Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  “And here is where I ask something truly difficult of you,” the man said, and he extended his open palm to Konstantine. Konstantine had not held the man’s hand since he was ten and Padre Leo had invited him into the fold in exchange for his mother’s immunity and protection.

  Konstantine could only look at the open palm.

  Padre Leo smiled. “Indulge a silly old man.”

  Konstantine took his hand.

  “Be a Martinelli,” Leo said, and when Konstantine tried to jerk his hand away as if burned, Leo clamped down on it. Surprising power pulsed through the old man’s grip as if Death itself lent him his indomitable strength. “You have rejected your father’s name, but I ask you to embrace it now.”

  “You ask too much,” Konstantine said, yanking the way an animal might jerk if caught in a trap, ready to rip off its own paw to be free.

  Leo did not let go. “The only flaw the Ravengers bear is their youth. They wait for us to be foolish in the ways young ones always are. We are democrats, not aristocrats. New money, not old. But you can bridge that gap, Konstantine, with the Martinelli name alone.”

  Be a Martinelli. But he could never. How could he bear the name of a man he despised?

  “I know you hold no love in your heart for your father, but others do. And I have heard the loyalists are desperate for any link to the family they’ve lost. With Angelo’s death, you are the last. Use it. For all they know, he groomed you himself. A bastard son is still a son. Be a Ravenger, my boy, but also be a Martinelli. There is no one to oppose you! And taking up the mantel of an old, distinguished line will offer opportunities for expansion and unification. I am sure of it.”

  Angelo’s death. He had not heard. So it was done then. She had her revenge. Good.

  “No one will oppose you,” Padre Leo said as if trying to read his silence. Konstantine knew he was wrong, but he let the man hold his arm and make his demands.

  “Power comes with benefits,” Padre said, eyeing Konstantine in his stillness, measuring his silence. “With my money and your father’s name, you could have whatever you desire. Is there nothing you can think of having for yourself?”

  Yes.

  He wanted her. The girl who’d appeared one night, curled in his bed like a kitten by a fire.

  With Padre Leo’s resources, he could find her. As a Martinelli, she might find him.

  6

  Lou bolted upright in her bed, head throbbing with adrenaline. She had the gun pointed without consciously choosing a target.

  “You’ve never been a morning person,” Aunt Lucy said, closing the closet door behind her and stepping into the studio apartment. “But this is a tad extreme.”

  Her aunt stood by the closet with two take-out cups in hand. A long skirt rubbed against her calves and the tops of her sandals. Jesus sandals Lou called them. Like Lucy should be trudging across the desert preaching love and forgiveness to anyone who would listen.

  Lou lowered the gun to the soft coverlet draped across her legs.

  “Where have you been?” Lucy shifted her weight to one hip. “It’s been hard to track you down.”

  In the three weeks since killing Angelo, she’d been restless. She’d hardly slept. Hardly ate. A pervasive feeling of loss surrounded her, like she’d forgotten something and couldn’t stop searching for it.

  But everywhere she searched, she only found violence.

  Last night she’d ended up in a dive bar in West Texas, beating the shit out of six bikers in a parking lot. She’d only wanted one of them—Kenny Soren. But when his friend grabbed her ass, she’d broken his wrist instantly. Then introductions were made by all.

  She looked down at the dark purple and rose colored bruises across her knuckles. A marble-sized pocket of fluid rest above her second knuckle. She’d obviously busted a vein.

  Lucy’s breath hitched, and her eyes slid away. “You need ibuprofen.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Here,” Lucy said and gave Lou one of the Styrofoam cups. When Lou reached to accept it, the aches and pains from last night made themselves known. She’d done something to her shoulder. It screamed when the arm extended. It was probably the baseball bat that’d come down on her shoulder blade. She raised her arm overhead, rotated it until the tension eased. Then her neck cramped.

  “You need to do bhujangasana,” her aunt said. She put her own coffee cup on the counter and went into the kitchen, which was really still the living room, and the bedroom given the studio design. Drawers opened and closed loudly. Ice rustled in the freezer. Then Lucy reappeared with an ice pack wrapped in a dishcloth.

  Lou accepted the ice pack. Her aunt’s cheeks were flushed, and her jaw worked furiously. And if Lou wasn’t mistaken, a hint of wetness glistened near her temples, as if she’d quickly scrubbed at her eyes.

  They wouldn’t talk about Lou’s injuries. Lucy wouldn’t ask how she got them, no matter how much she might want to. Lucy had set this policy herself and the fact that she’d taken her tears to the other room was proof this rule had not changed.

  Lou’s stomach turned. “Bhujangasana. Is that what the kids are calling it?”

  She swung her legs out of the covers and put her bare feet on the cool wood floor. She let her hand rest between her thigh and the ice pack as she drank the coffee using her free hand.

  “It’s yoga,” Lucy said, her voice strong again. “Cobra pose.”

  Lucy laid on the floor in demonstration, belly down, and pushed away from the floor with her forearms. “It opens up your chest and shoulders and feels so good.”

  Yoga. Of course.

  Lou had no idea why she thought her aunt would even suggest drugs for her aching body. As a child, when Lou got migraines, her aunt would boil her tea rather than fill her prescription for Sumatriptan. Lou would be an inch from a brain bleed, and Lucy would hand her a steaming cup much like the one she held now and say some shit like all the love and none of the side effects.

  “Or!” Lucy said, her eyes widening and lips breaking into an ah ha grin. “You could do Thunderbolt, Vajrasana.” She rose into a lunge, arms out in front of her.

  Lou tuned out the woman doing yoga in her periphery and lifted the cup to her nose. She inhaled. The scent of roasted coffee shifted the whole world into focus. The harsh sunlight softened to a warm glow. Her aches seemed to relax with the rest of her body. She was wondering if this was how cocaine addicts felt after their first line of the day.

  “Le Bobillot?”

  “It’s still there,” Aunt Lucy said, her face smashed into the wood floor as she held her next pose. “As charming as ever, though I see no one is adhering to the smoking ban. Gah.”

  Sunlight streamed through the large windows and warmed the back of Lou’s neck. She sipped her coffee and pictured the Paris café in her mind. A corner building across from a boulangerie. Round tables were evenly spaced in a row on each side of the door, so if a patron so wished, they could drink their coffee while watching the 13th arrondissement buzz around them. Across the way, an ancient church, beastly the way only churches in the Old World could be, rang gigantic bells on the hour.

  A month after her parents had died, Aunt Lucy had brought her to this café. Bought her a baguette from the boulangerie across the street. She drank espresso from the tiniest cup she’d ever seen and nibbled her warm loaf. It was the first happy memory she’d had since her father died.

  Lou stood, leaving the warmed ice pack on the bed and stretched her arms overhead. She was careful not to dump coffee on herself and then padded over to the window.

  Aunt Lucy continued to prattle off yoga poses behind her, building her own flow. It was hard for the woman to stop once she began. Besides, yoga always calmed her aunt. The tension that had erupted between them at the sight of Lou’s injuries had diminished, like a mist slowly dissipating from the room.

  Lou kept her eyes on the window, on the pool glistening two stories below. The sparkling water surrounded a lush garden with white and pink roses t
wining the fence. Petunias in patio planters and a creeping morning glory reached for the No Lifeguard On Duty sign.

  Stretching out beyond the pool and its walled garden was the St. Louis skyline. The arch cut the sky with a delicate whoosh. The river coursed behind it, shimmering like melted silver. A boat with a large red wheel churning at one end cut through the waters. People as small as ants roamed the boardwalk.

  This was the way with Lou and her aunt. Together, perhaps even occupying the same space, yet with an undeniable distance. Sure, each tried to cross the barriers to the other’s side, out of love or respect, yet never quite breaking the borders of their own worlds.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Aunt Lucy asked. She was on her knees, looking up at her. The yoga flow had ended, and Lou’s coffee was nearly gone.

  Lou thought of Jimmy Castle.

  She’d been in Texas looking for names. Names of anyone associated with the Martinelli crew. Pimps. Drug pushers. Traffickers. She’d weed out all the rats who’d served him, starting with the worst. Before she put a bullet in Kenny Soren, he’d blabbed about Jimmy Castle, a dealer in Dallas, an old-time peddler who still carried the Martinelli torch.

  Lou intended to pay Mr. Castle a visit tonight.

  “I’m busy.” Lou kept her eyes on the St. Louis skyline, on the cars speeding from one end of the bridge to the other. A hand clamped down on her shoulder and turned her around.

  “With what?” Lucy demanded. Her blue eyes shimmered with the threat of tears. “They’re all dead.”

  Lou’s skin iced and she put the empty Styrofoam cup on a cinder block serving as a bedside table. “How would you know? Is there some Martinelli bulletin board I don’t know about?” She forced a smile. She was aiming for joviality, but came up short.

  Lucy’s lip trembled. “Your father gave you to me—”

  Like a goddamn coffeemaker, Lou thought bitterly. She stared at the callus on the side of her thumb.

  “—because he wanted me to keep you safe. He wanted you to live, and you’re trying your damnedest to get yourself killed!”

  They’d begun with the usual cold silence and now the argument. Lou’s shoulders relaxed as the conversation turned familiar. She was on solid ground again.

  Her aunt drew a breath, seemed to draw on some inner reserve and stilled herself. “I know you can’t stop cold turkey.”

  Lou snorted. “As if I’m an addict.”

  Lou thought it was her one good quality. She’d never fallen prey to drugs or alcohol, no matter how deep she went into the underbelly of the world. Lou was her father’s daughter in that respect. She could walk beside the derelict without succumbing to the temptations herself.

  “Aren’t you?” Lucy spat. “Normal people have jobs and friends. Relationships. You’re too self-serving for that.”

  Lou flinched as if slapped.

  Lucy grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

  “Self-serving,” Lou repeated. Self-serving was her least favorite word in the world. That’s what the papers and media had called Jack Thorne. Self-serving. They claimed he’d forgotten his purpose. Forgotten his duty as a public servant. He’d turned self-serving in a quest for more money. More power. And this greed had gotten him killed. “Like my father.”

  “Those were lies,” Lucy said. Tears broke the surface and spilled over her aunt’s cheeks. “Your dad was a good man.”

  Lou turned toward the window so she wouldn’t have to see those tears. She didn’t overlook the fact Lucy was professing Jack’s innocence, not hers.

  And her aunt was wasting her breath. Lou didn’t believe the slander printed on every front page in June of 2003, yet it still stung to hear even the suggestion Jack Thorne had been self-serving. Her mother? Without question. Lou loved her mother, but Courtney had been a cold and selfish woman. Every inconvenience was taken personally. Every mistake a personal insult.

  But not her father.

  “I’m at my wit’s end. Every night you go out, you hunt down some criminal and—”

  Lou’s headache worsened the harder she worked her jaw. She turned when Lucy appeared beside her at the window.

  Lucy reached up and brushed the hair out of Lou’s face. “I want you to have a life.”

  “Because your life is full of people,” Lou said, knowing it would cut her.

  Lucy’s hand fell away. For a moment, she looked unsure what to do with it. Then she settled for putting it on her hip. “I want more for you. I want you to be happy.”

  “That’s the thing about happiness. It’s different for everyone. What makes the executioner happy? You need to understand that’s what I am. You preach acceptance. So accept it.”

  Her aunt reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. Lou couldn’t count on all ten fingers and toes how many times she’d seen her aunt do this. Here it comes, she thought. All the patience is gone, and we’ll jump right to the demands now.

  Lucy took a breath. “Your father had a friend, Robert King. He’s a private detective in New Orleans. He’s offered you a job. He thinks your skills would be useful for his current investigation.”

  Lou blinked. The conversation had gone in a direction she hadn’t expected. She searched for purchase, hoping to pull herself upright again. But her aunt charged on.

  “He’s an old friend. And he likes to bend the rules like you do. I think you’ll like him.”

  “I don’t like anyone.”

  “He can be trusted.”

  “No one can be trusted.”

  Lucy pinched her nose again harder. “He’s known about me and what I can do for sixteen years. He hasn’t told anyone. I trust him.”

  And now he knows about me.

  “Everyone needs allies, Lou. Even you,” Lucy said, and it was her own father’s words from long ago.

  Lou understood what allies were. A big fat liability.

  “He wants to meet at the Café du Monde, tonight at eight o’clock. Please be there.”

  Lucy marched toward the closet and stepped inside. Lou thought she was alone until her aunt reappeared and hurled a bottle of ibuprofen at her.

  It hit Lou square in the chest before she caught it.

  “And don’t shoot him,” Lucy commanded, before disappearing again.

  Sunset was at 8 o’clock in New Orleans. She wouldn’t show up to the café before 8:15. Maybe he wouldn’t wait, and this whole situation would dissolve like ice in water.

  Fine. She would indulge her aunt if only to buy her a month or more of peace before the nagging resumed. And by then, she’d have followed the Castle trail to new monsters in the dark.

  A Martinelli was best. They slaked her hunger better than any other kill. And she had to accept the possibility she would never know peace, no matter how many men she bled dry.

  But she had to start somewhere, and there were other demons in the world worth hunting.

  7

  King tore open three sugar packets and dumped them into a large cup labeled Café du Monde in curvy black letters. Beneath the words was a cartoon image of the café where he currently sat, a sienna-colored building with green awning and chairs.

  Coffee and beignets, it promised.

  And it delivered, as King had a generous portion of both spread before him on the table.

  He showed up thirty minutes early. Not because it was his favorite café in New Orleans, but because he wanted time to look at his file again, and to think about what he might say to Lou.

  Lucy hinted that while Lou agreed to come, she wasn’t sold on the idea. It would be up to King to sell it to her. He had to admit, if only to himself, he wanted the girl’s help. If he intended to follow through with the Venetti case, her ability would be an asset. He could also use the gun power and someone to watch his back. Getting around without drawing attention would be easier, provided the girl was as discreet as Lucy.

  Lucy claimed Lou had Jack’s sensibilities, his mind. What would King say to Jack to win him over? He tried to imagine a bloodthirsty Jack Thorne a
nd what words could be spoken like an incantation to bring him back from the dark side.

  Yet in practice, a conversation never went the way King envisioned. It didn’t matter who the person was or the circumstances. People were the final variable, and he found success most often when he was willing to follow their lead.

  He’d chosen the right place, at least. It was crowded enough, with light flooding the eating area beneath the green tent. A woman could feel safe here, speaking to a man she’d never met before. It had the added bonus of coffee and deep fried donuts covered in powdered sugar. And an attentive teenager walking up and down the aisles, sweeping scrunched straw wrappers and crumpled napkins into an upright dust pan.

  Of course, King had the feeling Thorne’s kid might not be into crowds, lighted places, or deep fried confections. If she mopped up the Martinelli family the way Lucy thought she had, she probably didn’t need some overhead bulbs to make her feel safe.

  By the time King polished off the third of four beignets, he knew she wasn’t coming. The Jackson Square crowd was thinning. A human statue painted to look like stone stepped down from her crate at sunset and packed up for the night. The artists who’d laid their canvases against the iron fence, on display for the day’s passing tourists, they were packing up too. They stuffed paintings into large black sacks and picked up the blankets or jackets they’d been sitting on. King watched one man rub his half-finished cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe before tucking it behind his ear for later.

  People shuffled deeper into the quarter with thoughts of after-dinner drinks on their minds. King kept waiting even as the last of the orange faded to black, and the only lights were the artificial orbs overhead and the streetlights growing brighter as the world dimmed.

  King thought of Brasso, the way he looked the night before, sitting across from him at the high-top table. A toothpick bobbed in his mouth as he twirled a coaster on the smooth wood. His bright face had glowed in the tiki lights, and his smiles had been too quick to come and go.