Bad Blood by Anthony Bruno

left is . . .”
    â€œDeath.” Mashiro nodded like a horse. Who the hell’s side was he on anyway?
    The samurai got down on his knees then and bowed to his lord. “I will stand by you, no matter what. You have my pledge.”
    Nagai grinned wearily. Mashiro was a good man and tough, too. But come on, he was only one guy. And could D’Urso’s Mafia boys really protect him from Hamabuchi’s revenge? Not if they were all like that joke Francione. “Hamabuchi has a lot of men over here watching us,” he said. “We’ve got sixty with us, but I know there’re more here than that. The guys in our crew, the ones who supposedly take orders from us, they really get their orders directly from him. I know it. I’m living with assassins all around me.” Nagai threw another cherry into his mouth, then spit it out. What the hell was he eating these things for?
    Mashiro got to his feet and gestured with his head toward the bowl of cherries. Didn’t he hear any of this, goddamn him? Nagai grabbed a handful of cherries in disgust and threw them at him.
    Mashiro drew both swords. Flashing steel surrounded him like an evil mist. He was a goddamn human food processor, sending specks of neon red flying in every direction. His final slash was with the short sword. A cherry half flew straight up into the air. When it came down, he caught it on the flat of his blade. “There will be no trouble with D’Urso and no trouble with Hamabuchi. You will be happy. I am dedicating myself to it. Please do not worry.” He flipped the sword up and tossed the cherry into his mouth. He bowed, grinned, and chewed.
    Nagai forced a smile. Maybe he could switch sides and pull it off. Maybe Mashiro really was a one-man army. Musashi Miyamota apparently was. If Mashiro could keep him alive long enough for him to establish a power base here with D’Urso, it just might work out after all. It was possible. Nagai picked out another cherry from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. Life just might be okay after all.

EIGHT
    IT WAS ALMOST seven when the PATH train from the World Trade Center rumbled into the Hoboken station. Tozzi’s car was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Lots of oxblood leather briefcases, Burberry raincoats, tortoise-shell glasses, and panty-hose legs in white Reeboks, and they were all getting off here. Standing in line to get through the turnstiles, Tozzi wondered if Hoboken was really the place for him. He climbed the stairs up to the street with the crowd and crossed the wide cobblestone street. As he approached the curb on the other side, he saw himself in the reflection of a plate-glass window in a fern bar. The light gray suit and the black Italian loafers were too new; they weren’t him yet. He took a good look and was a little disappointed with what he saw. He didn’t look that different from the rest of the crowd. Maybe he did belong here.
    He’d promised the lady at Elysian Fields Realty that he’d be there at seven. He figured he may as well start looking for another apartment because there was no way he was going to be approved for the one on Adams Street that Mrs. Carlson had showed him. No wife, no good. He considered going to that meeting with the landlord on Friday anyway and telling them his wife had died unexpectedly, a brain tumor or something like that. Maybe the landlord would take him out of pity. But that was too stupid, he decided. Everything was stupid.
    He’d spent the whole day trying to make a concrete connectionbetween the “Death Bug” murders, cult killers, and swords, and he came up with absolutely nothing. He’d somehow forgotten how frustrating it can be poring through files, cross-checking possibilities on the computer, spending hours and hours trying to make the facts work the way you want them to, then finally realizing that what you thought was a brilliant hunch wasn’t worth shit. The deep cuts on the two