"Yeah," I said, "just when I was downstairs. I stayed out of the elevator to keep the connection."

"Why hasn't he called me?"

"He" was Dimitri. Katrina loved Twill, but he wasn't the kind of child you worried about. It was an odd feeling I had whenever I realized that my only blood son was my faithless wife's favorite.

"I don't know if it's love, honey," I said. "Probably isn't. But he must be getting some kind of great sex. His nose is open like the Midtown Tunnel at three a.m. I don't think he feels comfortable talking to his mother when he's feeling like that."

"He always comes to me," she said.

"A man has to let go the apron strings sometime."

A flash of anger went across the gorgeous Scandinavian face.

"Those flowers are getting kinda dry, aren't they?" I said to get her mind on something else.

"I like them."

"Just get some fresh ones, why don't you."

"A woman's husband is supposed to buy the flowers."

"The last time I bought you flowers you put them in Shelly's bathroom."

"That was nine years ago."

"Eleven," I said. "And in all that time I haven't let you down once."

"If you don't like them I'll throw them away."

"You got me wrong, baby. I like the arrangement. It's, it's wild. I'm just saying that they're getting dry and maybe you should replace them."

Katrina squinted at me. I could see that she was trying to decipher the symbolic content of our conversation. Maybe she thought that I was telling her something.

I wasn't. I liked the flowers. They distracted me and somehow transformed the room.

"You aren't lying to me, are you, Leonid?"

"About what, Katrina?"

"Dimitri."

"No. He's a young man lost in his first love. He doesn't want to come down, and wouldn't be able to if he tried."

"He's safe?"

"No man is safe when he's in love, Katrina, you know that. But I can promise you this-nothing will happen to our sons, either one of them, not as long as there's breath in my body."

My wife's bosom rose, hearing that truth and vow from me.

She stood up. Clad in her coral robe and nothing else, she gave me a look that was unmistakable.

"Are you coming to bed?"

My heart actually skipped. The shock of this feeling pushed the thugs and their threats almost out of mind.

"I can't, babe."

"Why not?"

"There's a job I got and it's really very serious."

Again Katrina studied me.

"Did you mean what you said before?" she asked.

"About what?"

"About shooting a man in the head."

"No," I said and then I told her about coming upon Wanda Soa's apartment without mentioning any names.

"I didn't do anything, but there it was," I said. "That's the kind of weight I have on my mind sometimes."

Without a word Katrina approached me, planted a wet kiss on my cheek, and then caressed my neck with her left hand.

I watched her walk away, thinking that I had missed an entire life somehow and wondering was it my fault or just fate.

When I was nine years old my father started taking me to firing ranges. We practiced with pistols and rifles on legal ranges, semiautomatics and explosives down on secret Appalachian retreats in the summer. We hunted bear and deer with bow and rifle and I learned how to set traps for beasts and men.

"There's a war coming, boys," he'd tell me and my younger brother, Nikita. "It's being fought right now in South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Most Americans don't think that the battle will ever make it to these shores, but they're wrong. Keeping the struggle away from our cities and our borders is like trying to make sure your kids never get sick-if you spend all your time isolating them, then later, when they grow up and go out in the world, the infections'll kill 'em."

I felt about my father the way a spider feels about the dark corner where she is drawn to build her web: he was fundamental and gave me no choice.

By the time I was twelve my father was gone for good. At the age of thirty-seven Nikita was sent to prison for an armored- car robbery and multiple murders in Michigan. At that time we hadn't spoken to each other for over a decade.

I was sitting at my desk, considering what weapons I had to bring to Shandley's in order to assure my own sons' survival.

Tolstoy, my self-named father, was right about the war. When I look at the newspapers today I wonder why the pundits don't acknowledge that we're in the middle of World War III. I'm sure that some future historians will say so.

My father was a brilliant man, but what good was it to spend a life questioning false happiness and peace?

I don't know.

I can't know.

All I could do was strap a slender dagger to my left ankle and practice using the release on the wrist holster that held my custom-made four-shot.38.

I didn't sleep that night. There was too much chatter in my head. Twill was giving his innocent brother criminal advice in one corner while Angelique was sobbing behind the closet door. Gordo was somewhere making plans that would prepare me for a big fight-a fight I was bound to lose. Ron Sharkey was knocking on the ceiling below, asking for twenty bucks for his fix. And I was that spider, suspended in her dark corner-waiting.

WHEN THE SUN CAME up, at 6:37, I donned a blue suit that had finally made it home from the cleaner's. Then I walked down to my office, hoping not to see Aura swabbing George Toller's molars with her tongue.

I made it to my desk without heartbreak.

There was a job to do and a life to live and even though that was more than I could handle, there was nothing I could accomplish at 8:39 that morning.

So I logged on and started reading about the world war my father predicted.

It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking toward depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world talking about how to keep to a budget.

The buzzer of my front door sounded a few minutes shy of nine o'clock. I saw Aura on the screen of the four monitors in my desk drawer, her African and European heritage from the front, back, and both sides. The dress suit she wore was off-white working overtime to complement her ecru skin. Her big eyes looked up into the camera she knew was there.

She pressed the button again but I could see no benefit in answering.

She had the keys to my door, the combination to my inner locks, but she wouldn't use them.

I closed the drawer and picked up the office phone.

After seventeen rings he answered.

"Who the fuck is this?" Luke Nye bellowed into my ear.

"I wake you up, Luke?"

"Oh, hey, LT. What's up, man?"

The pool hustler wasn't intimidated. We just had an understanding like fellow soldiers from the same regiment fighting the good fight on foreign soil. Day or night, we were on call, and there was no use making any kind of big deal out of it.

That's the career criminal way of life-you're always behind enemy lines, you're always at war. And even though I was trying my best to go straight, I couldn't erase years of training.

"A guy named Gustav who works out of a pool hall down on Houston-"

"Shandley's," Luke said before I could get the word out. "Pretends like he's a Russian gangster but he's from Rumania. Got some Russians workin' for him, though. They say he's got the biggest dick in the tristate area. I don't know for a fact, I'm just sayin'."

"What about him?"

"He runs the pool hall as a kind of office. Asian kids come there to sharpen up their skills, but the real action is a few blocks east, where he's got a warehouse filled with foreign ladies just waiting to please."