I’m not much good at romance, I’m afraid, but I am the master of ambivalence.

“Okay,” she said, back now, her face clean, her brow strangely untroubled. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Take the tape player,” I said. “Go to the Roundhouse. Ask for Detective McDeiss. He’ll probably be at home, but they’ll find him for you. Give him the tape, along with the address in Kensington where Terry can be found.”

“McDeiss?”

“That’s right. He’ll make sure the arrest is done clean, by the book and without any shooting.”

“And what happens to Terrence?”

“I’ll find him a lawyer. He’ll make a deal and will have a chance to clean himself up in prison.”

“You make it sound like I’ll be doing him a favor.”

“Buying drugs for him, shooting him up when you visited, letting him live like a tick sucking off Wren’s wealth, enabling his self-destruction, and protecting him every step of the way, that was no favor. There is an infection in his body that is chewing him to pieces, and he’s doing nothing about it. He’s killing himself. Prison might be his only chance.”

She looked at me for a moment, a harsh emotion rolled across her features like a rough ocean wave, and then she smiled wanly. “You’re a bastard.”

“Yes, I am.”

She stared down at the tape player on the table, as if she were staring at betrayal itself, and then she picked it up, dropped it into her bag, whirled around.

“Call me when it’s done,” I said to her back.

“One step at a time,” she said, and then she was out the door.

I gave her a minute, in case she quickly changed her mind and came back in, and then I rushed over to the window and watched her leave as I took out my cell phone and made a call.

“I see her, bo,” said Derek from the other end.

“Don’t lose her. She’ll be in a dark blue BMW.”

“She got the tape?”

“Yes.”

“What she going to do with it?”

“Call me when she gets to the Roundhouse.”

“And what if she goes the other way?”

“Then keep following.”

“Just so you know,” said Derek, “I think you got some visitors.”

“Who?”

“Two men. They was waiting for her to leave before they popped in.”

“Okay, thanks for the heads-up. I was expecting them anyway.”

And I was. Sims and Hanratty, I figured. I had dropped their tail, I had slipped out of town, I had pissed them off. At least I was being consistent. Now they were coming for answers, which worked out just fine, because answers were what I had for them.

I again took to my chair and waited in the darkness for the knock at the door. And then it came.

Knock, knock.

“Come on in,” I called out cheerfully. “The door’s open.”

And in they came. Not Sims and Hanratty.

Damn.

38

“Where is my money, Victor?” said Gregor Trocek.

The question was rhetorical, I supposed, what with me flopped on my back and the point of Sandro’s switchblade digging into the soft flesh beneath the point of my jaw. If I had tried to answer, my flapping jaw would have been impaled like a speared fish. So I kept quiet as Gregor wandered around my apartment, raising his hands in mock exasperation.

“Where could it be? Where, where, where? What?” he said, turning to stare right down at my face. “No answer for me?”

I guess the question wasn’t so rhetorical after all.

“I don’t have it,” I tried saying through gritted teeth, my words sounding less like English than a Neanderthaloid grunt.

“But, Victor, how can I believe anything you say?”

“I’m telling the truth,” I tried again.

“Speak more clearly, please,” said Gregor. “I can barely understand a word.”

“There’s a knife.”

“Yes, I’ve had enough, enough of your lies, your thievery, the baubles in your apartment.” He walked up to the flat-screen television bolted onto my wall. “Nice. High def?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It is quite gratifying to know my money paid for such quality merchandise. I would have hated for it to be wasted on junk.”

“I didn’t buy it with your money.”

“What? I still can’t understand you. Maybe a little more persuasion will clarify your words. Sandro, cut off his nipple.”

This wasn’t going well. This wasn’t going well at all.

When I realized that it was Gregor and Sandro coming through my door instead of two cops, I figured I was in trouble, and I became ever more certain when Sandro, instead of hesitating tastefully once inside, charged right at me while Gregor locked the door behind them both.

I grappled to my feet. Sandro socked me in the eye with a forearm shiver. I reeled from the blow and slammed into the floor.

Swish-click.

And just like that, Sandro was on top of me, the point of his switchblade pricking my flesh.

That was bad enough, that was enough to swell my eye and roil my stomach and leave me clenching my teeth to stop from being impaled. But now, with a simple imperative from Gregor Trocek, it was getting far, far worse.

Sandro began undressing me with his knife.

“Such an ugly tie,” he said as he looped the blade between the knot of my loose red tie and my shirt. With a jerk of his wrist, the tie was sliced in two.

I tried to scuttle backward, but Sandro grabbed my shirt.

“And now these annoying buttons,” he said.

A flick of the knife and a button flew off. Flick went another.

I let out an involuntary wail of fear.

Flick, flick, flick. The front of my shirt drifted open.

I tried again to get away, but he grabbed my T-shirt, pulled me forward, and in a quick move plunged the knife into the fabric, ripping upward with the blade until the metal edge snapped by my cheek and nicked my ear. As he jerked the shirt once more, it ripped in two, leaving my chest bared.

I stared up at Sandro’s face as he grabbed my hair with one hand and pointed his knife at my chest with the other. His eyes were bright, his lips twisted somewhere between anger and delirium. He was enjoying this entirely too much. Yet another lesson that I was not made for prison.

“Oh, look,” said Sandro. “A tattoo. Is that your lover’s name? Maybe I deal with her after I deal with you.”

“She’s already dead,” I said.

“Too bad.”

On the coffee table, my cell phone rang. Sandro stopped and turned his face toward it. It rang, rang again, and then went to voice mail.

“Enough of your games, Sandro,” said Gregor, standing to the side of us, his hands behind his back as if examining nothing more alarming than a mediocre piece of art. “Make your mark.”

“Can I take the tattoo?”

“As you please,” said Gregor.

“Gracias,” said Sandro as he used the point of the knife to painfully scrape a wide circle around my left nipple, which included the tattoo. I tried to pull away, but Sandro held me tight as he worked. Blood began rising through the slices, welling and dripping down my chest, across the shallows of my abdomen.

“What is he doing?” I yelled.

“Marking where he will slice when he cuts off nipple. He needs be sure there is enough flesh, so after shrinking in smoke, it will still look like something.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sandro saves pieces he cuts off. He has quite lively collection. Fingers. Ears. The nipples dry nicely with smoke and turn same brown as tobacco.”

I fought to catch my breath. “Sick” was the only word I could grunt out.

“Agreed, but I don’t value Sandro for his sanity. We could end this right now, Victor. You could emerge with your measly chest intact, right now. If you are ready to tell me what I need to know.”

“We made a deal,” I whined as I stared at the blood. “We had an arrangement. Twelve point five percent.”

“That was before I learned that you have it all. All is better than an eighth in everything but shrapnel.”