“I don’t… No… I don’t have… your money.”

“Ah, Victor, you are making Sandro very happy.”

The knife dipped down, the edge pressed into the bloody circle.

“But I know who does,” I said hastily as I tried again to pull away. “I know who has it.”

Gregor tapped Sandro on the shoulder. Sandro dug the knife in deeper and then, with a sigh, lifted it from my chest. He wiped it on my pant leg, one side, then the other, before snapping it closed and rising to his feet.

I shut my eyes, opened them again. The pain was still there, along with the blood. I touched the wound, the red smeared sickly.

“Get up now,” said Gregor. “No need to wallow.”

I pushed myself to a sitting position and then stood, un-steadily. My chest burned, my stomach shifted, a line of vomit climbed up my throat and burned its way down again. I staggered a bit before collapsing onto the pleather sofa. I put the remnants of my T-shirt against the bleeding wound and then modestly clutched my buttonless shirt closed. I might have sobbed.

My cell phone rang again. Derek, I assumed, calling to tell me where Julia had gone, calling to read to me my future.

“You want to pick that up?” said Gregor.

“No,” I said, and the truth was that I really didn’t. In the midst of the blood and the torture, I didn’t need another blow.

“Okay, Victor. Now tell me what you know.”

My breathing was crazed with fear, like a raccoon on the run. I took a moment to try to get it under control.

“Come, come,” said Gregor. “Don’t leave me hanging.”

“Remember how we were on the track of Miles Cave?” I managed to say. “Well, he doesn’t exist.”

“Really,” said Gregor. “No Miles Cave. Interesting. He’s ghost, but ghost who writes letters.” He reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and began to read in his dark Russian voice. “‘Dear Wren, As our recent conversations have not gone well, and you have lately been refusing to take my calls, I am having this letter hand-delivered in hopes – ’”

“It’s a fake,” I said.

“But of course you would say that. It has your address. And it looks like your signature. And I have it on good authority that you wrote it.”

“Whose authority?”

“Someone I trust.”

“He’s lying.”

“It’s not a he.”

“Who? Julia?”

“Victor. Let us start again. Where is my money?”

“I don’t have it. And I didn’t write that letter. I am being framed. By the very person who does have the money.”

“So talk.”

“Wren Denniston was broke. He saw a way of getting out of the Inner Circle disaster with some money in his pocket by playing his old business associate for a sucker. So he concocted a way for you to invest with an imaginary partner. He took your cash and credited the investment in the books, but he never put the cash in the bank. Instead he gave it to someone to hide, in case you or the feds came looking for it. Then, later, he credited the withdrawal and, wallah, one point seven million in cash ready to soften his fall. His golden parachute.”

“So Wren has my money.”

“He did, but he was murdered, murdered for reasons that had nothing to do with the money. By an addict named Terrence Tipton, whom Julia has been in love with since high school. But the murder left the cash with the person Wren had hidden it with. The person who had been involved with Wren in the plan, the person who had drafted up the partnership agreement between you and the fictional Miles Cave. When you showed me the agreement, I thought I recognized the author.”

“And you didn’t tell me? I am hurt.”

“I wanted to be sure.”

“And are you?”

“Yes.”

“So, Victor, who is this man who conspired with Wren, who took advantage of his murder to steal my money, and then who framed you? Who is this mastermind of crime?”

“You’re not going to believe this.”

“You better hope that I do.”

And just as I was about to tell him, there was a scrape of feet at my door.

Knock, knock.

Gregor’s head whipped around. Sandro bolted to standing as he straightened his arm. Swish-click.

I clutched my shirt tighter.

“Victor Carl,” came a voice I recognized from the other side. “This is the police. Open the door. We have a warrant.”

Click-swish. Sandro put his hand in his pocket.

Gregor turned his face from the door, grabbed hold of my head with both hands, pulled me close enough so I could smell the cumin on his breath. “Who?” he said, quietly but urgently.

I thought it through as quickly as I could, thought of Sandro and his dancing knife, thought of what fun he would have. I thought of it all, and then I let the lesser angels of my nature have their way. Sure, why not, and didn’t he deserve to be the quarry that got Gregor off my back? But if it was going to work, if a single name was going to send Gregor off to do his part on this brutal night, I needed him to trust me. How could I get Gregor to trust me with two cops banging down the door? How indeed?

“Twenty-five percent,” I said.

“You’re being greedy,” said Gregor. “We had deal.”

“That was before you sliced up my chest like a London broil.”

“Fifteen.”

“Twenty.”

Another knock.

“Yes, fine,” said Gregor. “Agreed. Who?”

“Clarence,” I said as I jerked my head out of his grip and stood up, clutched my now-bloody shirt tight. “Clarence Swift.”

“No. Can’t be.”

“Yes it can,” I said. “That little eel has it stashed away, mark my word. Now, if you boys don’t mind, I need to talk to my friends in the constabulary.”

39

Sims and Hanratty, back again to where it all began.

“Are we interrupting something, Victor?” said Sims, looking through the crack of the door and past my shoulder to the two nefarious characters in my living room.

“Nothing worth talking about.”

He eyed my shirt, still clutched, a rough circle of blood beginning to appear on the cloth, took in the burgeoning bruise on my face, my bleeding ear. Then he peered into my eyes as if to figure out what the hell was going on.

“You mind if we come in?” he said.

“Does it matter if I say yes?”

“No.”

“Then by all means,” I said as I opened the door wide, letting them through. Once in the apartment, the two cops stood side by side – Sims dark and furtive, Hanratty solid as granite with a Mount Rushmore jaw – and stared at the two other men in my apartment like a pair of fighting dogs sizing up the competition.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your guests?” said Sims. “We so much would like to meet them, wouldn’t we, Hanratty?”

Hanratty glowered and said nothing.

“Hanratty is always looking for new friends,” said Sims, “since he tends to break the old ones.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “How rude of me. Detective Sims, Detective Hanratty, this is Gregor Trocek and his boy toy Sandro.”

Sandro hissed at me with his Andalusian lisp.

“Gregor Trocek,” said Sims. “Gregor Trocek. Where have I heard that name before?”

“It is quite common,” said Gregor. “Pleasure meeting you both, but we must be going. We have business meeting to attend.”

“At this time of night?” said Sims. “It must be some business. Gregor Trocek. Gregor Trocek.” He tapped his chin twice, and then his eyes lit up. “Of course. Gregor Trocek. What a coincidence. I was just this evening reading the Interpol file of a Gregor Trocek. A rather nasty villain.”

“Must be different Gregor Trocek,” said Gregor Trocek.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Sims. “The Gregor Trocek I was reading about was approximately your height, approximately your weight, had the same beady eyes and unkempt beard, the same air of perverse dissoluteness. He is wanted for questioning in Belgium about a notorious sex crime. A young girl violently assaulted. Shockingly young, actually. The community is still in an uproar. He is under investigation in Albania. Something about trafficking in young women. What was the term in the file? Oh, yes, the white slave trade. Quite evocative, no? And he is barred from entering Thailand and Cambodia. I can’t imagine what bestiality one must commit to be banned from entering Thailand and Cambodia. Care to comment?”