Verona
Author: Jeffery Deaver
Date: 2019-08-29 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short Stories; Fiction; Mystery; Thriller; Crime; Audiobook; Mystery Thriller; Novella; Romance; Suspense
Description: When your mob families are at war, what are the risks of giving love a shot?In this explosive short story, international bestselling author Jeffery Deaver brings readers a classic tale of star-crossed lovers who defy the boundaries of enemy territory. When an underworld kingpin gets taken out, his prime turf is up for grabs. For Irish crime lord Brendon Nagle and archrival John Yung, head of a forty-man tong, it’s war. For Nagle’s son, Andrew, and Yung’s daughter, Loi, it’s love at first sight. But others are watching as their secret love unfolds. Surveilled, suspected of betrayal, and targets
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2019 by Jeffery Deaver

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle
www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

eISBN: 9781542016070

Cover design by Adil Dara

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

One

Friday, July 1

So this is how you die.

My God, my God!

Horrible . . .

He was staring at a car burning furiously in the road ahead. Black smoke swirled upward into the late-afternoon sky like a cyclone, deep-orange flames roiling below. The vehicle had swerved and crashed head on into an abutment of a bridge over a small creek.

Donald Lark, sitting in the back seat of his Escalade, leaned forward and told the driver, “Stop, stop!”

“Yessir.” Evan steered onto the shoulder and braked. He climbed out, telling his boss, “Stay here, sir.”

Lark’s pudgy hand dug for his phone in his suit jacket pocket. He retrieved the Samsung and hit nine-one-one. He gave the dispatcher the details of the accident and the location. The woman said nothing about previous reports, which suggested the occupants were dead.

She said fire and police would be there soon. Lark knew the deserted area well—this was the route to his country house. “Soon” would be at least twenty minutes.

The smoke parted momentarily and Lark was shocked to see on the rear of the burning Subaru a sticker.

MY DAUGHTER IS AN HONOR STUDENT

AT STUYVESANT MIDDLE SCHOOL.

Was the girl inside?

Please let her be home! It would be impossible for anyone to survive. The flames were gutting the interior. Fire was a particular fear for Donald Lark. He still bore the scars from the time, at age eight, when he tried to douse burning grease in a frying pan; the resulting explosion disfigured his arms and swiped his mother’s brows clean off. He was more horrified at her disfigurement than his sizzling skin.

How you die . . .

Lark rolled down the left rear window and leaned out. He debated joining Evan. Lark was in his midsixties, hardly old. But while the former teamster had once been in strapping shape, he was no longer. Muscle was now fat, and the heart temperamental.

The SUV was about thirty feet from the crash and he could feel the stinging waves of heat driving toward him on the summer breeze. His eyes and nose stung from the acrid smoke. Evan—a large man, a steady man, with a shaved head and broad shoulders—was lifting the tail of his black jacket, protecting his face as he moved closer to the conflagration.

He saw his minder slowing, squinting against the smoke. “I can’t tell!” the man shouted. “I can’t tell if anybody’s in there.”

Anybody . . .

Maybe the girl.

Or maybe someone not so innocent. Maybe tweakers high on meth, driving fast after sucking in the poisonous fumes. They’d bought the car second- or thirdhand.

Maybe young Sarah or Claire or Amy was fine.

Donald Lark, the father of two daughters and a son, blessed himself and prayed that the latter version of the accident was the truth.

Crouching, Evan moved closer yet, disappearing behind the shadow of smoke. Then a shout: “There’s nobody inside. They got out!”

Ah . . . Thank you, Lord.

Sarah, Claire, Amy . . .

Lark called, “Any sign of them nearby?”

Evan didn’t answer. The black smoke thinned, and Lark could vaguely see his driver on the road’s shoulder, bending down, reaching for something. He rose.

But . . . wait. What was this? It wasn’t Evan. This man wore a combat jacket and a black baseball cap, pulled low.

My God. A pistol with a silencer on the muzzle was in his hand.

Lark broke a thumbnail hitting the window-up button and lunged for the front seat, slamming the door lock.

But then he heard the noise he knew he would. Click.

The doors of the Escalade unlocking.

This was why the assailant had been bending down—to fetch the key fob from Evan’s pocket.

The rear passenger door was opening.

This would be another gunman.

Donald Lark sat back and fixed his eyes on the crucifix rocking gently from the rearview mirror.

Ah, but no, I was wrong. This is how you die.

Two

Tuesday, July 5

Sam’s Bar and Grille had been in the Panhandle forever.

The place had a disinfectant, Lysoly scent to it. Brendon Nagle swore he could also smell cigarette smoke, which must’ve been off-gassing from the warped wood paneling; smoking had not been allowed in any city building for years. There was a jukebox with tunes nobody wanted to listen to and some arcade spaceship game left over from the 1990s. A toddler would have found it boring.

On the wall were washed-out pictures of unfamous boxers and football players from obscure teams. Also, sturdy men with big, curly hairdos, dressed in tight shorts and tighter T-shirts, grinning at the camera. Their sculpted arms were crossed over solid chests. There was no indication of the sports they’d been involved in, if they’d been involved in sports at all.

Maybe, Nagle considered, they were ’70s gay porn stars. Sam might’ve swung that way.

He thought this was hilarious but it wasn’t a joke he shared with the trim man sitting at the table across from him: Andrew, his twenty-six-year-old son.

Or with somber, hulking Max Klempter, the other person with him. Max had a number of talents and interesting qualities. Appreciating humor, much less irony, was not among them.

Nagle said to Andrew, “We’ll be inside maybe an hour or so is all. Then collect you and head over to Evergreen.”

“Sure,” the boy said, and sipped his Stella. Nagle’s dark-haired son—who could’ve played the handsome college football star in an inspirational sports flick—was in chino slacks and a hoodie sweatshirt with a University of Texas logo on it, a longhorn steer’s long horns. There’d been a law school competition there. Moot court or something.

Nagle finished his double Crown Royal and rose. Jowly and tree-trunk-solid Max stood too, leaving his Coke seven-eighths full. He was at full height faster than Nagle and stepped to the door. He perused the street. “It’s okay.”

Nagle regarded himself in the dusky mirror behind the bar. The black suit was tight over his tall, bulky frame; he hadn’t worn it since a business partner’s untimely, and unpleasant, death three years ago. He straightened the tie, deep purple, and combed back his dark, thinning hair with a palm. Max had opted for charcoal gray.

Andrew asked his father, “You knew him well?”

Debating, briefly, what to share and what not. “Not so much. Just a business associate. I did some deals with him. Real estate.” He nearly added that the deceased had been a “stand-up guy.” But that sounded too much like a line from a bad Mafia movie and, anyway, it wasn’t true.

His son nodded, possibly wondering what the “deals” involved, and returned to the file he’d brought to review. It contained loan agreements, balance sheets, land plats, assessor’s reports and easement records, all anchored by a dense and lengthy contract for the purchase of a commercial building, not far from where they were at the moment.

The site for Lark’s memorial service was convenient.

As was his death itself. But that was a different matter.

Nagle noted Andrew was absorbed in the minutiae of the paperwork and jotting notes in the fine handwriting he’d mastered as a young boy. He was as sharp as they came. The boy—all right, young man—had taken the year off after graduating from law school, high in his class, and passing the bar. He’d decided not to get a job with a firm right away and had spent some time in LA and the Far East. He’d returned a couple of months ago and approached his father, asking if he could pick up some pocket money helping him out until he decided what field and firm he wanted to pursue.

Nagle was delighted, though of course he made absolutely certain that Andrew was involved only in the legitimate side of N & O Transportation and Storage Services.

The other part of the business? No, the young man was completely separate from that.

Nagle and Max left Sam’s and walked up the street to Hannity Brothers’ Funeral Home. It was an old place, the façade as scuffed and burnished as a fifteen-year-old car’s bodywork. But it fit right into the neighborhood. No gentrification here, nothing quaint, nothing precious, nothing hipster. Donald Lark had enough money to be buried on Mount Olympus, but the Panhandle was where he’d grown up. The PH was his turf, the PH was where he’d wanted his memorial service to be, and, for all Nagle knew, it was where he planned for his ghost to roam the streets, scaring the shit out of anybody who’d crossed him in this corporeal life.

As the two entered the building Nagle asked, “And?” The question was soft; other mourners were nearby.

Max shook his head, not understanding.

Nagle muttered, “Who. Did. It.” Impatient.

“Oh. Word is nobody local. Most likely? Some banger from the East Coast, somebody Lark shorted. I don’t know. That Latino guy from New York, the one you wanted me to—”

Nagle shut him up with a glare.

Max would know instantly he’d committed a sin; he shouldn’t’ve uttered a syllable relating to Nagle’s operation, much less a fucking hit he’d considered! The big man revealed his regret at the lapse with a faint tightening of his thin, pale lips. Within the Nagle organization even the most obscure reference to anything illegal was forbidden outside his office, which was protected by a half-million dollars’ worth of antisurveillance devices. Nagle also assumed everybody he met in person or talked to on the phone was recording him, even Max and his son. Not that they would intentionally betray him; he did believe, however, that a clever cop or FBI agent might slip a bug into Max’s pocket or Andrew’s backpack.

Was this paranoia? Obviously not. Because Brendon Nagle was still a free and wealthy man, despite ordering a dozen murders and committing hundreds of other Title 18 and state offenses.

Then the mystery of who’d been the triggerman—brilliant assassin or meth-high thug—vanished from Nagle’s thoughts. He walked into the large parlor filled with those here to mourn, or celebrate, the demise of Donald Victor Lark.

The Party of the First Part hereupon agrees to convey unto the Party of the Second Part that a certain parcel of property herein referred to as the “Parcel” no later than . . .

Blah and blah and double blah.

Andy Nagle had reviewed the documents for the sale and purchase of the building on Evergreen Avenue a dozen times and even if he wanted to, which he didn’t, he wasn’t going to read through the damn things again. He was looking to the bar.

A middle-aged barfly—a floppy white guy—had paused beside him. “She’s mine.”

“I’m sorry?” Andy asked glancing up.

“The girl? At the bar? You were looking at her. The hot one with the long black hair.”

That description probably wasn’t necessary, since she was the only person at the bar. She was proffering her driver’s license and, a moment later, receiving a glass of white wine he suspected was marginal at best.

This was, after all, Sam’s Bar and Misspelled Grille.

“What’re you asking me?”

“I saw her first. You’re not making a move, kid. She’s mine.”

Andy could smell an exotic, and repulsive, blend of liquor on his breath. He needed tooth work. Badly.

She took a minuscule sip, set the glass down and pulled her iPhone from the right back pocket of her jeans, the place where, Andy believed, females were required to stash their mobiles. The phone was extracted with some difficulty; the jeans were extremely close fitting. She tossed her long, straight black hair back over her shoulders and set to work at the task required of a person alone at a bar, especially a woman in her twenties: reading through emails, texts or Facebook posts and studiously ignoring everyone around her.

The man gave a haughty look of victory to Andy and staggered toward the bar. Andy rose and beat him there. He shot a look toward the man. Andy did not have the flint or vicious nature of his father but he was tall and strong and when he lowered his round head, topped with military-style crew-cut hair, and fixed unwavering eyes on someone, it gave them pause.

“Prick,” the older guy muttered. Then returned to his bar cave in the corner.

Andy leaned against a stool and said to the skinny bartender, “Another, please.”

The man drew a Stella, handed it to Andy with a napkin wrapped around the sweating glass.

“I could’ve handled him.” The sultry-voiced message was spoken without eyes leaving iPhone screen.

He said, “I have no doubt about that in the world.”

She glanced his way. Andy’s smile faded as he scanned her beautiful face, black eyes encircled by glasses with ocean-blue frames.

He thought: Love at first sight.

Inside the Hannitys’ funeral home, Brendon Nagle reminded himself to wear his somber face.

The dim room, painted in pale green and carpeted in hotel-room dark gray, was packed. Maybe a hundred people were present, with those who were older or more jarred by the tragedy sitting, the others—the majority—standing in clusters.

Subdued conversation. Classical music. Nagle had no idea what the tunes were. Music was more an irritant than anything to him, though he liked Christmas carols. And Camelot, The Music Man, and Les Misérables.

Nagle and Max filed past the widow and the three grown children and a half dozen clones of grandkids, and other relatives, offering the regulation words delivered in the regulation timbre.

“I’m sorry for your loss, you’re who again, yes, I heard he went quickly, a blessing, who are you again, it’s so merciful his mother passed last year, to have to bury a son, can you imagine, who are you again, yes, who are you again . . .”

“We did some business together,” Nagle would say.

“Oh.”

One man who didn’t have to ask about Nagle or his shadow was Lark’s son, the oldest of the siblings. His nickname was Pete J. When Nagle had shaken his sweaty hand a moment before, in the receiving line, the pudgy, slovenly man had blinked. Pete J was his departed father’s main lieutenant; he was more than aware of how Brendon Nagle fit into the city’s crime schematic.

Nagle and Max then joined the queue to pass by the casket, which was closed. The killer or killers had not spared ammunition. Four or five rounds to the head. Hollow points. There was only so much that the Hannity brothers could do cosmetically.

On top of the casket was a photo of Lark, beaming, taken at around age fifty, when he’d consolidated his control of the Panhandle. Nagle suspected that someone in the Lark organization had chosen this particular pic as a snub, reminding Nagle and everyone else present that it was Lark who’d won the Panhandle War.

Nagle bowed his head over the shiny box and thought, So long, prick.

“Get me a bourbon,” he snapped to Max. “Strong. Knob Creek.”

The man hesitated.

“What?”

“It’s a funeral parlor, sir. They don’t serve drinks. That’s the reception, after. Water maybe.”

“The fuck good is water?”

“Sorry, sir.”

Scoffing, Nagle and Max circulated among the mourners.

The general opinion about the murder was just as Max had heard: The hit had been ordered from out of state. Probably New York, maybe Boston. Nobody yet had a clear idea why. But motives for murder in this business came discount cheap.

Nagle was not here to learn who the killer was, though, any more than he’d come to offer sympathy to the shaken widow and her goslings. He was present for one reason only: to silently announce to Pete J and representatives from the other crews in town that he was moving on the Panhandle. Pete J would have to start thinking about a deal. Or a war. The man was not as ruthless as Lark and not as clever, which meant that despite the fact that he weighed 250 pounds and walked around with a perpetual glare on his face, he’d probably go for the deal. Nagle had already been thinking about various little-carrot, big-stick strategies. He almost felt sorry for sad-sack Pete J.

The other gangs in and around town would potentially be more troublesome. They, too, would know Pete J was a rookie in the world of organized crime and they’d have their eyes on the PH as well. As the long minutes ticked by, though, Nagle noted that no other local crews had sent representatives here to declare their intention of stripping away bits of the Panhandle like an eagle beaking dinner from a deer carcass. No one from Martin Williams’s hard-ass black crew on the East Side. From the currently leaderless MS-Seventies. From the half dozen Latino and Caribbean gangs peppering the West Side. From a nameless Vietnamese crew, relatively new to town, quiet, odd, and ruthless. Or from Sebastiano Corelli’s outfit, the sad tatters of the oldest gang in the city.

No one.

Nagle supposed he wasn’t surprised by their absence. The membership was vicious and amoral and narcissistic—the job qualifications for this line of work—but they probably lacked the manpower and balls to move on the PH.

Then Nagle noted in the doorway the man he knew with certainty would be here.

Fifty-year-old John Yung was five four in height, with enviably thick black hair, combed back with lotion. He was in a light-gray suit, white shirt and white tie. The accessory seemed curious; Nagle supposed white signified something funereal in Chinese culture.

With Yung was his Max, a minder known only by one name: spelled Ki and pronounced “key.” The unsmiling man was squat and broad. His hands were huge and Nagle imagined he was a master of various types of martial arts. Yung’s forty-man tong was nearly as powerful as Nagle’s organization. It was certainly as violent. They were competitors on every front: drugs, human trafficking, money laundering, massage parlors and street prostitution, retail-store protection. Yung controlled twenty-five square blocks north of the Panhandle, Nagle thirty blocks, south.

Yung whispered something to the widow and offered her a carefully folded handkerchief, to dry a stray tear. He then leaned up to Pete J, shaking his hand and gripping the big man’s elbow as he did so. Nagle was pleased to see that Lark’s son had looked more distressed earlier, when the two of them had shared a word or two, rather than now, with Yung.

Yung moved on to the casket. As he approached it, his eye caught Nagle’s and the small man smiled. Nagle reciprocated.

The expressions, of course, were anything but the polite courtesies they seemed. Just the opposite. They were battle flags being raised.

“Well, lookie who it is.”

Oh, hell. Not now.

“My good bud, Brendon.”

Outside the funeral parlor, Nagle and Max paused, regarded each other briefly, lips taut. Nagle turned his attention back to the newcomer.

The trim man, about forty, wore the same dark plaid suit he always wore and a pastel shirt. Today, it was yellow. He sometimes picked green or rose. Better choices. Yellow made him look sickly. You could say that a light-colored shirt was his trademark. But that suggested forethought, which would be giving Organized Crime Task Force detective Elliott White far too much credit. He might’ve been a good cop, father and husband but fashion was not his strength.

He walked with a faint limp. Nagle’s grandmother would have called it a hitch in his gitalong.

His unmarked car, muddy and scratched, sat at the curb nearby. Inside was an African American woman in a blue suit and an open-collar white shirt. Detective Violette Hayes—a name that Nagle loved—was watching closely. She was young and stocky and eager and appeared primed to call in a 10-13, though the odds of either Nagle or Max taking a swing at White, much less shooting him dead—as lovely as that thought was—were nil.

Nagle reached into his pocket. “Here you go, my friend.” He offered the slim detective a card for one of the car washes he owned. “I’m comping you. You can get that bird shit off your roof. Lot of stakeouts under trees lately?”

White ignored the outstretched hand, which angered Nagle to no end, and he put the card away.

Nagle knew this was a busting-chops call, not a legal one. Those came pre-dawn with stern shouts and loud raps and drawn guns.

A few cars away, the door of Nagle’s Lincoln Navigator opened and his driver—and second minder—stepped out. Six-foot-tall Jimmy Ebbitt weighed fifty pounds less than Max. Crowned by a shaggy haircut, Jimmy was strong and tendony as steel cable. His face was narrow to the point of being Halloween scary. Max was imposing because of his size, Jimmy because he looked like a hollow-eyed zombie who couldn’t wait to suck your blood. No, that was vampires who sucked blood. Well, couldn’t wait to do whatever zombies did.

Jimmy joined his boss and Max.

Detective White sized up the minders. “Max the Factor. And who else but Jimmy Jump Up?”

For no earthly reason, White sometimes gave people bizarre nicknames. He stepped up onto the curb, buying height. “Paying respects, were you?” He cut his eyes toward Hannity Brothers’.

“Did you, Detective?”

“To Lark? I only pay respect to people I respect.”

Which didn’t come out half as clever as he’d probably hoped.

The cop looked up and down the street. A bus went by hissing gassy exhaust. Two cars, one rattling precariously. Among Panhandle residents, vehicular life largely involved Hondas, Nissans, Kias and vans with plumbing and delivery logos on muddy, dinged-up sides. A BMW 3 Series and that bargain-basement Mercedes were the fanciest vehicles Nagle had ever seen parked here.

“We know all about it, Nagle.”

It was “Brendon” no longer. Much less “good bud.”

“About what?”

“Play dumb all you want.”

“Pretend we’re playing charades, Detective. Gimme a clue. How many words? Sounds like?”

“I know you’re going to make a play for the Panhandle.”

Nagle was good at exasperated looks. He fired one White’s way now. He noted that the man’s expression was like that of a biologist examining a bug in a jar—if that bug had been brought in on suspicion of murdering another bug.

“I’m not allowing that to happen,” White continued.

Nagle shifted from facial to manual gestures. He lifted his arms, palms up. Meaning: The fuck you talking about? “I’m happy as a clam in the land of Uncle Sam on the South Side. Why’d I want to invest in this flea-ridden ’hood? Look around you, Detective. You sure you don’t want that car wash?”

Jimmy said, “Why don’t you just fuck off, Detective?”

White smiled. “Jimmy Jack Off, what a withering retort! I’m recovering from the trauma best I can.” He turned back to Nagle. “Answering your question—the PH, not the car wash—because you’re a greedy prick who wants to exploit and terrorize the poor folks here. You’re already making a move on the PH. And I will not have any more bodies in my precinct. The stats’re already shitty, thanks to you, Lark, and Yung.”

Nagle said, “My grandmother had an expression.”

“Did she now?” White offered an amused glance at the very large Max, who had stood motionless, arms crossed, this entire time.

“Yeah. Her expression for talking was ‘having a chin wag.’”

“Chin wag. Like a dog’s tail wags. That’s funny.”

“And I’m not inclined to have one with you now. So why don’t you skulk off somewhere.”

“Skulk,” the detective mused. “That’s good too. I don’t know which one I like better. Skulk or chin wag.” The half smile morphed into a glare.

“I got a meeting, Detective. All I can say.”

“You will make a mistake someday, Nagle. And I will be there when it happens.”

White turned and strode back to the car. Violette Hayes turned the key and the engine snapped to life. They drove past Nagle and his associates, without glancing toward them.

“Prick,” Jimmy muttered. He and Max returned to the SUV, and Nagle continued up the street to Sam’s to collect Andrew. He walked inside and stopped. He had to laugh.

In the hour that the father had been at the funeral, the son had been busy.

The young man was sitting at the bar talking with a woman wearing tight jeans and a white tee. Their backs were to him but he was impressed with her figure and dark hair, long and silky.

Nagle wondered what she was like. Andrew was a handsome kid, a charmer who’d escaped his father’s bad-temper genes. He’d dated plenty: pretty girls who smelled of expensive perfume, who spent hours on their makeup and clothes and hair, and who—at least when Nagle was around—didn’t say “fuck” or “asshole.” They came from good families, did well in school and were on professional tracks. But they didn’t last long in Andrew’s life. For all the packaging, they were eerily vacant.

The woman’s hand went to Andrew’s arm and she leaned close to whisper something. Andrew laughed and whispered something back.

Nagle noted that his son had closed the folder containing the Evergreen Avenue property purchase documents. Good. Professional.

Andrew glanced toward the door and saw his father. He smiled his way, paid the check. He and the girl did the trading-numbers thing—with phones, of course, not pieces of paper like in Nagle’s day. Andrew hesitated for a moment and then kissed her, fast, on the cheek. He stepped away from the bar, and the girl turned, her eyes following him.

Nagle froze. The young woman was John Yung’s daughter.

Nagle and Andrew were in the back of the Navigator, en route to the building on Evergreen.

“Do you know who that was?” Nagle asked softly.

“At Sam’s?”

“Sam’s. Yeah. The girl.”

“Loi.”

“Loi? That’s a name?”

“Chinese for ‘Thunder.’ She’s pretty, don’t you think?”

Silence.

“What is it?”

Max in the front passenger seat—on the phone—and Jimmy, driving, ignored what was going on in the back. Per the hired-help rules, they remained invisible.

Nagle told him who her father was and at this news Jimmy broke the regs. His head swiveled briefly behind him. Nagle didn’t know for sure if he actually said, “Oh, shit,” but he might have.

Andrew barked a laugh. “Yung, that Yung. Your . . . competitor?”

Nagle nearly chuckled at the young man’s knowing euphemism. He had once thought he might bring his son into the business—the crime side, that is. He’d even used Andrew on a job when he was ten; the unwitting kid had no clue he was a participant. But not long after that, Nagle realized that if it ever came to a trial, the DA would go after his family, and there was a weakness in his son. He’d cave under interrogation. The less Andrew knew, the better for Nagle. He’d tried hard to keep Martha, rest her soul, and their son separate from the operation.

But, of course, Andrew found out. No clever deductions were required. When he was thirteen, a team of burly cops from the Organized Crime Task Force came a-knocking. Andrew’s room was among the first searched.

The smart and shrewd young man caught on immediately to what his father was now suggesting. “She wasn’t spying on me.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

He had been.

“She didn’t even know who I was. I never told her my last name.”

But Loi could easily have known who he was. She could have followed him from the Nagle house, or maybe waited near the funeral home to snag him. Andrew telling her his name was irrelevant. Women could be just as duplicitous and dangerous as any man in this business; Nagle had ordered two hits on them—wives of mob bosses who’d taken over their husband’s crews.

“I picked her up. She walked in, ordered a wine and sat down at the bar. I came up with some stupid line and went over to her. We hit it off. She said her father had business up the street and she was supposed to wait there for him. They were going out for lunch with her mother later.”

Business up the street . . .

“She didn’t ask about me?”

“Why would she?”

Nagle lowered his head, his brows furrowed. The first-stage-of-anger look.

“No.”

A moment later: “Andrew, look. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

This was true. Physical risk from Yung and that side-of-beef minder, Ki. But pain and heartache too—if, God forbid, something, well, tragic, happened to Yung and any family members who happened to be with him at the time, Loi among them.

A shame but accidents did happen.

The young man stiffened. “You don’t want complications.”

“Just not now. It’s a . . . sensitive time.”

“I’m not sixteen, Dad.”

“No, you’re not. You’re old enough to know what’s wise and what isn’t. And seeing her right now isn’t wise.”

“Right now? So, what? A week, a month?” There was an edge to the young man’s voice. Well, he was a grade A, certified lawyer.

And the son of a crime boss.

Nagle dropped a lid on his own temper. “A month, sure.” Enough time to consolidate power in the PH.

“She’ll be back at college by then.”

“Where?”

“She’s in grad school at MIT.”

“I’ll buy you plane tickets to . . . wherever the hell it is.”

“Boston.”

“Boston.”

Andrew opened the file and was looking over the notes he’d jotted on the real estate deal for the Evergreen property. He surfaced a moment later. “All right.”

“That’saboy.” An expression that dated back to his son’s youth. Anytime Andy did something good—cleaned his room, made his bed, did his homework, fought a bully—he was rewarded with “That’saboy.”

Andrew was frowning.

Shit. Had the young man changed his mind?

His son shook his head and tapped a document. “Railroad easement. Dates to 1872. We can get an exception, but P and Z doesn’t meet again until September.”

“That’s who she was talking to in the bar? Brendon Nagle’s son?”

John Yung, still in his funeral suit, minus the white tie, was standing in the study of his suburban home, a truly nice space. Comforting and not irritatingly luxurious. The warm gray carpet and off-white textured wallpaper kept the room muffled, and the decorations were Buddhist simple. The only piece of art—a reproduction—was a sculpture of Autumn Dew, the famed warhorse of Emperor Taizong’s. It dominated one wall.

Presently, Yung’s minder, Ki, dominated the opposite. The man, his arms at his side, was standing next to his boss. Yung was staring out the window at his neatly landscaped backyard, trimmed to perfection. It was a beautiful view. Ki, Yung had learned, had no interest in aesthetics.

“I talked to the bartender. He told me things.” When Ki talked to someone, he always got a response. “He picked Loi up. She was at the bar, having a wine.”

“In the daytime?” he snapped. “Go on.”

“The Nagle kid was working on some documents. They looked like business papers. Nagle and Max were with him just before they left for the funeral.”

“Did he seem to know who she was? The kid?”

“The bartender said he didn’t hear them mention last names. Just Andy and Loi.”

“What did they talk about?”

“Date things, he said. Nothing about business.”

Yung boiled with rage. His daughter with the son of Brendon Nagle! How had this happened? Yung had a tendency to assign blame instantly when something went amiss. Where could he now assess fault that his daughter and Nagle’s son had intersected? Donald Lark was in a way to blame for getting himself killed. Yung’s wife, too, for raising a troublesome and rebellious daughter, who would go into such a disgusting excuse for a bar on her own. And the wife could be doubly blamed for foolishly insisting he stop spanking the girl when she hit thirteen.

Yung finally, though, focused the fault where he wanted it to be all along: on Brendon Nagle.

Gazing at the backyard: the koi pond, the hardscape, the sand garden, the topiary.

After the funeral, when he, his wife, and daughter had had a meal at Le Residence, Yung had glanced several times disapprovingly at Loi’s makeup and close-fitting jeans and top. She didn’t appear to notice the criticism. Or more likely did, but ignored her father. He gave up glaring and absently listened to her rambling on about a man she’d met at Sam’s. He’d been so nice, so funny, so handsome. So polite.

He’d texted Ki to return to the bar and interrogate the bartender. Then Yung had turned back to Loi and asked the next logical question. “Is he Chinese?”

“Oh, Father. Seriously?” The girl’s face had flooded with exasperation.

Where was the willow switch when you needed it?

Ki had returned to Yung’s home ten minutes ago with his report.

Yung continued his own interrogation. “Did the boy seem overly . . . enamored of her?” he asked, though this question would be out of Ki’s realm. Yung had never known him to be involved with a woman, and could not even picture it. Like a lawyer in court, he rephrased: “What did they say, talk about?”

“Music, TV shows, colleges. He went to law school and is taking time off before he goes to work.”

“Lawyer? Criminal?”

My God, was the boy on track to become a prosecutor?

“No. Corporate and real estate.”

Yung turned from the window. “Did the boy say anything about his father?”

A pause. “I didn’t ask. I can go back.”

Yung was irritated. Ki should have thought of that. “No, never mind. Did he kiss her?”

“Yes. But just on the cheek.”

“Did she hesitate? Or did she want him to? You didn’t ask that either.”

“No, sir. I’m sorry.” Ki remained motionless and didn’t sound the least bit sorry. He had been with Yung for seven years and Yung still didn’t know if that was his first or last or only name. He was strong and solid and knew six or seven forms of martial arts. Despite, or perhaps because of, his ability to kill virtually any human being he could get close to, Ki had an astonishing serenity about him. He walked about surrounded by the rosy aura of a spiritual leader.

Yung considered the situation. Had Andy in fact known exactly whom he was picking up—to learn about Yung and feed the information to Nagle? It made sense. And the thought infuriated him.

He was enraged, too, at the idea that the son of a crude, ignorant teamster wanted to make his daughter a conquest.

And he wasn’t even Chinese.

Yung happened to glance at a hanging picture of himself, his wife, and Loi when the girl was ten.

The days when she was obedient.

He said to Ki, “You were going to handle LeBron Stiles?”

“When he’s back from Miami. Yessir.”

Stiles. The big, loud, sunglasses-clad, gold-decked gangsta rolled with the Ten Treys. He’d shot one of Yung’s men, a territorial dispute in a neighborhood that bordered the Panhandle.

“Find somebody else. You stay on my daughter. I want to know everything. You understand what I mean? Everything.”

“Yessir.”

He shooed the man from the study with the back of his hand.

Ki departed slowly.

Yung turned back to the window. He watched three robins bathing in the dirt. He was curious. He didn’t think robins ganged. He couldn’t recall seeing two adults together like this, let alone three. Was this an omen? Yung believed in omens.

But, if it were, was it favorable or not? That was always the question.

And, of course, an omen could be both.

What was favorable for one person might foretell tragedy for another.

Three

Thursday, July 7

They sat on a bench overlooking the Potawami River.

Loi Yung felt a sudden urge to kiss Andy Nagle and leaned in, aiming for the neck.

Andy had fast reflexes; by the time she reached her target he’d turned his head, and lips met lips.

They sat back on the green-painted bench, which, a small plaque reported, had been built by the Depression-era WPA, making it nearly a hundred years old. Apparently, Loi thought, they built things to last back then. Her father always complained about the shoddiness of modern manufacturing. Maybe, she thought cynically, the guns he bought for his murderous employees broke down more often nowadays.

She’d dressed in clothes she hoped would get—and hold on to—Andy’s attention: a thin blue-and-white pin-striped blouse, silk, and close-fitting white jeans. On her feet were Jimmy Choo slingback flats in sparkling silver. She’d traded her blue-framed progressives for blue-framed sunglasses with, of course, blue lenses. The shade perfectly matched her toenail polish, though he couldn’t see that . . . yet.

Andy was wearing his afternoon goin’-out clothes: faded blue jeans and a Mark Zuckerberg–gray T-shirt, tight across the chest and at the biceps. He looked great. Loi gazed over the dull-brown waterway. Here it approached picturesque. A serpentine landscaped park surrounded them on this shore, and across the slow-moving river were baseball and soccer fields, where teams were enjoying the beautiful day and temperate clime. There were sandboxes and playgrounds for the children. Joggers jogged. There were a dozen kites fluttering and arcing in the blue sky. Farther upstream, closer to the Panhandle, factories and warehouses lined the riverbanks. Those from the past hundred years were built of somber gray stone. Those dating to earlier eras were constructed of red brick, now sooted to brown.

“This is crazy,” Loi said.

“But what’s crazy, in the whole scheme of things, the universe, the cosmos?” Andy asked. His aftershave wafted past. A dry scent, like lime-laced gin.

“My, how philosophical.”

She squeezed his hand and felt a faint electric current zip to her chest when he reciprocated.

He’d told her that when he’d first laid eyes on her, it was love at first sight.

The same for her.

“Oh!” Loi reared back, laughing, as a small fluffy dog, which had to have poodle in its 23andMe, bounded into her lap. She stroked the soft curls covering its enthusiastically bobbing head.

“Sorry, sorry!” a dark-haired young woman called. She had one of those retractable leashes, and the dog had charged ahead before its mistress could reel in the ebullient creature. They petted the dog as the woman, dressed in shiny yellow workout clothes, took up leash slack and approached. “Oh, no, are you muddy?”

“No worries,” Loi said.

“What’s his name?”

“Her,” said the brunette. The fuzzy coat hid the indicia of gender. “Junebug.”

“Oh, I love her,” Loi said.

They made do-you-now-or-have-you-ever-had-a-dog conversation for a few minutes, then the woman and Junie or Buggie, whatever her nick was, were off for more exercise.

“You told her you had dogs growing up,” Loi said to Andy. “What kind where they?”

“Malinois. Guard dogs, like the Secret Service uses. They cost twenty-five thousand each. They didn’t have names like Rover and Lassie. They were Un and Deux. One and Two. French was the language they were trained to respond to—you know, ‘sit, stay, attack, release.’ On the theory that any intruders were probably not going to be Francophiles.” He took a deep breath. “Which brings me to something I have to say.”

“I know who your father is. And I’ll bet you know mine.”

Andy nodded. “He told me I couldn’t see you.”

Loi recalled the confrontation she’d just had. Her father—in one of the business suits he always wore, every day of the week—was lecturing. “Same with me. I think he’s more upset that you’re Brendon Nagle’s son than that you’re not Chinese. And that’s saying something.”

Suddenly Andy gave a soft laugh.

“What?”

“You know who we are?”

She lifted an inquiring, and carefully shaped, eyebrow.

“We’re Romeo and Juliet.”

“You’re right, we are.” A memory surfaced in Loi’s thoughts. “High school. I played Nurse. I would have been a better Juliet than Sally Brines but the school wasn’t ready for an Asian in the lead.” A thought occurred to her. She whispered, “Hey, you know one thing about the play?”

He grimaced. “I know it didn’t end well.”

Loi said gravely, “No. What I mean is Romeo and Juliet knew all kinds of shit was going to happen. They didn’t waste any time.” She pulled him to his feet. “Follow me.”

“Hm. Nice place,” Andy was saying, looking over her apartment. “Course, how many times have you heard anybody walk into your digs and say, ‘Hm, crappy place.’”

Loi loosed her sparkling laugh. She swapped sunglasses for her everyday pair.

Nothing crappy here. A large open loft with fine hardwood floors and bare stone walls, on which hung American Primitive paintings. They seemed to be originals.

He said, “I like the fish tank.”

It was four feet long and filled with dots of tiny colorful creatures, meandering in three dimensions, and on the bottom rested several weird-looking fish with whiskers and ugly faces.

Loi hung her jacket and walked into the open-plan kitchen. Andy followed.

She explained that her father had arranged for this place for her. It was in the poshest—and safest—part of town, the North Riverfront. “The furniture isn’t so nice. Dad’s business is down.”

“Mine’s is too. At least the part I’m working on, the B side.”

“B side?” she asked.

“The old records? Forty-fives?”

“Oh, those things you see in movies?”

“The flip side was B. It was a pretty good song. A was the hit.”

“What’s your father’s B side?”

“Real estate mostly. All legit.”

She said, “My father doesn’t let me know anything about what he does. I’m a woman.” As they stood over the island Loi poured wine for them both. They tapped glasses. Loi’s voice sounded troubled, preoccupied, as she asked, “You ever been scared? Because of what your father did?”

He told her about the OC Task Force raid and the search of his room, while he stood in the doorway, watching the cops upend drawer after drawer.

She shook her head. “You were thirteen?”

Andy nodded.

She gave a sour laugh. “I was fourteen and I found a locker key—you know, like at train stations—in my tampon bag. My father’d put it there in case we were raided.”

“What was in the locker?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Drugs, guns? My father also smuggles exotic animals into the country. Maybe it was a cobra. I grew up envying people in, you know, normal homes. Didn’t you?”

“I used to. Yeah. Every day. But not anymore.”

“No?”

He kissed her hard. “Because then I wouldn’t’ve met you.”

Her response was to nod toward a doorway. “The bedroom’s in there.”

At eleven p.m. Brendon Nagle heard the buzzer of the intercom unit on his desk and, looking at the security-camera screen, saw Max standing outside, gazing up like a Rottie at its master.

Nagle pushed a button, admitting him, and a few moments later he regarded another screen to see his minder outside his office door. The big man put his gun and cell phone into a box bolted to the wall and closed the lid.

Nagle buzzed him into the office and Max walked through the scanning frame. It beeped. Max fished in his pocket and retrieved a digital recorder, handed it to Nagle; his boss pointed to the frame, sending his minder through it again. Now, no beep.

The large room was in need of a fresh paint job and it featured a scuffed floor, yellowing ceiling tile. A battered desk held pads of paper and boxes of pens. There was a computer but it wasn’t capable of going online; it was for typing out information and examining spreadsheets only. (Bin Laden evaded capture for years thanks to recognizing the danger of those fucking magic boxes.) The windows were mirrored and faced a park, not another building where spies might lurk. Nagle sipped his Crown Royal and nodded his minder into a chair.

Max sat and Nagle lifted the digital recorder, examining the tiny box carefully. He scanned it with a separate instrument, checking for radio transmissions. The needle remained asleep. He looked, too, at a separate screen on his computer, on which other sensors around the room and in the building were sending reassurances that he wasn’t being monitored.

Nagle asked, “Did Andrew pick up on the bug?”

“No. I’m positive.”

His boss snapped, “How can you be sure?”

Max responded slowly: “He was talking in a certain way. Natural. If he or the girl had found it, either they’d shut up or start playacting. This is natural. Listen.” He took the recorder and pushed a button. Nagle heard the voice of a giddy woman, chatting about a dog. Max fast-forwarded, hit “Play.” From the recorder came a fast laugh, his son. Then Loi was asking:

“What?”

“You know who we are? . . . We’re Romeo and Juliet.”

“You’re right, we are . . . High school. I played Nurse. I would have been a better Juliet than Sally Brines but the school wasn’t ready for an Asian in the lead. Hey, you know one thing about the play?”

“I know it didn’t end well.”

“No. What—”

Max reached forward quickly and clicked the unit off. Nagle wondered why.

“How’d you get the bug on him?”

“The woman you heard? She’s the girlfriend of one of my guys. Cathy.”

Spacey broad, she sounded like.

“She’s got this little dog, jumps up and licks your face. She let it jump on them when they were in the park. While they were petting it, she dropped the bug into Andy’s backpack. Cute.”

“What?”

“The dog. It’s cute.”

“Why do I give a fuck?”

His plan was working out largely as he’d hoped. He’d thought of it almost the minute he’d identified the girl as Yung’s daughter. Their relationship, he’d realized, could be a golden opportunity. He’d known that whatever Andrew agreed to, he’d continue to see the girl on the sly, so he’d ordered Max to arrange to bug the two youngsters.

“Where is he now?”

“He left her apartment a half hour ago. Jimmy and me’ll monitor him and record everything when they’re together. We’re on his phone too.”

Nagle was nodding at the recorder. “She say anything helpful to us?”

“Bad news and good news.”

Nagle zipped off a don’t-be-cute look.

“Sorry, sir.” He withdrew a notebook and flipped through it. “She told Andy that her father’s real busy—buying up property around Henderson square. It started the day Lark died.”

“Fuck.” The shabby park was the heart of the Panhandle. “That fast?” Nagle was stunned. “Six days?”

“What she said,” Max replied as he began fast-forwarding through the recorder.

So Yung was moving in already.

Which is why that asshole detective, White, had busted their chops right after Lark’s funeral: he’d heard the rumors that some crew was moving into the Panhandle.

Ah, the Camelot of the city. The Panhandle. The most desirous neighborhood in town.

Damp gray or dusty gray, depending on the weather, the PH was a jumble of decrepit town houses, cinder-block apartments, dirty nail salons, bodegas with perpetually smeared storefront glass, paycheck loan advance shops, wig stores, bar upon shabby bar, restaurants a meal or two away from a health department closure.

And desirous why?

Because Nagle’s territory, south of the PH, and Yung’s, north, were suffering from the terminal illness of gentrificationitis.

The two men made their living from crack houses, bordellos, the street sales of drugs, sidewalk hookers, the protection of mom-and-pop stores.

But their turfs were getting cleaned up—professional couples moving in, developers suctioning up vacant lots and turning them into condos, police kicking out all the bad boys and girls.

The Panhandle, though, the lovely PH, had nothing nice to boast of, and never would, given its proximity to the docks and mixed zoning, which meant daddy lawyer and mommy CPA were never going to move into a ’hood where you lived separated from Trader Joe’s by a leather-tanning factory or a tractor-trailer-repair shop, and where the homeless and the whores could look little Mason and Kelsey up and down as they waited timidly for their school bus.

The PH was still populated with people who hung their hopes on numbers games, craved their heroin and crack and meth, and slaved away at day-labor jobs and in nail salons and restaurant kitchens awaiting the green cards their traffickers promised but would never deliver.

Brendon Nagle needed the PH for his organization’s survival.

A mosquito of paranoia buzzed. He asked pointedly, “Why didn’t you know about Yung? Buying up that property?”

“Must’ve gone through middlemen or something. Lawyers, you know.”

“Middlemen.” Nagle scoffed and offered a searing glare to remind Max he was paid for information as well as for his skill with a gun and knife. “Well, give me the good fucking news you mentioned.”

Max found the part of the recording he’d been looking for. Loi’s low, sensuous voice began to flow from the recorder.

“So, we have a place on the lake, Lake Mason. You know it?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe we could go up there.”

“We could fish, hike, put up preserves.”

“If that’s what you really want to do, Andy . . .”

“Or, I guess we could think of something else to occupy our time.”

Nagle felt Max’s eyes on him. He didn’t look back.

“This weekend?”

“No, Father’s going to be there then. Some secret-meeting bullshit. Just him and Ki and two men from LA. All really secret. We could go on Monday.”

“Monday it is. Can we skinny-dip in the—”

Max shut off the recorder. “I found Yung’s address up there. And checked out the plat and deed records, Google-earthed it. Good elevations and lots of trees for cover. A shooter could get close as thirty yards and not be seen. No perimeter fence.”

Nagle said, “Minimum security, just Yung and three others? Yeah. Good. Find some shooters.” His voice grew stern. “Make sure they’re good. When you aim for Yung, you can’t miss.”

“I’ll do it tonight.”

“Don’t fuck up, Max.”

“No, sir.” He reached for the recorder.

“Leave it.”

“Yessir.”

Max plodded out, the floorboards creaking underfoot.

Nagle waited until he was gone before pulling on a headset and plugging the jack into the little digital recorder. He scrolled to where Max had shut the device off so abruptly, presumably to keep him from hearing what happened next, and hit “Play.”

“I grew up envying people in, you know, normal homes. Didn’t you?”

“I used to. Yeah. Every day. But not anymore.”

“No?”

“Because then I wouldn’t’ve met you.”

“The bedroom’s in there.”

Nagle heard rustling and whispers.

He turned the volume up, closed his eyes and sat back in his chair.

At nearly midnight, John Yung ran his finger around the rim of his glass—it was filled with root beer, his favorite beverage. He had never tasted alcohol. He watched Ki hunch forward over the desk and point his mobile toward his boss like a Ouija board platen.

They were in the office of his company, Yung Eastern Imports, surrounded by samples of the many types of junk he bought and sold as a cover operation, products ranging from lobster-claw grippers on sticks to solar-powered driveway lights. Nothing cost much more than $19.95 retail.

From the Motorola cell phone came the sound of voices. His daughter’s and that of Brendon Nagle’s son.

“I grew up envying people in, you know, normal homes. Didn’t you?”

“I used to. Yeah. Every day. But not anymore.”

“No?”

“Because then I wouldn’t’ve met you.”

Ki shut the recording off. The apartment that John Yung had acquired for his daughter in a posh section of town boasted many fine qualities: a nice view of the river, two spacious bedrooms, a Jacuzzi, a high-tech kitchen . . . and a dozen hardwired—that is, unscannable—listening devices hidden throughout. No video cameras, of course. Yung wanted to hear everything his temperamental and disrespectful daughter and her guests said, but would never, ever have thought of witnessing her in any stage of undress.

All conversations were recorded by Ki and could be played back on the quiet man’s phone.

“Is there more? Is it useful?” He sipped the soft drink. The spicy flavor was seductive.

“I’ll give you a summary. The boy said his father wants to start buying up properties in the Panhandle. Beginning immediately.”

Yung clenched his fist and relaxed it.

“And I’m afraid Loi told him a few things she shouldn’t have. About the meeting you have at the lake house. With those fellows from LA.”

“She did that?” Yung exhaled long, controlling his temper.

Ki nodded. “There’s something else, sir.”

The tone suggested he was hesitant to share troubling news.

“And that is what?”

“The boy was wired.”

“What?” The root beer paused halfway to his lips. He set down the glass.

“My scanner showed transmissions coming from Loi’s apartment while he was inside. They weren’t mobile phone frequencies. I followed him after he left the apartment. They were coming from him.”

Yung closed his eyes momentarily. He controlled his breathing. “I thought he wasn’t involved in the organization.”

“That’s what I heard. But apparently we were wrong. It looks like he’s using Loi.”

Yung exhaled hard. What a stunning revelation this was. His daughter seduced by his rival’s son. “There’s only one reason for it, you know.”

“Yessir. Móushā.”

Ki was from Shanghai, whose dialect, Wu, was different from the Mandarin that Yung had grown up with. But the particular word Ki had spoken was the same in all versions of the Chinese language.

“Murder.”

Father and son using my daughter to get through my defenses and kill me.

Yung rose and walked to the corner of the office where sat a basin and a mirror. He poured out the root beer and carefully washed and dried the glass. He stared out the window at a row of two-story industrial buildings that dated to the early twentieth century.

All he could think of at the moment was his daughter, letting her heart drag her into this vile situation, which put Yung at so much risk.

This is what came of defying your father.

He was then aware that Ki was still present. “I need to be alone, I need to think.”

Four

Friday, July 8

Andy, Max and Jimmy were in the Navigator on Evergreen Avenue, en route to the building that Brendon Nagle would be buying and developing.

It was closing in on eleven a.m., and they were soon to meet with contractors to discuss the renovations. Andy was in his walking-around-in-the-dirt clothes: jeans and a work shirt. Jimmy had dug up a Carhartt jacket that looked like it’d never been worn, Andy was amused to see. Max was in a suit because all Max ever wore were suits. Today, navy blue. His shirt was white. Probably, a suit made it easier to keep a gun hidden.

At the wheel, Jimmy, who’d been in a chatty mood all day, was telling Max and Andy, “This ’hood?”

Andy looked about. “Uh-hum.” It was a no-man’s-land that abutted the Panhandle. “Have a name?” He had seen plats and title records and inspection reports of buildings in the area. He could recite degrees of longitude and latitude and stats of easements and tax history but he had no soft information about the place.

Max, in the front seat, sat and stared forward. Silent.

“Name?” Jimmy laughed bluntly. “Yeah, it has a name. Shit City. Fuck ’Em Acres. I don’t know. Places like this don’t have names. It’s all factories, warehouses, tenements, SRO temporary apartments, vacant lots, nail salons, bodegas, even a slaughterhouse until last year.”

“How’d that happen?” Andy asked. “Zoning wouldn’t allow it.”

Another hearty laugh—at the naïve question.

“Once your dad and the other developers get finished with it, it’ll be SoMain—you know what I mean? How they come up with names like that. The Upper North district is UpNo . . . Wait, wait, wait, I know, this’ll be Lower Main: LoMain.” The laughing continued. “Like Chinese food, you know.”

Then he shut up fast, apparently remembering that Andy was sweet on Yung’s daughter.

“And the people? Hookers, day labor, grifters, bums. They’re not”—hands off the wheel for air quotes—“‘homeless.’ They’re not ‘street people.’ They’re bums!”

Andy got a text and looked down at his phone. He asked, “Where’s the Toucan Café?”

Jimmy’s shoulders rose and fell. “Four blocks, five. Why?”

“Keep a secret from my dad?”

Both men grunted slightly affirmative grunts. “Loi texted. She wants to meet me there. Just for ten minutes. You mind?”

“Mind? Shit no. Man, that place’s got the best Cuban coffee in the city. I mean, the best.”

“Max?” Andy asked.

Another “I suppose” grunt.

Andy sent a text back to Loi and slipped his phone away.

Jimmy spun the wheel, garnering a honk from an oncoming car that’d had to brake smartly to avoid a collision. Jimmy shot him the finger.

Five minutes later they were pulling up at the restaurant, an attempt at upscale in a neighborhood that was decidedly down. A huge wooden cutout of a tropical bird dominated the façade. Five dark metal tables, surrounded by matching chairs, sat on the uneven sidewalk. A sign reported: “No Outdoor Service. Please Order Inside.”

It might have been the best brew in the city but the tables here, and inside, were unoccupied.

Andy asked, “Do they have toucans in Cuba?”

“Ask fucking Castro. Or is he dead?”

Andy and Jimmy climbed from the Navigator. Jimmy asked Max, “You want coffee? I’ll get it.”

Max spoke for the first time since they’d been in the SUV. “Yeah.”

Jimmy asked, “Andy?”

“Thanks. Not too sweet.”

As Jimmy darted inside, Andy sat at a rickety table, on which was a cheap cloth covered with pictures of hula dancers, which seemed to have nothing to do with either Cuba or toucans.

A few minutes later Jimmy returned with a cardboard tray containing three small paper cups. He glanced behind Andy and nodded. “Ain’t that your friend?”

Andy turned. Loi was about twenty feet away on the sidewalk. She’d stopped and was standing with her arms at her side. Her face was clouded. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the deep-blue lenses.

He rose and started toward her. “Hey. Something wrong?”

It was then that the side door of a battered, white windowless van, parked at the curb, slid open fast and three Asian men jumped out.

“No!” Andy shouted as two of them dragged him toward the vehicle. The other swung a pistol back and forth, covering the sidewalk.

Max leaped from the Navigator, his own gun in his hand. Jimmy dropped the coffee and reached for his hip. The armed Asian fired a shot. Max collapsed onto a table and chair, the red stain on his chest blossoming fast. Then a hood was tugged over Andy’s head and he heard the door slam shut and the tires squeal fiercely as the van made its escape.

“The fuck happened? Put the phone away. Tell me.” Brendon Nagle was speaking to a twitchy Jimmy Ebbitt, face red and sweaty.

The men were in the back room of the Happy Paws veterinary clinic on Ambrose Street. It was a small place, run by a competent veterinarian, who specialized not just in German shepherds and Maine coon cats but in Homo sapiens.

It was here that Nagle brought anybody in his crew who’d been injured in the line of duty. Veterinarians, unlike other medicos, did not need to report gunshots to the police. Well, maybe they did, but, given what Nagle paid, this one didn’t.

Jimmy now explained in depth about the abduction and Max’s shooting. “His fucking girlfriend. She lured him to this van. They snatched him right off the street.”

“That bitch. It was all a setup. I knew she was trouble . . . Jesus. My son.”

“I got Max into the car and we was out of there before the cops showed. And I swapped plates.”

Nagle asked, “Were they Chinese?”

Jimmy frowned. “Asian, I saw that. I don’t know exactly—”

Nagle growled, “Since I don’t know anybody Japanese or Korean or whatever else they’ve got over there wants to fuck up my life, can we drop the political correctness and say Chinese?”

“Okay, yeah. Chinese.”

Nagle looked to the doorway marked “Surgical Suite 1.” He asked, “Max?”

“Bad. The doc said he’s hanging in there. But he’s been under the knife for almost an hour.”

“Fuck.” Nagle felt blood pumping into his face, which, he’d noted, actually turned dark when he was this angry.

Jimmy, unnerved by the man’s fury, only nodded. “It happened so fast, Mr. Nagle. I mean, I tried—”

Nagle’s thoughts shot back to his son. He slammed a palm on a table. Jimmy froze. But the boss wasn’t particularly mad at him. Yung would have planned it all out to the second. Hit and run. Who he was pissed at was his son. “The kid had to follow his dick and look where it led him. Get back to the office. Get a couple of men ready. Those shooters Max had lined up for Yung.”

“Yessir, sure.”

As Jimmy hurried off, Nagle knocked on the door.

A moment later it opened. Dr. Tom Levine, a spectacled fifty-five-year-old, stood in the doorway. He peeled off clear latex gloves. They, like his jacket, were bloody.

“Brendon, come in. I’ve gotten him stable.”

Max was lying in a bed. He looked groggily at the other men. Beside him was his cell phone. The screen was bloody.

“Max, Jesus.” To the vet: “How’s he going to be?”

“Lost a lot of blood. I’m phoning around for a supply but I’m not having much luck. What’s your blood type?”

Nagle said, lying, he didn’t know.

The vet went to a basin and washed his hands, saying, “I don’t have time to type it now. We’ll hope a supplier comes through. On the underground market there’s not a lot of product out there.”

Max’s head lolled and his eyes closed. Nagle thought he’d died, but then he returned a moment later, eyes opening and blinking slowly. He whispered in a high pitch, “Sir . . . there’s . . . problem. Talked to . . .” He coughed.

Nagle blurted to Levine, “His voice. Sounds like a woman. What’s that?”

“The anesthetic. It’s normal.”

Max tried again: “I talked to . . . a guy knows somebody in Yung’s crew.” He nodded to the bloody mobile. “He said . . . He said Yung thinks Andy knows your whole operation.”

“What?” Nagle’s face tightened into a knotted frown.

“In China . . . the gangs, a father has a son in the business . . . that means he’s grooming him to take over.” He coughed for a minute, winced.

Keep the fuck on talking . . .

The vet reached for an IV drop, presumably to increase the painkiller.

“No,” Max barked. “Have to stay awake. Have to . . . tell him something.”

Dr. Levine stepped back.

Nagle sputtered, “But Andrew doesn’t know shit.”

“Yung doesn’t know that. He’ll torture him . . . to get your plans for the Panhandle.”

Or, Nagle thought, threaten to torture him to get me to give the plans up, or to stay out of the Panhandle altogether. And if I refused to give up anything, how would that look to the world?

A fucking mess.

Max gripped Nagle’s arm. “Listen, Mr. Nagle . . . My guy thinks he knows where they’re keeping him. This warehouse on Merritt. Merritt and Boyd.”

“Is Yung there?”

The big man faded out again.

“Max?” Nagle leaned forward, tapped his shoulder. No response. Maybe if he punched the wound, the pain’d bring him to. Probably not a good idea with the vet here.

Max’s eyes opened.

“Is Yung there?” Nagle repeated. “The warehouse?”

“Probably.”

“Where’s your piece, Max?”

The big man squinted. “Jacket.”

Nagle looked at Levine, who nodded to a rack beside the door.

Nagle dug into the garment and snagged the pistol and—instinct from the old days—checked to make sure it was loaded and a round chambered. He put it in his own pocket.

Max closed his eyes.

“Max?”

No answer.

Nagle looked at the vet questioningly and Levine nodded to the corridor.

“How’s he going to be?” A whisper.

The veterinarian gave a faint shake of the head.

Nagle’s rage rose a measure. Just fucking wonderful. His son kidnapped. And now he needed to break in another minder.

John Yung was going to pay.

The muscle that Jimmy had recruited were Vincent and Dale.

They were Anglo—like the names suggested—but dark complected, with sharply trimmed brunette fades and compact builds. One slightly taller than the other, but still not tall. They were hard to tell apart, at least to Nagle; being as security conscious as he was, he kept his distance from the shooters and knee crackers.

These two were in the back seat of the Navigator. Jimmy was behind the wheel and Nagle was in the front seat.

Cruising through the dusk streets of the city, the neighborhoods growing scruffier and scruffier.

Jimmy killed the lights and they cruised slowly toward the warehouse Max had told him about.

“Look,” Jimmy said, braking. “There!” He pointed.

Forty yards away, in an alley that led to the back of the warehouse, Yung’s daughter was climbing out of the driver’s side of a red BMW convertible. M Series, the fancy one. She tossed her long hair over her shoulder and disappeared out of sight toward the building.

“Bitch,” Nagle muttered. He snapped to Jimmy, “Pull in there. The alley. Back in.”

Jimmy reversed and rolled slowly into the alley, stopping fifteen yards away from the back of the building, near Loi’s car and the white van that Jimmy said had been used in the snatch.

Nagle and the two shooters got out. Jimmy stayed behind the wheel, ready for the getaway.

They looked in the van, which was empty. Then the shorter of the men, Vincent, Nagle believed, did recon, slipping up to a side of the warehouse. No security camera. Nagle looked around. Typical of the Panhandle. All very early twentieth century. Redbrick, solid. Some buildings were oddly elegant, with etched-glass windows and gargoyles below the roof.

Vincent did a pull-up and looked in the grimy window. He dropped back to the gritty alley and, crouching, eased to a door. He tried the knob. He fiddled with it for a moment, his back to Nagle and the others. A moment later the man returned. “I don’t see your son, sir. But Yung’s there. Four other men too.”

“The door?”

“I got it open. Just inside, there’s a row of wooden crates. We can use them for cover. We move into flanking positions there, there, there.” He pointed to the warehouse wall. “We each draw targets.” He hesitated. “You’re sure you want to do this, sir?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Nagle snapped. “Kill everybody but Yung. I want him alive. I’ll shoot him in his knee or leg.”

“Uhm, femoral artery’s always risky with leg shots.” Dale, the other shooter, offered this.

“Well, foot.”

“Foot’s good.”

Vincent nodded.

“Then we find out where Andrew is, get him and get the hell out.”

“And the girl, sir?”

Nagle was thinking: Loi had probably turned on Andrew because Yung had found out about the wire and told her. She’d assume that the boy had picked her up to use her—to learn information that would help Nagle murder her father.

Wasn’t that how Romeo and Juliet ended? Nagle had a vague memory. Both of them dying because of some misunderstanding?

Unfortunate.

Well, too bad. Nagle said, “Kill her.”

From a black gun case, Dale took a Glock for himself and handed another to Vincent. He looked at Nagle, who displayed Max’s. He hadn’t shot for years, but firing a weapon is a type of programming that stays with you forever, especially if there’s a kill involved. Riding a bicycle.

Crouching, they made their way to the warehouse and paused. Dale would go in first, then Nagle, then Vincent. They’d draw their targets. After making sure Andrew wouldn’t be hit, they’d kill the others present and wound Yung. They’d find out where his son was, rescue him and get the young man and the gang leader into the SUV. Nagle would turn the tables. He and Jimmy would go to work on Yung—find out his plans for the Panhandle.

There’s always a silver lining.

Following the two men, Nagle drew several deep breaths, though he wasn’t the least nervous. In fact, he was exhilarated, just like every time he’d tapped somebody himself. The cool, damp evening brought back a memory from fifteen years ago or so: The time he’d beaten to death a rival who’d been skimming receipts from fairs and sports events within Nagle’s territory. He could still smell the smoke from the vendor’s carts, the cool fall air. He’d used an iron pipe on the guy’s skull, a very satisfying murder weapon. What a great night that had been!

Vincent silently opened the door. The men slipped inside the dim, pungent place—one large room. The mold nearly made Nagle cough. He controlled it. They kept low as they scurried along the concrete floor behind the row of wooden crates, stenciled with Western numbers and Chinese letters.

Across the dim space, Yung was engaged in an animated negotiation with a swarthy man, big. Sort of Asian. Maybe Samoan or Polynesian. The deal involved what sat on a table near the men: a carton of what appeared to be prescription medicine. Opioids, he guessed. There were similar cartons in a stack nearby.

Silver lining indeed. What a windfall!

Yung and the others seemed to have no awareness they weren’t alone.

“On three,” Nagle whispered.

The others nodded.

But Nagle didn’t make it that far. At about one and a half into the count there came a series of blinding flashes and ear-cracking explosions shaking Nagle to his spine. The warehouse door to Nagle’s left crashed open and with the gassy roar of a diesel engine a large van squealed across the floor, skidding to a stop directly between Yung and his associates, and Nagle and his.

The words on the side of the van were “Metro Police SWAT.”

No!

On a loudspeaker: “Everyone! Drop your weapons and raise your hands. Or you will be fired upon. Drop your weapons. Now, now, now!”

From behind the van and from other doors in the warehouse, cops appeared, decked out in tactical outfits and holding machine guns and pistols at the ready. They were screaming for the men to drop their weapons and lie face down. Dozens of them, like roaches skittering over the floor of the warehouse.

Nagle and his men tossed their weapons and dived to the cold, moldy floors. They were roughly frisked and handcuffed, then hauled to their feet.

Somebody shouted, “Clear, west side.”

“Clear east and center!”

The door of the armored vehicle opened and out stepped Detectives Elliott White and Violette Hayes. She was dressed in full combat gear; White wore only a bulletproof vest, as if he simply had to show off his pastel shirt. Tonight, baby blue. They spotted Nagle and walked across the gritty floor, through the faint mist of smoke from the flash-bang stun grenades. He stopped about five feet from Nagle. He didn’t smirk, didn’t smile, didn’t gloat. The cop simply looked him in the eye. “Gotcha.”

Detective Elliott White’s joints might have been in revolt—that damn leg—but he couldn’t feel a lick of pain. He was high, jubilant. He hadn’t felt this good since he was upped to gold shield at the baby age of thirty-one. He was wearing the same powder-blue shirt tonight that he’d worn that day—so confident was he that tonight would work out.

As well it had. The two heads of the major syndicates in the city had just been rolled up, Yung for felony drug possession with intent to sell and weapons, and Nagle for weapons and conspiracy to commit murder and battery—sensitive surveillance microphones had recorded him in the alleyway behind the warehouse just ten minutes ago.

And the girl, sir?

Kill her.

White was standing in the middle of the drafty, spacious warehouse, speaking with Violette Hayes.

“Getaway car got away,” she told him.

Jimmy Jump Pants . . .

“We’ll find him.”

Hayes said, “Wish they still called it an all-points bulletin.”

“What?” White said.

“Don’t you watch old TV?”

“Like?”

“Dragnet. Highway Patrol.”

“That’s more old time than me.”

“Now it’s: ‘Be advised. Ten forty-eight. Homicide suspect driving a black Lincoln Navigator, tag number Alpha Bravo Charlie One Two Three.’ Where’s the fun in that? Saying, ‘all-points bulletin’ is a lot sexier.”

White was ebullient but not necessarily in the mood for banter. “Let’s go see our friends.”

As Crime Scene collected weapons and laid the number cards where Nagle and the others had broken into the warehouse, White and Hayes made their way outside through the musty space and next door to the office of the Monmouth & Briggs Storage facility, long closed. He guessed the two thousand bucks being paid for a one-month rental by metro police was the most money the imposing building had made in decades. White and Hayes had themselves discovered it—like location scouts looking for the perfect set for the climax of an action-adventure crime flick. Warehouses being popular final scenes for Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise and Marvel Comics movies.

White held the door for Hayes and they walked into the warehouse office, where the individuals who’d made the sting a success were sitting. White thanked the suspects’ former minders—now undercover informants and key participants in the takedown—Ki and Max Klempter.

The slim detective then turned to the other two people in the room. He said a heartfelt “We couldn’t have done it without you.” And formally shook the hands of Andy Nagle and Loi Yung.

Five

Monday, May 5

Two Months before Donald Lark’s Funeral

The worst? The worst of it, growing up in my family?”

Loi Yung repeated Andy’s question. She turned over in bed to face him and she felt his firm chest against her breasts, his belly against hers.

They were in a hotel room in the upscale Riverside area of town, not far from her apartment.

Loi turned her gaze from his intense eyes, his tousled hair, and looked out the window, lost in thought. “The worst of growing up . . . the depression, I guess.” Memories cascaded. “The meds. All the meds. Try this, try that, up the dosage, lower the dosage, mix this with that . . . Mother wouldn’t take me to the clinic herself. It would look bad. It would be shameful. Our housekeeper drove me. Mother told Elvira to park behind the place and take me in through the back door. I had to wear sunglasses.”

Loi remembered this clearly.

“At fifteen, the first suicide attempt. Well, second, but the one at eight didn’t count, the doctors said. The one when I was a freshman in high school, half a bottle of Mother’s pills and a glass of vodka. Wasn’t easy, by the way. My parents didn’t drink. At least that time she took me to the ER in person. When I came to, she was slapping me. The doctor thought she was trying to keep me awake and told her it wasn’t necessary. That wasn’t why she was doing it. She was furious at me. What would people say about a mother whose daughter tried to commit suicide?

“I was in the psych ward for a few days. My father came to see me. I was so happy, seeing him wearing his best suit, walking into my room. But he never sat down, never unbuttoned his jacket. He leaned down and whispered that if they made me do this ‘therapy stuff’—that’s what he called it—if I had to do therapy and I talked about his job, he’d send me, my grandmother and Mother back to China, where we’d live and die on the street. It didn’t occur to me that he couldn’t do that; Mother and I were citizens and Grandma had a green card. But I was terrified at the thought.”

As she told Andy the story, Loi noted this about herself: She shared the story without a modicum of an urge to cry, without the slightest tightening of her vocal cords. Her heart was tapping more quickly than in its waiting state—but that was solely because of the presence, flesh to flesh, of the man beside her.

“I did what he said,” she continued. “Kept quiet. Which made therapy pretty useless. You’re in group and it’s your turn to talk and you’re like, ‘Hi, I’m Loi. Some girls made fun of me at school. I didn’t get asked to the dance. My parents were pissed because I got an A minus in algebra. Boo-hoo. I’m so sad.’ Instead of the truth, ‘Oh, my dad runs hookers and sells drugs and fucking kills people who cross him.’”

Andy and Loi had known each other just ten days. They’d met at a benefit for a politician who, it turned out, was taking payoffs from both of their fathers. The event had an aboveboard air about it, wholesome, and attendees were encouraged to bring family. Loi had come along, reluctantly, and had been both bored by the chatter and uncomfortable with the creepy old men ogling her. But then she caught the eye of a handsome young man across the banquet room. His face revealed that he was dying.

Unseen by the parents, the two eased toward each other through the crowd and ducked into a darkened hallway for some private time.

For her—and him too, she later learned—it was love at first sight. Numbers were exchanged, and a myriad of texts and calls followed. They began furtively dating. This—the Riverside Hotel—was their rendezvous spot. Andy lived at home, where he was always under his father’s prying, paranoid eyes. Loi’s father had her entire apartment bugged.

She now kissed his forehead and lay back in the Riverside’s sumptuous bed. “And you? The worst part of growing up?”

Andy didn’t hesitate. “The man in the brown suit.”

He sat up in bed, as did she, and they tucked sheets about them—not from modesty; the AC was churning hard. He took a sip of wine, handed off the glass. Then told her the story: One day in October, when Andy was ten, his father came to him and said, “Bundle up, Andy. Let’s go take a peek at something. You like brats? Sure you do. They’re tasty. That’saboy.”

He didn’t know. He’d never had a brat.

They pulled on coats and gloves and baseball caps—not matching but close in appearance, which made the boy feel just fine. Dad and son.

They drove to a city park, left the car at the far edge of the crowded lot and plunged into Oktoberfest. You could sample a hundred types of foods and, for the adults, beer and hard cider. The brats were, hands down, the best thing he’d ever eaten. They strolled past the booths, where you could win stuffed toys with hoops and darts and look at old-country Germanic exhibits. A half dozen rides, wimpy ones, sat on the edge of the fest, but his father didn’t want him to go on any, and that was okay, even though the Whirl-A-Gig looked fun.

They had been at the festival for about an hour when his father looked at his watch and said it was time to leave. Andy didn’t want to, of course, but this was more time than he’d spent with the man in months; he didn’t want to spoil the day by asking to stay a bit longer. His father’s temper was always a factor to keep in mind. They walked briskly to the parking lot and began searching for the car. His father said he couldn’t remember where he’d parked.

“It’s over there,” Andy had said. He remembered explicitly.

“No, no. There.” His father had trooped off in the opposite direction. Andy didn’t dare disagree so he made a show of looking carefully up and down the rows as they walked. He then realized that his father was no longer in front of him; they’d gotten separated.

He walked up and down, calling, “Dad, Dad!”

No response.

Not from his father, that is. But one man had heard. A tall, slim man, wearing a brown suit. Nobody else at the festival was dressed formally like that, so apparently he had something to do with the operation. He was carrying a briefcase. “Hey, kid,” he called from three rows of cars away, “you lost?”

“I can’t find my father. Have you seen him? He’s got a blue jacket and hat like mine.”

“Where was he last?”

Andy looked up the row he was in and pointed. “About . . .” But his voice faded as he turned back. The man in the brown suit was gone. Vanished completely.

He stood perplexed, not knowing what to do. But a minute later his father emerged, out of breath. “Andrew. I was looking for you, everywhere,” he snapped. “Where’d you go?”

The boy hadn’t gone anywhere. He had been in the same row since his father had disappeared. He struggled to control his tears. He said, “I’m . . . I’m sorry. I was . . .”

“Don’t snivel. The car’s that way,” he muttered and pointed in the direction where Andy knew the Chevy was.

Andy now said to Loi, “We found the car, we got in, and drove home.”

She was looking his way with a raised eyebrow.

Andy said, “The next day there was a story in the news about a murder at the Oktoberfest. A man was killed in the parking lot. He was reportedly an organized-crime figure, a man believed to be shaking down carnival and festival operations. He’d been beaten to death with an iron pipe and robbed of his shakedown money. There were no suspects and the money was never recovered. They showed a picture of him.”

“And it was the man in the brown suit,” Loi said softly.

Andy nodded. “Dad had gone there for the hit.”

After her upbringing, Loi Yung didn’t think anything would shock her. But this did. She laced her fingers through his. She expected them to be trembling but the digits were completely relaxed, if chill. “Your father used you to distract him and then he murdered him. He’d planned it all along.”

“But that wasn’t really the worst of it. That night I heard my parents arguing. My mother had put together what happened. She knew Dad’s business, she knew we’d been to Oktoberfest, knew about the murder. She was screaming at him. ‘You used him, your own son, how could you?’ And he was screaming back—he has this really bad temper. And I snuck out of my room to watch, and I saw he’d pulled his gun and had it pointed at her head. But it was like she didn’t care. She just kept laying into him and he kept shouting, ‘You keep out of my business!’ Stuff like that.

“And then he said, ‘You hear me, you fat bitch? You pig!’ And Mom went all quiet. She’d been beautiful when they met. She could’ve been a model. But married to him for a dozen years, abused, depressed, drinking all the time, eating too much . . .” He shrugged.

Now Loi felt his fingers quiver just a bit.

“The look on her face,” he went on. “He just destroyed her, saying that. It wasn’t the gun, it wasn’t the threats. It was those words . . . She drank herself to death two years later. So. The worst? The man in the brown suit.”

She felt his head ease against hers. Not the whole weight, just enough to take comfort in her nearness.

They sat in silence for a long moment, silence broken only by their breath, the rustle of bedclothes, and the tap of the wineglass landing on the table every few minutes, the pour of more chardonnay from the bottle.

Finally, Andy leaned away and turned to her. There was a gleam in his eye as he said, “I have this idea.”

They’d showered and dressed in the hotel’s white, thick terry robes and were now on the couch, in front of a coffee table.

Andy tucked the lapels of Loi’s robe closer together. Not the time for distractions. She smiled his way and said, “So, an idea, you were saying?”

“I don’t know if you’re interested. If not, I don’t blame you one bit. But—”

“Our fathers’re murderous pricks who’ve ruined their family’s lives,” Loi said in a matter-of-fact voice, pushing her cerulean glasses higher on her nose. “You want to bring them both down. I’m in.” She enjoyed his amused look—that she’d deduced so quickly where he was headed.

“Something I’ve been thinking about for years. Always thought I’d do it solo, but I’d rather have a partner.”

She took his hand and kissed his fingers. “How?”

“That’s what we need to figure out.”

A simple goal. But the means to achieve it would be, of necessity, complex.

So the lawyer boy and the coding girl used their sharp, twisting minds to cobble together a plan.

Andy said, “How about we go to that detective who’s always dogging my father. White?”

She nodded. “Elliott White. He hassles mine too. And his partner. Violette Hayes. Organized Crime Task Force. They were always nice to me. Felt sorry, I guess.”

“We’ll tell them both we’re sick of the murders and drugs. How they’ve treated us and our mothers and the rest of our families.”

Loi pointed out, “They’ve put us at risk too. My cousin lost an eye when some gang from the West Side planted a bomb at his wedding. My father was the target.”

“Two drive-by shootings at our house this year alone. One took out my bedroom window.” He added gravely, “It wasn’t all tragic. The bullet hit a Star Wars poster of Jar Jar Binks.”

Loi said, “How’s this: We’ll smuggle bugs into their offices and dens or living rooms at home? White can record them making a drug deal or ordering a hit.”

Andy shook his head. “They’d still need probable cause for a warrant or they can’t use anything they record in court. Anyway, with my father, it wouldn’t do any good.” He explained the man’s paranoia, the impossible security in his office and how he never said an incriminating word outside the place.

“We need to catch them in the act.”

He thought for a moment. “Or an act of our own making.”

“A sting, you mean,” Loi said.

“Exactly. We convince White to set one up.”

Her eyes rose to the ceiling. His mind was more attractive to her than his body. Well, it was close. “Good, good . . . But we’d need somebody inside.”

Andy agreed, but who, he asked.

“What about recruiting Ki? And Max?”

Andy stretched. “Maybe. Let me think about it. But let’s assume we can. What kind of sting are we talking about?”

She sat back, eyes on the ceiling, lips parted. Still, she noted Andy’s eyes sweeping downward from her hairline to her eyes. She almost curled into his lap.

Concentrate here, she told herself.

Loi said, “Here’s a thought: My father handles most drug sales himself—he thinks if he isn’t there, his people’ll skim from him. Ki could let us know when he’s going to meet with a buyer or seller. We’ll get your father there at the same time. White and Hayes’ll be waiting. Both of our fathers . . . armed, about to shoot it out. Thousands of dollars of drugs.”

Andy was doubtful. “But remember: my father’s the opposite of yours. He never goes anywhere he could get busted.”

“What if we lured him there?”

“How?”

Loi Yung was a coder’s coder. Her mind hashed through strategies in microseconds. “We use you as bait.”

“Go on.”

“What if your father thought you’d been kidnapped by my father? He’d come to save you.”

“He’d have Max deal with it.”

“Not if Max is out of commission.”

Hm. “Interesting.” Andy gazed at an ugly landscape print on the far wall. Black and white. Coal country, he guessed. “So Ki tells us about a deal your father’ll be at. We’ll have White find some Asian American cops. They stage my kidnapping and use blanks and fake blood to make it look like Max’s been shot. But we’ll have to make it credible. That paranoia of his.”

“We could make it seem like I betrayed you. I lured you to the kidnappers.”

Andy snapped his fingers. “Juliet as Judas! Good. Oh, and here’s another thought: There’s a vet my dad uses for his men who’ve been shot—to avoid reporting gunshots. He’ll play along if White threatens to bust him, but offers immunity. My father’ll go to see Max, who fakes he’s been shot. He tells Dad where I’m being held—the place where the drug deal’s going down.”

Loi was filled with shivers of enthusiasm. “You know, we play this right, it could work.” She gave a coy smile as she examined his face. “What’re you thinking?”

Andy said, “There’s just one more piece I’d like to add.”

Loi said, “And I’d like to hear it.” She decided she could wait no longer, and tilted her arms around his broad shoulders and tugged his head down for a long kiss. She whispered, “But in a minute or two.” Off came the glasses.

Six

Friday, July 15

Present Day

A week after Brendon Nagle and John Yung had been arrested in the warehouse sting, Andy Nagle was sitting in his father’s office.

The building was being renovated and would be put on the market soon, though Andy wondered what the demand would be for a building owned by a murderer. He supposed that the residential market would be a problem—who wanted to sleep with ghosts hovering—but commercial developer?

Blood and business had never been incompatible.

The bulk of the remodeling work had been done, though a large drop cloth was spread over part of the floor, the electrical outlet plates needed to be screwed back in, and the wall where the police had removed his father’s safe needed replastering.

Andy could look up and see wires and insulation and pipes through the drafty black L-shaped gap. New acoustical tiles were going up in place of the old yellowing ones.

His phone hummed. No caller ID. It would probably be the automated phone calling system from the prison where his father, like Yung, was being held without bail. The male voice sternly gave a number of rules—no recording, no conferencing—and then asked if he wanted to accept the call. As with the others, Andy did not pick up.

That’saboy . . .

He eased back in the comfortable brown leather chair. Large windows looked out on a city park. He remembered, years ago, standing at this very sill and watching the snow. That visit was the first time his father had wanded him with a transmission-detection scanner. He was twelve.

An incoming email triggered a vibration on his phone. It was from Detective White, reporting that the government auditors had been through his father’s company’s books, and forensic experts had examined the computers. They’d found that the man was hardly the rich mafioso he claimed to be. His illegal operations were just barely breaking even. Did Andy know of any other resources his father had?

He replied that he was sorry but, no. His father never gave him access to the accounts on the illegal side of his business. Only the legitimate operations, the real estate. And that business, too, hadn’t been doing well. Andy concluded the email:

Guess Dad was more bully and thug than savvy mobster. Wish I could help.

He sent the missive on its way.

The intercom box on the desk buzzed. Andy pressed a button. “Yes.”

“It’s me.” The voice from downstairs was a whisper.

Andy hit the door-unlock button. A few minutes later Jimmy Ebbitt walked quickly inside and swung the door shut behind him, breathless. Apparently he’d run up the stairs rather than wait for the elevator. Andy was struck by his change of appearance. He was more emaciated than ever and he sported a shaved head in place of the shaggy locks. He wore dark glasses, which he now took off.

The skittish man looked around the office and walked to the window, peered out. He apparently saw nothing to trouble him, though that didn’t appear to balm his unease.

“How’s your dad?”

“I don’t know. We’re not in touch.”

“No? Guess not. You got a right to be pissed, kid. But he wanted the best for you and your mom. Rest her soul.”

If I hear that one more time, I’ll scream.

The twitchy man twitched now, as he looked out another window. “And Max? I didn’t want to call, figured they were bugging his line. How’s he doing?”

“He’s hanging in there.”

Jimmy, who’d been living underground since the warehouse arrests, knew nothing of the takedown sting that Andy and Loi had orchestrated. He believed the abduction was really ordered by John Yung. And so he had no clue that Max had been part of it and was fine—aside from the sore muscles following his dive into Toucan Café’s sturdy outdoor furniture.

His voice cracked. “I want you to know, Andy. At the warehouse? Those cops just showed up. They came out of nowhere. Fucking nowhere! I panicked. When I saw ’em, I got the hell away. I’m sorry.”

“Nobody’s blaming you. What could you’ve done?”

“That’s right. I couldn’t do nothing. I just . . . I just feel bad. I shoulda seen it coming.” Jimmy the contrite puppy whispered, “Andy, listen, I could use some help. The cops’re looking for me. Everywhere.”

“Where’re you staying?”

“This crappy place over on Taylor.” He swallowed and got to the words he’d undoubtedly rehearsed a hundred times. “I gotta get out of the country. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do, but your dad owed me for the last month. It was due the day he got busted.”

“He paid you cash, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah, ten thousand a month. I really need it. It’s not your problem, I know. But . . .”

Andy rubbed his eyes. “Jimmy, I’ll tell you, the police took almost everything.” He paused and looked the man over. “If you had the money where would you go?”

He brightened at this. “I was thinking the Bahamas. But they froze my bank account. I ate in a soup kitchen last night. It was really that. Soup, I mean. What they give you. It wasn’t bad. It was just, it was . . . soup.”

Andy said, “Bahamas’re nice. I’ve been to the Atlantis.”

Jimmy was frowning. “Oh, I don’t mean someplace fancy like that. A cheap motel is good, just until I can get on my feet again. Not even on the beach.”

Andy shrugged. “I found a little cash in one of the file cabinets here. Cops missed it. A couple thousand. You want it, it’s yours.”

Jimmy’s red eyes brightened. “Really? Oh, man, thanks.”

Andy pointed across the office. “The one on the left, the end. Top drawer. It’s in an envelope.”

“I can’t thank you enough, Andy.”

The man strode eagerly across the room but stopped when Andy said, “Oh, Jimmy. I’ve got a question.”

He turned.

“Didn’t Yung come through with the ten he promised you?”

“Yung? The ten?” he stammered.

“What I’m asking, that’s right,” Andy said calmly. “The ten thousand.” When Jimmy, face glowing crimson, swallowing, said nothing, he continued, “What he was going to pay you for selling out my father.”

Silence still, as Jimmy blinked. His right hand thumb and forefinger flicked compulsively together.

“You approached Ki and told him you’d sell Yung my dad’s plans for the Panhandle, so he could buy up the properties first.”

The skinny guy now managed to get a few whispered words out. “No, Andy, no. Ki’s lying. I swear. I’d never do that.”

But he would, and he had.

Because Ki, working with Loi and Andy by then, had dutifully reported to Andy and Loi Jimmy’s willingness to betray Brendon Nagle.

The skinny man sputtered, “Really, it’s more complicated than that.”

Really, it wasn’t.

Andy took the silenced Sig Sauer automatic pistol from the desk drawer and shot Jimmy Ebbitt twice in the chest and then once in the head. He collapsed right in the middle of the drop cloth, which Max had placed there earlier in the day for this very purpose.

Seven

Monday, May 5

Two Months before Donald Lark’s Funeral

Andy and Loi were lying in bed at the Riverside Hotel.

The promised “minute or two” had grown into an hour.

Loi now whispered, “You said there was another piece you wanted to add.”

“This is the part we don’t share with Detective White.”

“I’m intrigued.”

He kissed her forehead, rolled onto his back. “I have a confession.”

She nodded and twined his chest hair once again. This was a habit he could get used to.

“I’m guilty of armed robbery.”

Loi lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t just let that one sit.”

“My father’s real security conscious. I told you. But I could still figure out parts of his operation. Sometimes I’d follow a courier from his office—you know, on his way to make a money drop. Before he got there, I pulled on a ski mask, stuck a gun in his ribs and took the cash.” Andy shrugged. “A perfect crime. Nobody was going to the police. And my father was sure another crew had done it.”

She slapped him lightly on the arm and grinned. “Shame on you!” Then she tenderly kissed the spot she’d whacked. “You needed the money?”

“Needed? No. Wanted? Yes. To piss my father off.” He chuckled. “Anyway, who can’t use a half million in unmarked bills?” Then he grew somber in voice and somber in spirit. “We’re doomed, you know.”

“Romeo and Juliet.”

“True, but I’m thinking something else: We’re doomed because we can’t lead normal lives. Any hope of that died years and years go.”

“Normal life,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t know how . . . Can I confess something too?”

“Be my guest.”

“I’ve got a bad side to me.”

“Makes you all the hotter.”

She cuddled closer and gave a sound that resembled a purr. “Every once in a while, when I’m in the mood, I upload ransomware onto some company’s network. You know how that works?”

Andy’d heard of the crime. “It encrypts their data, like payroll and accounting, intellectual property. If they pay into a crypto account, the hacker sends them the decryption key.”

“That’s it. If you ask for under fifty thousand, it’s just the cost of doing business to most companies. They may report it but usually even that’s too much trouble. I have to say it was the only time I’ve really felt alive lately, squeezing some corporate idiots for money and watching my Bitcoin grow.”

Andy said, “They fucked us up, our dear fathers. But they taught us one thing.”

Her beautiful face shone. “How not to run a crime syndicate.”

“Exactly. If we had a crew, we’d do it right. You and me.”

“Is that what the other piece is?” Loi asked.

He nodded. Then he added, solemnly, “We do this, there’s no going back.”

“There’s nothing to go back to. Our childhoods are scorched earth . . . So? Next steps.”

“First is calling room service. I seem to work up an appetite around you.”

The couple was back on the couch in front of the hotel room’s coffee table, with eggs and toast and champagne before them. Additional hotel stationery too.

More ideas, some forming, some misting away.

“I think I know how to recruit Max and Ki. We cut a deal with White for their immunity.”

Loi considered this. “That’ll be the starting point. But the most important thing they’ll want is a job. If they agree to bring down their bosses, nobody’ll hire them.”

“But we will. At double their salary. Max’ll go along. He’s taking care of two elderly parents, and his mother’s disabled. Ki?”

Loi didn’t have to think long. “He’d love the chance to work with us. He’s been like a second father. The only reason he’s still with Father is to protect me from him. He once said if he ever whipped me again, it would be the last time. A job and immunity, he’ll be good.”

“Okay. Ki and Max are on board . . . How’s this for a plan?” Andy explained he’d ask his father to hire him to oversee the books and the paperwork of his real estate company. He would only have access to the company’s legit operation, of course, but with Loi’s computer skills she could probably hack into the man’s secret files and find where he stashed his cash.

When Detective White and the Organized Crime Task Force arrested Andy’s father, the cops would find some money, along with the drugs and weapons, but Andy and Loi would have already taken the bulk of the cash money and destroyed any digital trace of its existence.

This stash would be their start-up capital—plus the money Andy has stolen from his father and Loi’s ransomware profits. They’d use it to create their own syndicate, based on a whole new business model.

Their fathers’ problem was that they were stuck in the mentality of a gangster movie from the 1980s: Martin Scorsese crime, The Sopranos crime. Smuggling and selling drugs and guns, running whorehouses, human trafficking, demanding money from brick-and-mortar retailers for protection.

Nagle and Yung didn’t realize that that approach was pathetically outdated.

Trade unions? Robots ran most of the manufacturing and longshore and stevedore operations, and the new face of labor—the tech industry—was geographically dispersed and not unionized.

Construction? Huge international companies were accountable to shareholders and kickbacks were easily detected.

Graft at city hall? Too risky now that whistle-blowers got rich quick, and everybody with a camera phone and a blog was an investigative reporter, eager to out corruption.

Protection of retail operations? You couldn’t shake down Walmart or Amazon, and a mom-and-pop store couldn’t afford to pay serious sums.

Bookmaking and running numbers? You could gamble everywhere legally now.

Drugs? Grass was becoming legalized, and demand for street heroin and coke was waning and prescription opioids were being more tightly controlled.

Organized crime needed to wake up to the twenty-first century. Andy and Loi threw ideas back and forth for hours, and their syndicate took shape. They would sell forged prescriptions through the dark web. As for sex, no more massage parlors or houses of prostitution or trafficking in women and girls (the latter unacceptable to both of them, in any event); they’d use Eastern European servers to run porn chat and hookup websites, identify the married men and politicians, extort tens of thousands in exchange for not emailing wives or outing the men on social media. They would also sell some of the incriminating data to competitors and political opponents. And classic business protection? Ransomware, again.

Then Andy fell silent.

“What?” Loi asked, frowning. “Having second thoughts?”

“No. But for this to work we’ll have to take it one step further.” His eyes were cool as he regarded her face. “It’ll have to get ugly.”

“We’re the doomed lovers, Andy . . . Go on. As long as nobody innocent gets hurt.”

He said, “Not innocent at all. Donald Lark.”

“The crime boss running the Panhandle. Nothing innocent about him.” She frowned. “I heard Father and Ki talking one time. Lark ordered a hit where the target’s whole family was killed, even the kids.”

“If Max and Ki agree to sign on, the first step is, they’ll kill Lark. That puts the Panhandle in play.”

“He’ll be hard to get to.”

“Every Friday he takes a route to his summer place through this deserted area thirty miles out of town. Max and Ki can handle it. That’s what they’re good at. And they’ll plant stories Lark was killed by somebody out from New York, New Jersey.”

“So, Lark’s dead,” she mused. “Our fathers’ll go to the funeral to telegraph they’re making a move on the territory. We’ll find a bar or restaurant near the funeral parlor, and it’ll look like you and I hooked up there.” She laughed. “Oh, that’ll drive them crazy.”

“Our fathers’ll probably have Max and Ki interrogate the bartender—to see if it was a legitimate pickup or if either of us was fishing for information. Max and Ki’ll pretend to grill the guy, and they’ll come back to our fathers with the story that everything was legit. It was love at first sight.”

Loi laughed and kissed his cheek. “My dad and yours’ll start spying on us, recording what we say.”

“Your father’ll hope I spill something about mine. And vice versa.”

“Oh, we can feed them all sorts of good stuff.”

“We’ll stir the pot, get the rivalry going—that’ll make it easier to set up the kidnapping. They make mistakes, get arrested. We take the money and open up shop. What do you think?”

She tapped her glass to his. Her long kiss was his answer. She asked, “Timetable?”

“It’s May now. I’d say two months. July’ll be good. That’ll give you time to get into my father’s accounts and find his safe houses. It’ll take a while to convince White and the cops to help us and set up a deal for Ki and Max. And plan the kidnapping sting.”

“So we have to be secret lovers until then?”

“Afraid so. We can’t quote ‘meet’ until the funeral.”

“Two whole months?” Loi pouted.

And quite the luxurious and erotic pout it was.

Eight

Friday, July 15

Present Day

Andy Nagle unscrewed the silencer from the Sig Sauer. He slipped the gun and the hot accessory into his pocket. He glanced with no particular emotion at Jimmy’s collapsed body.

Yes, he and Loi were planning a wholly up-to-date crime syndicate. Still, it was wise not to discard all aspects of the past—especially those that had proved reliable over the years: for instance, 9 mm slugs and cinder blocks to keep a body at the bottom of the deep.

Footsteps in the corridor.

“Hey.” Loi Yung walked into the office, glancing down at Jimmy’s corpse, untroubled at the sight. She examined the wall behind the corpse. “No blood on the walls.”

“I aimed carefully. And used hollow points. Max’s on his way. He’s going to take out the trash.”

“Ah.” She doffed her jacket and slung it over the back of a chair across from the desk. She kissed Andy then dug through her backpack. “How’s this?” She held up a sketch of the proposed logo for their company.

R & J GLOBAL INTERCONNECTED SOLUTIONS, INC.

A name that echoed their new approach to organized crime, as opposed to, say, the antiquated: “Transportation and Storage.”

He said, “Nice typeface. Classy.”

She said, “What if somebody asks who R and J are?”

“We’ll tell them they’re our silent partners.” Andy’s phone chimed and he read a text. It was from Pete J, the late Donald Lark’s son. “He’s agreed to a sit-down.”

Loi said, “Can’t wait to see his expression when we tell him he can keep on with business as usual.”

She had come up with the idea, a good one. It would be best to make sure the Panhandle remained the hotbed of traditional organized-crime operations—to keep White and the other cops and law enforcement agencies diverted, unaware of the empire that Andy and she were building.

Max appeared in the doorway. He nodded to the couple. He wasn’t smiling but then he never smiled. He walked to Jimmy’s body, studying it while pulling on blue latex gloves. The big man emptied the scrawny guy’s pockets and dropped everything in a plastic bag. He then began to wrap the body in the blood-spattered drop cloth.

Loi cocked her head and gave a laugh.

“What?” Andy asked.

“We’ve got a new ending for Romeo and Juliet.”

He lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.

“They survive, okay?”

“That’s good.”

“And they go on to form Montague-Capulet, Inc., a front for a syndicate that controls all the organized crime in Verona.”

Andy nodded slowly. “Shakespeare meets Bonnie and Clyde. I like it.”

A faint smile blossomed on Max’s face, the first Andy had ever seen. The man’s crescenting lips soon returned to their flat state and he proceeded with the duct taping.

Andy said, “I’ll help you get him in the SUV.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sounding like a BBC period-drama butler, minus, of course, the accent.

Andy rose and pulled on latex gloves too.

Max said, “You get the feet. The lighter end.”

“You sure?”

The big man grunted once more.

On “three” the men hefted, then started down the hallway with their load, Andy calling to Loi, “I’ll be right back.”

She blew him a kiss.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © Gunner Publications

Jeffery Deaver is a former journalist, folk singer, and attorney whose novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the New York Times, the Times of London, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Los Angeles Times. His books are sold in 150 countries and have been translated into twenty-five languages.

The author of forty novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction law book, as well as the lyricist of a country-western album, he’s received or been short-listed for dozens of awards.

Deaver’s book The Bodies Left Behind was named best novel of the year by the International Thriller Writers association. His Lincoln Rhyme thriller The Broken Window and stand-alone novel Edge were also nominated for that prize, as was his Amazon short story “Ninth and Nowhere.” He has been awarded the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association, and he is a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award and the Nero Award. The Cold Moon was named the book of the year by the Mystery Writers of Japan. In addition, the Japan Adventure Fiction Association gave The Cold Moon and Carte Blanche its annual Grand Prix award. Deaver’s book The Kill Room was awarded the Political Thriller of the Year award by Killer Nashville. And his collection of short stories, Trouble in Mind, was nominated for best anthology by that organization as well.

Deaver has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention and the Raymond Chandler Award for lifetime achievement in Italy. The Strand Magazine also presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Deaver has been nominated for eight Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, as well as an Anthony, a Shamus, and a Gumshoe. He served two terms as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

His audiobook The Starling Project, starring Alfred Molina and produced by Audible, won the Audie Award for best original audiobook of the year in 2016. Deaver contributed to the anthologies In the Company of Sherlock Holmes and Books to Die For, which won the Anthony. Books to Die For recently won the Agatha as well.

Deaver’s most recent novels are The Never Game, the first book in his Colter Shaw series; the Lincoln Rhyme novels The Cutting Edge, The Burial Hour, and The Steel Kiss; Solitude Creek, a Kathryn Dance thriller; and The October List, a thriller told in reverse. For the Dance novel XO, Deaver wrote an album of country-western songs, available on iTunes and as a CD; before that, he wrote Carte Blanche, a James Bond continuation novel and a number one international bestseller.

Deaver’s book A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme / Amelia Sachs novels are in development as the NBC series Lincoln. Lifetime aired an adaptation of his book The Devil’s Teardrop. And yes, the rumors are true: he did appear as a corrupt reporter on his favorite soap opera, As the World Turns. He was born outside Chicago and has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University.

Readers can visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.