“I know that too.”
“But I’m not sure it’s for me.”
Myron nodded slowly. Esperanza finally turned to him to gauge his reaction. Myron tried to keep his face neutral.
“How’s business upstairs?” Esperanza asked.
“Shitty,” Myron said.
“But you still want me back?”
“I do. We can starve together.”
Esperanza smiled. She crossed the room and kissed Myron gently on the cheek. “I miss being around you every day.”
“Same.”
“And we can’t forget Big Cyndi.”
“No matter how hard we try,” Myron said. “When do you want to start?”
“Let’s table that for now,” she said. “So what’s up?”
“Something about this serial killer isn’t adding up,” Myron said.
“I thought Sadie did a pretty good job of explaining it all.”
“She did. But no one can explain why Greg is the only connection to two of the cases.”
“You have a theory?”
“Just a simple one: The killer is connected to him.”
“Or out to get him.”
“Or someone close to him,” Myron said.
“So what’s your next step?”
“When Greg was hiding, you found Grace’s hidden bank account in Charlotte,” Myron said. “I think we need to do more digging.”
He explained what he wanted her to do. She listened in silence. When he finished, Esperanza said, “I’m on it.”
“Have you spoken to Win?” Myron asked.
“No, why?”
“He sent a cryptic text.”
“Does he send any other kind?”
“I checked with Kabir,” Myron said. “He told me Win’s down in the basement training.”
She checked her watch. “Yep. Like clockwork. Talk to him. I’ll start on this.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The only way to get to Win’s secret space was via the private elevator. There was no button to call the elevator. You could only access it with a key. Once inside the elevator, there was no button that would take you down below street level — you had to put the right code into the keypad. Myron always typed in the code very slowly for fear that if he got a number wrong, the elevator might self-destruct or the walls would slowly start closing in like the garbage disposal scene in Star Wars.
Win liked his gadgets.
Myron hit the lower floor. The elevator doors opened. Myron never knew what to call the room. Win’s gym? Workout room? Training space? Exercise area? All felt inadequate. There were the expected items you’d find in a classic workout gym — weights, barbells, pull-down-type machines, leg presses, a heavy bag, a Wing Chun fighting dummy, that kind of thing. The lights were kept low, giving the place a cave-like atmosphere. Right now, Win was barefoot and shirtless, sweating, running through a series of traditional katas. Win trains every day. His origin story is nothing as dramatic as Batman’s (murder of his parents) or Spider-Man’s (insect bite mixed with murder of his uncle), but when he was young, Win had felt unsafe and scared — the details are best saved for another time — and so he decided that he never wanted to feel that way again. That meant constant learning and training. He has studied with master fighters and top-level weapons experts from around the world. He is almost supernaturally knowledgeable about pretty much every hand-to-hand fighting discipline, knows his way around various blades better than anyone Myron knew, was a marksman with handguns and more than adequate with riflery. Win is always armed, though perhaps not right now where he was only wearing some kind of bathing-suit-like shorts. The room temperature was set at ninety degrees.
“A moment,” Win said, continuing through the kata, a flowing dance of kicks, blocks, blows, somehow both violent and meditative, “unless you want to join in.”
Over the years, Myron had trained with Win, most notably in tae kwon do and street fighting. It wasn’t a competition between them, but it would be hard to say who would come out victorious in a real fight. Win was smarter, more knowledgeable, better trained, more ruthless. Myron was bigger, stronger, and had the reflexes of an elite athlete.
“Pass,” Myron said.
“A sparring session. A quick workout. A hot shower. You’ll feel better.”
No doubt. “You said you needed to see me.”
Win finished the kata with a flourish, moving both hands and feet at blurring speeds. When he finished, he bowed to a mirror (not surprisingly, Win’s workout space had lots of mirrors), grabbed a towel and a bottle of room-temperature water. Win didn’t believe in drinking cold water when he worked out.
“Kabir is still tracking down Greg’s basketball game in Wallkill,” Win said, “but so far, no one remembers playing with him.”
Win filled Myron in on what Kabir had told him at the Frick. Myron listened. He didn’t like it. Myron had played in basketball pickup games his whole life. Pickup games were celestial, magic, nirvana, a place where everyone starts anew, where your wealth or status are meaningless, where your game matters and only your game, where you can suddenly form a bond and even a friendship with people you’ve never met before. You didn’t know what your fellow players did for a living. You didn’t know if they were married or had kids or anything about them, except that maybe they couldn’t dribble with their weak hand or they played too lax on defense or man, could they jump high for a rebound. They were Ronnie or Ace or TJ or if there were two guys with the same name, they’d be Big Jim and Little Jim, and most of the time, even if you played with the guys for years, you might not know their last name. Because it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the game. It was childish and warm and competitive and a bubble. There was the stale smell of a small gym, the dribbling of the ball, the squeaks of sneakers on the wood floor. You called out screens and high-fived and argued whether the contact constituted calling a foul and most of the time, nah, forget it and get payback on the next play.
But even when Myron dialed his game back, even when he saw the competition was not good enough for him to go more than 20 or 30 percent, the other players still knew — this guy had game. This guy was great. Myron could never hide that.
And neither could someone like Greg.
It was bothersome, no doubt, but when Win finished, Myron said, “You didn’t text me about Greg’s basketball game.”
“No, I did not.”
“So?”
“Jeremy Downing is not in the military.”
It took a few seconds for Myron to register what Win said. “Wait, what?”
“After you told me that Jeremy had not flown in from overseas, I began an extensive background check on him.”
“On him,” Myron repeated.
“Yes.”
“On my son. You ran an extensive background check on my son.”
Win put a black long-sleeved shirt over his head. “Is this how we are going to do this?”
Myron said nothing.
“You say he’s your son, I remind you that it’s only biological, that you barely know him, you say that doesn’t matter, that I should have asked you before I did anything like this, I say there is no harm in doing a background check, that if I found nothing you would be none the wiser, you say yes but you should have, I interrupt you and remind you that there is no one on this planet I care about more than you, that I would never do anything to harm you, that whatever I do, I do to protect you because I love you. Is that how we are going to have to play this?”
Myron shook his head. “You’re something.”
“I am. Can we skip past all that now?”
Myron nodded. “We can. But one thing first.”
“Go on.”
“You gave up Bo without telling me. Then you did a background check on Jeremy without telling me. This keeping things from me — it needs to stop.”