”
They stood up, extended their arms, and delivered the crowd-pleaser:
“Well, rejoice: I. Don’t. Know.”
Then they put their hat on and walked out of the room.
A few curious heads hatching out of their cubicles followed them to the elevator and watched the doors close. Then they turned back to Greggs’s office.
The detectives remained seated, waiting for instructions. It was their way to commemorate the rare occasions when they didn’t have any better ideas.
Carlyle blew a couple consonants in smoke signals and squished his cigar in an ashtray.
“Call state, the feds, and the rest: they have sixteen hours. We’re wrapping this up first thing tomorrow.”
* * *
—
Right at that point along the plot, in other offices in other novels, different detectives sat facing their own case walls covered in pictures of their dramatis personae connected with wool thread. Police inspectors smoked, P.I.s drank and smoked. House, MD, balanced a ball on the end of his cane. In 1890s London, Sherlock Holmes lay interred on his own sofa under a toxic cloud of pipe tobacco and tried to pluck some music out of a twenty-ounce bottle of morphine after having shot his own violin up his cubital vein. Meanwhile, behind the door with the glass panel and the fresh shiny vinyl letters, A. Z. Kimrean kept wearing out the floorboards in their apartment, up and down the pool of light from the window like a Brechtian actor, chewing on hypotheses and spitting them on the floor. Every now and then, one of their hands hovered over the chessboard and prodded a piece. That was their thing.
“Who.”
They peeked through the blinds hanging loosely over the broken window. Their right hand rubbed their eyes, cheeks, and chin.
“Who?”
The left hand moved some piece on the board.
Then the whole body bent backward:
“WHOOOOO?!”
The scream faded out with the flapping of a dozen seagulls scampering away from the docks.
“Who is it?! Who the hell breaks into a drug lord’s fortress, a crowded club, and a thirty-seventh floor penthouse without planning ahead? Why does he do it, how’s he so reckless, what’s the point?!”
“Check.”
Adrian Kimrean froze in midstep.
With an audible whiplash he spun around and looked at the chessboard for the first time in hours. Maybe days. He played in his head; he didn’t need the visual aid of the pieces.
A black pawn and a knight in row one had the white king cornered.
“What the fuck is that knight doing there?”
“I promoted.”
“Pawns are promoted to queens!”
“Not necessarily. You’re allowed to promote to knight. Check.”
Adrian closed up on the game. Without too much consideration, just like someone pushing the reset button, he had his king personally execute the black pawn.
His left hand immediately lifted the black knight and replaced the white king’s rook.
“Check.”
Adrian opened his mouth really wide. He didn’t yell, but the next line came out of tune anyway.
“How did you— Did you even know what you were doing when you promoted to knight?”
“Not really. The pawn just wanted to b
e a knight.”
“Nobody wants to be a knight! Everyone promotes to queen because it’s the best piece!”
“It’s my pawn; he can be whatever he wants as long as he’s happy. And I’m winning thanks to him. Hey, this is the second time I beat you at chess!”
“You never beat me at chess before; you cheated! You took my queen with He-Man! And no one, no one in their right mind promotes to knight!”
By the end of that speech he was hunching menacingly over the board, his shadow’s spidery fingers on the wall curled into evil claws above the round wooden heads of his embarrassed troops.
Outside, seagulls were warily returning to their posts on the crane.
When he looked back up, Adrian had spotted the key phrase.
“No one in their right mind.”
Stripes of midmorning illuminated their right profile.
“That’s it. He’s all right brain,” said Adrian in awe. “No reason—only passion. It’s not business at all, it’s not about justice. He’s not seeking balance. All he wants is to hurt. But to hurt…(Mimes a gun with a hand.)…by just killing people? No, of course not! He’s hurting the father! It’s not about murder, it’s torture! He wants the father to suffer by killing his offspring!”
“Whoa—all of his offspring?” Zooey inserted. “Then we better warn Ursula before—”
The green eye summoned a frown over both.
The rest of the body attempted to move; Zooey prevented it by fastening her left foot to the floor.
“Wait. Ursula…was here?”
She focused on the door with the glass panel and the fresh shiny vinyl letters. Then her sight line shifted to the bed. Then to the guitar next to the bed. Then to the pillows, beyond her own raised hand, petrified like a wait cursor.
(In a whisper.) “What did you…”
Her green eye, fixed on the penumbra region by the bed, watched last night’s movie replay. The bed scene. The toes. The check. The door.
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