LITMIR.BIZ

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until his housekeeper made her weekly visit. It was when she’d found the usually crusty dishes nearly spotless in the sink, and asked Rick if he’d done them himself, that he realized he had an ugly, hairy little dishwasher on his hands—and the war had begun.

      He hated mice. He didn’t like snakes, either, but at least most snakes ate insects, which justified their existence to some extent. Mice were scavengers and disease carriers. Can you spell bubonic plague? If Walt Disney hadn’t turned them into saucer-eared heroes, no one would like mice.

      But Rick’s enthusiasm waned as he watched his nemesis roll and flail, trying to get his leg free of the spring-loaded bar. Amazing that he had a leg left. The bar would have broken his neck if he’d gone for the cheese first, instead of trying to spring the trap.

      Not so clever this time.

      Now Rick had to figure out how to quickly end this. The mouse’s shrieks had become heartrending, and trapped animals had been known to chew off their limbs to escape. From the drying rack on the counter, he grabbed a large stainless-steel colander to contain the struggling mouse.

      A gunshot was the quickest way to end an animal’s misery, but that would be overkill for a mouse, literally. Drowning it was too much like torture and a cerebral concussion too brutish, but Rick had little choice. The concussion would be quick and painless. He should have invested in one of those live traps, but somehow this had turned into an epic war of wits, with the mouse trouncing him repeatedly, which had probably made him want the wretched little thing to suffer. Obviously, now he was getting soft.

      He got a wooden mallet from the kitchen drawer where he kept his tools. But when he flipped the colander over, he found the mouse unconscious—or possibly dead. It didn’t appear to be breathing, and there was no response when he nudged it with the mallet.

      He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jeans’ pocket and settled on his haunches. He’d been carrying gloves with him since his vice days, as religiously as some guys carried condoms. You never knew when you were going to need the protection of latex.

      He quickly had the mouse free of the trap, but it still showed no signs of life, and its leg was clearly broken. Funny how it didn’t look so diabolically clever anymore. More like a defenseless creature that was caught up in the universal fight to survive, like everyone else. Food was survival. Cheese was food. It was simply trying to eat without dying.

      Rick’s thoughts took a grimly ironic turn. Maybe the mouse wasn’t such a zero after all. It had cleaned up the place. Rick Bayless was the slob who’d left the dirty dishes. Besides, having somebody set a trap for you was no way to die. It just seemed wrong to be tempted with what you wanted most—and then killed for wanting it. Was that how Ned had died? Was he lured into a death trap?

      His gut clenched at the thought. He shook off the questions. He had no answers. What he had was a dead mouse that needed to be disposed of. He left it where it was and headed down the hall to his bedroom to get a shoe box. Maybe he’d even give the devil mouse a proper burial.

      By the time he got back, the mouse was gone. The trap was where he’d left it, and he could see a faint blood trail leading toward the refrigerator, but no sign of the mouse. It had regained consciousness and made a break for freedom, dragging itself across the floor. Or it had been faking the entire time.

      Score one—or twenty—for Mickey. Rick had lost count.

      8

      Simon Shan walked over to the display of ancient ceremonial swords on his bedroom wall and removed a nineteenth-century jade-handled dagger. Other than a rare ivory mah-jongg set that had belonged to his grandmother, these weapons were the only heirlooms of value in the Shan family. They’d been passed down from father to eldest son for generations, and his father had told him that this dagger’s blade was sharp enough to cut floating silk.

      Simon ran the pad of his index finger over the edge, watching the blood rise to the surface and bubble. Amazing. He hadn’t felt a thing.

      Holed up in his spacious bedroom, he’d been considering the remains of his brilliant career. The media had made quite a fuss over his Eurasian features when he became a celebrity two years ago, calling them both exotic and patrician. Possibly that was why his face had graced the covers of five popular magazines this month alone.

      The magazines were fanned out like a huge tiara across the cushioned bench at the foot of his bed where his former assistant had arranged them. He’d also been on countless talk shows and news programs, answering questions about his new gig as spokesperson and designer for the Goldstar Collection, one of the country’s largest discount chains.

      He’d been labeled the male heir to Martha Stewart and the next bona fide lifestyle icon. But that was then. Yesterday. Today he was a drug dealer. Two weeks ago, DEA agents had found half a million dollars’ worth of opium in the trunk of his sports car. He’d been charged with dealing, possession, and with using his import-export company to smuggle in the contraband.

      Today he was an exploding sun, a blindingly bright has-been.

      He walked the length of his blue-and-green Olympic pool of a bedroom to one of the room’s three bubble windows. He slipped the curved blade behind a light-blocking blind, moving it enough to look out at a typical Monday morning in Santa Monica. The sun was rising over the ocean, but he didn’t dare press any of the remote buttons that would open his condo’s custom blinds. Fifteen stories down, the paparazzi waited on the busy street with their zoom lenses. He could see them on the roofs of nearby buildings, as well.

      They were probably hoping for a shot of him dirty, disheveled and strung out on his own alleged stash of drugs, which was why he’d taken extra care with his grooming, slicking his hair back from the widow’s peak on his forehead and dressing in the black silk-blend turtleneck and unpleated gray slacks that were his signature look. If someone showed up at his door disguised as a deliveryman, or crawled through the air-conditioning ducts, Simon Shan would be ready.

      He checked his left index finger. The blood had already dried in a perfectly precise line, and still he felt no pain. The skin didn’t know it had been breached, and to his way of thinking that was more humane than a gaping, disfiguring bullet hole. He preferred Chinese martial arts and direct contact with his opponents, but if weapons were necessary, only daggers and swords should be allowed in civilized warfare. They required coordination, precision and courage. Guns were for cowards. Any idiot could pull a trigger, and too many did.

      In motion, move like a thundering wave. When still, be like a mountain. The first two tenets of the Twelve Descriptions of ability came back to him. Ability was the literal meaning of kung fu in English, but Simon hadn’t had to think about his martial-arts training in years. It would feel good to get physical with some slimy photog who stole pieces of a man’s soul and auctioned them off to the highest bidder. It would definitely break the monotony.

      The walls of his penthouse condo were closing in. He kept the televisions and computers dark to avoid the almost continuous coverage of his case, and the phone had stopped ringing, except for the press. For his part, he’d been avoiding all contact with the outside world. He’d chosen to isolate himself, and at first it had felt right, like protective custody. But now, the silence was deep and lonely. Painful. Today, he was going to break that pattern.

      He opened the bedroom’s double doors and walked down the long slate hallway to the kitchen, the dagger at his side. If the bedroom had always reminded him of a swimming pool, this hallway was a lap pool. The floor was flowing slabs of blue stone, cut and set so tightly that no seam could be seen, and the Oriental art on the walls featured black swans.

      Recessed lighting haloed the brushed-steel and green granite kitchen. He’d had the oversize room designed to accommodate a cooking show, should he ever want to shoot out of his home. He’d envisioned parties featuring fusion cuisine, paired with the best California wines.

      He attacked the pile of mail he’d been avoiding on the kitchen countertop, knowing it would be one rejection after another, some polite, some not. Events he was scheduled to host were being rescheduled, but with someone else at the podium. Parties

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