dante-44

The name moved through the city the way money does: fast, and with interest. Monday, three men I'd never met started calling me boss. Tuesday, an envelope under the office door. Inside, a photograph of Lucian's widow standing at his grave, and on the back, a time and a place written in a hand that was nearly mine.

I went. She was the only one at the grave, black dress, letting the weather have her. She didn't turn around.

“You're the one who took the debt.”

“I took it. Nobody sold it to me.”

“Same thing, from where I'm standing.”

“Tell me about the note.”

“Your name's on it. You tell me.”

“Not my hand.”

That stopped her. First real thing I'd said. She pulled a folded page from her sleeve like it was hot. Lucian kept a book, she said. Names, dates, who owed what to whom. His insurance. He showed it to her once, drunk, laughing. If anything happened to him, that book would name the man.

“Who else wrote in it?” I asked.

“Lucian. The bookkeeper. And whoever writes like you.”

“His brother went into the ground six months before him,” she said. “Car accident, they said. You know what the book says about Leo? Nothing. The man who wrote your name left no trace of himself anywhere. That's a professional.”

She walked past me. At the gate she stopped.

“Lucian used to say the man who writes in your book writes your ending.”

Kiki was at the table when I got home, coffee on, the page I'd folded in my pocket already flat in front of her. She never locks the door when I'm out.

“Hard man to surprise,” I said.

“Not hard. Married.” She tapped the paper. “This isn't your hand.”

“No.”

“Someone's practicing it. Flattering and dangerous in equal measure.”

“Which one first?”

“Dangerous. Flattery you can price. This, you can't.”

“There's a book,” I said. “Lucian's. It names the man.”

“You're going to find it.”

“Before it finds me.”

She looked at me then, the way she does, reading the ending before it's written. Then she stood, took the page off the table, and put it in the drawer where she keeps the things no one else gets to see.

“Bring me the book,” she said. “And bring yourself. In that order.”

I held her hand a beat longer than the city gets.

“Every time.”

Custom noir chapters, written to order. First paragraph free: [email protected]