After handing him the money, she had grabbed the slender sterling flask that had been sitting on the nightstand between them, smiled, unscrewed the top, brought it to her lips. She had handed the flask to Michael and Michael had known—known as fully and completely as any lesson he had learned in his forty-six years—that he shouldn’t. But he did anyway. Two big swallows to steady his hands. It was Cuban rum, top-shelf. It warmed him.

And now it is showtime.

In the instant before Michael can make his move, the woman stands, reaches into her big leather bag. Michael is sure that, when she withdraws her hand, it will be holding a pistol. This is a certainty. He freezes, the breath catching in his throat, his muscles tightening.

It is not a gun.

It is instead . . . a Montecristo? Yes. Michael goes cool for a moment, dimpled with relief. He can smell the sweet tobacco, even from five feet away. “What’s this?” he asks, his face risking a half-smile.

The woman doesn’t answer but rather begins to wordlessly perform the cigar smoker’s ritual—sniffing, rolling, end-cutting, gently spinning the cigar as it is being lit with a wooden kitchen match. After a few puffs, she kneels in front of him, rests her hands on his knees. Her touch electrifies him. Michael, a two-pack-a-day man, doesn’t cough, isn’t bothered by the smoke in the least.

It’s just . . . weird, right?

A woman like this smoking a Cristo?

Then, for the first time since they’d met, through the silvery haze of smoke made blue by the muted hotel TV, through the sudden, heady fog of her perfume, Michael notices the pristine blackness of this woman’s eyes, the cruelty that lives there, and he is frightened.

Something is wrong.

He tries to stand, but whatever hallucinogenic drug was in the rum seizes his world and makes it stutter and weave and lurch in front of him. He reaches for his gun. Gone, somehow. His heart races to burst, his legs feel thick and useless. He falls back into the chair.

“Here comes the dark, officer,” the woman says, jacking a round into the Glock’s firing chamber. “Here comes the night.”

Before the darkness, in a breathtaking panorama behind his eyes, Detective First Grade Michael Patrick Ryan of the Cleveland Police Department observes a thousand dazzling visions at once. Some are so brutal in their majesty, so radiant, that tears come to his eyes. Most are terribly sad: Carrie, his young daughter, forever waiting for him on the front porch, her wheelchair gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. Dolores, mad as hell. Dolores’s father had died in the line of duty, you see. Every morning, for fifteen years, Michael had promised her he would not die in the line of duty.

But this isn’t really duty, is it, Mike?

Michael Ryan glances up at the barrel of his own weapon, at the delicate white finger on the trigger, the bloodred fingernail. He closes his eyes one last time, thinking:

It was all for my girls.

All of it.

And no one will ever know.

One

∼

Altar

1

I step into the white room at precisely eleven o’clock. White walls, thick white carpeting, white stippled ceiling. The lights are on and it is very bright, very warm. Aside from the blue-screened LCD monitor on the desk in the corner, the only color in the room is the plum velvet wing chair, dead center, facing the computer’s small video camera, facing the lights.

I am dressed in charcoal trousers, pleated, and a powder blue shirt with French cuffs. I am also wearing a pair of black Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. I am barefoot and the shirt is open at the top.

I received the e-mail from Dante at eight-thirty and that gave me just enough time to get to the dry cleaner, just enough time to flirt with a waitress and pick up some dinner at Guarino’s. I can still taste the garlic from the veal piccata and feel like I might be cheating this woman, even though she is going to be light-years away, figuratively speaking. But I understand what compels the person on the other side of the session to call, to arrange, to pay. I respect that.

So I take out my Binaca and freshen my breath.

I sit down.

At eleven-ten the computer speakers sizzle with static, the small window in the upper right of the monitor flickers once, twice, but does not yield an image. I do not expect it to. Although the connection allows for two-way video transmission, I have yet to see anyone appear in that frame. Watchers watch.

Soon, from the speakers, there comes a synthesized voice, robotic, yet unmistakably female.

“Hello,” the voice says.

“Hello,” I answer, knowing she can see me now.

“Are you the police officer?”

The game. Eternally the game. First the game, then the guilt. But always, in the middle, the come. “Yes.”

“Just home from a tough day at work?”

“Just walked through the door,” I say. “Just kicked off my shoes.”

“Shoot anyone today?”

“Not today.”

“Arrest anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Just a girl. A very wicked girl.”

She laughs, pauses for a few moments, then says: “Fix yourself a drink.”

I stand, walk out of the frame. There is no bar in this room, but there is a desk with some of the items I anticipated needing. She cannot see these things, these props I will use to produce this chimera for her. Nor, of course, can she see the cauldron, the long-rusted hooks.

Those are in the black room.

As I pick up the tumbler containing a few inches of rum, I hear an increase in the pace of the woman’s electronic breathing. Watchers like to anticipate, too. Watchers like it even when they can’t see.

I play her for a few moments, then reenter the frame and sit down.

“Drink,” she says, a little breathless now.

I drink. The liquid is pleasant amber fire in my stomach.

“Stand up.”

A strong, authoritative command. I obey.

“Now . . .” the voice continues, “I want you to take your shirt off. Slowly.”

I turn my right wrist, look again at my silver cuff links, at the ancient symbol engraved into the smooth matte surface. I take the cuff links out with great drama, then unbutton my shirt slowly, one mother-of-pearl button at a time, and let it slip over my shoulders to the floor.

“Good,” says the voice. “Very good. You are a very beautiful young man.”

“Thank you.”

“Now your trousers. Belt first, then the button, then the zipper.”

I do as I am told. Soon I am naked. I sit down on the chair. My penis looks thick and heavily veined against the purple velvet.

“Do you know who I am?” asks the voice.

I do not. I say so.

“Do you want to know who I am?”

I remain silent.

“I can’t tell you anyway,” the voice says. “But I do know what I want you to do now.”

“What is that?”

“I want you to think about the woman you saw today. At the whorehouse.”

“Okay.”

“Do you remember her?”

“Yes. I haven’t been able to forget her.”

The voice continues, a little faster. “The woman you saw on the top floor. Did you like her?”

“Yes,” I say, my erection growing. This was the easy part. “Very much.”

“Did it turn you on to watch her?”

“Yes.” Up a few more degrees. Then a few more.

“That was me, you know. I was the whore.”

“I see.”

“Do you like to watch me do that to other men?”

“Yes. I love it.”

“Spread your legs,” she says, the transmission breaking up a bit.

“Like this?”

A few more moments of static, then: “Meet me.”

“No.”

“Meet me tonight.”

It is a plea, now. The power has shifted, as it always does. “No,” I reply.

“Meet me and fuck me.”

I wait a few beats. My heart begins to race. Is she going to be the one? “If I say yes, what will you do for me?”