Blood Money by Thomas Perry

anything but watch, and hide. “I’m so sorry, Danny. I’ve been telling you that at least once an hour since it happened. Did you hear me?”
    He shrugged. “Who was listening? When you’re dead it doesn’t matter what anybody says about it. You’re just dead. I don’t feel anymore. I slipped up, so I’m meat. You know that’s the way it works. You live until you make a mistake.”
    “Why are you here, Danny?” asked Jane.
    “It’s your turn now,” Danny said.
    “I’m going to die?”
    Danny shrugged. “Maybe. It’s what you’re for.”
    “That’s it?”
    “Somebody falls, and somebody else steps into the line to take his place. I’m down, and your turn has started already.” His dark eyes assumed a concerned look. “Don’t let them make their move before you’re ready.”
    “But I don’t even know what’s going on.”
    He scowled. “Don’t give me that crap. You know the only thing that matters. The world is a place where good and evil fight. It’s no different from what your father and his father taught you: Hawenneyu the right-handed twin creates, and Hanegoategeh the left-handed twin destroys. Everything that happens is part of their fighting.”
    “What am I supposed to do?”
    “Better than you’ve been doing,” he said contemptuously.“Until now you’ve been running these little errands—taking some loser to a safe place. Just moving pieces around on the board. Tonight you’re close to something very big.”
    “What is it?”
    He sighed. “What is this? Have you been asleep all day? Does the name ‘Bernie’ ring a bell? You know—the old man in the room down the hall from you with a brain full of money?” As he spoke, Danny took his index finger and poked at one of the holes in his shirt. “Tomorrow he could look like this, and Frank Delfina will already be putting the money into play.”
    “Money? That’s what’s important?”
    “Everything is important to the brothers because they use it as a weapon. Hawenneyu makes a little boy. Hanegoategeh gives him a virus. Hawenneyu strengthens his body to give him immunity, and Hanegoategeh makes the virus mutate into a plague and sends the boy off to kill eighty thousand people. Hawenneyu has made sure one of the eighty thousand is a man who would have started a war and killed eighty million.”
    “But you haven’t told me what I’m supposed to do.”
    “Look at the configurations and make a choice.” His voice was quick and urgent. “Do something before things change again.”
    “I don’t know enough, can’t see enough all at once to know what’s happening,” she said. She hit on a simple strategy, a way of sorting it out. “Is Bernie telling the truth?”
    Danny looked at her without appearing to have heard. “Money is a weapon,” he repeated, and Jane awoke.

6
    A t dawn, Bernie Lupus opened his eyes. A ray of sunlight had entered the dark hotel room. He knew that much. It took him a moment to see the figure standing beside the curtain. “What? What’s going on?” he whispered.
    “I came to talk while Rita is still asleep,” Jane said. “I don’t think it would do her much good to hear us talk.”
    Bernie put on his glasses, looked around the room, then took them off again. He eased himself out of bed, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and an undershirt. He picked up his clothes and walked stiffly into the bathroom.
    When he emerged, he said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
    She kept her steps at Bernie’s pace. The stiffness seemed to leave him gradually as he moved his limbs. When they reached the door that led to the parking lot, his strides had grown longer, and he stood straighter. Jane walked with him away from the motel toward a little plaza where the stores seemed to be closed. The morning sun glinted off the windows with such strength that his face was lighted by the glow. He said, “It’s going to be a hot day here.”
    “The car is air-conditioned.”
    He squinted at her. “Who’s going to