Don't Be Shy 26

Violade lived far outside the city, the highway becoming a thin ribbon of asphalt tied onto an endless swath of grassland, then a turn-off onto the estates of Platinum Heights, where the mansions of the rich and untouchable shared space with orange groves, apple orchards, a single vineyard. All artisanal, organic. Laborers came once in a blue moon to tend the produce, harvest it, but food wasn’t the point. It was an atmosphere, a feeling of growth and naturalism.

Lena knew how much it cost.

She drove through the orange trees, then the apple trees, before coming to the turn that put her on the winding road to Violade’s manor. There weren’t many houses in sight. Just trees, rolling hills, a lake that no one ever swam in. Their pools were so much closer, had such high-quality chlorine. There was no dirt in sight. Like all the scenery had been laid out on canvas instead of the ground.

Lena knew there were motion detectors and private security to monitor them, even if nothing as ostentatious as high walls or a broad gate. Violade’s manor was definitively protected, though. Barb-wire fence, a guardtower, a booth for her to stop at if she didn’t want to be shot—man with a dog who swung a mirror under her car and looked inside her trunk before she was allowed inside.

The house itself had always crept her out. The grounds were huge, marked by a special breed of grass, emerald green, that Violade had bought and ripped up the lawn for. But the yard wasn’t decorated at all, it was just neatly mowed. Every day. And all the lights were on in the manor, even with no one really living there. Just Violade, a son who’d been in Europe four years now, the staff that stayed in the servant’s quarters except when they had a job to do. It made Lena think of a dollhouse. A dollhouse that’d somehow been made the size of a real house, but still wasn’t real itself, anymore than you could eat a plastic pear.

She parked. There was a man sitting on the porch who stood as she approached. He wanted her quickly, needed to be shown her keys even though she'd just put them in her pocket. That hadn't happened the last time she'd been here. He waved her through and she found more soldatos loitering inside. One was even cleaning his gun. They greeted her idly. She asked where Violado was and they told her he was in the conservatory. When she went in, all the curtains were drawn. Violado stood in the middle of the room, attended to by a middle aged tailor, his suit in the process of being assembled.

He'd gotten so old. A scarecrow of a man in his white tank top and boxers, losing himself in the suit that was growing around him like a web being woven. White stubble rusted his cheeks and chin. His hair was barely dark at all now. She couldn't look at even an inch of his face without seeing a wrinkle.

She wondered how much longer he had.

“New suit for the funeral,” he told her. “Can you believe it? I haven't bought a new suit in fifteen years. This guy, he's the son of my old guy. Can't talk to him. Can't talk to him.”

“What do you have to say to a tailor?” Lena asked him.

He shrugged eloquently. “Sanders is dead.”

“I heard.”

“Lotta bad things happening lately. Happening to us.”

“Bad karma,” Lena suggested sardonically.

“You think the Yakuza ever goes for that? No. No. Maybe one guy, maybe one, but we are dropping left and right. You know some of the boys got picked up on programmings, programmings that didn't come from me, not anyone who should be handing out orders. They say Sanders told them to before he died. Why would he do that?”

“Someone killed him. Whoever did it made him hand out the order first. Who got programmed?“

Violado pointed to a notepad on top of an end table. “You don't want me to text you all the names?”

Lena rolled her eyes and went to pick up the notepad. She scanned the names. Her eyebrows raised. “I know these people.”

“My condolences,” Violado said, not bothering to mean it much.

“You knew them too. We used them on your son's trial.” Lena’s voice charred with bitterness. “Character witnesses, remember?”

The tailor slid in front of Violado, measuring between his shoulders, but Violado sidled him out of the way. “You think this is blowback? That is what you think?”

“Walsh, Sanders, them… what else could it be?”

Violado thought about it. He tapped his fingernail against his cheekbone. Lena could hear the click they made through the papery skin. “What about Edmund? He wasn't even part of our thing back then.”

“Maybe he doesn't want just the ones who did it. Maybe now he wants all of you.”

“All of us,” Violado repeated. Then he turned it into a statement. “All of us.”

Lena looked away.

Violado smiled. He cracked his neck, then turned it to the tailor. “Leave us.”

The tailor beat a hasty retreat past Lena. She thought he might’ve cast a sympathetic glance back at her, wondering if he should leave her alone, but she didn’t turn around to check.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she preempted.

“Like what?” he prompted.

“Like I’m better than you, than yours…”

“I know you’re not better,” Violado said, shuffling his skeletal weight down onto a chair like his thinning hair, like the bags under his eyes were boulders. “I’ve never killed anyone. Can you say the same?”

Lena could hold herself still. She could. She could make her heart beat once per minute, if she wanted to. She could hold her lungs shut for an entire day without fresh air. She could stand until her legs turned to bone. And she could hear the scream at the distant inside of herself without ever, ever letting it out.

She pushed herself into her work and it embraced her like a long-lost lover. “Walsh, the lawyer. Sanders, the consiglieri. The character witnesses and Edmund… he’s working his way up the food chain, but he’s taking out targets of opportunity on the way. He’ll cut straight to the core of this; he’s saving you for last.”

Violado gestured around himself. “He couldn’t get in here with an army. Armies have tried.”

“Exactly. He’s going for the easy pickings first. Rushing through his list before we know what he’s doing. Judge Homer. Do you know where he is?”

“Hunting.”

The scream inside her briefly held a laugh too. He would be. “Put some men on him. You’ll catch your killer when he moves on the judge.”

Lena turned on her heel and started to leave. The audience was over. She knew Violado would want to dismiss her; be pissed at her for leaving without his say-so. But then he’d feel bad about what he’d said to her and it would all even out, somewhere in the wash. And anyway, she wouldn’t have to talk to him for weeks. So most of it all would be forgotten by then. All that’d be left would be the bone under their relationship. How he needed her and she… she deserved him.

“He’ll be going after you too, you know,” Violado called after her, with a volume his voice didn’t usually have.

Lena stopped. She canted her head to the side, but only a little. Not sure if she wanted to see him and not sure if she could stop herself. “I’ll be flying out to Vegas to interview Walsh’s replacement. He won’t try anything there.”

“He won’t be able to take his guns on a plane. I’ll call Arturo, he runs Vegas. If someone new tries to buy a piece under the table, he’ll look into it.”

Lena nodded. “That’s good.”

“You should take one of the boys along.”

She should. It was the logical thing to do. But when did she ever get to leave the city? When did she ever get to feel like she was more than ten minutes away from having to see him, talk to him—that she wasn’t about to run into him or his men or something of his that was a goddamn mirror, because whatever they were, she was.

And she still would be in Vegas, but she could breathe too. She was an awful, horrid person for enjoying this thing that had to be done after what’d happened to Walsh… but she wouldn’t feel awful. Maybe she’d feel like when she was with Kara. Like maybe she was—

She didn’t even know if there was a word for it. Normal people didn’t need a word for not being a monster, did they?

“I can take care of myself.”

“Pride, Lena. Pride.”

Yes. Wouldn’t it be nice if she had some of that.