The pain was sharp and immediate, and it broke the trance. He straightened and blinked. Blood was dripping onto the glass, big fat drops that spattered in perfect patterns, softening red to pink where they hit the powder on the table. Slowly, like a man waking from a dream, he unclenched his fingers. The razor blade. He’d forgotten he was holding it, and his tightening fist had jammed a good third of it into the meat of his palm. Gingerly, he tugged it out, the sliding sensation vaguely nauseating. He dropped it on the glass, where it hit with a ting.

Shit.

Ian closed his hand. Heat and the throb of his pulse. His fingers were red.

Is this all you are?

Is this what you want to be?

He heard Katz’s voice from last week. Laughing, calling him a degenerate. A drug addict in a suit.

A wave of disgust pounded him. He yanked the bill from his nose. Grabbed the cigar box from the floor and upended the Ziploc into it, then leaned forward and used a forearm to shovel all the blow from the table into the box as well. He stood up fast, and walked hard to the bathroom. The toilet seat was still up from the morning’s puking. He held the box over it.

He hesitated before dumping it. But only for a minute. Then he kicked the handle with the tip of his dress shoe and watched it all swirl away.

OK. He’d made some mistakes. And even the things that he had done with good intentions, like paying off Katz, had made things worse. But he wasn’t going down like this. Not Ian Verdon, no way. He’d worked too hard, come too far. Cocaine wasn’t going to beat him, and neither was Johnny Love or Victor, that sick fuck. And if his friends didn’t want his help, well, fine. He’d do it on his own.

Do what, exactly?

The thought took the wind from him. What was there to do? Monday morning, Jenn and Mitch would go to the bank, get the mystery bottles, and give them to Victor. That would be that.

Or would it? Only as long as the guy held true to his promise. Ian had heard too many pitches to buy that “believe every word I say” schtick on credit.

Ian’s left hand was wet with blood. He spun the faucet, held his hand under it. The pain was steady but distant. Hell of a week. A black eye, a sliced palm, a second-degree burn on his balls, dope sickness, and the rejection by his only real friends. Hell of a week.

Somehow he had to make this better. Make up for all the ways he’d blown it.

How long have you got, kid?

All right. Maybe not all the ways. But as many as he could. Help his friends. Get back to being the man he once had been. The guy on the go, the Tennessee Refugee who had come to the Windy City and made a killing.

How, though? Beyond where to score premium flake or play in a private poker game, he didn’t know anything about the criminal world. His cell phone didn’t have numbers for ex-cops with friends on the force or gangbangers working as muscle.

Well, OK. What do you have, then? What are you capable of?

He could always go to the police. But while he wasn’t sure of Victor’s magnanimity in victory, he was damn sure of the man’s willingness to carry out his threats if crossed. His father, Alex’s kid, the others… Ian shivered in the cold tile bathroom. He couldn’t risk it. Especially not knowing what he was dealing with.

Wait. There. He had a flash of the movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, preaching that information was power. God, how many times had he seen that flick? Fifty? A hundred? Lying on the couch of his shitty efficiency apartment, eating ravioli straight from the can, reciting the lines to get rid of his Southern drawl.

Information was power. And right now they didn’t have enough.

So what? You don’t know how to learn about a man like Victor. Not as if you can look him up in Well-Dressed Psychopaths Weekly.

OK. So he couldn’t get much on Victor. So what could he-

Whoa.

He straightened. Left the bathroom, picked up his phone from the counter. Scrolled through until he found the number he was looking for.

“Davis. It’s Ian Verdon. Listen, can I buy you a beer? I need to pick your brain.”

CHAPTER 26

HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ON SHIFT UNTIL SIX, but Mitch just couldn’t find it in himself to give a good goddamn. When he thought about the sum total of hours he’d occupied the same patch of sidewalk, sun or rain or snow, in a monkey suit, smiling on cue, jockeying to open the doors of cabs and limousines, hauling luggage and giving directions, it made him not so much tired as physically sick. Eight hours a day, 250 days a year, times, what, ten years? Staring at the patterns of blackened gum driven into the sidewalk, at the building opposite, watching people walk to better jobs, talking into cell phones, women in stockings and long soft hair not even looking as they strode home. His life. What a colossal waste.

Alex and Ian had both already left, the first storming out, the second slumping, leaving him and Jenn sitting in the conference room alone. He had a quick flash of hoisting her up onto the polished wood table, laying her back with one hand behind her head, whispering to her as he kissed down her body, but a glance told him that wasn’t going to happen. She sat rigid, staring at her hands, elegant fingers splayed across the tabletop.

“Are you OK?”

She nodded but didn’t look up.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“What about your job?”

“I quit.”

She’d looked at him then, an appraising kind of stare. He met her gaze and put on what he hoped was a rakish grin. Maybe it was silly, but he felt good. Alive, and strong, and with the woman he wanted. They could stand shoulder to shoulder against the world. Forget the others.

It was a gorgeous day, the sunlight bright and pure, the colors fresh-scrubbed. He put his arm around her and steered east, no real destination in mind. They got lucky with the light at Michigan and crossed over to Millennial Park. The air smelled of fried foods and the lake. It felt good to walk with her, and he didn’t break the silence, just wandered up the steps toward the massive chrome sculpture. The thing was shaped like a bean, maybe forty feet across and mirror-polished, the curves reflecting the whole world. Tourists and their children wandered staring, watching the surface warp and distort them. He liked that about it, the sense of disappearing in plain sight, of turning into something else.

“Aren’t you scared?”

He turned to look at her, surprised. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is a good thing. It solves everything at once. We get to keep the money, don’t have to worry about Johnny, and all we have to do is give up something we don’t want anyway.” He watched a small boy, seven or eight, walk steadily toward the sculpture with his hands in front of him. “That was smart of you, telling him you’d put it in the bank, so we do it in public.”

“Is that why you think I said it?”

“Isn’t it?”

She didn’t reply. Whatever was spinning in her mind, he had a feeling he wouldn’t like it, and so instead of asking again, he said, “Can you believe Alex? I know we’ve had our differences, but I never thought he’d just abandon us like that. Prick.”

“He has his daughter to think about.”

“Like we don’t have people to protect?”

“It’s different for him.”

“Why?”

“He’s a father. He’s worried.”

“He’s a coward, is what he is.”

“Come on.”

“What? Why are you defending him?”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” His forehead felt overlarge, the blood vessels in it pounding. “Again. What’s going on between you two?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure. He showed up at your place the other night for nothing.” The words were barely out of his mouth and he already regretted them.

“Excuse me?”

He sighed. “I didn’t mean that.”