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There are alot of really idiotic martial arts systems out there. Karate, for instance. Do you really see people squaring off like that out in a street fight? No. It’s not at all functional. Yet one of my toughest motherfucking soldiers came up in karate.

My point is, it’s not the system that makes the man, it’s the man that makes the system. It’s about what the man brings, not what the system brings.

This is especially true with Valerie, my executive coach. Valerie has never met a motivational saying she doesn’t like. The more idiotic and trite the saying, the more she likes it and uses it.

But she makes those fucking sayings work—that’s the thing about Valerie. That’s what sets her apart. In Valerie’s hands, the sayings aren’t trite.

So I’m talking on the phone with her in one of our coaching calls, enjoying her, enjoying the way she laughs—she’s smart, and it’s easy to make her laugh. I’m even enjoying her lame-ass motivational sayings.

And then we come around to the Kiro account. “Have you found your way into the Kiro account yet?”

I tell her no. “We’ve been researching the hell out of it. It’s just always out of our reach.”

“Your competitor isn’t anywhere nearer, though, right?”

“I think our competitor might be getting inroads,” I say. “They’ve been making business trips that look like they’re related to Kiro.”

Needless to say, she doesn’t know Kiro’s a guy I’m trying to find and kill. She thinks I’m running an accounting firm.

Gotta keep it clean with Valerie, being that she’s an executive coach.

“But they don’t have the account yet,” she says. “So it’s still in play. Are you thinking positive? Are you encouraging your people to view it as already a done deal? Already yours? Letting the universe know that Kiro account belongs to you?”

This sounds hokey, but it’s actually been good advice. People thinking Kiro is dead has made us more powerful. Everyone wants to be on the winning team. Especially when it comes to criminal organizations.

“But it’s not truly a done deal. I don’t know what they’ll say if wedon’tget the account.”

“Keep your eyes on the prize, Lazarus. When one door closes, another opens.”

It was a two motivational-saying call. Three if you count “Think Positive.”

Anyway, when one door closes, another opens. Right?

The very next day I get a phone call from one Dr. Roland Baker, a psychiatrist up in some hospital in northern Minnesota. I almost don’t take it. I don’t know the guy. He said he had some business with Aldo, my late boss. What do I care?

I take the call.

“This is about the boy,” the shrink says. “Aldo wanted me to alert him if anybody started poking around about the boy. He said it was vital. I know that Aldo’s passed, but…”

“Yes, he’s passed,” I say.Due to the fact that I killed him.

“I thought if this information was important to Aldo, it might be important to you, too,” the shrink says, clearly looking for a payday.

“I don’t know that it’s my business if somebody’s poking around about a boy,” I say. “I can’t say I condone it, exactly…”

“No, no, not like that. Thewildboy. I’m talking about the wild boy, Lazarus. The wild Dragusha.”

Needless to say, this gets me sitting up straight. “Kiro Dragusha?”

“Yes. Kiro. It took a lot of doing to get that boy under wraps. Aldo didn’t want people poking around, asking questions, undoing all of our work.”

“Aldo knew where Kiro was all this time?”

“Of course. He gave explicit instructions to be alerted the moment anybody started asking about him.”

I grin. I imagine telling Valerie how fucking wide the Kiro account door just opened.

“It’s very much worth my while, Dr. Baker,” I say. “I don’t know the specifics of Aldo’s arrangements, but I’m very invested in the Kiro situation.”


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