"You Mr. Malloy?" the behemoth asked. The woman looked at the younger of her two accomplices, the blond man in his early forties. The blond man nodded.

"At your service."

36.The bodyguard stared at his sungla.s.ses. Or more specifically, what held them up. "Man, what happened to your ear?"

The blond man ignored the question. "We're here to see Mr. Culvert."

The bodyguard looked at the woman standing behind Malloy. She had dark skin and luminous green eyes. Her skin was the color of cinnamon, and she looked a few years older than the blond man. Her body was toned, sinewy, her breastbone visible above the curve of her tank top. The bodyguard let his gaze hover over her an extra moment, then ushered the three people inside.

The apartment was located inside a largely unoccupied building in Harlem. The man they were going to see owned the premises, and other than letting family members stay from time to time, he kept it mainly for business dealings. And that's what this meeting was about. Business.

The bodyguard ushered them down a hallway into a room that was lit only by two weak floor lamps. The windows were blacked out, and there were no phones or other electronic devices present. Three couches were arranged in a semicircle, and sitting on these couches were four men. Three of them were dressed all in black trench coats, and were just as big as the guy who opened the door. Machine guns were strapped to each of their chests. They made no efforts to hide them.

The one man who was unarmed was dressed in a simple track suit, and wore enough gold chains to bring down a hot air balloon. He was thirty-two years old, and worth nearly twenty million dollars. The woman looked around the place, slightly disappointed that there was no evidence of his successful rap career in the building. No 37.platinum alb.u.ms, no framed magazine covers. For what she had in mind, those trinkets would have made the ensuing story that much more vivid.

The chains clinked together as the man twitched involuntarily. He constantly licked at his lips and rubbed his hands together. His eyes were wide, the whites almost eerie in the gloom. He smiled broadly when they entered.

"Mr. Culvert," Malloy said. "Good to see you again."

LeRoy Culvert stood up. He gripped Malloy's hand with both of his and shook them energetically. He looked warily at the two people Malloy was with. The other man he viewed with skepticism. The woman he eyed with fear.

"Mr. Culvert," the woman said. "Let's talk about the future."

"Absolutely," LeRoy Culvert said, sitting back down.

The four bodyguards watched, guns at the ready. "Here, take a seat."

"That's all right," she said. "We'd prefer to keep this short."

"Whatever you say, ma'am," Culvert said with a laugh.

The man was stoned out of his mind. That was clear. And the woman knew exactly what drugs he had taken.

"So?" she said. "You've clearly sampled our product.

What do you think?"

LeRoy Culvert leaned back, his head tilted toward the ceiling. Then he whipped it forward.

"See, normally I'd lie to y'all. I'd tell you your 'product' is s.h.i.t, and that you should feel lucky if I'd sell it to the poorest crackheads who live in the subway. See, that way I'd bargain you down, get you to sell it to me at a discount, and I'd keep the profits for my own."

"Smart business strategy," the woman said.

"But I ain't gonna do that to you. You're good peo-38 ple. Listen, this be the finest product I have ever tried in my whole life. whole life. Fact is, if you hadn't come on time Fact is, if you hadn't come on time today I'd have to get my man b.u.t.tercup to track you down and get some more down here because my stash is out. out. " "

"b.u.t.tercup?" Malloy said.

The ma.s.sive, milky-white bodyguard nodded. "That's what people call me."

"Intimidating," the woman said.

"Listen, lady," b.u.t.tercup said, "I will break your bony a.s.s over my knee."

"Hey, my man Cup, there's no need for that," Culvert said. "These people are our friends. friends. They're going to double They're going to double your salary, because I'm gonna be worth twice as much."

"At least," the woman said.

"So look, I want in. I'll start with a million worth of the rock. I have enough dealers on the streets that we'll probably be sold out in a month. Then we'll re-up, and go from there. Everybody makes money. You have the product, I have the distribution. Together, we'll blanket the city. Every two-bit street demon with a habit and a ten-dollar bill will be aching for a taste of this."

"You do have the streets," the woman said. "And that is commendable. Very nineteen eighties. But to be honest, I'm thinking a little higher than street level."

"What you mean?" Culvert said. "Higher, where?"

"That's not important. I'm just glad you enjoyed the product."

"Enjoyed?" Culvert said. "Man, I'm gonna buy ten grand worth just for my own personal enjoyment. What do you say to that?"

Malloy shrugged. The woman did not move. The other man stayed quiet. He looked uncomfortable.

39."Who is this dude?" Culvert said, nodding to the quiet man.

"This," the woman replied, "is Detective Sevag Makhoulian of the NYPD. He's our liaison inside the department. He will keep us apprised of any police awareness of our operation."

"Smart b.i.t.c.h, you is," Culvert said. "So, let's make a deal."

"Sorry," the woman said. "No deal."

Culvert looked like he'd been punched in the stomach.

"What do you mean, no deal? You gave me the product to test, I tested it, and now I want to take it to the streets.

We all make money."

"We make money," she said. "You don't." make money," she said. "You don't."

LeRoy Culvert jumped from the couch, his chains clinking, baggy pants fluttering. "Listen, b.i.t.c.h, I want my stash. Business or not, I got to have more of that stuff.

Those rocks are life, life, man." man."

"I'm glad you're satisfied with our product," she said, "but that does not change the fact that this transaction is done."

"Man, f.u.c.k y'all," Culvert said. "You gonna be like this, I'm gonna have to take over your your operation. b.u.t.tercup, gut this b.i.t.c.h." operation. b.u.t.tercup, gut this b.i.t.c.h."

b.u.t.tercup went for the gun in his waistband, but before his hand ever got there the woman ripped a blade from inside her coat and ripped it through the soft meat of b.u.t.tercup's throat. The wound yawned open a ghastly red, and b.u.t.tercup made a choking sound as he dropped to the ground, flailing. Blood poured from the severed veins.

The woman wiped her hand on the couch.

LeRoy Culvert stared at the b.l.o.o.d.y mess. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" he said. "We're partners!"

40."Yes, we are," the woman said. "You're going to help us get the word out about our product. I'm just sorry that your corpse is going to be the vehicle for delivering the message."

Suddenly Malloy pulled two machine pistols from his coat, and in less than two seconds shredded Culvert's bodyguards in a hail of bullets. Blood and pillow feathers spattered the apartment, which was lit brightly by the gunfire.

When Malloy had stopped firing, he paused and saw LeRoy Culvert cowering behind one of the couches. He was muttering sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus over and over over and over again as he rubbed a gold cross hanging around his neck.

"Jesus won't save you," the woman said, walking over to the cowering man. "But give him my best."

With one thrust, she buried her knife up to the hilt just under LeRoy Culvert's jaw. He tried to open it, instead aspirating a cloud of blood. When Culvert's eyes rolled back in his head, the woman pulled the knife free.

Culvert's body toppled to the ground.

The woman looked at the b.l.o.o.d.y knife in her hand.

"Three days," the woman said to her a.s.sociates. "Once Paulina Cole does her job, and the police tie this into it, we'll have enough product on the street to saturate the entire city in less than a week."

Malloy stood there, staring at the bodies. He made the sign of the cross. The woman turned to Malloy and put her arm across his shoulder.

"I know you're thinking about him," she said. "But I promise you, he won't have died in vain."

"Thursday," Malloy said. "I've been waiting for this day for twenty years."

"Me, too," she said. "Now come on, we have some new recruits coming in. I want this room to look like something out of Stephen King's nightmares."

41.The woman took the knife and drew it across the wall, leaving a b.l.o.o.d.y smear. Just a few strokes later, the F F was was visible. When she completed the rest of the word, and the apartment was sufficiently coated, they left the building and waited for Detective Sevag Makhoulian to report the crime.

5.

Amanda Davies arrived home at eight o'clock. She called it home even though it was anything but. The reality was it was the home of her friend and coworker Darcy Lapore, and Darcy was campaigning for most altruistic human being on the planet by allowing Amanda to stay there.

Living here wasn't what she'd expected after coming to New York for law school. She figured she'd graduate from NYU near the top of her cla.s.s, which she did, then find a cushy job in some high-profile firm and become one of those high-powered career women who had bra.s.sy blond hair (hers was auburn, so this would be tricky), wear smart Hillary Clinton pantsuits, get married at thirty-six, kids at thirty-nine, realize by fifty that you never really spent much time with your family, sixty before you realized you were never really happy in your marriage and my, didn't life go by fast?

Instead, she met a guy named Henry Parker who changed her world. Well, part of it was her own doing, choosing the not-for-profit sector of legal aid rather than one of those cushy jobs. She didn't make the money most New York lawyers did, but she was pretty sure she slept better at night.

43.It took a few years, but looking back Amanda realized how much of her life she'd missed. It was as if she'd taken her expected life and turned it around. Her parents had died when she was young, and after being shuttled back and forth for years, she was adopted by a kind couple named Lawrence and Harriet Stein. The Steins were everything foster parents could be. Except for real parents.

Amanda went through the first twenty years of her life without knowing a real relationship of any kind, and she didn't figure that would get any better.

Then she met Henry in extraordinary circ.u.mstances, literally picking him up on the side of the road, later to find out he was wanted for murder. Thankfully he was innocent. That would have been a deal breaker.

They'd leaped into a relationship faster than either of them knew what they were doing, and for a while it was good. Really good. Then just as they met under extraordinary circ.u.mstances, so were they torn apart. Henry broke up with her for reasons that he believed were n.o.ble, but devastated them both. And after some tentative patchwork, they'd decided to give it another go. Slowly this time. They were starting like they should have from the beginning. Movies. Dinner. Holding hands while walking through Central Park, picnic lunches on the Great Lawn.

She'd moved in with Henry too quickly last time. For now, Darcy would do, but every night spent in that cold guest room, with the hard mattress that was meant more for show than for use, with the artificial orchids everywhere and paint so white that it seemed to have been bleached of all personality, she couldn't wait for the day when she could feel his warmth next to her every night, where she could lean her head on his chest whenever she felt like it and listen to the beating of his heart. She craved 44.that intimacy, that security. He needed it, too, she knew it. But if it took a few extra months to build protection for the rest of their lives, she supposed she could wait.

The alternative would have been unbearable.

When she used her spare key to open the apartment door, she had to fumble around in the hallway for the light switch. It wasn't by the door like it would be in a normal apartment. The hallway light was part of some intricate module by the entrance of the atrium that controlled all the lights in the house. That was one of the things she loved about Henry's previous apartments. There were no modules, and definitely no atrium.

Once she found the panel and turned on every light in the house before finding the one to her bedroom, she went inside, stripped out of her work clothes and threw on a pair of shorts and a tank top. Darcy and her husband, Devin, were out at their summer home in Oyster Bay.

Every weekend they begged Amanda to come with them, and every weekend she declined. She hated being the third wheel, and having to do it four and a half days of every week (they usually left for Long Island early on Friday) was enough. And while sitting at the edge of a beach, dipping her toes into the luscious water of the Long Island Sound seemed like the perfect antidote to the stressful Manhattan life, it didn't mean a thing without Henry. And he wasn't the "dip your feet in the water and laugh like a fool" kind of guy.

He had two modes: work and play. When the switch was on Work, Henry was as driven and ambitious as anyone she'd known. When it was on Play, there was n.o.body else in the world but the two of them. Everything faded away when he held her in his arms.

And she loved both sides of him unconditionally.

45.Amanda called Henry's cell. It went right to voice mail.

"Hey, babe, hope you're having a good day and Jack hasn't led you off a cliff or something. Give me a call when you get a chance."

When she hung up, Amanda turned on her laptop and put Aimee Mann on high. She was a ma.s.sive fan, but found she couldn't listen to her favorite song, "Wise Up,"

as often as she used to. The lyrics were about finding what you thought you wanted most, only to realize that once you had it, it wasn't what you thought it would be. Every time she heard it, she thought about their relationship.

She'd never been a goopy girl, the kind who read her horoscopes or gossiped over cosmos while wearing outfits that cost more than the GDP of the Congo. She wasn't superst.i.tious either, but she didn't want to think about losing what she wanted. What she had.

She figured if Aimee knew what she and Henry had been through in their few years knowing each other, she wouldn't take offense.

Kicking her shoes off, Amanda lay back on the hard bed, wanting to think about nothing until it was time to get up for work the next morning. The one thing she did like about Darcy's place was that the girl didn't spare the pillows. The guest room had no less than a dozen pillows of various shapes and sizes covering the bed. Amanda had spent her first week deciding which ones were right, and picked the right half-dozen to fall asleep to. When she and Henry lived together it always drove him crazy. Mainly because he would wake up on one side of the full-size bed with one nostril covered and a feather sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

Amanda groaned as she rolled off the bed, blowing a hair strand from her eye. Darcy and Devin had a fifty-six-46 inch flat screen in their bedroom, one of those cool wallmounted units that seemed to hover without wires or a bracket. It probably cost more than her education, so Amanda figured she'd make use of it.

The remote control was some digital monstrosity that took Amanda ten minutes just to turn on. She was always amused by Darcy's taste in television, so she decided to see what her friend had recorded. The DVR listed thirty-two episodes of s.e.x in the City, s.e.x in the City, ten of ten of Gossip Girl, three of three of Desperate Housewives... Desperate Housewives... and this and this morning's newscast. Amanda laughed. One of those things didn't quite fit.

She pressed Resume Playback on the news program, and saw swarms of cops roaming around what appeared to be a crime scene. A reporter's voice-over spoke of some horrendous murder, some young man's body found pulverized in the East River. The reporter was using her "ultra serious" tone of voice reserved for crimes that were not just bad, but truly terrifying. Amanda felt her heart beat faster. Why the h.e.l.l had Darcy taped this?

"Kenneth Tsang was survived by his mother and father and young sister. According to the police there are no suspects at this time, but sources confirm that the brutality with which the killer or killers ravaged Mr. Tsang's body was done with some sort of message in mind. And since the city medical examiner Leon Binks has confirmed that over one hundred of Mr. Tsang's bones were broken before the body was found in the river, that message will be heard loud and clear."

Amanda shook her head. It was still hard to fathom just how much evil there was in the world. How normal people seemed to be at risk leading normal lives.

And then she realized why Darcy had taped the segment.

47.Standing by a yellow line of police tape, talking to a uniformed officer, was Henry.

Amanda watched. Henry was just doing his job, but something about him being so close to death always unnerved her.

When the clip ended, Amanda walked back into the guest room and grabbed the cell phone. She dialed Henry's number at work. It rang through and went to voice mail.

Then she tried his cell again. Right to voice mail.

"Henry...it's me. I know I just called, but I just wanted to say I love you and please be safe."

Amanda hung up the phone and put on her pajamas.