In mid-sentence, I turned and swung at Vito's friend. Call him Brutus. Brutus wasn't expecting it because I was talking. You don't expect the punch when the other person isn't braced. But I was braced. I just masked it by looking in the other direction and by talking to Charlie. Misdirection will do wonders in a fight.

Brutus stumbled backward and fell to the floor. He put a protective hand over what was left of his nose. That had to hurt. It wasn't the hardest swing I'd ever thrown, but it was square on target, and he was completely unprepared for it.

I thought Vito might come at me, too, but he didn't. He took a couple of steps back and drew a gun.

"This is crazy," I said. "You think I'm wearing a wire, Charlie? Is that it? You want to check me out? Fine."

I took off my overcoat and tossed it toward him. Then I removed my suit coat and tossed it in the same direction. I undid my tie, unbuttoned my shirt, threw off my pants, kicked off my shoes and socks. I tossed my wallet, keys, and money clip to him and slid my cell phone across the floor. I was down to my undershirt and boxers. Every other part of my wardrobe was in a pile near Charlie's feet.

Brutus needed some medical attention. His face looked like a used tampon. He stumbled out of the room as Leather Jacket appeared and whispered something to Charlie Cimino. I had to assume his report was favorable, because the F-Bird was not in the Porsche.

Leather Jacket gathered up my clothes into a small laundry basket he'd brought for the occasion.

"Easy on the starch," I said.

Leather Jacket thought that was humorous. "Underwear, too, sweetheart."

"Like hell."

He walked toward me, but not too close. He wasn't here for the earlier fun, but he could see a pool of blood where Brutus had been lying and he probably had caught a look at Brutus, too. He reached into his pocket. For a split second, I thought he was going to produce a weapon. Vito already had one trained on me, but two is always better than one.

Instead, he pulled out a balled-up pair of cotton boxers.

"Trade ya," he said. "But you go first. Take it all off."

I didn't really have much of a choice. But I was in role, and in that role, I would be annoyed but ultimately willing to cooperate.

"Normally, you'd have to buy me dinner first," I said. I stripped off the remainder of my clothes and flung them at his feet. Leather Jacket took only a quick peek, thankfully, just to make sure I didn't have some wire wrapped around my nuts or something.

He tossed me the boxers, which I quickly put on.

"Sit in the chair," Leather Jacket said. I was going to do that, anyway, because I figured they were going to need time to search my clothes.

Once I was seated, Leather Jacket showed me handcuffs and walked behind me. "Don't give me trouble," he said. "Give me your hands."

"This is ridiculous," I said, but I complied. He cuffed my hands behind the chair, through one of the bars, so if I tried to stand, I'd have to pick up the chair, too. Score one for them.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Now, you wait."

Charlie walked out of the room. Leather Jacket followed, holding a basket full of my clothes.

Vito kept the gun on me all the way to the door. "Cheap shot," he said to me.

"Sorry about his face," I said. "If I realized you two were boyfriend-girlfriend, I would have hit him in the stomach."

He gave me that same creepy grin, just like the one he flashed when we were nose-to-nose in the garage.

"See you soon," he said. He closed the door behind him and locked it.

56.

THERE WAS NO WORKING CLOCK IN THIS ROOM, BUT by my estimate I spent the next ninety minutes wearing only boxers in an unheated room in the dead of winter. I did my best to stay in role, both because you always stay in role-you never know when they might be watching-and because if I let my imagination run wild here, I might come to the conclusion that I was royally fucked.

Either way, I was royally cold, and an uncontrollable shiver was working its way through my body. If they were trying to determine whether I was working undercover against them, they would have been smart not to subject me to these conditions. The kinds of tells, the giveaways you look for in a liar are harder to detect when the subject is already trembling from the cold.

But it occurred to me that maybe they had passed that stage. Maybe they were convinced that I had joined the other side, and now they just wanted to know how much the G knew before they put a bullet in my brain. In that state of affairs, putting me through this was a smart move.

Or maybe I was just overthinking this, but I didn't have a lot else to do right now.

Except to stay in role. Above all else. No matter what.

The door opened slowly. Vito peeked in, confirmed I was still handcuffed to the chair, and walked in, still in that long coat, still smiling broadly and still pointing a gun at me. I thought, for a beat, that this was it, that all the forks in the road I'd tried to forecast, all the potential drama, was a fantasy; he was just going to shoot me and be done with it.

I think that's what he wanted me to think. He didn't like the way I chested up to him in the garage, or the number I did on his partner. But he wasn't in charge, and he hadn't had authorization to retaliate. He didn't have authorization to shoot me, either, at least not yet, but he enjoyed the chance to make me think otherwise.

Vito handed the gun to Leather Jacket and squatted down, so we were face-to-face. "That wasn't very nice, what you did to my friend."

"He wasn't paying attention. Tell him next-"

Before I could finish, Vito's right forearm clocked me in the kisser. My head snapped backward. Stars danced inside my eyelids. Everything went black for a count of one, two, before I opened my eyes and saw the floor below me.

"You mean like that, he wasn't paying attention?"

I spit blood. My teeth felt like they'd been rocked from their roots. My jaw was intact, thankfully, but not by much. My head was ringing. A sharp pain radiated down my neck.

"Who said you could do that?" It was Charlie's voice. It hurt to move my head, but my eyes peeked up at him. He was watching me. It was hard, in my state, to read his face. He looked unsure, I thought, which I took as a good sign.

"We'll handle this," said Leather Jacket.

"Fuck you," I said. "Uncuff me and let me go."

He didn't speak, but he slowly shook his head.

"I'm freezing," I said.

"Give him a coat," Charlie said.

"No, pretty boy's doing just fine," said Leather Jacket. Then, to me: "Why were you at the federal building yesterday? Four o'clock."

"Yester-I had a motion to compel that I filed yesterday. I delivered a copy to Judge Graves's office. She likes courtesy copies."

I answered quickly, no equivocation. Charlie had put a tail on me. I was followed. He'd been wondering about me. I didn't know why.

"What's the name of the case?" asked Leather Jacket.

"United States v. Guevarra. Illegal possession of firearms."

"What's the docket number?"

I spit more blood. "I don't have the fucking docket number committed to memory, dumbshit. Show me any lawyer who does. Look up the damn case. It's public record."

"Why did you want to know about Starlight Catering?" he asked.

"I already answered that."

"Not to me, you didn't."

I looked up. Charlie had left the room. It was just me, Leather Jacket to my left, and Vito to my right.

I spit again, a thick mixture of blood and saliva.

Another blow, harder than the last one, to the right temple. A soft, vulnerable part of the skull. It was Vito's forearm again. My neck hurt more than anything. It was being knocked around like a pinball.

"Answer," said Leather Jacket.

"We're shaking down the whole field of state contractors," I said, "and we give this one a pass. I was just asking. I don't give a flying fuck about Starlight whatever."

He was quiet a minute. All eyes were on me. I thought I was doing okay. Relatively speaking. I'd rather be sipping margaritas on a beach. I'd rather be giving myself an enema.

"What the hell is this? I work my ass off for Charlie and we've got a good thing going here. What happened?"

I said it to the floor. My head was hanging. I was woozy and struggling to maintain not just consciousness but clarity of thought.

"Dick Baroni is what happened." It was Charlie's voice again.

Dick Baroni. The guy Charlie told me about-even spelled his name for me so I could Google it. The guy who crossed him and got his office torched, with him in it. He lived to tell but apparently didn't tell. I was supposed to take a lesson from that.

"Dick tells me the feds were asking him questions about me," said Charlie. "Why, after so many years, would they be doing that?"

Lee Tucker. What the hell was he doing? They interviewed Baroni after I gave him the name? They might as well have painted a target on my chest. It had been a plant. Charlie had thrown out the name to see if it would spawn any interest from law enforcement. If it did, that meant the person he told-yours truly-was working with them.

"Okay," I said, like I was awaiting the punch line. "And who the hell is Dick Baroni?"

Charlie watched me for a long time. He hadn't expected that answer. "You know who he is."

"I have no idea who he is."

"I told you about him."

"When did you do that?"

"You're lying to me."

"When, Charlie?" I shook my head, exasperated. "Just answer me that. When did you ever tell me about him?"

He paused. "First time we talked. Really talked. At my club."

"Like, three months ago? I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday."

I thought it was a plausible enough position to take.

"Three months ago," I said, "when-"

I cut off the sentence. I tried to summon emotion that I'd tried hard so hard to suppress. It wasn't all that hard. It was never very far from the surface.

"When I was just getting back-when I was just getting over what happened. I mean, I was a fucking mess when I met you. And you think-what-I remember that conversation so well that some name you dropped would stick in my mind?"

I had a head of steam now, and I let the anger release.

"And by the way, why would I do any of this, Charlie? Why the hell would I team up with the feds? Do I have some reason that I don't know about? I just woke up one day and decided that I wanted to work undercover for the feds to help nail somebody I'd never met?"

I had Charlie thinking. It was working. Maybe Tucker was right. Maybe I was a natural.

Charlie walked over to me. He put his hands on his knees and looked into my eyes.

"Tell me you're not working for them," he whispered. "Look me in the eye and-"

"I'm not working for those assholes," I said.

He slapped me hard across the face. "Again."

"I'm not a snitch," I said.

He reached around and grabbed the back of my hair, showed me his teeth. "Again."

"I wouldn't do that. I'm not a fucking rat."

The adrenaline was racing through me. He was buying it. I could taste freedom. I realized, only then, how much I'd expected this whole thing to go south.

"I put you on the map," he said, his face twisted into a snarl. He was still gripping the shorthairs on my neck. "I pulled your head out of your ass. And this is the thanks you give me?"

He opened his other hand. Resting on his palm was an F-Bird.

Charlie tossed the F-Bird to Leather Jacket. "Your turn," he said.

57.