The Crooked Arrow

"Sophie, stop skating in circles."

"I'm drawing you a warning!"

Vincent Romano had just opened his mouth to ask what kind of warning needed three trips past the same patch of ice when something slammed behind the red maintenance door.

Sophie dug her toe picks in. Her blue skirt swung around her knees.

"That's where he went," she said. "The man with the bag."

Across the ice, the tracks she'd carved came together in an arrow. The point leaned badly to one side, but there was no mistaking where it led.

Vincent set his coffee on the boards. "Come here, please."

She pushed off so fast that he had to catch her elbows at the gate. Up close, he could see the damp curls stuck to her pink cheeks. She'd tied a blue ribbon around one mitten, apparently in the belief that everything she wore ought to match her dress.

"Tell me what he looked like."

"He had a gray hat and a black coat. He put up a sign that said the door was broken."

"Could he have been here to fix it?"

"Danny fixed it this morning. He let me hold his flashlight." She looked at Vincent with the exasperation of a five-year-old who'd been forced to explain something obvious. "I tried to tell you, but you weren't listening with your eyes."

Vincent had been on the phone, settling an argument between two men who'd each assured him, separately and with conviction, that the other one was an idiot. Sophie had called his name twice. Both times he'd held up a finger.

She had found a better way to get his attention.

He beckoned to her coach. "Nina, take her off the ice. Let the parents know practice is over early."

"Can I stay and see if I'm right?" Sophie asked.

"You can stay with Nina and ask me when I come back."

She considered this. "You have to actually come back."

"I will."

Vincent stripped off his suit jacket and laid it over the boards beside his coffee. A woman in the stands saw the tattoos on his forearms and quickly found somewhere else to look. Sophie, already halfway to the benches, turned to point at the door one more time.

Marco was at Vincent's shoulder before he had to call him. Vincent gave him the description and motioned toward the service corridor. Marco sent one guard ahead and took the other around to the far side of the rink.

The paper taped to the red door said MAINTENANCE IN PROGRESS. Below it, in smaller type, was the name of a company Vincent had paid an unpleasant amount of money to replace the rink's sound system. He'd have walked past the sign himself.

One of the guards tried the handle. Locked.

"Rink security," Marco called. "Open the door."

Silence. Then Vincent heard metal dragging against concrete, followed by the soft thud of something hitting the inside of the door.

Marco glanced back at him. Vincent nodded.

The master key turned. Through the widening gap Vincent saw an open equipment cabinet and a man in a gray knit cap hauling a duffel off the floor. The stranger saw them, dropped the bag, and went for the other door.

The guard waiting in the service hall caught him before he got through it. His cap rolled under a workbench. He stopped fighting as soon as he realized there were two men between him and the exit.

"This is a mistake," he said. "I was hired to pick up the old equipment."

Vincent looked at the stripped rack. A rack-mounted amplifier lay on its side, its cable torn out. A shelf behind it had been pulled completely off the wall.

"Then you'll be able to tell us who hired you."

The man looked up at him properly for the first time. Vincent knew the moment the face and the name came together. People usually stopped talking right about then.

This one did, too.

"Call the police," Vincent told Marco. "Keep the room as it is."

The man craned his neck to see past the guards. He'd left a phone on the workbench beside the torn-out amplifier. Its screen went dark before Vincent could see what was on it.

Marco noticed the look. He stayed in the room.

Vincent found Nina at the benches, trying to persuade Sophie to undo her skates. Sophie had pulled one lace loose and apparently decided the second could wait until he kept his promise.

"Did my arrow work?"

"It worked. You were right about the man."

Her shoulders dropped. She'd been holding them up by her ears, he realized, all the way through the commotion at the door.

"Coach says my straight lines need work."

"I could tell exactly where it pointed."

"That's because I made it big enough for you."

Nina gave a little cough into her glove. Vincent took his jacket off the boards before Sophie could see him smile.

He had bought North Pier Ice House from the family company years ago, on paper as well as in his own mind. His father had taken him here to skate on weekday mornings. Now it was the one Romano property where nobody was supposed to have to know what the Romano name meant. Vincent was starting to wonder how much of that illusion he had paid people to maintain.

Marco came out of the corridor holding a black card by the edges. "This was in the outside pocket of the bag. I figured you'd want to see it before the police take it."

The gold crest belonged to his father's private staff. The photograph beneath it was scratched across one eye. Vincent knew the face anyway. He'd seen it behind his father at the rink, at the house, in the passenger seat of every car Carlo Romano had owned for twenty years.

Adrian Vale. His father's head of security.

A man the city had believed dead for six years.

Behind Vincent, a skate blade clicked against the rubber floor.

"Oh," Sophie said. "I know him."

He turned. Nina was still beside her, holding the loose end of the skate lace. Sophie had tipped her head to see around Marco's arm.

"Where have you seen him?" Vincent asked.

"At my house." She lifted her chin, certain of it. "He came to see my mom yesterday."