“Like what?”

“I don’t know, you’re looking at me… strangely.”

“I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how awful all of this is.”

Her father seemed incredulous, like he wasn’t buying this explanation, but then he said, “Oh, Clements talked to the Millers next door, and JoAnne said their dog was barking like crazy yesterday at around six thirty.”

“So?” Marissa asked.

“So,” her father said suddenly agitated, “the other day, before I found the note from Tony, when I came in the house the dog was barking, too. I thought it was a little unusual at the time. I mean, the dog knows us, right? He never barks at us.”

Marissa, distracted, barely paying attention, said, “I don’t get it.”

“It means Tony was here again.” Now her father was practically yelling, and Marissa, frightened, backed away a few steps. “The dog was barking both times, and we know Tony was here once, right? Clements said this sounds interesting, but I don’t think he really gets it. This is another thing I’m talking to my lawyer about, though. There have to’ve been other witnesses; somebody must’ve seen Tony coming or going. What’s wrong? Why’re you moving away from me?”

“I’m not,” Marissa said.

Her father glared at her, something in his eyes reminding her of the way he’d looked when he’d gleefully revealed his affair to her and her mother. Then he said to her, “You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course I believe you,” she said.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Hey,” Xan said.

She hadn’t seem him enter the dining room from behind her, and she was so startled she might’ve shrieked.

“Sorry,” Xan said. “Just wanted to see how you two were doing.”

Marissa held his hand, relieved he was here.“We were just… talking about the funeral,” she said. “It’s tomorrow morning.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help you out, just let me know,” Xan said to Adam.

“Thanks, but I think we’re okay,” Adam said, looking at Marissa. “At least I hope we are.”

Marissa and Xan went upstairs.

In her room, she whispered to him, “Oh my God, he did it. He really fucking did it.”

twenty- two

Johnny watched the couple get off the Coney Island- bound F train, and then he followed them down the long escalator and out to the street. The couple went past the convenience store at the corner and turned right. Johnny hung back for a block or two, until the couple reached an area that was darker and more deserted, and then he made his move.

He pulled down his black ski mask and started walking faster, until he was about twenty yards behind them; then, right when the guy looked back over his shoulder, Johnny sprinted toward them, holding his.38. Before the couple could run or yell for help or react at all, Johnny was pointing the gun at the guy’s face, saying, “Gimme the fuckin’ ring.”

Johnny had spotted the woman’s ring on the subway. It was a sparkly diamond engagement ring, looked like at least one carat. The woman was blond, blue- eyed, and, like most people in this part of Brooklyn nowadays, probably not a native New Yorker. She was probably from the Midwest, Kansas or some shit. No girl who grew up in the city would wear her engagement ring, diamond up, on the subway at eleven o’clock at night.

“Please… don’t shoot him,” the woman said.

Yeah, definitely not a New Yorker.

“Just gimme the fuckin’ ring, bitch,” Johnny said. He hated that he had to be so disrespectful, that he couldn’t talk like the charming woman- lover he normally was, but he knew that in a robbery situation it was a good idea to act as little like your normal self as possible.

“Take it easy,” the guy said. He was tall and thin and had the same bumpkin accent as the girl. “We don’t want any trouble, yo.”

Yo. Like he thought he was talking street and that would, what, save him?

Johnny pressed the gun into the guy’s cheek and said, “Tell the whore to gimme the fuckin’ ring.”

“Give him the ring,” the guy said to the woman.

“I can’t. It’s my grandmother’s.”

“Give it to him, goddamn it.”

“Please,” the woman said to Johnny, “take our money. I have two hundred dollars in my purse, and my fiancй has money, too. You can have it all, but please, I can’t give you the-”

Johnny pistol- whipped the guy across the side of his head. He fell to his knees, and then Johnny hit him with the gun again, on the front of his face, and heard something crunch. The woman started screaming. Jesus, what the hell was wrong with these people? Did they want to die?

Johnny grabbed the woman’s left hand and started to pull off the ring. Would you believe it, she was still trying to resist? She was screaming in Johnny’s ear, trying to break free. Johnny was ready to shoot her in the head and shut her up, but then the ring slid off.

“Thanks, guys,” Johnny said.

He’d got what he wanted. No reason not to be polite now, right?

He walked away quickly. After he turned the corner he jogged a few blocks, and then continued home at a normal pace.

He wished he could sell the ring right away. He knew he could get a thousand for it, maybe more, from any pawnshop, and he didn’t like to hold on to the things he stole, especially jewelry. Jewelry, especially rings, was the type of stuff that people wanted back. Sometimes he’d dump stolen jewelry for a fraction of what it was worth just to get rid of it. After all, he wasn’t an idiot. That was the difference between him and every other criminal in the world.

But he needed the ring, to give to Marissa when the time was right. Then when she was dead, like her parents, he could pawn it off and make his thousand bucks. Not that a thousand bucks would mean anything to him then.

Yeah, it would’ve been nice if Adam Bloom had come home on time and Johnny had killed him like he’d planned to, but everything else had gone so well since then that he couldn’t exactly complain. After he left the house on Monday evening, he dumped the stolen car in a supermarket parking lot way out in Flushing and got rid of the backpack and the sweatshirt that had gotten blood on it. Then he washed up in the bathroom of a gas station and hailed a livery cab and had the driver drop him off around the corner from the movie theater on Fifty- ninth at about eight o’clock. He was only about a half hour late, and he told Marissa the subways were running slow and he couldn’t call her from underground. She wasn’t upset, because she’d been running late, too, and had just gotten there. The movie was about to start, so they decided to go in and get something to eat afterward. Not that she seemed interested in actually watching the movie. While they were in the back of the movie theater, making out, he was replaying the murder in his head. Were there any loose ends? He couldn’t think of any. He’d gotten rid of all the evidence, and the cops had probably already arrested Tony. Hopefully Tony would go to jail for the rest of his life or get the death penalty. If Tony had an alibi, the cops might try to pin the murder on Adam. That would work out really well for Johnny, too. Johnny needed to get rid of Adam for the rest of his plan to work, and it didn’t really matter if Adam was rotting in a jail cell or six feet underground as long as he was gone for good.

After the movie, Johnny took a leak, and when he met Marissa back in the lobby and saw her looking so upset, talking to somebody on her cell, he knew she’d heard the news. Johnny lived for moments like these. He got to play a role, be another person and, even better, be this great guy everybody loved.

Johnny knew that Marissa needed him to take charge, and he handled it beautifully, putting her in the cab, telling her all the right things. At the house, Adam was totally buying into his shit, too, and Johnny played it just right, hugging him, literally giving him a shoulder to cry on about three hours after killing his wife. Seriously, did it get any better than that?