“And get out.”
“And get out. We saw them park the trailer at the dock and leave it. It should still be there. We’ll slide up in the cloth cradles and wait for the truck to come back.”
“What if it sits there for days?”
“Okay already. I’ll check manifests.”
She bobbed her head. “Let’s hope it doesn’t turn too cold tonight. Sleeping in those cradles could get nippy.”
“Want to share a cradle? Purely to avoid hypothermia.”
“Purely?” she said, eyebrow cocked up.
***
“We’re on the wrong tack,” Thomas said. Florescent lights rained down a warm yellow that denied the midnight hour. They slouched around the cluttered conference table. Over at the electronic wall, another three teammates monitored Tran Cam data.
Angie picked up the bottle of scotch she had brought and poured another shot into her coffee cup. “That’s what I want to hear… that we’re doing it all wrong.”
Thomas loved it. She could have been so right for him. “No, I’m serious here. We can make a new start. What if we chased this guy based on his profile? If you tell me what we know about him, you’re telling me what he will do. Then we watch where he goes to do it, not the whole damn world.”
“Want a drink?”
“Sorry, I can’t. I’m on a good flight right now. Don’t want to crash land.”
She rolled her eyes. “You mean you don’t want to poison yourself and die in your own vomit. Okay, here goes… creeping up on thirty-four-years-old but acts twenty-one. Party animal, professional thief, appears to do a couple of jobs a year, then fritters away all his money in between. Loves motorcycles and speed, which should demonstrate aggressive tendencies, but otherwise appears passive—the second or third stringer on a job, not the lead. He can live in a loft with expensive possessions or a flea trap in Chinatown.”
Thomas grinned, egged her on. “Keep going.”
Angie coughed and snuck a peek at him. “A loser addicted to barbiturates.”
“Bite me, Ms. Tommo.”
“I’m here at midnight just to be insulted?”
“Keep going.”
“He could wiggle under a crack in the door and hang by his fingers from thumb tacks in the bulletin board. Short, small, and muscular.”
“Uh, huh. Keep going.”
“Runs around with a prostitute and married her. Has no hang-ups about her career. She worked all the time he lived with her—so he must not care.”
“Interesting. Amoral, but probably not a pimp.”
“If she’s his type, then he likes the kind that dresses in black, lives to shock you, and looks like your fifteen-year-old kid sister… or brother.”
“I don’t get anything there.”
“No, because you’re pure hetero. Zlata is also ethnic. He’s real Polish, from one of the old neighborhoods. Had a best friend from his school days, but hadn’t seen him since said friend went into The Church. Hasn’t been near home and friends since the friend died and he ran.”
“Didn’t die—was murdered. Anything else?”
“Won’t give up the Artifact. Insanely lucky—he’s beaten a very expensive team over and over.”
Thomas winced. She was right, as usual.
“Okay, your turn,” she said, and sipped at her scotch.
“He’s on the run, but he’s smart enough to know he can’t run forever. He hasn’t tried to negotiate, so he must have something else in mind.”
She twirled a pencil in a circle on the tabletop. “Makes sense.”
Thomas paused, continued. “He may have stashed money here and there—the accounts we seized showed about fifty grand each. We keep cutting the money off behind him, so he must be low on funds.”
“Maybe. It’s a plausible progression.”
“If he runs out of money, he goes back to work. If that’s the case, Zlata not only evades us—he practices his profession at the same time. Very cool head.”
She snorted. “It’s the barbiturates. They’re calming.”
He stared across the table at her, watching the way her hair made shadows around her face, revealing it as she flipped her hair back. “They work for me. So we’ve never seen him act aggressively, but we’ve never seen him cornered. Would he pick up a gun? Under what circumstances?”
“Problematic. Approach with care.” She stretched and glanced over at the three staffers who manned surveillance consoles, then turned back. “That all you got?”
“Hmm, critical. Some might say harsh. Here’s my last point. Why has he never practiced his profession on us? He’s got to want to hurt us bad by now.”
“He already has the Artifact, even if he doesn’t know what it is.”
“I made it pretty clear to Father Mirko; the Artifact was Zlata’s ticket out, and Zlata didn’t buy it.”
“So?”
“Why didn’t he give it up?” Thomas leaned forward, locked his fingers together, and sighed. His eyes flew open—he jerked bolt upright, pointed a finger at her. “Because he doesn’t have it!”
Angie jumped on it. “You’re right. He sold it. We’ve been chasing the wrong man. We should be after the guy who bought the Artifact from Zlata.”
“Why didn’t he steal it back? Is he more afraid of the new owner than of O’Brien?”
“Speculative.”
“Indeed. Then back to our best guess. Zlata doesn’t have the Artifact anymore, but he knows it’s his way out.”
“So what?”
“He needs an Artifact. Not THE Artifact.”
She shook her head. Then cocking her face over, she smoothed the lipstick in the corner of her mouth. “You’ve got something there. But do you want Zlata or the Mister X who has the original Holy Grail, O’Brien’s loaded Artifact?”
“Zlata knows X. We don’t.”
“Okay, we need him no matter what, and he needs an Artifact.”
“Zlata will be coming to steal an Artifact from O’Brien. He’ll use it to change the game.”
She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “Yes. Maybe. We should search our own house.”
“Damn! This last month we’ve combed the metropolitan US with Tran Cam—in the hope the woman or Zlata would stroll into an airport or a bank. But he’s coming to us.”
“Even if you’re right, we can’t ask thousands of employees to watch out for Zlata. We could never explain it.”
“No, but Tran Cam software could scan our own cameras.”
She jerked her head. “Oh.” They both thought about it. “It’s Georgia. Remember Jean and the fifty million dollars? That’s where O’Brien had his Artifacts built.”
“Has to be. We’ll hook the Georgia cameras into here, have the software watch.”
“So what does this mean?” She shot him the knowing glance. “Not operationally. I mean, politically.”
“We have to tell Garland.”
Angie nodded. “But not about the Artifact. And we don’t tell LeFarge anything.”
“Right. One other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I used to think LeFarge was our biggest vulnerability. Now I think it’s O’Brien. You agree?”
She laughed. “For sure. He’ll be the death of us.”
Thomas felt his mouth fake a smile, but it was a skeleton’s grin.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Club Gonos
Down in an industrial yard in New Jersey at midnight, close to the corridor that sucked the commuters along into NYC, Robko and Sibyl stashed the trailer and the motorcycle. They had gone to a self-storage business where Robko had once concealed the rewards of a specialty rack. An eccentric owner of fifty chicken stands had misplaced his Wild West gun collection. Robko searched for the right fence, so he had to keep the lock-up for some time. In his weekly checks, he found that the yard was run by a Pole out of Chi, a careful, quiet man who became his friend.
It wasn’t going well. She had raised the door and stood by, trying to guid
e him and the trailer in a simple backing maneuver. He had lined up to the right of the aisle, prepared to turn the ninety degrees left and slide into the storage unit. Theoretically the trailer would fit, but he had yet to prove it.
She shook her head. He had backed and filled so many times that the trailer door was centered on a concrete post of the next storage unit over, and the van was practically touching the doors on the other side. She’d shouted till her throat hurt, but the slump-shouldered figure in the driver’s seat over-corrected every time. “Tchaa. I can’t stand it.” She strode up to the driver’s window and repeated, “I can’t stand it.”
“You can’t stand it? You’re not doing the work. Maybe if we unhitched the trailer and rolled it in.”
“Only if you want to unload it first. It’s too heavy. All those cars you stole, you never had to back up?”
“No, you just drive them out straight ahead. I never even had to parallel park.”
“Get out of the car.”
“What?”
“I said—get out of the car.”
He opened the door and clambered out. He came across as whipped, hanging his head. She jumped in and slammed the door. She turned hard left, and with a jerk headed off down the aisle. Now that she was in charge, she felt a grin pop onto her face. She hummed as she drove clear around the block of units and came back to their lock-up, centered in the middle of the aisle. She cranked first one way to start the turn, then the other to straighten out. The trailer centered up on the door. She pulled forward to straighten up the van, then as she peered left and right at the side mirrors, she backed the trailer smoothly into the unit.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“I grew up with horses. I’ve been backing trailers since I was fourteen.”
***
In the end, the Bronx flop turned out to be just another place: the difference was that Thomas was locked up with himself. He didn’t mind the faded furnishings, the old-fashioned bathroom, or the kitchen with a buildup of grease and grime in every crack. He didn’t mind the sour smell of take-out in every other apartment or the stale fragrance of urine in the stairwells. Here he would be himself for as long as he could stand it.
Like the other inhabitants, he found life in his rooms less troubled than life outside them. Rather than cultivate other people, he talked to himself. He hid from LeFarge. There was safety in solitude.
Nine at night. In the elevator lobby, he kicked something into the corner. He wandered over to find a jink pipe, tarred with its last burn. “Drain Cleaner,” he said aloud. “Thunderbolt.” Coming down the graffitied corridor from the elevator, he saw the bare light bulb that blazed in its socket outside his door. “Edison’s security,” he said. He peered up at the door jamb and saw the edge of black paper protruding out against the brown enameled door. “No one in or out.” He read new graff scratched deep into his door, “My Kingdom Is Gone.”
“Really charming. Obscure too. Should look that up.”
Inside, he threw a frozen pizza into the microwave and spilled a couple of pills onto the countertop. He flipped on the TV. He scanned around channels while the microwave groaned. “Nothing.”
In an hour, he felt as dark and small as the room. He picked up his throwaway and, blanking the video, dialed Angie. No need for her to see what a dump this was. “Angie, still at work?”
“Just walking through the shift change for the surveillance team.”
“We had a good day, didn’t we?”
“Yes. Memdevice number nine arrived back and is under lock and key. The humdrum searches didn’t produce anything new, but your ideas on chasing Zlata inside O’Brien’s empire have perked up the whole place.”
“Our ideas.”
“You make the intellectual leap; I execute. I don’t have to do strategy.”
He could imagine her, pacing back and forth in front of the electronic wall, waving good night to her departing troops. “You’re very humble tonight.”
“Oh, and did I mention, I keep you from falling apart?”
“Speaking of falling apart, I need to break free. I can feel the walls closing in.”
“You’re not talking about clubbing again, are you?”
“It’s all about looking for Zlata, in case he’s back in town. I’ve done ten clubs in twenty days. It’s time to get lucky.”
“You know the private detectives are also looking.”
“Waste of money. They don’t have the feel. I picked up the name of a new club up near Central Park yesterday—it’s wild enough to draw him. Want to grab a cab and meet me there? Not like it’s a date.”
He could hear her chuckle on the other end. “You got that right.”
***
About nine, Robko and Sibyl rambled over to the new club from their high-rise residence hotel. Robko had found the club venue that morning when he asked the doorman, “What bar would terrify you to learn your daughter hung out there?”
The answer bounced back quick and sure. “Club Gonorrhea. Other side of the Park.”
As they stepped up to the brute at the door, Sibyl said, “I wish my mother could see this, an exclusive, bouncer-protected, sexually transmitted disease. Oh, the irony of it all.”
“All the signs are good. A bruiser on the door, a lot of people dressed in black, and the pavement outside jumping up and down from the bass.”
“I wouldn’t want to live in the apartments upstairs.”
He dropped a fin on the guy at the door, and they slipped into the front of the queue. “This is just to show our appreciation.”
“Of course, sir. You won’t remember me, but I’m Freddy. You dropped into the Dumpster a couple of times when I worked the door there.”
Sibyl glanced at Robko. “And I don’t think he means your place in Chinatown either.”
He snuggled her arm and leaned his head over to touch hers. “I’m betting you think you’re funny and all.”
Inside, the Club owners had decorated the place in sheet aluminum spattered in red paint. He inhaled a muddy river of perfume and cologne, sharpened up by the tang of spilled wine. When they gazed up, they viewed the usual ducts and lights painted black. They also stared at upside-down furniture attached to the ceiling.
She said, “Makes me dizzy.”
“Try it while you’re flying on something pharmaceutical—it’s a mind-neuker. I feel like I’m walking on my Ma’s ceiling.” He could feel an associated memory teasing at the back of his brain, but the klono he had swallowed kept it at bay, mysterious and delicious.
She started snapping pictures—two hipsters visibly preened for her camera.
The band portrayed itself as a New-York-tripper on a hillbilly turnaround. Two men swapped through a succession of instruments and traded vocals back and forth while a drummer attacked the world’s smallest trap set. The nasal tenors droned on about the hills of North Carolina, the virtues of home, and the methamphetamine cure for love sickness. Three horn players gave the whole mix a Motown vibe. She leaned in to Robko’s ear. “It’s possibly the worst band I’ve ever paid a cover for. It’s Elmo Goes to Hollywood and Plays with La Cantina Brass.”
“This isn’t the real band. The real band is in the back.”
“Huh?”
“See on the back wall… set far apart?”
She peered through the gloom. Three doors painted with spatter-and-drip. Each door had its own label, Doors Number One, Two, and Three.”
“Door One,” he shouted in her ear, “is a martini, cigar, and hookah bar designed to give you black lung and cirrhosis in under two hours. Door Two leads out a back patio bar, which will still be packed even after first snow. And Door Number Three….”
“— is where the real band plays. How did you know?”
“I videoed this afternoon. Talked to a woman who claimed to be Joan Jett.”
“Impossible. She’d have to be seventy-five by now.”
“Mick is still alive. Shall we see what’s behind Door Number Three?”
They wended their way back—the thick gluey crowd, more interested in the lobby band, slowed them in a quicksand of revelry.
Door Three banged open abruptly and a mob of twentysomethings boiled out. Door Three drowned out North Carolina with a tidal wave made of power thrash hyped on steel drums. They let the mob by before wiggling down the corridor.
***
Thomas and Angie had met at the front bar and percolated into the back. She had given the band an hour of her time based on the lead singer. Angie told him that the singer looked a lot like a young Blondie and appeared alluringly surly. After the hour though, Angie pointed down into her drink.
He bent toward her. “What?”
The ice had melted. He stared. A standing wave of bulls-eyes made a resonant connection—a psychic link between her scotch-and-soda and the bass player.
“I’d like a civilized drink,” she shouted, “in a civilized place, where the staff doesn’t smell of hair gel and sweat.”
“Are you sure? It gets better the later you stay.” The band perched on scaffolding above their head, not six feet away. He could smell perspiration dripping off the band. The music rolled out so loud, his senses felt confused, like the sweat had mixed with the percussion.
“You mean as I get drunker and the music gets louder?” The crowd seethed around them, jostled them as they scrunched together around their tiny table.
Making a trumpet of his hands, he shouted into her ear. “I hear the third set has been used for the soundtrack of an indie sci-fi movie—The Destruction of Tokyo.”
“Then I’m definitely sure. You’ll buy me a bottle of champagne, and we’ll get two rooms in one of those exclusive Central Park hotels. We can be in to work early tomorrow.”
He shrugged, jumped up, and turned to lead the way. As they wove down the hall through a crowd to the lobby bar, he shouted to her over his shoulder, “I bet the Fire Marshal didn’t sign off on this hallway.” With a jarring thump, he ran full into someone. It was Zlata! Zlata had sandy hair and two eyebrows instead of one, but it was him all the same. Thomas held his palm up. Zlata paused and rocked on his heels. From his greater height, Thomas leaned down and shouted, “We haven’t met, but we know each other. I’m Thomas Steward, and you’re Robert Thomas Dragomir Zlata.
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