The Big Wheel

by Scott Archer Jones

She flared her eyes and broke out into a smile. “Oh yeah.”

  “Call her.” He tapped his way to the white pages for Zlata, Robert. He found five in New York City. He discarded three who had registered to vote, and threw away the other two because, according to the City website, they worked for NYC. Dead end. Not as easy as compiling corporate data. Genealogy next—he’d hire a firm to give him the US family trees for the Zlatas. At this rate, he could expect very long days or a short career. He tapped on the edge of the desktab. He had missed something. It ate at him, but what was it?

  ***

  A knocking. At first it reverberated in Robko’s head, but then it repeated and bounced around the room. He dragged himself out of bed. Throwing on the bathrobe, he shuffled over to the door. He peered through the peephole, and opened the door. An explosion in the shape of a woman swept in, raised a hand, and whacked his ear hard. The explosion swept on past into the room.

  He fell back. “Damn, Sibyl! That really hurts.”

  “You’re lucky I wasn’t holding anything, like a club or a hatchet.”

  “Good to see you too. Just like old times.”

  “I’m still mad at you. Mr. Abernethy again? Why I put up with this, Robert, I ask myself.” She was still whipcord thin. She had gone to blonde, cut in an expensive shag. She had an X&G bag over her shoulder, but knowing her habits, he figured it was a knock-off. She perched on the end of the bed. “A thousand. Up front this time.”

  “This isn’t about sex. Or it’s not all about sex.”

  “Meeting me in a hotel? Why didn’t you just come home?”

  “Not my home anymore. If I remember the last time we talked, you were waving a knife around and threatening to cut off my little robko. Besides, I may be in trouble. I don’t want any blowback coming your way.”

  “Trouble?” Her face took on a familiar pinched look, like a worried fourteen-year-old. He gazed into her small face with its absurd blue eyes. Contacts, no doubt—big eyes in an elfin face anyway.

  “Hmm.” He sat on the bed beside her. She didn’t move away. Slow, hesitant, he ran his forefinger over the back of her hand.

  “Trouble,” she repeated. “Money?”

  “No, I’m set right now.”

  “Bluemen? The Fedzilla?”

  “Not so’s you could tell.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “My loft in the Bowery got raided last night. It’s another crew, but not the usual. These guys are violent. Smash and grab. Shoot-you-dead types.”

  Her eyebrows pinched together, a vertical line up into her tall forehead. “A crew? Why are they after you?”

  “Jealousy? Revenge for my last employment? Maybe they think I have something they want. I don’t know yet.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “I’m not really sure. I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you to watch your back.”

  “That’s just so nice. Two years you waited.”

  “And look at the reception I just got. Thank God I didn’t come over the week after.”

  She reached up and touched his ear. “It’s a bright cherry red.”

  He thought she sounded a little pleased. “I wonder why.”

  She picked at her lower lip with a thumb and forefinger. “Tell me, why should I watch my back?”

  “They can follow me to you. The name on the loft is Tim Boxwood. The names on your condo are Tim and Sibyl Boxwood.”

  “Oh.” She sat quiet for a long minute. “What are you going to do?”

  “Get a phone. Watch your place for a couple of days; see if anyone sniffs around. Move out of here into a furnished apartment. I’ll try south of you in Chinatown. Lay around and see what happens.”

  She slapped him on the arm, hard. “You’re the most do-nothing I’ve ever met. That’s not a plan.”

  “Best I’ve got.”

  She muttered under her breath, “Piece of shit.”

  “That too.” He fell silent. She sat cross-legged, with a red shoe wagging, wagging on the end of her boney foot. Fake Celetti, he thought.

  She stabbed him in the thigh with a painted nail. “Give me five hundred.”

  “I thought you wanted a full flip.”

  “Family discount. I wanted the afternoon off anyway. Saturday is a big night for me, and I can get some sleep beforehand.”

  “Here?”

  “You’re naked under that robe, aren’t you?”

  Chapter Six: Love Turned on The Wheel of Torture

  Thomas sat in the Adirondack chair out on a windswept lawn that perched on the edge of the Sound. Loutish, unformed, O’Brien sat beside him, grunting into the phone. He was wearing a terrycloth robe and Mexican sandals.

  Thomas waited. He planned what he would say and what he would ask. O’Brien hung up, angry. “Damn fools. Don’s people got caught watching Dupont’s Montreal relatives. Sooner or later one of them will go looking for Dupont.” He flung the vidi on the table at his elbow.

  “Did Dupont give up the memory devices?”

  “That would be a no. He had already passed them on to his buyer.”

  “And he didn’t have a name for the buyer?”

  “No, dammit, not a real one.” It was hard to tell if O’Brien was feeling petulant or savage.

  “Then we should have a plan for containment.”

  “Don’t be goddamn mysterious. What’s that mean?”

  “Wait for the buyer to make the first move to use the data against you.”

  “And then? Hire an army? Done that.”

  “Hire a bunch of lawyers and set up financial attacks on your enemy. Serious predatory attacks.”

  “Meaning?”

  Thomas dipped his head. “For example, have a bunch of patent-infringement and unfair-trade-practices people ready to file something within twenty-four hours, once you have a target. Deny your enemy access to any ongoing favorable deals. Build a cash pool to buy stock. Threaten a hostile takeover, and then trade for the data.”

  “An army of bureaucrats.”

  Thomas blinked. “You know LeFarge’s team calls itself ‘The Foreign Legion?’ Also, the ‘Kill Team?’ They’re risk takers. You need a capability for risk taking, but—”

  O’Brien waved a hand and shut him off. “I get your point. Now, why are we here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you privately at your house. How much you want out in the open later will be your decision.”

  The Governor grunted. “The office is safe.”

  “We have proof it’s not.”

  Annoyed, O’Brien snorted. “Tell me what you gotta tell me.”

  “We know the safecracker. If the Artifact didn’t turn up with Dupont and he didn’t confess to selling it, I believe it possible the safecracker didn’t give it to the head thief. We should pursue the burglar, not the buyer who has the memory devices.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “His name, his real name, is Robert Thomas Dragomir Zlata.”

  “What kind of a name is that?”

  “Slavic. Polish.”

  “Frickin’ Polacks.”

  “His family is from Chicago, and they call him Robko, so he’s grown up deep in the local culture in spite of his Christian names.”

  “What do we know about him?”

  “He didn’t finish high school, and the US Military refused to take him. Sealed record of course, but we guess personality issues or he failed a drug screen. Got picked up on drug charges as a kid—weed—but has no adult criminal record. That in itself is a surprise.”

  O’Brien asked, “What about his folks?”

  “His father is dead, died of a heart attack in prison. Had an older brother, but he’s dead too, from leukemia. Robko is estranged from his mother; she’s only seen him occasionally over the last ten years. It’s for the usual reasons. According to her, Robko’s not a good Catholic boy, not much good at all. She’s religious, in spite of the fact she ran a bar for forty years. She works, and he doesn’t. She thinks he’s a drug u
ser. She knows he’s stolen from her. She wants grandkids, and he wants—what? We don’t know him that well yet.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  “I flew out to Chicago on the red-eye and asked her.”

  “You got balls, Tommy. And luck.”

  “I also talked to an uncle and some friends in the neighborhood. The interviews cost you a bunch. Robko used to be in a gang or crew, boosting cars for a chop shop. They suspect he moved on to burglary, what they call second story work. They don’t know what he does now. He’s not around much.”

  “What else do we know?”

  “He was born July 10, 1988. Five foot eight, a hundred and thirty, black hair, light brown eyes—school friends admitted his eyes look pale and spooky. In good physical shape, likes basketball in spite of his height. He spends a lot of money judging by his loft here in New York, but he’s off the financial grid. Zlata is a cash-only type of person. For instance, he had a serious motorcycle accident in 2002. He used no medical insurance, paid everybody in cash.”

  “But where is he?”

  “We worked forward through his alias. You know, Tim Boxwood, the name on the Bowery loft? We followed Boxwood to another alias, Abernethy.”

  “You have a name. Do you have a location?”

  “Approximately. He’s gone into hiding here in NYC, and I think I know within a few blocks where he is. I want a favor though, Dennis.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I want to look for him myself first. Give me some time to hunt up his acquaintances, drink in his bars, find his old girlfriends. Don’t send in the storm troopers, not just yet.”

  “Huh. Fewer feet on the ground.”

  “They wouldn’t know what to look for.”

  O’Brien dropped his gaze to the grass, tilted his head, scuffed at the green with his toe. “No promises, Tommy. You found this guy, or at least found out who he is faster than anyone else—so that earns you something. But like I said, I will have the Artifact at any cost. And quick.”

  “So for now, it’s a yes?”

  “Stay in touch. I mean it. Two or three times a day, or I unleash the hounds.”

  “I understand.” Thomas stood up and nodded—a little medieval bow. He always shut up and left the meeting when he got what he wanted. He had bought some time, and now he needed some luck.

  ***

  Robko looked for an apartment the morning after Sibyl’s visit. He found a walkup above a Chinese grocery store. The apartment would be ready in two days, and he knew enough not to push the landlord. Scoring this sublet as a white-eye in this neighborhood—that was a special deal. Both Robko and the landlord liked the week-by-week cash aspect. The tenant on the lease had to be pulling a short jail term somewhere, unaware of and cut off from this side deal.

  He spent afternoons on Canal Street, the seedy side of SoHo. Sibyl had a condo in one of the graceful old five-story, cast-iron buildings there, but this far south, the blocks hadn’t turned posh and gentrified, and the real estate prices weren’t catastrophic. He wandered back and forth a bit, in and out of the cheap clothing stores. He looked at electronics only the poor would buy, browsed the news at the stand on the corner, and got a haircut. A Middle Eastern restaurant squatted across from her door, perfuming the street with cumin and coriander. He ate too many falafels and drank enough tea to float himself inside out. He saw NYPD patrol cars and some private security, fat-looking and ineffective at best, but he didn’t see anybody in a good suit. He didn’t see a van by the curb or patrolling the area. Still, he had an itch. Someone in the neighborhood was watching somebody. A bugman hid somewhere around here, he could feel it. He decided the condo should remain off-limits.

  On Canal, he bought a phone and loaded money into the card. As vidis go, it wasn’t very smart, but as long as he could get onto the Net, listen to the news and make calls, it kept him happy. He also bought four baseball caps in various colors that he rotated in and out of a plastic bag.

  Seeing Sibyl had put him in a sentimental mood—he called his Ma. He hadn’t seen the old bitch in a year. She wasn’t home, and the answering machine picked up. He didn’t leave a message.

  He videoed the Matchmaker, out on the coast. He was at a table under an umbrella, sucking on a margarita. Judging by the beach and boats behind the Matchmaker, Robko got him close to a marina, maybe one of San Diego’s. Robko could hear discomfort in his voice. The conversation was marginally helpful but so round-about as to be a pisser.

  The Matchmaker’s voice came through fruity, plush. “Yes, who is it you want?”

  “Hi, I’m trying to reach the Castelon Dating Service.”

  “Who’s this? There’s a glare on the screen, and I can’t quite see.”

  Robko coughed. “An old client. You set me up last year, you know, on the Milwaukee thing. And the year before there was a girl on the—the Florida thing.”

  “Oh yeah. I remember you. You’re that really tall guy.”

  So this was how the conversation would go. “No, I’m the short one.”

  The Matchmaker picked his glass back up and inserted the straw into his face. “Sure, I remember you. What can I do for you this fine day?”

  “I ran up against a strange girl on a date, and I wondered if you had anything to do with her.” With my door being kicked in and me being shot at.

  The Matchmaker pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead. “Tell me about her.”

  “Well, she had a lot of hangers-on. A lot. And she liked it big and loud. She was capable of slapping someone around pretty good.”

  “And where did this date take place?”

  “Within sight of Greenpoint across the bridge. You know, back East.”

  The Matchmaker sucked on a tooth. “Greenpoint? Out by the airport? I don’t think we’ve got anyone like that on file. That’s a woman who would seek a specialized relationship. We haven’t had anything like that come up in a while. There are a few old clients, you know, who do the—”

  “The rough stuff?”

  “Yeah, you know, who are looking for it rough or give it out rough, but—”

  “You’re telling me they don’t live near Greenpoint?”

  “Yes, that’s right. They date around more in California and out on the Lakes. They wouldn’t be interested in someone like you, I’m afraid. They tend to hook up with bankers and…. um, truckers.”

  “Well, thanks anyway. I’ll call maybe, the next time I’m free for a date.”

  ***

  Thomas wandered SoHo off and on for a week, when he wasn’t working with Angie and the data. O’Brien allowed this only because nothing else was coming together. Thomas wore his lucky shoes, carried his lucky jacket, avoided cracks in the pavement—but it wasn’t working out very well.

  He took a turn past the apartment on Canal Street at different times of day for a look. By now he had a dossier on Sibyl Boxwood and knew she was a prostitute. His information showed she made the mortgage payments on the apartment—Tim Boxwood didn’t shell out for it. He saw Sibyl on a frequent basis. She left for work at three in the afternoon and often didn’t return until the morning. She didn’t use the condo for business.

  Boxwood had morphed into Abernethy, or at least they saw money going out of Boxwood’s account and showing up later in Abernethy’s. Angie had commissioned a very expensive hacker to tunnel the SoHo and Bowery hotels. Digital desk registers showed an Abernethy had checked into the Cumberland the night of the loft raid. He checked out three days later and left no trail. The address he had given in Boston didn’t exist.

  At night Thomas moved from bar to bar, not expecting to spot his opponent. He just wanted to find where Zlata had been in the past, who he was, what he liked… what women he was attracted to. Thomas carried a photo, a clever fake that showed a young Zlata and an equally young Thomas in basketball uniforms, arm in arm. After a drink and maybe a bar appetizer, he’d ask the bartender, “Say, I’m trying to find an old buddy of mine who used to live around here. S
ee….” He’d show the photo. “I’ve lost track of him. I’m trying to find out where he moved.”

  The bartender would lean over and look at the photo. Most of the time the bartender would say something along the lines of, “Whoa, a long time ago. You’re a lot older now!”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Nah, never seen the guy, or he’s changed so much I don’t recognize him from this.”

  Late in the week, Thomas twigged that he had the style wrong. He had been in and out of restaurants and bars he liked. On impulse, he ducked into a bar near Zlata’s loft. The old storefront sported black painted glass overlaid with green and red paint scrawls. A homemade poster on the door advertised the night’s musical entertainment, the Zombie Howlers and the Pukers.

  Inside Thomas found an interior so dark he tripped over chairs twice getting up to the bar. He ordered a beer and watched two young people beside him slurp jello shots. He doubted this was the place to order a scotch. The background music was some sort of trance threaded through with industrial noise in a loop. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  “Yo, buddy!” A voice beside him cut through the sound. “You look lost.”

  Thomas turned to see a serviceman, a mere baby in uniform. “No, I just wandered in out of curiosity. Interesting place.”

  “What?”

  Thomas raised his voice. “Interesting place.”

  “You ought to see it when the bands start up about eleven.”

  “What kind of music?”

  “Oh, thrash, hard buzz, some old-timer punk.”

  “I have a friend likes that kind of stuff. He used to live around here, and I’m trying to find his ex-wife, so I can track him down for old time’s sake.”

  “What’s the babe look like?”

  “Short, lightweight, blonde.”

  The serviceman shrugged. “Come on, man, that don’t help. They’re all freakin’ pixies down here. How about the guy?”

  “Here, let me show you his picture.” Thomas handed over the photo.

  His new friend held it under the edge of the bar where neon girdled it. “Nah, don’t know him, but I’ve only been coming here for a year. Hey, Lew.” He motioned the bartender over. “Do you know this guy?”