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but darkening Los Angeles evening.

  “Get the Superheroes account set up for Europe, Africa, Japan, split China into Mandarin and Szechuan, don’t ask me how to spell it, and then the rest of Asia,” Marco barked. His face had the compressed look of an oyster pulling back into its shell, or that’s the way Andrea thought about it. He wore that face whenever he became severely stressed, and clearly, getting a movie ready for release and distribution was exactly that kind of time.

  “What about India, Australia and the Middle East?” Andrea asked.

  “I don’t know. The rights department didn’t mention that.”

  “We want to get it right—I should say correct—the first time,” she said.

  “I know, I know. Don’t ask me why we only get called at the last minute. They know the release date months in advance and still, here I am punching in the details on a blanking deadline.”

  “That would be me doing the punching in.”

  “Sure.”

  The rest of the day Andrea felt like she never took a breath as adjustments and modifications to the financial systems had to be made at a moment’s notice to handle the financial flows. Superheroes: Going Nuclear would hit movie theaters that weekend. The prediction inside the Melbox offices had been that this movie would have the biggest grossing opening weekend in history, and there was no way that Marco would allow for the financial IT group to be the people who couldn’t calculate the results. Andrea double checked the distributor database, the movie theater database and the film distribution system, making adjustments as she saw issues, this being at least the tenth blockbuster where she’d been through the drill. The excitement always made her happy, as people rushed around and the place buzzed. It was the long periods of inactivity, when movies were in post-production, and her job consisted of upgrades and minor feature additions, when Andrea longed for more.

  “I’ve got five or six directors who totally want to work with me. They’re only looking for the right part. I’m working with my personal trainer too, so that I’ll be ready.”

  The boy across from Andrea had spent the entire dinner explaining his acting career, the technique, the pleasures, the agony, and dreams. False dreams, she corrected in her mind. Even now, as she cracked the crust on her crème brulee with her spoon, Andrea wondered if he remembered her name.

  He was cute, that was for sure, blonde, tall, tan. She especially liked the dimples on his cheeks when he smiled and the curve of his neck, a feature she had ample time to appreciate as he blabbed, err, pontificated.

  “Could I have another Margarita?” she asked the waiter. “Straight up, on the rocks, no salt. Thanks.”

  “Did I mention the time I…” Andrea had stopped listening.

  By the time she climbed into her car, she felt slightly tipsy. She shouldn’t drive, should she? Ah, no, she was fine. No way was she going to spend another minute with that blowhard. What did she see in him anyway? She pressed the button to open the top, shifted into gear and drove.

  Milano

  Dorian leaned forward in a cluttered office near the Stazione Centrale, just north of the Duomo, near the center of Milan. His chair creaked as he glanced at the drooping beige-green walls. Across a desk piled with stacks of paper and files, sat a man who had introduced himself as Ispettore Davide, leafing calmly through a document. He wore an impeccably tailored suit, garnished with a perfectly folded handkerchief that poking out of the breast pocket. His clothes failed to hide his craggy face and a tired bored look. Dorian opened his mouth to speak, but the Ispettore held out his hand to stop him. Dorian slouched back.

  Exhausted from a cocktail of jetlag, alcohol and thoughts, Dorian’s world felt like a knot. He’d reviewed the last few days hundreds of times, every permutation worked over like an intricate embroidery. Glimpses of sleep had been no more than mental calculations with eyes closed. His head throbbed behind his pupils. The pieces didn’t fit. He throbbed with fury. He could have been dipped in a solution of anger. But one thing confused him: he didn’t feel sad.

  “How may I help you?” said the Ispettore, finally looking up. His voice was soothing and sonorous, Italian tinged with a Milanese accent.

  “An explanation is all I’m looking for,” Dorian said. He had to keep it simple.

  “Difficult for me to do,” the Ispettore shook his head slowly, “as the regulations are quite stringent on the information that should be imparted during an active investigation.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Davide, how could this have happened?” Dorian’s voice rose. “No one has been able to explain anything to me. My parents had the strongest door ever. They had it fitted after the last robbery. Like a safe. The company promised it couldn’t be broken down. Impossible they said. Impossible. Understand? But still someone broke it down. Did the installers do a bad job? Was it weak in some way? Not properly attached? I can sue them so they never do a single cazzata again. And why? What motive? What would someone want with my family? People are not killed like this in Italy anymore. We are full of pride because we are a civilized nation. Who is so crazed as to do this?” His hands stabbed the air. “I want to kill them. I want to find and show them what they showed Babbo. That’s it.”

  As Dorian spoke, the Ispettore leaned forward, gradually slowing the torrent of words.

  “I am furious,” Dorian said and paused, taking a deep breath. “So tell me then, what’s going on?” This detective was just some piece of shit cop. What did he know about anything? Dorian shoved the thought out of his head. This was not the person he needed to be angry at.

  “I know you are coming to grips. With your loss.” The Ispettore gestured, weathered hands spread wide. “At this moment you need to grieve. Think of your family. Remember about them and how they were to you, your life. Make your peace with what fate has brought you. Realize that this is the best that you can do, and pick yourself up to carry on another day.” He looked at a lone certificate—Ecellenza di Polizia—hung on the wall next to the desk and grimaced. “It is our job. Mine. The police. Our duty, I should say, to search out the evidence, seek out the perpetrators, to look at the various angles that inevitably present themselves in these dreadful situations. We will hunt them down and bring them to justice, even if we have to travel to the far corners of the Earth. Count on our efforts to do what must be done, even if it takes years. This is my commitment to you.”

  “No.” Dorian wanted to scream. “No. I can’t do anything with commitments. Facts. Tell me everything. Explain. How did they get in? That is what I’m looking for. Anything that affects me. Tell me all.”

  “I should not.” Davide looked sympathetically, his eyebrows wriggling as he peered at Dorian.

  Dorian wished Davide would give him more. He could not live with only this. If the Ispettore didn’t, then… He had to stop that thought.

  The two men looked at each other, the silence hung in the room like a clinging fog. Ispettore Davide broke the stillness. “Ok. I will tell you.” He shuffled papers. “They, the intruders, climbed the balconies, and opened la finestra, the window.” He snapped his long fingers. “That simple.”

  “Not the door?”

  “Only later. Nothing was stolen, though there was a great deal of damage to the apartment. I did notice stray cables in a closet as if something had been ripped out, but I think that came from earlier, not related to this intrusion. Otherwise, bullet holes. The terrible aftermath.” He stumbled over the words, hitching a thumb inside his trousers. “Your sister injured one. We found blood which doesn’t match your family.”

  “She did?”

  “With a clothes hook, based on the forensic evidence which tends to tell its own story.”

  “My god.” Federica, his big sister, had fought for her life with a stick. His vision blurred. “But who do you think this was? Such a bloody, fucking, killing of my family!” Dorian wanted to jump over the cluttered desk and choke the Ispettore. No, the man was doing his best. Calma!

  “We know almost nothing. We are analyzing th
e evidence and looking for motives, but frankly the elements don’t make sense.” The Ispettore sighed. “We are at the stage where the evidence comes to us. Something small can become big later. We only have our instincts to go with now, nothing more. But we must do the hard work.”

  “That’s it? You have nothing? How is that possible? How often...”

  Davide interrupted Dorian for the second time with his hand. “We have no suspects. I have told you what I know, now I must ask you some questions.” He stood up and came around his desk, pushing aside one of the smaller piles of documents. He sat down on the edge, first removing his expensive jacket and laying it carefully elsewhere on the desk. He towered over Dorian. “Do you know of anything, however small, that might help us to understand what happened? An acquaintance of your father, a chance comment, some worries your parents had. Anything?”

  Dorian tried to calm himself. He thought back. He needed to remember conflict, arguments. Yes, he could barely remember, but it was there: his parents arguing, many years ago. He could hear them rather than see them, their urgent voices radiating from the kitchen. He knew they were arguing from the tone, not the volume. He must have been twelve, since he’d been coding that video game.

  The late afternoon sun had cut through the warm dim light of the bedroom, as if