they wouldn’t even allow me that. Amy had gone home cold and tired and scared. I wondered if these bastards knew that, if they’d watched Amy’s lonely ride home and laughed.
Once the window was covered and as much of the debris as possible cleaned up, I sat in the gym office with my feet on the desk, drinking coffee and staring at the damage. I’d hung a CLOSED DUE TO VANDALISM sign on the door. When seven o’clock came, I called Grace and told her what had happened and that she wouldn’t need to come in for the day. After dealing with her worried questions and attempts at mothering, I managed to hang up and call Joe. He listened to the story in total silence, and when I was done he asked just one question.
“You say Amy was there?”
I sighed. “Yes, Amy was there.”
“Slumber party?”
“Joseph—”
“No, no, don’t worry, I won’t pry. I just have trouble believing it. Seems to me she’d have good taste, and your taste has certainly never been so impressive before.”
“I’ll see you at the office.” I hung up on him, but I was smiling when I did it.
The next call went to my insurance agent. It was still too early for him to be in, but that was good—I wanted to break the news on his answering machine. Explaining that I had a claim due to an assault on my building would be tedious.
At ten to eight, I finished my coffee and walked into the weight room again, taking one last look before I went down to the office. The sleep I’d lost wasn’t tiring me yet, not in the face of the anger I felt as I surveyed the bullet-riddled equipment.
I’d left the lights off to help make it clear that the gym was closed. The plastic sheet I’d spread over the broken front window let some sunlight in, but it came through filtered and gray, the plastic not being completely transparent. Now, as I stood in the middle of the weight room and stared at it, a figure developed in front of the plastic sheet. The milky cast kept any facial features from being distinguishable, but I could see the figure was a man, and he seemed to be peering through the plastic, searching the interior of the gym. For a reason I could not begin to articulate, I felt a wave of dread, a quick sense that the man on the other side of the plastic was a dangerous one.
Taking two steps toward the wall, I bent and picked up one of the curl bars. It was fifteen pounds of solid metal, and if I swung it accurately, it would make a hell of a weapon. Even as I twisted the bar in my hands, shifting it so I gripped the end like a baseball bat, the man on the opposite side of the plastic pushed hard against the edge of the sheet, and the duct tape that held it in place began to peel back from the wall. A second later that entire side ripped free, and the man stepped right through the window and into the gym.
His name was Thor. The brief, seemingly unfounded sense of danger I’d had when his silhouette appeared was not so absurd, after all. Thor—I still knew no last name—was probably the deadliest man in the city. I might have denied knowing him the previous day, but the recognition as he stepped through that window affected me in a way few things could. Although I’d met him rather unwillingly, it had been an important acquaintance for me. The kind of acquaintance I would not forget, no matter how long I might live. The kind of acquaintance that sometimes made sleep a hard thing to find.
“Lincoln Perry,” he said, his voice soft and controlled and without menace, the way it always would be, no matter what the moment, no matter what the stakes.
“Thor.”
His ghostly eyes took in the bar in my hands with a disinterested glance and then returned to my face. He wore black slacks and a long-sleeved black shirt, and everything about him was unremarkable other than those eyes.
“It would seem,” he said, looking around the gym quickly but without missing a single disturbed item, “that you have had some trouble.”
I looked around the gym again, too. “I’ve made some enemies.”
“That is something you appear to do regularly.” There was no smile in his voice or on his face, but I had the sense the statement amused him.
“We’ve all got talents,” I said.
He ran an index finger down one of the weight benches, admiring the deep split that a bullet had left in its cover.
“Your troubles and my troubles appear to run together often.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“The police have been asking me questions,” he said. “In all truth, the police often ask me questions. I rarely provide answers. But yesterday, the questions concerned you.”
He looked up at me, held me with those blue eyes.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“As I said, I rarely provide answers.”
I nodded. “They’ve been asking me questions, too, Thor. Your name was brought up for the first time yesterday. You were in the car of a dead man, they said. A dead man they suspect I may have killed.”
His face didn’t change at all. “Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“But you are in love with his wife?”
“No. I was once. I’m not now.”
“We know some things about one another,” he said, the words slow and careful, as if he had taken great care selecting them. “Things that would probably be best left between us.”
“I’m not going to talk.”
His head bobbed once. “There was another man . . .”
“He’s gone, and he was so scared of you that he’ll never talk, no matter the incentives.”
This, he certainly believed.
“I suppose that is all, then.” He gazed around the room once more. “At least for me. You? You seem to have some issues that need to be addressed. I wish you luck with that. I trust you will not need it.”
He turned on his heel and moved back for the window, reaching out for the free edge of the plastic sheet.
“Wait,” I said.
“Yes?” half-facing me, but still leaning toward the window.
“Why were you in his car?”
When those ice-blue eyes met mine, my spine felt as cold as the metal bar in my hands.
“I do not discuss the affairs of others.”
He would end the lives of others, had done so frequently, but he would not discuss their affairs. Honor.
“They’re coming for me, Thor. Whoever did kill Jefferson, and the cops. They’re all coming for me.”
Thor cocked his head, frowning. He did not like to talk. He was a man of deeds, not discussion. He stood there and stared at me, though, and I thought that maybe he was remembering the way we’d locked eyes after he’d plunged his knife into another man’s body, remembering that he’d not seen me in court after that, testifying against him. Those things that he wanted to remain between us already had, for some time.
“An offer was made,” he said. “It was made out of confusion. I declined the offer, and I went on my way. That was the only time I ever saw the man.”
“What offer?”
He looked at me for a long time, and just when I thought he was going to decline to answer and make his exit, he told me.
“Alex Jefferson wanted to employ me to kill a man. I do not know who the man was, because I stopped him long before he got to the details of the situation. I told Mr. Jefferson that whatever he had been told about me, it was wrong. I told him that I do not engage in activities of murder for money.”
“How did he find you?”
“Through an acquaintance who has represented some of my associates in legal matters.”
“A criminal defense lawyer, then,” I said, and he seemed amused again.
