“He could have given me a character reference to Q.E.D., but he didn’t even admit to the lead investigator that we knew each other. And I believe he planted my gun at the scene. He was the only one who knew I’d put it in the bank.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t have a chance. I’m not sure I want one.”

Mike mulled this over silently, and I felt a prick of irritation that he didn’t immediately condemn Marco. A breeze softly buffeted the wind chimes hanging outside. They tinkled soothingly.

“You should get your crystal ball,” Mike said at last. “Find out why Detective Marco betrayed you.”

I could do it. Marco himself had forced me to accept the fact that I’d inherited Lola’s psychic abilities. I’d used them to help us find Lin’s missing friends. I suppose I could use my talents to help myself as well. But the very thought of learning any more about Marco made me feel queasy.

“The less I know about Marco the better,” I said, closing my eyes for much needed sleep. For now, ignorance would be my only bliss.

Date With Destiny

Detective Riccuccio Marco had an inbred devotion to truth, justice and the American way. Granted, all three lived in the shadows of his own crimes and guilt, but he’d learn to compartmentalize his life, and so far the positives still had his dark side on a tight leash.

Two years ago he’d entered a new program to streamline the training of solo detectives to replace those killed by the R.M.O., the Mongolian Mob, and other crime syndicates. His colleagues in the psy-ops department of the Chicago PD assumed he’d been motivated by the desire to learn more about the drug-related shoot-out that killed his rookie-cop kid brother, and in part that was true.

Handsome, articulate, sensitive to emotions and bred into a lifetime of nuance, Marco had easily excelled at crime-fighting propaganda campaigns, psychological profiles on seriously twisted suspects and media appearances. None of his superiors would guess that he’d majored in psychology so he could understand his own horrific crimes. R.M.O. attorneys had illicitly wiped his record clean.

Prior to his long years of study at the University of Chicago, he’d been a sgarrista—a foot soldier—for the Russian Mafiya Organizatsia. And before that, he’d been an innocent kid. Everybody started out in life innocent. Few were lucky enough to die that way.

Angel was still innocent, though she pretended otherwise. But she wouldn’t be for long if she got stuck in the prison system. She needed help. So Marco made two calls. One was to one of the best lawyers in town, a former prosecuting attorney who was so clean his shit didn’t even stink. The other call was to a shyster who acted as an equivalent of a capo bastone, or underboss, to R.M.O. leader Vladimir Gorky. That call cost Marco—how much he didn’t even want to know.

Both attorneys—upstanding and crooked—essentially said the same thing: Angel Baker was screwed.

Gossip in the substation’s coffee bar confirmed as much. While the department sold whiskey-flavored coffee, Marco concluded that he needed a shot of the real thing. Not even the chameleon-flavored alcohol marketed as Vivante would do. So he tossed back a quadruple espresso and headed for the nearest exit, glancing at his watch. Six in the morning wasn’t too early, or late, to drink he concluded. Not considering the circumstances. Then it would be time to call in some more chips.

Marco almost made it out the door. His mistake was taking a shortcut through the eastern corridor, which took him past the psy-ops interview suites.

“Hey, Marco, is that you?” came a bulldog voice. Captain Mitchell Deloire stuck his head out of one of the suites. “Fancy meeting you here. I need you to come in and interview a suspect before you go.”

“I’m leaving, Del,” he said, waving off the older man.

With a round, seemingly neckless head planted on broad shoulders, Deloire looked like a bulldog. But instead of growling, he whined.

“Come on, Marco, give me a break. I got nobody here from psy-ops and this nut-ball they call the Cyclops says he’s ready to talk. I just need somebody to do a quick psych profile. Then you can wash your hands. He thinks he’s King Richard III. You can brush up on your Shakespeare.”

Marco stopped and looked back with longing. He’d always had a weakness for delusional personality disorder. “I’d like to help you out, Del, I really would. But I hung up my shrink hat. Now I’m—”

“Yeah, yeah, a hotshot detective. Maybe he’ll tell you something to help with the Cloisters case. That suspect you brought in with Townsend—Angel Baker—she’s the one who brought down this wacko thespian. Maybe King Richard can tell you something about her that will nail your investigation.”

News travels fast, was Marco’s first thought. Of course, when the mayor’s son is killed, the details would travel like wildfire throughout the department. His second thought was that Angel had never told him she’d tussled personally with the Cyclops. To know she had risked her life so thoroughly and hadn’t even told him made the low-burning flame of frustration she fed in his gut flare up.

Angel was a damned stubborn woman. She’d never had any intention of giving up her work for him. That he’d allowed himself to think that she would made him feel like a sap. He didn’t doubt that she wanted him. What he doubted was her ability to reveal her hand. He wasn’t even sure if she could play straight.

From a psychological viewpoint, she was damnably intriguing and gutsy as hell. He was curious to hear what the Cyclops would have to say about his defeat at Angel’s hands.

“Okay, Del,” Marco said, massaging his frown away, “but this better be quick.”

“I heard she was here tonight,” Cy said as soon as he entered the darkened room.

Marco always turned down the lights when he interviewed a mole who had spent his life underground in Emerald City. It didn’t matter that Cy was blind. He would sense the lack of heat from the ceiling and know it was dark and feel safer.

“Who was here?” Marco asked casually.

“Angel Baker.” The stooped and disfigured young man said the name with such loathing that Marco’s arm hair bristled to a stand.

“If she were here, would that be all right with you, Scott?” he said, glancing down to make sure he said Cyclops’s birth name correctly.

“Call me Richard,” Cy said. He took a limping step forward.

According to the files Marco had quickly perused, Cy’s legs had been badly burned in the underground fire that had killed or disfigured most of his family about ten years ago. Cy was born and raised as a mole, one of the many descendants of Chicago’s homeless who had moved into the labyrinthine subway system in 2020 when the CTA abandoned the train tracks in favor of aboveground superconductor lines. Undesirable though the real estate might be, it had been dubbed Emerald City and had largely been left alone by Chicago politicians and law enforcement agencies.

The moles, who congregated in loose clanlike affiliations, often pirated gas from underground pipelines to light their dreary subway tunnels and stations. Cy’s clan had accidentally set off a gas explosion, and many of his family members were killed. Those who survived had been ravaged with burns and were treated like lepers by other clans.

Cy’s twisted scars, which covered most of his body, had left him lame and sightless in one eye. His disabilities and the loss of his loved ones had sent him over the edge. Delusional and frustrated by his misfortune, Cy had built an underground prison and hired out his services as a jailer to the various mobs, apparently enjoying his ability to control the fates of others. He called his prison the Globe and was fond of quoting Shakespeare.

“I’ll call you Richard if you’d like,” Marco said in his neutral therapist’s voice. “But according to your file, your name is Scott Owen. And I understand some call you Cyclops. The headlines refer to you as Cy. Who are you really?”