You are still in my thoughts,
YUJI ONO
Oh, Leo.
Some part of me—my heart, I suppose—had hoped Leo’s death might be a mistake, but now I knew it wasn’t. The brain could not deny the evidence. Leo was dead.
I was glad that Natty was at school because I didn’t know what I wanted to say to her yet.
I set the ashes on the coffee table in the living room and contemplated my next move. Leo needed a funeral, but if I gave him one—if I, say, had him buried at the plot in Brooklyn—it could potentially implicate me in his escape. I did not relish the idea of a fifth stint at Liberty. So, perhaps Leo’s service could be informaclass="underline" ashes scattered in the park on a sunny day, Natty reading a poem, etc. Did it really matter that Leo’s remains shared space with my parents’? They were all dead anyway.
I wanted to cry over Leo. I could feel the rusty gears turning behind my eyes and the tightening of my chest, but the tears would not come.
The longer I looked at Leo’s ashes, the more I began to feel, oddly enough, embarrassed. The steps I’d taken to keep Leo safe had been just the wrong ones. Look at the outcome! My father, wherever he was, would probably be ashamed of me.
I hadn’t moved for hours when Natty got home from school. Her eyes shifted from me to the bag to me. “Poor Leo,” Natty said before she sat down on the couch.
Natty leaned over the coffee table and picked up the bag by one of its corners, as if she wanted to make as little contact with it as possible. “Does it seem like enough is here? Leo was so tall.” She set Leo’s ashes back on the table. “I dreamed of him last night.”
“I didn’t hear you scream or anything.”
“I’m not a child anymore, Anya.” She rolled her eyes. “Besides, it wasn’t a nightmare. Leo was well and whole.” She paused. “I don’t think we should bury him. Leo wouldn’t like that. He liked being home with us. He liked being here.”
I told her I would pick out an urn next week.
I went into my bedroom. I took the chocolate bar out of my bag and set it atop my dresser.
The bar looked so sweet and harmless lying there. Not deadly in the least.
On Saturday, I put on my trusty black dress, which I couldn’t have been sicker of wearing, and dragged myself to Uncle Yuri’s funeral, which wasn’t held at my church but at the Eastern Orthodox one that most members of the Family favored. I debated whether to take Natty but decided against it. Natty had known Uncle Yuri even less than I had, and I didn’t want to put her in proximity of our nearest and dearest. I debated whether to take my machete, but decided against that, too. Since I would be frisked, there was really no point. I did take one of the bodyguards Mr. Kipling had hired to stand guard outside our place—a brick wall of a woman named Daisy Gogol. She was six feet tall, had arms as thick as my legs, and was in need of an eyebrow and upper-lip wax. She was Natty’s and my favorite, though. Daisy Gogol had a melodious speaking voice. I once mentioned this to her and found out that she had studied to be an opera singer before moving into the more lucrative field of security. Natty reported that she had spotted Daisy Gogol feeding the birds on our balcony.
The funeral service was tedious as I felt almost nothing at Yuri Balanchine’s death. Daisy, however, wept copiously. I asked her if she had known Yuri. She hadn’t known him at all, but had been moved by the reading from Ecclesiastes. She clutched my hand in her meaty paw.
Since the night of the three attacks, I had not been in a room with anyone from the Family. In the front pew, Mickey sat next to his wife, Sophia. Fats was two rows behind them. The rest of the church was filled with employees of Balanchine Chocolate, some of whom were relatives I knew vaguely (but have found no need to mention in this narrative). It occurred to me that any of these people could have been responsible, or none of them. The world was very large, and at that age, I believed it to be filled with potential villains.
When it was my turn to view Yuri’s body, I leaned over the casket and crossed myself. The mortician had managed to erase the effects of Yuri’s stroke, and his face looked more symmetrical than it had the last time I’d seen him. His lips were painted an unnatural purplish hue, and I wondered what they had been trying to tell me that day in September. I thought of his other son, Jacks. He hadn’t been let out of prison for the funeral, but Yuri had been his father, too. And despite everything Jacks had or hadn’t done, on that day, I was able to manage a dust mote of pity for my poor cousin.
I went up to Mickey and Sophia to pay my respects. Mickey was wearing a dark suit as was to be expected. Sophia was wearing a shapeless maroon dress that was draped almost like a toga. An odd choice for a funeral.
Mickey’s eyes were bloodshot. He took my hand and thanked me for coming.
Sophia smiled at me, but the smile was forced. “How are you, Anya?” She planted a kiss on each of my cheeks. Her cheekbones were sharp against mine. “We have been meaning to come see you since your return but we were much occupied with Yuri. How did you enjoy your time abroad?” Sophia lowered her voice. “With my cousins?”
“I loved them,” I replied. “Thank you.”
“You and I—we must really catch up,” Sophia said. “Much has happened these past months.”
On my way out, I was stopped by Fats. “Annie,” he said. “You haven’t been to my place since you’ve been back.”
“No,” I replied. “I haven’t.”
“You have nothing to fear from me,” Fats said. “I wasn’t involved in the attacks.”
“Everyone I know says they weren’t involved,” I said. “And yet the attacks did happen all the same, didn’t they?”
“Listen, Annie. I’m real sorry about Leo, but my interest here is business. Mickey is running Balanchine Chocolate into the ground. He’s not a bad kid but he doesn’t know what he’s doing any better than his dad did. I work with a lot of the guys that actually sell the stuff. And they need to know that the supply will come on time and in good condition. With Mickey running things, no one believes that anymore. He’s lost their confidence.”
“Fats, I can’t think about any of that until I know who was responsible for—”
“Listen to me, Annie!” I had never heard Fats raise his voice before. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter who did it. There isn’t time for you to track down the parties who were involved. Someone has to step in to organize Balanchine Chocolate, and I think that person should be me.”
I said nothing.
“I’d like you to back me. Your support would mean a lot.”
I chose my words carefully. “From where I’m standing right now, it looks like you tried to kill off Natty, Leo, and me so that you could take control.”
Fats shook his head. “No. That’s not what happened.”
“So, who did it? Say it if you know.”
“Kid, I am telling you I don’t. I wish I knew. But what I think, what I think is that someone outside the organization wanted to inject chaos into it. Just like with the poisoning last year.”
“Do you mean Yuji Ono?”
“Annie, I don’t know. Could be.”
“Why should I back you to run Balanchine Chocolate if you know so little?”
“All right … Here’s one thought I had.” He lowered his voice and looked across the room at Sophia. “What if she was involved? Her maiden name is Bitter, and Bitter is the perennial fourth-place chocolate distributor in Germany.”
I looked across the room at Sophia Balanchine. It didn’t seem likely that she would have sent me to hide in Mexico, potentially putting her mother’s family in danger. At this point, it felt like Fats would point his finger at anyone to stop mine from pointing at him.