His bodyguards exchanged confused glances. Since when did Mac offer to work with the detective who constantly tried to mess with Big Nick’s operations? But Makishima shot them a look that made it clear — he had a plan.

"I usually work alone," L muttered, still trying to decide if he could trust Makishima even for a second. "And I sure as hell don’t work with people like you." He tried to put as much disdain into the words as Makishima had put into detective, but it didn’t quite land. After an awkward pause, he added, "But… we can share information. We find the guy, we go our separate ways. Deal?"

Makishima gestured toward the building. "Let’s talk inside. No point standing around getting soaked."

He dismissed his guards, instructing them to keep an eye on the exits, then stepped inside with L.

They entered the elevator, and as the doors slid shut, Makishima leaned against the wall, exhaling dramatically.

"I’ve been drowning myself in terrible whiskey, stuck babysitting a pair of brain-dead thugs, and I think I signed off on someone’s execution today — probably two someones, I wasn’t really paying attention. I speak like I walked out of a dime-store pulp novel. My head constantly hurts, I hate this goddamn city and this goddamn rain." He turned to L and smirked. "I thought we’d landed in a proper noir mystery, but this? This is starting to feel like a bad comic book."

L gave him a dry look. "Didn’t think you guys had comics in the future."

"We do," Makishima sighed. "Like that Doraemonmanga you love so much. But I was never really into them."

"I like comics," L said. "What’s the point of your fancy books if they don’t even have pictures or dialogue?"

Makishima blinked. "Did you just quote Lewis Carroll?"

"What?" L frowned.

"Never mind," Makishima muttered, shaking his head. "So how’s life treating you, Detective?"

L sighed. "I live and work in a dump with a busted door, spying on cheating husbands and tracking down missing dogs. I’m drowning in debt, I own exactly one decent suit, I’ve got insomnia and a nicotine addiction… Oh, and my doctor says I need to cut back on sweets."

That last part actually made Makishima wince. "Oof."

The elevator dinged. Makishima cleared his throat, straightened his tie, and slid back into his usual smirk — the one that even he found a little annoying.

"Well then," he said smoothly. "Let’s trade notes."

It really did seem like they were working the same case. Vincent Palermo, Big Nick’s accountant, had somehow been secretly seeing the stunning Selena — without ever telling her who he really was or what he actually did for a living. Maybe he was trying to keep her out of trouble. Or maybe Selena wasn’t telling the whole truth and had ties to the underworld herself.

Was Palermo up to anything else during his little escapades, besides his meetings with Selena? There were more questions than answers, but the one that bothered L and Makishima the most was this: how the hell had he been sneaking out of his locked, guarded apartment without anyone noticing?

The freshly minted partners tore the place apart, rifling through notebooks, searching for hidden stashes, even digging through the trash. But Vincent had vanished into thin air.

“Maybe we should ask the concierge for the building’s floor plan?” Makishima mused, running his fingers along the spines of the books in the living room. The owner had clearly never opened a single one — identical hardcover collections of literary classics, pristine, obviously bought to conceal some kind of hidden passage in the wall.

L, in the middle of methodically squeezing couch cushions, shrugged.

“These things are usually simpler than they seem. Why bother with secret passages when you can just bribe one of the guards to look the other way every time you want to sneak out? I bet the books are just for show. I wanted a set like that for my office once, but they cost a fortune.”

Makishima shot him a long, withering look but eventually conceded that he might have a point.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a record of the days Selena met with Vincent, would you?” he asked.

If Vincent really had paid off a guard, he would’ve only slipped out on certain days — when that particular guard was on duty. Which meant…

“Kowalski!” Makishima exclaimed triumphantly, flipping through L’s notes and cross-referencing them with the security shift schedule Quick had provided. “Vincent only met with Selena on days when Kowalski was on watch! Let’s go pay him a visit—”

“Wait,” L cut in, “you don’t think… our James Smith — I mean, Vincent Palermo…?”

While Makishima had been buried in his notebook, L, out of boredom, had flipped on the TV. (He’d already checked the fridge earlier — nothing sweet, of course.)

“Looks like he’s already turned up,” L said, nodding toward the screen and turning up the volume. “And I mean that literally.”

The news anchor was chirping cheerfully:

“This morning, an unidentified male body was discovered at the docks. The circumstances surrounding his death have not been disclosed. If you have any information regarding his identity, please contact the hotline—”

A large photo flashed onto the screen, showing the pale, bloated, and unmistakably dead face of Vincent Palermo.

“So,” Big Nick said in a voice so calm it made Makishima’s stomach knot. He suddenly recalled all those stories about kings executing messengers who brought bad news. “Let’s go over this again.

“Vincent — one of the most important people in this family — had access to all our accounts and financial transactions. He’s been laundering money for us for decades. He knew damn well that the guards weren’t for show — they were there so no dumb fuck would get the bright idea to kidnap Big Nick’s accountant and use him to squeeze the whole organization by the balls. But Big Nick isn’t that easy to squeeze, because he’s a smart guy. That’s why he had five guards on the bastard. Plus a personal assistant to keep an eye on things.”

Nick spun his black Parker pen between his fingers, pausing for a moment before continuing, his voice still infuriatingly steady.

“And now, we find out that Vincent didn’t give a shit about any of that. That he played his own security like a damn teenager sneaking out to fuck some broad. And now he’s lying in the city morgue, and we have no idea who killed him or what he might have spilled before he died. Did I miss anything?”

“That’s all we’ve got for now,” Makishima answered as professionally as he could, trying very hard not to think about how, not too long ago, another one of Nick’s men had turned up beaten to death at an old sawmill a few miles out of town. “I’m heading to the morgue — to find out the cause of death and see if anything on him ties back to us.”

Nick gave a slow nod, tapping the pen against the desk.

“And that guard? What was his name — Kovalev?”

“Kowalski. After the morgue, I’ll stop by his place — see if there are any leads.”

Though, truth be told, Makishima already had a bad feeling about this. No one was picking up the guy’s phone, and it was looking more and more like Kowalski had disappeared right along with Vincent.

“Don’t be stingy with the cash,” Nick said, his eyes drifting toward his cabinet of expensive liquor — a sign that this meeting was about to wrap up. “If you need to bribe someone or shut someone up, spend whatever it takes.”

Stepping outside, Makishima instantly regretted sending his goons with the umbrella away. It had taken him mere seconds to reach the car, yet he was already soaked through, as if he had stepped fully clothed into a shower. But after that meeting with Big Nick, enduring the company of those Neanderthals had been beyond him.

L was lounging in the passenger seat, expertly fishing donuts from a paper bag with one hand while taking slow drags from a smoldering cigarette in the other.

“Looks like you’re having a good time,” Makishima remarked. He reached to lower the window to clear out some of the smoke, but raindrops immediately splattered onto his jacket, forcing him to roll it back up. “I thought you weren’t supposed to eat sweets?”

“Let’s just hope we crack this case fast and don’t have to stick around too long,” L replied cheerfully, licking grease from his fingers. “I think I’ll manage to survive until the grand finale. So, morgue first?”

The trip to the morgue went suspiciously smoothly. “Private detective Lawliet” didn’t even have to grease any palms — the on-duty attendant was so taken with Makishima’s dazzling smile that she let them through without a fuss. (L later insisted that the expression looked more like a death threat than a charm offensive, but what did he know about the art of seduction?) They were granted full access to the deceased’s belongings, along with the official autopsy report.

“So, do you recognize him? Can you confirm his identity? The police still haven’t been able to ID the body,” the girl chirped, twirling a strand of hair around her finger while sneaking glances at Makishima.

“No, I don’t think this is the man we were looking for,” he answered quickly. Helping the cops connect Vincent to the mafia was the last thing on his to-do list. “My partner got it wrong — he’s a bit scatterbrained. Saw the photo on TV and thought it was our client, but clearly, it’s not.”

L picked up on the hint immediately and nodded. “Yeah, my mistake. Sorry for the trouble.”

A few blocks away from the morgue, back in the car, L summed things up:

“No traces of mafia ties in Vincent’s belongings, which I assume makes you happy. We also know he died from a single blunt-force trauma to the head — no torture, no signs of struggle. Looks like the killer snuck up from behind, cracked him over the skull, then dumped the body in the docks.”

“So he wasn’t killed because he was Big Nick’s accountant.” Makishima felt both relieved and uneasy. If someone had tortured Vincent for clan secrets, that would’ve at least made sense. But this? It seemed like he had been taken out for an entirely different reason — one that had nothing to do with the mafia at all. “Could it have been just a mugging?”

“Wallet was still on him,” L countered, slipping another cigarette between his lips and patting his pockets for a lighter. “So far, everything points to either a personal motive or some freak accident. Though, maybe the killer staged it this way to throw us off…” There was a trace of hopeful curiosity in his voice. Then he flicked his lighter, took a drag, and exhaled a slow stream of acrid smoke.

“God, I hope you drop dead from that disgusting shit sooner rather than later,” Makishima said with feeling.

“If I did have lung cancer, it’d take years to finish me off,” L mused. “So smoking definitely won’t kill me before this case wraps up. Honestly, if you really wanted me dead, you should be rooting for the donuts — one more and I might just slip into a diabetic coma.”

“As if that’s gonna stop you from eating them…” Makishima sighed, started the engine, pulled onto the road, and turned in the direction of Kowalski’s place.

Dusk was settling over the city, the first lights flickering on in windows and streetlamps. Kowalski lived in the poor part of town — a neighborhood of rundown, peeling buildings, overflowing trash bins, and dingy diners with half-broken neon signs buzzing weakly in the rain. Every passerby they saw was either homeless, a cheap prostitute, or a low-level gangster — the kind of crowd that made up the entire local population, however statistically improbable that might seem.

Makishima’s expensive Volkswagen drew greedy and suspicious stares. He parked it near a convenience store rather than right outside Kowalski’s place — a battered house at the very end of the street — and they hurried through the icy drizzle toward the entrance. Makishima pressed the doorbell several times, but no one answered.

“You’ll have to call in a couple of Big Nick’s guys to bust it down,” L suggested.

Makishima considered that they could just kick the door in themselves — it would be very fitting for this kind of story. Or would that be overkill?

“My car’s already the talk of the neighborhood. No need to attract more attention.” He rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a lockpick. Fortunately, his character had a solid background in breaking and entering — just as any good mafioso should. A moment later, there was a satisfying click, and the door swung open.

The hallway light was out, and the place smelled of rot. The kitchen looked like a hurricane had passed through: dishes, food containers, and utensils were strewn across the table and floor, while the sink overflowed with a putrid pile of unwashed plates.

“Are you sure your guys didn’t ransack the place?” L asked, curiously inspecting a heap of empty pizza boxes stacked on the couch.

“As far as I know, no.” Makishima nudged aside a bundle of foul-smelling socks with distaste and glanced over the papers scattered haphazardly across the dresser. “It’d take more than a search to make a place look like this.”

L sifted through the mess with zero hesitation, while Makishima focused mostly on avoiding stepping in anything that might ruin his expensive leather shoes.

At the bedroom doorway, L suddenly stopped, moved aside, and silently pointed inside.

The walls were covered with photographs of a blonde woman. They were all taken in secret — her stepping out of a taxi, sipping coffee in a café, adjusting her hair while catching her reflection in a shop window.

“Well, looks like Kowalski was a stalker,” Makishima remarked, scanning the obsessive display. “But who is she?”

“I know her,” L said unexpectedly. “That’s my client — Vincent’s secret mistress. Selena Johnson.”