I shook my head as we drove back and slowed into the driveway.
Chapter eight
Catherine
Igot out first. The street was empty except for the buzz of lights and the tick of the cooling engine. Seneca swept the perimeter with his eyes, then nodded at me to go in. I was still in judge mode right up to the threshold. The door was already blown; no need for keys. I stepped over the threshold and into the wreckage of my home.
It was a slaughterhouse. The entry rug was a snarl of muddy bootprints and glass, the air thick with the prickle of gunpowder and that weird, sweet undertone you only get from fresh blood and severed nerves. In the living room, the couch had been gutted, its stuffing drifted everywhere like dandelion seeds. Shell casings dotted the hardwood. The family photos over the mantle all hung cockeyed, one cracked straight through my brother’s forehead. I made a mental note to fix it if I ever stopped shaking.
Seneca stalked ahead of me, heavy and methodical. He checked the corners, then the windows. Satisfied, he nodded at the body crumpled by the bookshelf. I went to it because I needed to. The carpet squished under my knees.
The dead man was young, maybe late twenties, with the build of someone who didn’t work out for fun. His jacket was a high-end knockoff. The wrist, bare now that the sleeve had ridden up, gave him away. The tattoo was bright and angry against the skin, a band of green and red and a barbed ouroboros. My mouth dried. I reached for his collar, then stopped, hand hovering a second before committing.
The badge sewn into the inside of his jacket was subtle—a scuffed brass coin, stitched to the lining, but the weight of it was unmistakable. Seneca crouched beside me, his shadow blotting out what was left of the lamp light.
“Tell me you don’t recognize that,” he said, voice just above a growl.
I didn’t answer. I peeled back the lapel, found the coin, and palmed it. There was a second tattoo on the inside of his forearm. My pulse thudded once, hard. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Seneca watched me. “You know who this is.” It wasn’t a question. He waited, hands steady, eyes locked on my face.
I closed my eyes and said, “Martini family.”
He whistled softly. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He took the coin from my hand and turned it over. “Thought their reach was East Coast.”
“It is,” I said, “or was.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “But if they want you bad enough, they find you. I’ve always been an easy target in waiting.”
There was a click behind us. My vision tunneled, ready for another shot, but it was only the neighbor’s porch light flicking on across the street. I let my breath out slow and felt my heartbeat start to retreat from the stratosphere.
Seneca stood and paced the room, never taking his eyes off the windows. “They after you, or me?”
I wanted to say “both,” but I forced myself to be honest. “Me,” I said. “My grandfather pissed them off a generation ago. I’m just the loose end.” I looked at the body, the way the jaw was still clenched, and wondered how many times this man had been told who to hate.
Seneca frowned. “You’re a judge in New Mexico. Why the fuck would—?”
“Russo Bellini,” I said, cutting him off. “He was my grandfather. He ran Yonkers for twenty years. When he retired, Martini took the borough. There was bad blood. I left it behind, or thought I did.”
Seneca nodded, not as a gesture of understanding but as an adjustment to a new reality. “So that’s why the DA hates you. Why you get all the Italian defendants.”
“Not funny,” I said. But he was right.
He crouched again, this time gentle, and closed the dead man’s eyes. “You ever see him before?”
“Not this one. But they only give that tattoo to made men.”
He glanced at the torn couch, at the arc of bullet holes stitched across the wall. “They sent a real hitter. Not a fuck-up.”
“People get killed for looking at someone’s girlfriend in Yonkers,” I said, and the old bitterness crept in before I could kill it.
Seneca found a spot on the floor and sat cross-legged, like a soldier taking stock after a firefight. “You’re not what I expected,” he said.
I snorted. “You expected a mean old lady with a bun.”
“I expected someone who didn’t know what a made man was.”
