Marcus Sakey - At The City's Edge

"I was talking to that guy," Martinez points, then pats an ammo pouch on his flak jacket, pulls a pack of Miamis, Iraqi knock-offs of Marlboro Reds. Lights one with a Zippo, takes a drag. "He told me the people lived here were Sunnis, that's why they got burned out."

"They work for Saddam?"

"Nah. Just Sunnis, somebody didn't want 'em around."

Jason nods, swatting at a fly buzzing his ear. He does a silent count of his men, Jones, Campbell, Kaye, Frieden, Crist, Flumignan, Borcherts, Paoletti, Rosemoor, and Martinez, ten. "Too bad."

"Too bad for them, too bad for us." Martinez turns, holds the moment, then smiles. "Here we are without a couple of hot dogs and some long damn sticks."

All is full of love, all around you .

Floating dust and the smell of fire.

Under chipped paint, the metal railing was cool. Jason kept a hand on it as he moved down the steep staircase, swinging the flashlight in arcs. The darkness was thick and hungry enough that the flashlight seemed only to make the gloom more oppressive. He pointed it like a blind man with a cane, sweeping the ground before him. Pipes and electrical conduit hung from scorched concrete. The air was thick with a smell of burned toast. Piles of junk and abandoned furniture loomed like the bones of giants.

Metal bonged, and he turned to see Cruz descending, outlined in pale gray light, rain seeming to magically appear around her, the drops bounded by the square trap hole. She had the crowbar in one hand and her flashlight in the other. Where their beams met, the spot seemed to glow with light against the greater darkness.

"The fire didn't reach it," she said. Her voice muted and hollow with subterranean acoustics.

"Went up, I guess," Jason said. "The ceiling is concrete."

She nodded, then frowned. "Shit." He followed her gaze. Shelves had been overturned, and piles of broken glass sparkled. Boxes lay open, their contents strewn in all directions. She sighed. "Galway and DiRisio must have checked here. They'd have had hours . If there was something to find, they'd have found it."

Jason nodded absently, seeing two basements. The one his flashlight illuminated, ruined and silent. And the one he and Mikey had sat in years ago. All afternoon they'd hauled junk out of the place, and when they were done, they'd collapsed on ladder back chairs. Listened to the Sox game and shared a bottle of Black Label that Michael had stashed, passing it back and forth, smiling.

"To the good life, bro." He barely whispered the words.

"What?"

"You from Chicago?" He started for the southwest corner.

Cruz followed, her footsteps seeming to come from all directions. "Yeah. Well, Cicero."

The chairs were gone, the radio was gone, but the radiator was right where he remembered it. An old stand-up job, maybe three feet high and the same across, a coiling rack of heavy metal jutting out of the wall. "Growing up, you ever hear about bars, speakeasies, I guess, that served alcohol during Prohibition?"

"Sure."

"This used to be one. Speakeasies survived by payoffs. Grease the wheels, get left alone. But," he squatted in front of the radiator, ran his hands over the cool metal, "sometimes even the ones that paid got raided. You know, so the city could make it look like they were cracking down on Capone and the rest."

"So?"

"So," he said, his index finger finding a metal rib, "owners realized they needed good places to hide things." Jason lifted the latch. There was a click as it locked upwards. He grabbed the radiator with both hands and pulled. It swung aside like a door.

Behind it lay a cast-iron safe, the face set even with the wall.

"No shit," she said, admiration in her voice.

"No shit. Michael loved all the little secrets in this place. He used to store a bottle in here just to have an excuse to open it." Jason reached for the handle, fingers tingling. He jerked down on the lever.

It didn't budge.

"Gimme the crowbar." He wedged it behind the handle, the tip braced against the floor. Took a deep breath and heaved. Nothing. He pictured DiRisio smiling down at Mikey. The last face his brother ever saw. Threw himself against the drop-forged steel, the veins in his neck popping, his arms shaking.

The handle didn't even shudder.

Jason stood, wound up, and hurled the crowbar. "Christ!" It arced through the air with a whir like a helicopter cranking up and smashed into something metal at the far end. The clanging echoed back loud. He felt tears of frustration gathering at the corner of his eyes. So close. They were so goddamn close. But what good was close ?

The circle of light Cruz held on the radiator swayed and stretched, then narrowed as she knelt in front of it. One hand traced the face. "We can figure this out."

"Don't waste your time," he said, one hand rubbing his eyes.

"Look, it's a hidden safe. He probably didn't bother with a random combination." She sucked air through her teeth. "When's Billy's birthday?"

"Huh? April 2." He turned, hope springing sudden, and then equally suddenly quelled. "No, it won't work."

"Why?"

"The dial only goes to 50. He was born in '97."

She rocked back on her haunches. Twisted a curl of hair idly, fed the tip of it to her mouth. Then smiled. "You got twenty bucks?"

"Why?"

She reached for the dial, spun it three times, then stopped, spun it the other way, stopped, then once again. The latch swung with a quiet clank. She smiled. "April 2, 1997: 42-9-7. He combined the month and day, split the year."

He stared at her for a long moment. "I could kiss you."

"Open the safe. You owe me twenty bucks."

The briefcase was a brown leather zipper bag, the kind lawyers liked. Soft and new-smelling. The same one he'd watched his brother worry over just days ago.

Jason stared at it. Hiding this briefcase had been his brother's last act.

Why had he done that? If he'd suspected men were coming for him, he wouldn't have waited, wouldn't have put Billy at risk. So it must just have been a precaution. Jason remembered how nervous his brother had seemed about the bag, how he'd moved it around. He must have stowed it so he could relax, know that it was in a safe place. And not just any safe place.

One where Jason would know to look.

The thought sent a chill dancing between his vertebrae, like Mikey had left it here as a message. A last request.

I won't let you down, bro. Not this time .

Jason reached in and grasped the briefcase handle. For a moment he imagined he could feel the warmth of his brother's fingers on the leather. Cruz held both flashlights, and a dim globe of light surrounded them, splashing a matter of feet before vanishing into the abyss. He could hear her breathing, soft and wet and more than anything, alive . Against it, the zipper sounded grating. He opened the briefcase slowly, hands shaking.

Inside sat a plain manila folder an inch thick. Legal-sized, and filled with paper. That was all.

Jason wasn't sure what he'd expected, but something more dramatic. He flipped the folder open. A document with the dense print of legalese. Beneath that, some sort of spreadsheet. Something else that looked like a manifest. He rifled quickly. Pages and pages of documents, data in rows and columns, cramped paragraphs, notes and letters. It was paper. Just paper. And yet someone had killed Michael for it.

He broke the stack into two piles, wordlessly handed one to Cruz. Then Jason Palmer leaned against the basement wall of his brother's bar and began to read.

The air was cool, and once the warmth of exertion gave way, he began to feel a chill. His fingertips were raw, the nerves close, and he could feel the texture of the paper, every wrinkle and bump. He turned pages slowly, let his eyes drink the information. When the cold had him shaking, he stood and jumped up and down, stamped his feet. Then sat and continued. Reading with care, like a scholar working with ancient manuscripts. Finishing one and returning to others he'd already reviewed. Assembling a picture, a page at a time. His hands were white with a delicate filigree of blue veins. He looked at details, compared them. Fit them together. Tried them like puzzle pieces: Did this match against that one? How about the other? The world narrowed to the dim glow of the flashlights, a circle of warm light floating in nothing. Just him and Cruz and this riddle. This last message from his brother.