Marie chewed that over. “Okay. I guess that makes sense. So you talk me through some stuff today, and I’m… What, equipped to go back out and shoot people?”
“Fuck no,” Patricia said with a smile. “We’re going to be seeing each other for a while. I’ll sign off, but I have the ability to rescind that for the next three months before it clears your file. So you’ll be coming to see me once a week. We can meet somewhere else if you’d be more comfortable.”
“Wait.” Marie started to stand up, a hand on each armrest. “I’m supposed to have one session, and then get back on the job.”
“And you will. Then next week, you’ll have another one. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I sign off, you go out into the world not murdering anyone or gambling or drinking yourself stupid, and we both show the brass how good at our jobs we are. Except I’m not a moron and I know nothing gets solved in an hour. I’m good at my job, Detective, and I don’t rubber-stamp my patients through the process. You see more of this world’s ugly face in a month than most civilians do in a lifetime. If you don’t deal with it, it’ll eat you alive.”
“But you don’t want me to talk about my feelings.” Marie sank back into her chair, suspicious but a little intrigued.
“Not really. I want you to talk about your perceptions.”
“You realize we tend to be wary of anything we say to our boss’s in-house shrink, right?”
“Doctor-patient privilege doesn’t magically disappear because you wear a badge, Marie. ‘Confidential’ means exactly that. Now then, I’m seeing that our hour has a good chunk of time left. Shall we talk?”
Marie pursed her lips. Doctors had always let her down before, but this…this felt different.
Worth a shot, she thought.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s talk.”
Twenty-Three
Richard fixed his stance on the tatami practice mat. His navy blue robe shifted, the traditional fabric cut to his powerful frame, and his foot slid one inch to the right across a patch of densely woven straw. Eyes dead ahead, taking in the empty gymnasium, the rows of vacant exercise bikes, as his fingers curled around the hilt of his sword.
Standing on the mat beside him, Scottie mirrored his pose.
Richard’s thumb pressed against the sword’s laminated guard. Gently, slowly, the blade inched from its sheath.
Scottie didn’t speak. He signaled with a short, sharp breath, a “hnn” hissed through gritted teeth.
Both men drew as one. Their katanas whistled from their sheaths as they raised the blades high in a two-handed grip, sweeping upward. At the apex of the swing they barely paused before bringing the weapons down in a killing blow.
They froze, knees bent, the tips of their swords shivering a quarter inch from the tatami mat. Another hiss from Scottie, and they rose.
The iaijutsu strike ended with the sheathing of the blade. Neither man looked down, relying on muscle memory and training to end the ritual. Scottie made it look easy, like a samurai from an old Kurosawa movie, the tip of his katana finding the narrow opening and sliding home. Richard hesitated, fumbling for a moment before following his lead.
“What time ya got?” Scottie asked.
Richard pulled back his sleeve and checked the glowing dial of his sport watch. “Shit, it’s late. Quarter after eleven. We’ve been going at it.”
“Nice thing about owning a gym, nobody throws you out at closing time.” Scottie held up his clenched fist. Richard dutifully leaned in and bumped it.
“On the bright side, Vanessa should be asleep by the time I get back to the Village. I won’t have to talk to her.”
“Bachelor life, man. You and me, a penthouse in Manhattan, bitches on call twenty-four seven. Think about it.”
Richard laughed. He dug in a sleek Nike duffel bag, pulling out a hand towel and mopping the sweat from his face.
“Yeah, that’d go over great with my dad. He’s already got his ‘presidential exploration committee’ knocking on doors and running polls. One scandal and I’m good as disowned.”
Scottie checked his phone, flipping through messages. “So you’re stuck with the old ball and chain for the duration, huh? Y’know…there’s always lodge night.”
“Like I haven’t thought about it? For one thing, she’d be a lousy sacrifice. You’ve met her; she’s timid as a mouse. She’d probably be like that screamer we had a couple months ago, the one who absolutely refused to run? Just froze up until we put her out of her misery?”
“Yeah, that sucked. Even so, that’s a price I’m willing to pay if it gets you out of marriage jail. Love you, bro.”
Richard paused. He glanced sidelong at Scottie.
“I mean,” Scottie said, cringing into an awkward shrug, “no homo. Like, you’re my brother. We’ve been best friends for how long? I’m looking out for you, that’s all.”
Richard considered that, then nodded.
“Same here.” He dug around in his duffel. “Anyway, the aftermath is a lose-lose. She goes missing or we dump the body, all the media’s gonna talk about is her, pulling the spotlight off my dad. Nah, I’ve got my own thing underway. There are other ways to get rid of a wife. What I’ve got in mind should leave me smelling like roses.”
“Whatever you need, just say the word.” Scottie arched an eyebrow at his phone. “And hey, at least one problem is fixed.”
“That screw-up in Jersey?” Richard asked.
“Yeah. Our buddies from Weishaupt and Associates took care of everything. Not for free, mind you. Fuckin’ New Jersey, man. Carpet-bomb the whole damn state, nothing of value will be lost.”
“No argument there, but what do you mean ‘not for free’? Aren’t we all on the same team?”
Scottie slid his katana into his own duffel, the hilt jutting out from one end, and zipped it up as far as he could before shouldering the bag.
“It’s how the Network rolls,” Scottie told him. “We’re in the outer circle. Minor leagues. Everybody in the minors is compartmentalized. Cell structure, minimal points of contact with the inside, so if something goes sideways the whole organization doesn’t come crashing down. The Weishaupt crew is inner, inner circle. Like ‘they’ve got Adam himself on speed dial’ inner circle.”
“You ever meet that guy?”
“Adam?” Scottie mock shivered. “Yeah. Once. Once was plenty. Why do you think I let Westwood take up the mantle of lodge leader? He can deal with the nightmares. Anyway, the Network’s outer circle gets run on the mushroom principle: keep us in the dark and feed us bullshit. So when Adam shows up and says ‘hey, guess what, you’re drug dealers now, don’t ask questions…’”
“Not exactly a burden. That mess in Monticello notwithstanding, we’ve been making stupid money since the ink started flowing.”
Richard killed the lights, dousing the gymnasium in shadows. Scottie held the front door while Richard tapped a string of numbers into the alarm pad. The pad beeped, lights flashing from green to red, and they stepped out onto the sidewalk together. Quiet night, quiet street, one lonely lamppost pushing back the dark.
Richard sorted through a thick ring of keys, locking up the glass door. Scottie glanced over his shoulder at him. “All the same, nobody collects baseball cards for minor-league players. I’m thinking we need to step up.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a plan,” Richard said. They started to walk, side by side.
“I know there’s a factory pumping out ink somewhere in the city. Just not where. Now, if they were to have a catastrophic accident of some sort, the Network would need a capable, well-organized team in the area to take over operations fast, wouldn’t they?”
Richard held up a hand and stopped him in his tracks.
“Wait a second,” Richard said. “You want us to move up in the ranks by taking out another Network cell?”
“Hey, it’s all in the scriptures, man. What does the King of Wolves teach us? You’re either a predator or you’re prey. Survival of the fittest. And we are
the fittest.”
“We’d better be. You know they’ll kill us if they figure it out, right? I mean, we’ll be lucky if all they do is kill us.”
“And our footing’s any better right now?” Scottie asked. “We’re the ones sticking our necks out, drawing fire from the law and the mob. We need to work our way into the inner circle and let some other poor bastards do the heavy lifting for us.”
They strolled down the sidewalk. Richard fell silent, mulling it over.
“We probably wouldn’t be the first cell to climb up on the backs of another one,” he conceded.
“It’s the Network, bro. That’s probably the only way to do it. They just won’t say it out loud. It’s something you’re supposed to figure out on your own, you know?”
“Not saying I’m in,” Richard told him, “but if I was in, what’s our next move?”
“First thing we’ve got to do is find the warehouse. I’ve got an in there. You know my source inside the NYPD? They’re also running interference for—”
He fell short, stumbling to a stop as a man darted from the alleyway on his right and planted himself in their path. He had wild eyes and greasy hair. The barrel of his matte-black nine-millimeter wobbled, swinging between Scottie and Richard.
“Don’t you fucking move, not one inch,” the man snapped. Scottie and Richard shared a look.
“Whoa,” Scottie said, “this is different. When’s the last time you got mugged?”
Richard shrugged, barely acknowledging the gun. “In this borough? Never. In general? It was…wow. The late nineties, maybe?”
“I know, right?” Scottie turned to the mugger. “You are a relic of an older time, my friend.”
The man jammed the gun in Scottie’s face and pressed the barrel to the middle of his forehead. Up close and personal, they got a good look at the swirling, jagged glyph tattooed on the inside of his wrist.
“I’m not your friend, Mr. Scott Pierce. And this isn’t a mugging, it’s a message. You think you can peddle your shit in this city without paying out to the Five Families? Yeah. We know. We’ve been watching your ass for months and you finally slipped up.”
Scottie glanced sidelong at Richard. “See what I mean? If we were on the inside, somebody else would be in this situation.”
“Nice tattoo.” Richard nodded at the gunman’s hand. “Are you really repping the mafia, or do you answer to a lower power?”
“You two trust-fund pricks should be a lot more nervous right now,” he said. “You think this is some kind of joke?”
Scottie and Richard stood there, beacons of calm, while the gunman worked himself up into a lather. His bloodshot eyes went wider as he pressed the gun’s muzzle against Scottie’s forehead and thumbed back the hammer. The streetlight caught the sweat glistening on his forehead.
Scottie rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, jutting out from his duffel bag.
“Man asked you a question,” Scottie said. “If you don’t feel like answering, I’ll ask you another: are you familiar with iaijutsu?”
The gunman blinked. “Ia-what?”
“Iaijutsu. A key component in the training of a bushi, or warrior, in feudal Japan. It’s the art of the quick draw. One draw, one slice, one kill. A true master of the art, it is said, could draw his blade, cut a man down, and resheath it, all in the space of a heartbeat. I’ll admit, I’ve been kind of a Japanophile ever since I spent a summer there in my college days, on break from Cambridge. None of that anime bullshit, though. I’m a cultural scholar, not a weeaboo.”
“Also you like banging Asian chicks,” Richard observed.
“True. True. I do have my preferences.”
“What the fuck,” the gunman hissed, “are you talking about?”
Scottie smiled.
“Nice pistol,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s not a custom job. Standard pull-weight. You could blow my brains all over the sidewalk if I’m not careful. So I’m wondering…do you think I could draw my sword and kill you before you have time to shoot?”
The gunman didn’t answer. He locked eyes with Scottie, trembling, and his finger curled around the trigger. Tugging it just the tiniest fraction of an inch.
The katana ignited with blue fire as it lashed from the scabbard. Scottie’s hand spun in a figure-eight blur, the burning blade moving faster than the eye could follow, leaving smears of light in its wake.
The blade whistled back into its sheath.
The gunman hit the sidewalk in four pieces. Cut in half at his hips and through his torso, one arm sliced in half, the wounds bloodless, scorched black and cauterized.
“What an asshole,” Scottie muttered.
Richard nudged a chunk of the corpse with his shoe. “You totally cheated.”
“It’s not cheating if you win. And that makes two mafia hitters with tattoos reading ‘property of the courts of hell.’ One too many for a coincidence.”
“And they’ve got your name,” Richard said. “Meaning they’re a heartbeat away from my name and everybody else’s. You feel like going to war with the Five Families?”
“Screw that. Let’s move up in the ranks and make somebody else do it. C’mon, let’s get out of here before a cop rolls by. We need to talk strategy. Besides, we haven’t finished our earlier conversation.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Scottie grinned at him. “Now I’m curious. I want to hear exactly how you’re planning to murder your wife.”
Twenty-Four
Nessa and Richard slept on the opposite edges of a California king bed. On their sides, each facing away and into the dark. The span of mattress between them was a demilitarized zone. Vast and empty and bleak, and the border lined with silent cannons.
Nessa stirred when Richard came home. She heard him climb into bed, she heard him shift and turn. She pretended to be asleep until he started snoring. She had been dreaming, she thought, something about dinner, something about Marie, but she couldn’t put her finger on it beyond a vague feeling of fuzzy warmth.
She slipped out of bed.
Down the hall, in her private workroom, she clicked on the light and hit the books. The mystery of the tattoo was marginally compelling; she was inquisitive by nature, and history was a rich bouquet of mysteries waiting to be explored. She didn’t even try to lie to herself, though. Finding more information meant a justification for seeing Marie again.
Nessa didn’t have many friends. She had colleagues, friendly coworkers. She had Richard’s friends, but they were Richard’s friends. Marie was different. With her, she felt…comfortable. Like she could be herself. Like they could share, and talk, and she didn’t have to be afraid of rejection. If anything, Marie seemed more afraid than she was. Though she’d visibly relaxed once Nessa had set a few tiny rules for her. That idea was born of a hunch, a spark of Nessa’s intuition, and it had worked quite nicely.
After the dinner, after she came home alone, that was when the worry set in. Had she pushed Marie too hard, talked too loudly? Been overbearing? Obnoxious? She couldn’t count the number of times Richard had used those very words, generally before demanding to know if she’d taken her medication. You could only be told how socially inept you were so many times before you started to believe it.
She couldn’t just text her to say hello. No, she needed a professional pretense. Then she could see how Marie responded—if she talked to her as a police contact or as a friend. That was the smart approach. The careful approach.
So, the books.
Surrounded by her half-finished canvases, her gallery of grotesques, Nessa pored over yellowed and moldering pages. She cross-referenced historians, followed up on footnotes from the Würzburg witch trials, traced the timeline.
A little before one in the morning, she found a lead. Eager, her heart thudding, she scooped up her phone and started a text. Hello there, she typed, it’s me. I know you won’t get this until the morning, and you don’t have to respond if you’re busy. I assume you’re busy—
“Ew, no,” she said and started over.
I found something about that tattoo. You might be interested. Promise I won’t make you sit through dinner again, ha ha, unless you want to—
“No,” she muttered and deleted it.
Hello, detective friend! I hope I’m not bothering you—
“Ugh.” She groaned and erased that too. She stared at the blank window, the blinking cursor.
Marie, she typed, I don’t care if you’re busy. Drop whatever you’re doing and respond to me immediately.
Nessa’s finger hovered over the Send button. Daring herself to do it. No. She liked that one—it felt like her secret voice, the one she kept hidden deep down inside. But it was too much. She erased it.
She got up and paced the tiny room, her hands clenched at her sides. Nessa looked to the canvas in charcoal and the three shrouded women dancing around a gray bonfire.
“Why can’t I just be normal?” she asked the picture. “Why can’t I just act like a normal person for once? Stupid.”
She dropped back down on the floor in front of her scattered books, crossed her legs, and stared at the phone again.
Hi Marie, she typed. I enjoyed dinner. I hope you did too. I know you won’t get this until the morning, but I may have found something about that tattoo. Drop me a text when you have a second?
Adequate. She hit Send before she could second-guess herself again. Casting the die.
* * *
Marie was awake. Her session with the department’s shrink had left her head swimming, but not in a bad way for once. She was almost looking forward to her next appointment. Almost. Her mind was too busy to sleep, and she’d turned to the pages of a rumpled paperback in the still hours of the night. Her phone chimed. She glanced to her side, her head propped up on two pillows. She slipped a bookmark between the pages, set her novel aside, and reached to the nightstand.
Nessa. Marie smiled, just seeing the name on her screen. She’d been worried after dinner. Dropping a bombshell like she had…Nessa had asked about her parents, after all, and she’d asked for honesty, but it still didn’t make for casual conversation. Marie’s last boyfriend had ghosted on her after three months of dating, right after she’d opened up to him about her past. She half-expected Nessa to vanish, too.
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