14. Florida Man Swept Up in Underworld Politics
Chapter 14
Florida Man Swept Up in Underworld Politics
T he Seong-Espinosa summit was held on the twentieth of October in the huge dining room of the Espinosa home. When Rainy arrived, the long polished-cherry dining table was set with a green-and-orange runner with little pumpkins stitched into it.
“’Tis the season,” Jazz said delightedly, scattering tiny gourds in the center of the table while Felix tried in vain to whisk her from the room.
Emilio was already seated in the center of one side of the table, heavy and leonine. Rainy’s smile petrified on his face when he caught his eyes and Emilio gestured to the seat at his right—an order, not a question.
“Don’t think I’ll forget that this was your idea,” he said.
Rainy gathered calm around himself like a clean-cut suit. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”
“May every man’s record stay as clean as yours.”
Emilio’s smiles, Rainy had found, weren’t unsettling because the mirth in them was fake, but rather because the mirth in them was all too real.
“I know what I’m doing,” Rainy assured him. He wondered how, exactly, his life had made the left turn into him making a habit of lying to crime lords.
The truth was that he had no idea what he was doing. He’d laid out the evidence from Parish with much more confidence than he’d felt, and convinced Emilio to send a runner to Seong. The runner returned without broken shins and boom—conversation opened. And now, here they were.
He’d tried to tell himself, as he’d gotten ready this morning, that the outcome of the meeting didn’t really matter. Even if it went to shit, he’d only be back where he’d been a few days ago, ready to kill Adler at the soonest opportunity.
And yet, when he tried to reach for the righteous conviction that had been carrying him on his mission so far, the well seemed to have run dry. The anger was gone, replaced by the memory of Adler smoking a cigarette in the moonlight and offering Rainy a secret from his past like a tiny silver coin pressed discreetly between hands. A gentle, tentative kiss that Rainy had tucked away in his pocket like another glinting coin for him to reach down and guiltily run his fingers over in the quiet moments.
What Rainy felt now were nerves. Fizzing, humming nerves that had driven him out of the horrible, intimate quiet of his apartment hours before he needed to leave this morning. As much as he tried to reason his way out of it, he was desperate for this meeting to go well.
“ Mi vida, ” Emilio rumbled. Jazz paused where she was trying to steal a baby gourd back from Felix. She was wearing a purple cocktail dress with an intense bustier, and her bleached hair was piled high. “Listen to Felix. These people are dangerous. The only reason I’m allowing them here is on Rainy’s word.”
Rainy shifted in his seat.
Jazz swept from the room, pouting. Felix started to clear away the rest of the gourds.
“No, leave them,” Rainy blurted, hiding his laugh behind a cough. “Koreans love pumpkins.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s true,” Marco insisted, slinking into the room. Felix glared between the two of them helplessly, but dumped the gourds back into place. Marco exhaled a long, mango-scented puff of vape.
“Not in the house, Marcos!” Jazz shouted from the other room. Marco scowled and stowed the pen in his pants pocket. Lina entered the room behind him and cuffed him across the back of the head.
“Ow!”
“You’re so stupid. Why’d you let Rainy kill half the Parish staff?”
“I wasn’t even there!”
Lina just rolled her eyes and straightened her skirt suit before settling next to Rainy. It was immaculately tailored. Rainy thought she and Adler might get along.
“Why’d you kill half the Parish staff, Rainy?”
“I didn’t! That was Adler.”
The dining room doorway was suddenly eclipsed by Julian, who was one of Emilio’s favorite enforcers and always called on for this sort of thing. He was nursing a black eye, but probably from a bar fight more recent than the one he’d gotten into when he’d been out with the group before. He leaned against the frame.
“They’re here.”
Emilio stood. “Have Alé bring them in. And try to look like you have some fucking dignity,” he told his children, who continued to mill about like unruly cats. He scrubbed a hand through his thinning hair.
“No weapons,” Rainy reminded Julian.
“No weapons.”
“I know you have a knife on you.”
“Don’t.”
“In your shoe.”
Glaring, Julian bent down and pulled a short, thick-handled blade from the top of his boot. He tossed it to Rainy.
“You’re such a fucking narc since you went freelance.”
“Jesus, is this an oyster knife?”
“Ooh, gimme,” Marco exclaimed, diving for it.
Rainy tossed the knife into a vase that stood in the corner. Marco looked crestfallen as it rattled and scraped its way to the bottom. “No weapons.”
Footsteps sounded in the entry hall, and the Espinosas reluctantly fell into line. They faced the door as a united front: Emilio and Lina with stone-cold stares, Felix with a valiant attempt at one, and Marco with a weird little grin. Rainy stood off to the side, planting his feet and clasping his hands behind his back, but then he realized it was an awkward mirror of Adler’s characteristic at-ease pose, and he shuffled nervously. The anxiety was still churning, making him queasy in this unfamiliar territory. He didn’t know how he was supposed to present himself.
“Stop fidgeting,” Emilio told him darkly. Rainy settled for leaning a hip against the table and folding his arms.
Two burly Korean gangsters entered the room first, both dressed all in black like club bouncers. Marco gave them a little wave. They just stared at him stonily and stepped to the side in unison to admit two more suits. The first was a middle-aged Korean woman with a hairstyle so smooth, it looked like it was made of plastic. The second was a man with light brown skin and a paisley tie that Rainy admired very much. They observed the Espinosas as Seong finally stepped over the threshold.
He was much the same up close as he was through binoculars—done up in a severe black suit that was unbuttoned a little at the collar, with a smile that crinkled his eyes and was oily as a politician’s. Faced off against Emilio, he looked small and brittle. Seong might not have been as na?ve as Andy Parish, but he was the same kind of man—one who had never had to do his own dirty work. Emilio might have been a bad man, but Rainy respected him for the scars on his knuckles.
All the concentration Rainy had went out the window once Seong stepped fully into the room, because Adler was glued just behind his left shoulder. He looked more put-together than Rainy had ever seen him, crisply ironed and neatly gelled and moving in precise military step. There was that gray-brown tweed from the first time Rainy had tailed him, and it was still embarrassingly sexy. Rainy didn’t think it was his fault, though; Adler could probably make a hazmat suit look indecent.
Rainy tried to catch his eye, but Adler was very deliberately not looking at him.
Hmph.
Julian, still stationed by the door, circled in behind Seong’s group. “No hard feelings, but we’ll need to check you all,” he said, and went to lay a hand on Seong’s shoulder.
Adler caught his wrist. Rainy could see the outlines of his finger bones blanching white as he squeezed. Julian flushed angrily and tried to pull away, but Adler’s grip stayed firm.
Seong’s voice was low and smooth, only lightly accented. “Easy,” he said. Adler dropped Julian’s hand. Seong spread his arms, letting his jacket fall open to show he wasn’t wearing any holsters. “We know how these things are done.”
He looked directly at Emilio as he said this. Emilio nodded and spread his own arms.
Julian and Alé, another of Emilio’s favorites, patted down Seong’s entourage. Across the room, Seong’s two bruisers ran their hands quickly and efficiently over the Espinosas. Rainy spread his arms and legs obediently when one approached him. The man checked him for weapons with a professional coolness. He seemed to receive special attention; the man even checked the contents of all his pockets. Rainy figured that Adler had something to do with that.
Adler also appeared to be receiving a uniquely thorough treatment from Julian, who looked gratified as he dug around in Adler’s designer clothing. He slid his hands a little too high up the inside of Adler’s thigh, smirking. Adler’s jaw clenched so hard, Rainy was a little afraid his head was going to pop.
Eventually, both sides were satisfied. Julian nodded to Emilio, and one of Seong’s men made a brief hand signal to Adler. Emilio spread his hands.
“Welcome to my home, Mr. Seong. Friends of Mr. Seong.”
“A lovely home it is,” Seong said. “Shall we get down to business?”
Emilio barked a laugh. “Direct. I like that.” He held out a hand. “Call me Emilio.”
Seong shook it. He gave a mirthful knife-blade of a smile. “Call me Mr. Seong.”
Emilio nodded to his children. “This is my second-in-command, Felix Espinosa, and our counsel, Catalina Espinosa. My second son, Marcos. And I believe you’re already familiar with Mr. Rainy.”
Seong nodded along with each introduction, though it was nothing more than a nicety. He surely was already aware of the makeup of the Espinosa hierarchy. When Emilio finished, he folded his hands and nodded to the woman at his left.
“This is my director of business operations, Dr. Ryuk, and my head legal counsel, Mr. Gaumant.” The man with the paisley tie held out a hand to Lina. She accepted it like an armed grenade.
“And, of course, Mr. Adler. My left hand, as it were.”
“We’re familiar,” Emilio said.
“No hard feelings about the waterboarding, right?” Marco asked. Adler narrowed his eyes at him.
They settled at the long table in two parallel lines. Emilio and Seong faced each other like enemy generals in the central chairs, eyes locked on each other. Nobody missed the way Emilio leaned back in his chair with careful casualness.
Rainy was thwarted from securing the spot across from Adler when he stuck to Seong’s right side, while Rainy was pushed to the edge of the Espinosas.
“It is a fair question,” Seong said without preamble. “Whether we are willing to let go of the bad blood between us.”
Emilio raised a brow. “I’ve found that, contrary to my daughter-in-law’s expert opinion, the best salve for a wound is lots and lots of money. If we can move past our differences, this could be a very lucrative collaboration for both of us.”
Seong looked pleased. “Indeed. Pierre?”
Gaumant the lawyer produced a stack of documents from his buttery leather briefcase and spread them out on the table. “This is a summary of Parish’s recognized holdings,” he said in a resplendent French accent. “The first issue is with this firm, Marquise.”
As Gaumant spoke, Rainy tilted slightly in his chair to get a better look at Adler. He was sitting rigidly in his seat, the column of his spine arranged just a little off-kilter. Rainy had noticed his brow pinch when he sat, and again now as he shifted to get a better look at the photographs Julian had produced at Emilio’s word. His ribs were still tender, then. There was a green-faded bruise under his eye and along his jaw. The sight made Rainy inexplicably antsy. He found himself absently rubbing the slight lump under his shirt where Nasrin had taped a square of gauze over the neat stitches she’d made, just over his heart.
“Rainy will take care of him,” Emilio said authoritatively. Rainy turned to blink at him.
“What?”
Emilio’s thick, dark eyebrows offered a remarkable impression of gathering storm clouds. “The contractor, Belko.”
“Right, yeah. Easy.”
“Perhaps it would be more prudent for Belko to be taken care of on our end,” Seong said mildly. “I have my own channels.”
“No,” Rainy said. “If you want this to go smoothly, you’ll want me. Adler’s good at snapping necks, but he’s lacking a certain… finesse.”
Adler looked like he was considering leaping across the table and showing Rainy just how much finesse he was capable of. Rainy winked at him.
Seong looked displeased. “Nat?” he asked, and it took Rainy a moment to realize that he was addressing Adler. He had to turn his startled laugh into an awkward cough. Adler leaned in to mutter in Seong’s ear, still glaring at Rainy.
“Very well,” Seong said after a moment. “We’ll trust you to take care of Belko. But that still leaves the matter of divvying up the spoils of war.”
“Sixty-forty to us,” Emilio said easily. “Seniority.”
Seong laughed.
“Fifty-fifty,” Emilio amended with false ruefulness.
“With all due respect,” Dr. Ryuk said, her voice rough as a chain-smoker’s, “that ignores the fundamental differences between our operations. We should make an equitable division plan based on asset type, to maximize our gains.” She pulled up a spreadsheet on her tablet and slid it across the table. “We’re willing to take a deficit in paraphernalia if we get sole claim to the two front holding companies.”
Jazz had somehow weaseled her way back into the room with a tray of coffee, and now she was slinking around the back of the table out of Emilio’s eyeshot, trying to eye the newcomers under the guise of playing hostess. Eventually, she decided to strike out and moved along the row of Seong’s side, offering coffee. Seong and his two deputies declined politely, but Adler accepted a mug with two packets of sugar.
“Thank you, Miss Jazz,” he said, accent indulgently syrupy. She flushed and fluttered, pleased. Rainy rolled his eyes.
Suck-up, he mouthed.
Idiot, Adler mouthed back.
Rainy tipped his head to the right and found Marco staring at him with a raised eyebrow. He glared back, then fixed his eyes firmly on the center of the table, trying to keep focus on the conversation.
He’d known it would be strange to see Adler in this new, unfamiliar context. Still, he hadn’t expected to feel so… unsettled. Their spur-of-the-moment truce had been uneasy and fragile, but it had also felt clear and simple. Now, despite Adler’s familiar open irritability, it felt a million miles away.
Maybe Rainy had just been delusional. Maybe seeing the delicate, sticky strands of what was between him and Adler here, in reality, was the problem.
He’d let Malia and Marco’s stupid jokes feed into the idea that Adler was his. That he was some elusive wraith that appeared to tangle with Rainy and Rainy alone. Like his own personal white whale. Every interaction they’d had had been so far removed from everything else that it had felt like a dream with only the two of them in it.
This was the real world.
And this Adler, whose beautiful suits didn’t look out of place nestled into Seong’s lineup, who was called Nat —wasn’t his Adler.
He had a sudden, stupid wish to have his version back, and all to himself again.
“We can draw up plans later, once our people have finished recon,” Emilio told Seong.
“That depends on if we’re able to come to an agreement.” Seong folded his hands on the table. “I am under no illusion that we can be friends. But a partnership requires trust. Can we trust each other, Mr. Espinosa?”
“That is the question.”
The light current of tension tracing its way through the air now thickened and redoubled, weaving a blanket over them all. The buzzing of a lightbulb in the corner echoed inside Rainy’s skull like the scream of a klaxon. In the corner, Jazz allowed herself to be spirited outside without complaint, her tray clutched in a white-knuckled grip.
Emilio and Seong considered each other. On his side of the table, Emilio leaned in his chair, hulking and limned with silent threat. Opposite, Seong sat straight and unbothered, a slash of neatly tailored black against the lacquered wood chair. He examined Emilio with cool, shuttered eyes.
Slowly, Emilio smiled. He extended a hand to Seong across the table.
“I think this will be the start of a long and prosperous partnership.”
Seong just gave him that oily politician smile. Their handshake was firm and final. Rainy’s stomach curdled with the first, untrustworthy stirrings of hope.
The two sides of the table rose in unified lines, Seong and Emilio still locked eye-to-eye.
“If we’re going to be working together, that means all wounds have to be forgiven,” Emilio said. He jerked his head at Adler. “Rainy, kiss and make up.”
Adler’s mouth flattened unhappily, but Seong nodded at him, so he stepped around the corner of the table and stopped. Sighing, Rainy moved to meet him.
This close, Rainy could see the little stress fractures in Adler’s posture where he was holding himself gingerly around his hurt ribs. The bruising on his jaw looked worse than it had from across the room. Rainy imagined more fading brown-green mottled across his chest and sides, over the smooth, lithe muscle of him where Rainy had trailed his hands before.
A strand of hair just above his ear was starting to come unstuck. He smelled like that same expensive cologne from the night they’d met.
Rainy held out his hand. Adler stared at it for a moment before shaking it.
“Sorry about the ear,” he said drily. His face was smooth and unaffected, but in his dark eyes, there was a flicker of droll amusement that was held like a secret between them. Rainy wanted to tighten his grip, pull him in by the wrist, and kiss him again.
Emilio clapped his hands. “Good.” Rainy blinked, startled, only then feeling the curious weight of all other eyes in the room. He hastily dropped Adler’s hand.
Seong and Emilio were shaking hands again, and the rigid ranks dissolved into a flurry of hand-shaking, between Ryuk and Felix and Gaumant and Lina. It was a pageant of the type Rainy was used to in this house; genial smiles that contained blatant knives.
The hope in Rainy’s stomach had hauled itself out of the muck and was shaking off its wings. This might actually work. He’d lose the money, but he couldn’t bring himself to care when he might have a real excuse not to kill Adler. And if they didn’t have to kill each other, maybe what had happened between them in the multipurpose room could happen again. The future was a soap bubble, shivering-bright and rainbow-hued.
“Looks like the terms of our truce are being extended,” Rainy said.
“For now.” Adler watched the flurry of movement, hands drifting behind his back and feet planted apart.
“For now,” Rainy conceded, grinning. After holding out for a moment, Adler took the bait and looked back at him. When Rainy wiggled his eyebrows, he rolled his eyes. But the corner of his mouth twitched the barest hint of a smile.
The twinge of jealousy Rainy had been nursing the entire meeting ebbed, and the chatter of closing small talk lulled. He may have been tucked-in and polished here in front of the rest of the world, but Rainy’s Adler was still there. He was a spark and a shadow behind Adler’s carefully-built public exterior, a shimmer of feralness and mirth and lust that Rainy had managed to tease out from behind those walls. Maybe his Adler was the real Adler.
The Espinosas had finished saying their goodbyes, and Seong was moving for the door. Adler peeled away to return to his post at his shoulder without a backward glance. Rainy watched, aware that there was a stupid smile glued to his face, but unable to care.
Julian and Alé stalked after Seong’s posse like a pair of rottweilers, seeing them off the property. The Espinosas immediately fractured into their typical chaotic pinwheel of activity. Emilio and Lina started quibbling over the documents spread across the table, while Felix tried to sneak a word in edgewise. Marco went digging for Julian’s discarded oyster knife. Jazz slipped back into the room and over to Emilio with the capering dressage step of someone who knew they’d be instantly and indulgently forgiven for all trespasses.
“Marco, stop that,” Felix insisted. Marco ignored him where he was testing the blade of the knife on the polished wood surface of the dining table.
“Let’s relocate to my office,” Emilio said, gathering a sheaf of papers. “If we’re going to keep ahead of Seong’s corporate bitch, we’re going to need to draw up new plans.”
Jazz laid a hand on his burly shoulder. “In a minute. Right now, I made margaritas in the kitchen.”
“Jasmine.”
Jazz pouted. “You can’t take half an hour off, baby?” Her false lashes went downcast. “If you can’t be bothered to give me a ring, you could at least give me a little of your time.”
Emilio grumbled, but the trump card had been played, so he nodded at his children. “All right, fine. Kitchen now, study later.”
“Fine by me.” Lina plucked what looked like a list of stock options off the table and fanned herself with it as she strode toward the door. She looped her arm through Rainy’s as she went. He was dragged along after her into the hallway.
“I think that went well,” Rainy started cautiously.
“What the fuck was that?” she interrupted, continuing to march him down the hall toward the kitchen.
“It was awesome, that’s what.” Marco was suddenly at his other shoulder like some horrible, artificial-mango-scented manic apparition. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“What?” Irritation was starting to scratch at the inside of Rainy’s skull.
“Malia and I thought you just had some weird little crush on the guy—”
“For the last time, I don’t—”
“—but you didn’t tell us he’s fucking obsessed with you.”
“We all totally thought you had some pathetic one-sided obsession,” Lina said, straight-faced. “What a relief.”
“Hey!” Rainy snapped. “Also, why the hell do you even know so much about this?”
“Rainy, please.”
He pulled his arm away from her and was immediately ensnared by Marco. “This is going to be so great. It’s almost as good as me and Tessa.”
“It’s going to be fucking terrible,” Lina corrected. “You need to shut it down.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rainy was really looking forward to that margarita. “Adler doesn’t have a crush on me. Don’t you guys have jobs you’re supposed to be paying attention to?”
“Please,” Lina said. “He was staring at you the whole time. I’ve never seen someone make fuck-me eyes that hard in a room full of that many criminals.”
“We’ve fucked a few times. That’s it. You’re blowing this way out of proportion.”
“A few times?” Marco’s voice pitched up with delight.
“We’ve been trying to kill each other.”
Marco sighed. “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Rainy shook them both off, hard. “Getting a little too friendly, aren’t we? How about you two shut the fuck up about my personal life and do your jobs?”
There was something hard and prickly forcing its way up from his chest, and he just wanted them to stop. Stop tarnishing the luster of the image of Adler’s tiny private smile, like a photo negative tossed carelessly into the ruinous light of day. Stop reminding him that this might end badly, and soon.
Lina shrugged and pushed past him, keeping on her heel-clicking path to the kitchen. “Your funeral.”
Rainy turned his scathing look on Marco, expectant, and found him unusually somber.
“Look. I’m not trying to tell you anything, Rainy. I’m just saying that whenever you lay eyes on each other, it’s like you’re the only two people in the room.” Marco moved him out of the way with uncharacteristic gentleness and followed Lina into the kitchen. “You should think about that while you still have time.”
Rainy was left alone halfway down the hall, surrounded by green wallpaper and closed doors. He took a deep breath and tipped his forehead against the nearest door frame, feeling the white gloss paint soaking up the heat from his skin.
He pushed himself upright again when he heard Jazz clattering her way toward him and found her hanging off Emilio. Rainy pasted a careless smile on and peeled away to follow them in search of margaritas.
“Strawberry margs okay, Rainy?” Jazz asked in her thick Jersey roll.
“Sure.”
“What is this, spring break?” Emilio scowled.
“Shut up, you huge fuck. I’m not talking to you.”
Jazz toddled into the kitchen on her eight-inch stilettos, and Rainy made to follow her. Emilio caught his arm.
“A word,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Rainy looked longingly into the granite-countered kitchen where Jazz and the Espinosas were already pouring drinks, then stepped into the alcove just outside the door.
“That went well,” he said.
“Yes,” said Emilio. “Let’s hope there never comes a day when your luck runs out. Now, about Seong’s man. The one I instructed you to finish. I’ve heard that you got a little distracted.”
“Okay, seriously, what the fuck? Does this family sit around and have gossip sessions about my sex life?”
“Rainy, Rainy.” Emilio clapped him on the back jovially. “I don’t give a fuck how you get your dick wet. I just care that people keep their promises to me. And you promised no accidents. No distractions.”
“He turned out to be a harder case than usual, and then something else came up. If you’re worried I’m not still the best bang for your buck, don’t be.”
“I just want to be sure that if things go south, you aren’t going to hesitate to put a bullet in his skull. Understood?”
Inside, everything felt quiet and still. The adrenaline hush before you turned a corner that might conceal a bullet.
“Are you planning something?” Rainy asked.
Emilio laughed, rumbling and deep and horribly mirthful. “Rainy. Please. You’ve always understood this business. So you know it’s not a matter of if you’ll have to kill him.”
That shimmering soap bubble inside him popped. The fragile, lacy hope that had been tentatively growing evaporated in the cold that washed over him now.
Rainy stretched his easy smile until it strained the corners of his mouth.
“E, you know me. You have nothing to worry about.”
Emilio ruffled his hair. “Good boy. Now, come have a margarita.”
He lumbered into the kitchen without another word, leaving Rainy to lean against the wall of the alcove. He stared at the tiny dots of dust that clung to the shiny wood lacquer, dulling it. Everything inside him was leaden, sinking, dragging him down, down, down into the depths.
More than anything else, he was embarrassed. Embarrassed and ashamed, because he knew this life like the back of his hand, and he knew better than to let himself give in to that kind of stupid, na?ve hope. The kind that didn’t belong to people like him—not anymore. Not after the things he’d done, and the person he’d become.
Maybe Malia was right not to want to get in too deep with this world. Maybe she was just smarter than him. Rainy had never had the same doubts. He’d stepped right through that door and never looked back. Jumped into the ocean for the first time and swum like a fish. But maybe it just didn’t work like that. Maybe this was what it felt like to be in over your head and never realize it.
Maybe this was what it felt like to be Miguel.
Rainy pushed off the wall and walked into the kitchen. He smiled when the Espinosas waved him over, and laughed when Jazz pressed a drink into his hand. Because he wasn’t Miguel, and he wasn’t Malia.
Rafael Perez had been a good, smart boy, who stayed out of trouble and was a recruiter’s wet dream on the field. But Rafael Perez, like his brother, hadn’t known how to swim.
Rainy knew that the trick to staying afloat was pushing someone else under. Rafael Perez had jumped into this ocean after Miguel, and he’d drowned. It was Rainy who came up for air. And he may have spent his life since afraid to look in the mirror, but he knew this much:
The day Miguel died, Rafa died too. He’d died, and become someone new. He’d found Miguel’s killer and snapped his neck. He’d walked into this life and never looked back, given his parents the nice life they’d never had and outrun everything that might jeopardize it since. There were many things Rainy might have been, but only one that mattered.
He was a person who did what had to be done.
“Ah,” Emilio said, “I almost forgot.” He pulled something from the back of his waistband and held it out.
It was Rainy’s Colt, familiar as his own arm with its pearled grip and the initials etched into the bottom. He’d last seen it when he was looking down the barrel, before Adler shot him with it. His ear itched where the skin had grown back, but the cartilage hadn’t.
“Seong left this for you. Peace offerings, right?”
The weight of the pistol in his palm was like a handshake with an old friend who’d become a stranger. Rainy turned it over, tested its weight, ran a thumb up the grip where he could almost feel the warm ghost of Adler’s hand. His ears rang with the echo of a shot.
Slowly, he released the magazine and turned it over in his palm. It had been emptied.
There was one round inside.
“I trust you know what to do with it,” Emilio said lightly, turning back to his margarita.
Rainy slid the magazine home and tucked the gun away, where it fit as though it had never left.
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”