Russell Andrews - Hades

"Pain is good," he whispered. "It means I'm still alive."

They woke up together, found they were entwined. Her face was in his chest, her legs curled over between his. His arm was around her, covering her. They were naked.

He looked at his alarm clock, saw it was 5 a.m. They both wondered why they were awake, felt that maybe they weren't, maybe this was some kind of mutual dream, then she sat up and so did he.

They knew why they had awakened.

Someone was downstairs.

They listened, heard a rustling noise, then a quiet cough, the sound of someone shifting position. Justin did his best to swing his legs out of bed, but he couldn't, and also couldn't stop the grunt of pain that escaped from his lips. She was out of bed quickly; she went to his bathroom door and grabbed his robe off the hook. She slipped it on, then she knelt down, ran her hand across the floor until it touched the gun that she'd left there. She had discarded it at the same time she'd taken her clothes off. But before she could grip it, she heard him whisper, "Drop it." She looked up and he was pointing his own gun at her. He shook his head, one quick jerk back and forth, and said, "Don't touch it. Move back," and then she realized what was happening-what he thought was happening-and she thought her heart might break. The first time they had made love, that very first time a year earlier, it had been a setup. She had set him up, or at least had agreed to it. Men had barged in on them in the middle of the night, had drugged Justin and taken him away. He had suffered enormous pain-emotional and physical-as a result. She could see in his eyes he thought she'd done it again. She shook her head, but he didn't waver. Reggie tried not to let her pain show, tried not to show that she was devastated, but she knew she wasn't doing much of a job.

He said in a hushed tone, "Get in the bathroom. If I hear the door open I'll shoot you."

She thought she was going to cry, but she didn't. She just stepped sluggishly-all energy sapped from her body-into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

Justin was out of bed now, too. He had to struggle to pull on his pants. But he managed. He picked up Reggie's gun, stepped gingerly and silently down the stairs, his own gun held in front of him, pointed forward. As the living room came into view, so did the intruder. Justin yelled, "Freeze! Police!" The force of his voice made his ribs throb.

The intruder was sitting on the couch, leafing through one of the Melman Prep yearbooks that Justin had brought back from his meeting with Vince Ellerbe. He looked up, saw Justin, shirtless, wearing jeans, pointing the gun straight at him. He tapped the yearbook he was perusing, said, "Interesting reading."

Justin sighed and lowered his gun. Went back upstairs and opened the bathroom door. Reggie was standing in the middle of the small room, looking lost and despairing. He said softly, "You can come down now." She said nothing, only stared at him, and he said, "I'm sorry."

She shook her head, said, "How could you think that?"

He said, "I had to think that. I couldn't think anything else." And then he said, "I'll never think it again."

She said, "I understand. But I don't know if that's good enough." Then she stepped around him and headed downstairs. Justin followed her. When they both came into view, the man on the couch started shaking his head slowly.

"Unbelievable," Bruno Pecozzi said, looking at the two of them. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

"So word reached me that you want to talk," Bruno said.

Justin wanted to ignore the big man, wanted to put his arm around Reggie, to kiss her, to make her understand what had happened, why it would never happen again, but he couldn't. He didn't have time. He had to focus and deal with what he had in front of him, so he faced the man on the couch. He was amazed that there was no difference between the Bruno who'd been sitting there with a loaded pistol pointed at him and the Bruno who was sitting there now, a beer in his hand. Justin and Reggie had quickly dressed; she had put on her outfit from the night before, and Justin managed to get a long-sleeved button-down shirt on. Bruno had taken careful note of Justin's injuries and asked about them. Justin told him what had happened. Bruno never changed expression. Violence did not faze Bruno or even interest him all that much. It was simply a part of his daily life; he had the same perspective on it that commuters had about their rush-hour train ride from and back to the suburbs.

"I thought you were coming to talk a while ago," Justin said. "Right after I saw you."

"I had to be a little careful," Bruno said. "Perhaps you might recall the circumstances under which we last met."

"I recall," Justin told him. "Pietro Lambrasco."

"Was that his name?" Bruno didn't seem surprised that Justin knew it.

"Yes."

"Well," Bruno said, "I didn't much care what his name was."

"You just cared why he was there." When Bruno nodded, Justin said, "And did you find out?"

"I told you, there were a few possibilities. Turned out, I'd done something he didn't like."

"Back in the old country, maybe? When you took your relaxing vacation?"

"Could be."

"Where you from again, Bruno?" Justin asked. "That place where your aunt has the beautiful villa, up on the cliffs? What part of Italy is that? I don't think you ever told me."

"The south," Bruno said.

"As south as Sicily?"

"As south as that, yeah."

"And this villa, does it happen to be on an island?"

"How official is this conversation?" Bruno said. "I'll talk to you"-he jerked his thumb at Reggie-"but she makes me nervous. Bein' a Fed and all."

"You should be nervous, Bruno," Justin said. "You killed Evan Harmon. And I don't know how the hell you did it, but you sunk a ship near Sicily. And Wanda Chinkle knew about it."

"Did she?"

"Yes, she did. She left me kind of a note about it."

"What kind of note?" Bruno asked.

"She left me the name of the boat. Reggie's associates just confirmed it. Sometimes it's not so bad bein' a Fed and all."

"That right?"

"That's right," Justin said. He turned to Reggie. "You want to tell him?"

"Hades," she said. "You sunk a ship called Hades off the coast of the Sicilian island Favignana. Named Hades because he wasn't just the god of the underworld, or even just the god of wealth. Hades is the god of precious metal. And the ship had a lot of precious metal on it. That's what it carried on a regular basis."

"Platinum," Justin said. "On this trip, over fifty million dollars' worth."

"You landed in Palermo five days before the boat went down," Reggie went on. Her voice got stronger as she spoke, although she still wasn't looking at Justin. "You took a ferry from Trapani to Favignana. And you left the island three days after the ship sank."

"Your visitor Pietro Lambrasco. He was here for something personal, not just business," Justin took over. "We got the list of sailors working on the ship. All present and accounted for. No deaths among the crew. But apparently there was one stowaway. No one knows how he got on board but he was there. A young kid. And he drowned. His name was Angelo Tornabene. You want to know the name of Pietro Lambrasco's wife? Her maiden name, I mean?"

"No," Bruno said. "I know it. Giovanna Tornabene."

"Angelo's older sister."

Bruno said, taking another long swig of beer, "You didn't answer my question. How official is this conversation?"

"It's official," Justin told him. "It's official on her part and on mine."

"How official is it if I didn't kill Evan Harmon?" the mobster wanted to know. "'Cause I didn't," he said. "I would've. No problem. But before I could, somebody else beat me to it."