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I STOPPED TO VISIT JOCKO
before heading to Viscotti’s. I had run out of Bridget’s so fast that morning I hadn’t shaved. Besides, I wanted to procrastinate before visiting the widow. Either that or maybe he would slit my throat so I wouldn’t have to visit Ariel at all.

He seemed happy to see me, like maybe he was worried Flat Face and his crew had taken me out of the game.

“Sit! Sit! Sit!” He waved the sheet, tempting the bull to charge.

I sat. “What’s what, Jocko?”

The crinkly paper was tucked around my neck, and I swore I could smell a White Owl cigar.

“Good,” he said. “It was a beautiful funeral.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever been to a beautiful funeral. They were all pretty grim as far as I was concerned. So I said something polite. “I’m sure the family’s stress over his death was depersonalized. A lot of flowers.”

Jocko looked confused a moment, then flashed the straight razor. “Jocko give you a shave, yes?”

I tensed, wondering what I was thinking, coming back to his chair. I tried to relax—he had no reason to kill me. Flat Face had no reason to kill me. Yet. “Just be careful around my jugular vein, OK?”

“I never cut anybody that didn’t move. Almost.” He laughed to himself while he lathered my chin with hot shave cream, the smell of his Juicy Fruit fighting with the smell of the soap. “So you talk to the big boss?”

“Yeah.”

“A nice talk?”

“Businessman to businessman.”

“Good,
good
. ”

I was staring at the ceiling, listening to the long scrape of the razor on my neck.

“Let me ask you, Jocko. That guy with the flat face—was he Jimmy Robay?”

“Of course.”

“He seems reasonable.”

“I know him since he was a little boy. Used to sit in this chair when his family would come to Dominic’s on Sundays.”

I heard the front doorbell tinkle, and Jocko said, “I’ll be right with you, sir, please have a seat.”

Jocko spun my seat toward the mirror and cleared his throat. My eyes slid down from the ceiling to Jocko’s reflection in the mirror. His eyes were dark and seemed to have drifted way back into his skull. You know Death, who wears the hood and carries the giant garden tool or whatever? It was like that, only Jocko was holding up the straight razor. Death with a straight razor and Juicy Fruit.

Like an idiot, I thought,
He really is going to kill me
.

Like I said, though, I didn’t have time to die that week if I could help it.

I launched forward out of the chair.

There was that chopping sound, the one I’d come to know as the sound of a silencer. The wall mirror shattered as I stumbled and fell to the floor.

Jocko and the person who just came in were in a struggle. I was on the checked floor wrapped in the sheet, and the barber chair blocked my view. I yanked my arms, and the sheet snapped in two.

There were two more shouts behind me—one Jocko, who said “
Malocchio!
” and the other something I couldn’t make out. I scrambled to my feet.

A mirror behind me shattered, and I saw Jocko staggering backward, knocking all the combs and the jar of blue liquid crashing to the floor. His white tunic was splashed red with blood.

The punk stood across the room, a red razor gash from his left ear in an S-curve down over his chin. Below the gash was a curtain of blood. Next to this curtain of blood was the punk’s bloody hand, and he was looking at it with surprise. He was still pointing his pistol at Jocko, smoke curling from the silencer. It wasn’t just any pistol. Exotic like the gun before.

The punk’s blue eyes raised to mine.

My hand was on the counter behind me. I grabbed an electric razor and threw it at the punk, the cord trailing behind, but it missed his head.

There was so much blood on his hand, his fingers were slipping as he tried to cock the gun. I should have charged him when I had the chance.

I ducked behind the chair in front of me and heard the gun ratchet.

Like a sumo wrestler, I put my two hundred and seventy pounds behind the chair and shoved for all I was worth.

I’m happy to report the chair wasn’t bolted to the floor. If it had been I would have probably thrown my back out or ripped my arms out of my sockets, and while I lay there in agony, the punk would have put me out of my misery. I would have joined Jo-Ball and Huey in the Exploding Head Club.

That chair didn’t slide across the floor; it jumped in the air and hit the punk in the chest. The chair fell on its side on the floor. The punk was an object in motion, and his back slammed the wall of mirrors, cracks splintering out around him.

I had fallen to all fours when I shoved the chair and was looking up at him. He still had the gun, but his eyes were crossed, and it was like he was stuck to the wall. He looked like a bug in a spiderweb, what with the glass shattered behind him.

Like I said, the gun was still in his hands. I’ve got a rule about running toward someone holding a gun, even if he was injured and had a sheet of red down one side from a straight-razor cut.

I glanced over to see where Jocko was. He wasn’t, so I guessed he’d gone out the back or into the back room. Well, whatever, he was on his own.

I hesitated. The punk’s eyes uncrossed and tried to focus on me, the gun hand beginning to move.

I lit out the front door, making tracks on Smith. I rounded the first corner to get out of sight of the barbershop.

I made it to Bond Street and hailed a town car.

“Where to?”

“Downtown, Joralemon Street and Court or Henry, I don’t care.”

“You OK?”

“Yeah, I just went for a little jog. I guess I’m out of shape.”

“You should be careful.”

I closed my eyes and listened to my heart boxing with my lungs. “Yeah.”

THIS TIME, CAROL AND I
went to the police instead of them coming to us.

Doh saw us standing on the other side of the police tape at the Neapolitan Barber Shop. It was maybe an hour after it all went down. He seemed surprised, but relieved, too. Crispi wasn’t with him for a change.

“I hope your client can give us some serious cooperation, Doonan. Otherwise I’m going to arrest his ass for obstruction of justice.”

“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want to give our full cooperation.”

“Full?”

“Full. He was here when it went down, and barely escaped getting killed. He came straight to me.”

“Why not the police?”

“I think a grand jury would find it reasonable that my client would run from a killer and return after a safe interval with his counsel, especially if he had been the target of two previous attempts on his life from which the police were unable to protect him. You want Mr. Davin’s help or don’t you?”

“That would be divine.” Doh lifted the yellow tape, and we walked with him into the barbershop. There was blood all over the floor where the punk had been, and leading away into the back room where Jocko had gone to die.

We went through what happened, and where, trying to stay out of the way of photographers. Doh listened but took no notes. When we were done he led us to the back room. There was a hot plate and a small refrigerator next to a small table with a radio. You could see Jocko would have a quiet moment to himself back there. Eat his lunch and listen to the news or a ball game. Doh pointed to a large pool of blood next to the back door. He didn’t say anything, he just pointed. Then he waved us to follow him back through the front of the barbershop and around the corner. Carol and I sat in the back of his unmarked car; he sat in front, arm over the seat.

“I got a lot of questions, Davin, but my first is, how do you sleep at night?”

Carol cleared her throat. “Detective—”

“I don’t think he told you all he knows, Doonan.” He was pointing at me but looking at her.

She and I exchanged a glance.

I said, “I have told Ms. Doonan everything I know.”

Doh sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Here’s how it went down, people. After the first killing, we dug around a bit about Mr. Davin. We found that he owed money. We found that his girlfriend left him. Both of these little items were well known in the neighborhood. Both of these little items interested us. Can you tell me why, Doonan? I’ll tell you why. Love or money. That’s why people kill. Those are the only two reasons. In Davin we maybe had both. We spoke with Huey’s wife, Ariel, and she told us the ex-girlfriend used to come into the shop to buy pastry, and that she was a bombshell. This interested us. Why?”

Carol folded her arms, so I didn’t say anything either.

“Because most of the time when the cause of death is love there’s a bombshell. The prettier, the more trouble they are, the more men are likely to kill for them. It’s the way of the world. All the men in the neighborhood stopped what they were doing to watch her go by. All the women stopped what they were doing tohate the bombshell. She had a pattern. She would go to the bistro and buy a single pastry, and then go to a mailbox at the shipping store a block down. We went there, to the shipping store. The people there knew her, she stood out, so we got her full name and ran it. Sure enough, this woman Yvette was walking trouble ever since she got to this country and especially in Vegas. You knew this, Davin, am I right?”

Carol put a hand on my arm to keep me quiet. “We’re here to help, Detective, with your murder case in any way we can, but I don’t see how it’s helpful for Tommy to openly speculate on the character of his ex-girlfriend.”

Doh rolled his eyes and continued. “She was never charged with anything too serious, but was hauled into LVPD whenever she was at the center of some sort of altercation. Was there some sort of connection between Yvette and Jonathon ‘One-Ball’ Culobrese? Between Yvette and Huey LaMouche?”

He cocked an eye at me.

I said, “I hope not.”

So he nodded sadly. “Knowing her, you couldn’t be sure, could you? Even now.”

My heart felt like it was in a block of concrete. I was feeling dizzy.

“Well, rest easy, Davin. There was no connection. Except you. You weren’t killing these people, so we figured this was a dead end. Until Crispi noticed something. In one of her altercations just before she left Vegas to come here with you. You know this man?”

He held out a photo from Immigration.

It was the punk.

I looked at Carol, she nodded, and I said, “That’s the guy who shot Jocko.”

“Is it the guy you chased? The one who shot Huey?”

“I didn’t chase anybody.”

Carol leaned forward. “Detective, who is this man?”

“His name is Gustav Urushka.”

My vision swam, and I had to close my eyes. Delilah was right, I hadn’t been open enough to the possibilities.

I heard Carol say, “Why is Gustav Urushka trying to kill my client? And the other people around him?”

“It’s the way his people do things when they want something, his people from back in the old country, Eastern Europe. They want something from someone, they have rules, a way of doing things. First you kidnap someone’s kids or parents or whatever, then you start killing people around their target. Doesn’t do any good to kill the person who has something you want. They call it
zevasta
. This man Gustav was in a paramilitary outfit over there, as an assassin that killed political opponents, union leaders. A prodigy with a gun—our friend Gustav can shoot people from the hip, behind the back, over his shoulder. Over there, where he came from, they all have guns because they never know when a war might break out again. His father started him shooting melons with hollow points when he was only five. He could have killed you outside Donut House, and at the bistro, but he killed Johnny and Huey instead,
zevasta
, to scare you into finding Yvette for him. Seems he got impatient and decided to take you out at Jocko’s, or maybe torture you into telling. Only he didn’t expect the old man to be so handy with a razor.”

Breathe slowly in through the nose; close the eyes.

Breathe slowly out through the lips; stroke back my hair.

Breathe slowly in through the nose; open the eyes.

Doh says, “What’s Davin doing?”

So Carol says, “Tommy does tantric exercises when he’s anxious.”

“Tantric?”

“Like yoga.”

I exhaled. “He kidnapped the cats.”

“Cats?” Doh leaned in close.

“Yvette left me with four cats. I took care of them for a month. Then on Monday night I found my place had been broken into and my cats … Yvette’s cats had been stolen and there was a note signed ‘Gustav.’ And some letters. Look like love letters.”

“You didn’t think to call the police?”

“I considered it a domestic matter. I had no idea a guy who would steal cats and leave love letters would also go on a killing spree.”

Carol put a hand on my knee telling me to shut up.

“Detective, let’s keep this on the here and now, focus on progress, not recriminations. There’s a killer. My client is a target of this killer, has been from the first murder at Donut House. What are you going to do to ensure his safety?”

“First, he can hand over those love letters. That would be nice.” Doh flashed a reluctant grin. “Then we could put Davin on ice somewhere until we cuff Gustav. Of course, then Tommy might miss his next payment to Vince Scanlon. You know as well as I do that your client is crawling around for a finder’s fee on some stolen paintings. We put him in a safe house, he isn’t going to be too safe from Scanlon when he gets out.”

“You wouldn’t protect my client from Scanlon?”

Doh’s eyes narrowed to nothing. His freckles got redder. “He’s a material witness who has been withholding evidence in this case. We found the lady on Sackett Street. The one who hit Gustav before Davin chased him into the canal. She described someone Davin’s size and general description, and she also said the killer’s gun fell on the ground. I have to assume the killer never recovered that gun; otherwise it would have been a short chase. If we had found that gun back then, it might have told us things that would have Gustav in Rikers right now and Jocko still trimming sideburns and telling Gotti stories. So it’s hard to feel sorry for your client’s predicament when he seems to have an utter disregard for the safety of others.” He took a deep breath, and added with no little contempt, “But if he wants protection, we’ll put him up in a safe house.”