The Alley

The second night is easier, which is how you know something's wrong.

Tullio doesn't come in. The piano player takes requests. A couple gets engaged at table nine and the whole room applauds, and you pour champagne you'll later learn Serafina paid for out of her own pocket. Val stands by the kitchen door and watches you like you're a pot that might boil over.

At eleven, Serafina sits at the end of your bar for the first time since the interview.

"Something I haven't had," she says.

"You own the bar. You've had everything."

"Then surprise me."

You make her a gin sour with a few drops of the rosemary syrup Augie keeps for the brunch menu, and a pinch of salt. She tastes it, and her eyebrows lift a fraction.

"Salt," she says.

"It makes everything taste more like itself."

"Does it." She studies you over the rim. "Is that a bartender thing or a federal thing?"

You glance at Augie. He's at the other end, out of earshot, stacking glasses.

"Careful," you murmur.

"I'm always careful. You're the one who carries a revolver on his left ankle behind a bar." She sets the glass down. "Val noticed on the first day. The way you stand. Weight on the right."

Heat crawls up your neck. "Anything else Val noticed?"

"That you're a decent tipper at the coffee place on Halsted and you sleep with the television on." She stands, leaving the drink half full. "Goodnight, Ethan."

So she's been watching you longer than you've been watching her. Of course she has.

At one-forty-five you take the trash out.

The alley behind Velluto is a narrow brick canyon between the club and an old printing plant. One security light, buzzing. The river smell, sharp and cold, coming around the corner. A dumpster, a stack of crushed boxes, the back door propped with a wedge.

You're halfway through breaking down the last box when the door opens behind you.

Serafina, coat on, car keys in her hand.

"Val's bringing the car around," she says. "I wanted a minute without her breathing on me."

"She'll hate that."

"She hates everything." Serafina leans against the brick and tips her head back to the narrow strip of sky. "You asked me last night who told me about you."

"You didn't answer."

"I'm deciding whether I can."

She's quiet. You fold cardboard. The security light hums. Far off, a train crosses the river.

"In my family," she says, "every kindness is a debt. Every secret is a weapon. If I tell you a name, I've handed you a weapon. I need to know which way you'll point it."

"At whoever's trying to kill you."

"That's the right answer." She almost smiles. "It's too fast, though."

A car turns into the mouth of the alley.

Not Val's. Val drives a black SUV. This is a dark sedan with its headlights off, rolling slow over the broken asphalt.

Every hair on your arms stands up.

You don't decide. Your body decides. You drop the box and move, three steps across the alley, and you hit Serafina at the waist and drive her down behind the dumpster as the first shot cracks off the brick where her head was.

Then the night breaks open.

Four shots, five, six, loud as hammers in the narrow space. Brick dust rains down. The security light explodes in a shower of glass. You're on top of her on the wet asphalt, one arm over her head, your whole body between her and the alley mouth. Her breath is hot and fast against your throat.

You reach for your ankle.

The holster is empty.

For one stupid, frozen second you think you forgot it. Then you look down and see Serafina, flat on her back beneath you, holding your revolver in both hands, thumb already on the hammer.

She got it out before you did. She knew exactly where it was.

"Stay down," she says, perfectly calm.

"Give me that."

"Later."

The sedan's engine revs. Two more shots punch into the dumpster, ringing it like a bell. Then tires shriek and the car is reversing out of the alley, fishtailing, gone.

Silence. Ringing ears. Glass ticking down off the walls.

You don't move. Neither does she. Her heart is pounding against your chest so hard you can feel it through her coat.

"Are you hit?" you say.

"No." Her voice cracks on the word, just slightly. "Are you?"

"No."

Headlights flood the alley. Val's SUV. The door is open before it stops and Val is out with her gun up, sweeping, shouting Serafina's name.

"Here," Serafina calls. "We're fine. Both of us."

You roll off her. Sit back against the dumpster. Your hands have started to shake now that it's over. Serafina sits up beside you, hair half fallen down, a scrape across her palm bright with blood. She looks at the revolver in her hands, then at you.

She hands it back, grip first.

"You should carry a bigger one," she says.

Val crouches in front of you both, eyes going from Serafina's palm to your face. "Who?"

"Dark sedan, no lights, no plates I could see," you say. "Two shooters, maybe. Left out the north end toward Kinzie."

Val stares at you. "You got all that?"

"I was paying attention."

"Bartenders don't pay attention like that."

"Val," Serafina says. "Not now."

"We need to call this in," you say.

Both women look at you.

"No police," Serafina says.

"Someone just emptied a clip at you."

"And if I call the police, my father hears about it from the police instead of from me, and by tomorrow there are thirty men in this city with guns looking for a dark sedan. People die. Some of them won't even be the right people." She stands, wincing, and holds out the hand that isn't bleeding. "No police. Val will handle the glass."

You look at her hand.

Every rule you've ever learned says call it in. Doyle would want to know within the hour.

You take her hand. She pulls you up.

She drives you home herself.

Val argues for five minutes and loses, then follows two car lengths behind in the SUV. Serafina's car is a black Audi that smells like leather and her perfume, something dark with fig in it. She drives with both hands on the wheel, very precisely, under the speed limit the whole way down to Bridgeport.

She doesn't say a word. Neither do you.

Your building is a three-flat over a shuttered laundromat on Morgan Street. She pulls to the curb and leaves the engine running. The dashboard light makes her face look carved.

You wait for her to say something. Thank you. Get out. Who are you really.

She just looks straight ahead, gripping the wheel, the cut on her palm already crusting dark.

"Serafina," you say.

"Go inside, Ethan."

You go.

Upstairs, you check the closets and the bathroom with the revolver out, the way they taught you. You lock the door and the chain. You put the gun on the nightstand and sit on the edge of the bed with your shoes still on, watching the street through the blinds.

The Audi stays at the curb for eleven minutes. Then it pulls away. The SUV follows.

You lie back on top of the covers. You don't turn the television on. Your shoulder aches where you hit the asphalt, and you can still feel the place where her heart was pounding against you.

At 2:07 a.m., your personal phone lights up on the pillow.

Not the Bureau phone. The cover phone. The number you gave Val two days ago.

A text, from a number you've never saved and somehow already know.