I shake my head, guilt gnawing at my insides. “You didn’t have to fold them.”
Mike shrugs. “A PI can’t be neat?”
I don’t comment as I stuff the coveralls into my bag.
“He suspicious?” Mike asks as we start walking.
“Yes and no,” I say. “He’s suspicious of me, not you.”
“Well, it’s something, I guess. Where are we going?”
“Ralph’s,” I say. I don’t say “my dad’s bookie,” because if Mike’s any good at his job, he already knows.
“You think he can help?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“What were you doing at that club, anyway?”
I deliberate for a moment before handing over the clue. There’s no real point keeping it from him. And since I crossed the line in asking him to help us get out of the Strand, I might as well go all in.
“What the hell’s a dogfish?” Mike asked, looking at the paper.
“That’s what I said,” I say. “I’m hoping Ralph knows something about it.”
“What is this all about?”
“How much have you heard?” I ask.
“Not much—only that you’re a person of interest.”
“Come on, Mike,” I say, calling his bluff. “You’re an investigator. You haven’t heard anything else since we talked?”
Mike looks wary. He’s hiding something.
“I may have heard something about a forgery job that went south.”
“My dad,” I say, stuffing my hands in my pockets and picking up my pace. “He’s missing, but he’s left me a scavenger hunt to help me find something. And now you know all I know.”
“The club was one of the clues?”
“Yep.”
“What about the girl in the photo?”
“Still no idea, but Sam’s working on it. He’s trying to hack into the FBI facial-recognition database to see if he can get a hit on her.”
Mike looks impressed. “He can do that?”
“We’ll find out,” I say.
A short “L” ride and a few blocks later, we’re standing outside Ralph’s shop. It’s dark, as I expected it would be this late at night. But Ralph often works on his bookie business in the back after he closes the store. The back door that opens into the alley (yes, another alley—spies have cocktail parties, I get alleys) is located in Ralph’s office. All after-hours business takes place through the back door.
I use Ralph’s signature knock, which he taught me himself. I wait a few seconds, but there’s no response. I try the knock again, and wait again. Still nothing. I give Mike a worried look and he pulls out a gun.
I start to say that I don’t think the gun is necessary, but I stop myself. The way this whole situation is going, it very well could be.
Now, what to do about the door? There’s not even a handle on the outside. It’s always locked, so it opens from the inside only. I take out a hairpin and approach the dead bolt. But as I touch the hairpin to the keyhole, I notice that the door is not latched. Mike takes one look at my face and shoulders me aside. He’s first through the door, gun up at eye level.
“Clear!” he says from inside the darkened room.
I’m scared of what I’ll find. But it turns out there’s nothing more than a dark and empty office. I should be relieved, I guess, but I’m not. Ralph’s not where he’s supposed to be. And grifters are trained to be highly suspicious when things are not as they should be.
Mike and I search Ralph’s office for hints to his whereabouts littered among the stacks of folded paper lanterns, silk parasols, and boxes of plastic-wrapped kimonos that crinkle when I sift through them. But there’s nothing. No hint that the mob has abducted Ralph, either. Nothing is tossed, ripped, or wrecked, or seems in any other way to have been searched.
Mike is over at the industrial table Ralph keeps his computer on, its plastic casing yellowing as the years pass and Ralph misses another chance to upgrade. The CPU is a giant box dwarfed in size only by the ancient box monitor, complete with green POS screen.
“Anything?” I ask.
“I can’t even work this thing. It’s some random database program from the seventies or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I sigh and scratch my head. “There probably isn’t any kind of word-processing program or connection to the Internet. Computers aren’t Ralph’s style.”
Mike hits the Escape key a few times to exit out of whatever it was he was attempting to do.
“I didn’t find anything, either,” I say, frowning in concern. Maybe Ralph really is taking the night off. But better to be safe than sorry. “Let’s check the front. If we don’t find anything there, we can go.”
Mike trails after me through the entrance to the store, around the sales counter, and in among the shelves of trinkets and tourist trash. I look around for anything out of place. After about ten minutes of wandering around, I finally come to the conclusion that my dad’s disappearance is starting to make me see intrigue where there is none.
“I don’t think—”
But I never get to finish the thought, because three shadowy figures jog past the shop and a flaming fireball comes crashing through the window.
THE RESCUE
“Mike!”
Mike flies into action before the Molotov cocktail even hits the floor. No, literally, he flies. I’ve never seen a person who isn’t in the NBA jump like that. He tackles me out of the way of the flaming bottle.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the luxury of pointing us at a nice, cushy couch or pile of pillows. Instead he plows us right into a shelf full of glass and pewter figurines of dragons and potbellied Buddhas. My ear strikes the edge of one of the shelves, and it smarts like you would not believe.
But worse than that, the entire case, which is hardly stable at the best of times, comes toppling over, crashing its entire weight on top of Mike, who is still on top of me. The impact is deafening, outpacing the sound of the firebomb as it crashes on the floor barely two feet from us.
Mike takes the worst of it, his head ricocheting off the concrete floor only to smack into a steel crossbar. The heat is intense as the gasoline flares into a bonfire, flames licking up the rack of brightly colored silk shirts. I’m dazed by the sound, the pain, and the heat.
“Mike,” I say, trying to gather my wits. “Mike.”
But Mike isn’t answering. I shift myself out from under him, desperate to get us out of the burning shop.
“Mike!” I shake him, shove the case of now destroyed figurines off him, and turn him over. His eyes are closed, but his chest is moving. He’s breathing. Warm, sticky blood seeps from the back of his head, pooling on the floor. I check myself for blood, but other than his, the only blood on me is from a few minor scratches from the shards of broken glass glittering like diamonds in the firelight.
The smoke is starting to affect me now. I’m coughing and my eyes are watering. It’s hard for me to draw a breath. The fire has spread from the rack of shirts to the wall of paper cranes, cutting us off from escape out the closer front door. Which means I have to somehow drag Mike’s two-hundred-some pounds across the floor and out the back door before the fire spreads to us.
I suffer through another fit of coughing, trying my best to protect my nose and mouth from the smoke. I’m starting to get disoriented and nauseated, and I realize that it’s now or never. I loop my hands under Mike’s shoulders and start pulling him by his armpits, my knees pressing into the concrete as I drag him an inch or two away from the fire that is creeping ever closer to his boots. My eyes are running by this point, though whether from smoke or from sheer terror and hopelessness, I can’t be sure.
Then, with a rush of cold air, someone is next to me, pulling me back, wrapping me in a cool coat. Whoever it is hands me a cloth to hold up to my face to block the worst of the smoke. I cough into it like my lungs are going to leap from my chest, and it comes away covered in black.
I’m bewildered b
y the chaos, so much so that it takes me a moment to recognize the muscle-car mob enforcer as she gently pushes me to the side. I try to protest, but instead of forming words, I find myself racked with another bout of coughing.
She ignores me and pulls Mike up to a sitting position. Kneeling next to him, she pulls his arm around her and positions his hip over her shoulder. She shoves herself up, lifting his hefty frame entirely free of the floor, and nods to me.
I scramble much less gracefully to my feet, the coat keeping the worst of the smoke away from my head and face. I stumble after her as she makes a beeline for the back of the shop. She rounds the sales counter and disappears into Ralph’s office.
For a heart-pounding second, I am terrified that she’s left me alone in a burning building—that she was only a figment of my panicked imagination. I hurry around the corner, clipping my elbow and running right into her. I mumble a quick sorry, to which she grunts a response and moves to the back door.
I should be more concerned. Some tiny part of my brain is screaming at me that I’m escaping the fire only to wind up back in the frying pan. But I can’t seem to put a plan together for once we’re out in the alley. What if the shadowy figures who lobbed the Molotov in the first place are simply waiting out back with cudgels and cement shoes?
Still, I can’t help feeling grateful to our rescuer for saving us. Whatever else she has planned for us, death by fire has to be worse.
I shudder as I pass through the back door and into the crisp, ice-cold air of the alley. I cough and hack and wipe off black stuff, and all the while I’m breathing in the sweetest, most delicious scent of gradually decaying garbage and rat excrement. I’ve never been so happy to see an alley in all the days of my life.
“Move. You are still in danger.”
I know there are a million reasons why I shouldn’t. I stand there in uncharacteristic indecision. Can I trust her with my life? With Mike’s? He certainly didn’t sign up for this, no matter how much Sam is paying him.
She stands there, too, waiting for me to come to the only conclusion I can. I don’t know what’s out there, except that whatever it is has no compunction about killing me to get what it wants. I have no choice.
As soon as she sees my decision written on my face, she turns and carries Mike through the alley to her waiting Chevelle.
I watch, mute and helpless with nerves, as she opens the passenger’s-side door.
“Get in,” she says. “Quickly.”
I slide into the backseat just before she pushes the seat back and dumps Mike’s bulk into the front. She rounds the car in seconds, pulling the key from her pocket and shoving it into the ignition even as she’s shutting her door. With a short squeal of tires, she accelerates away from the curb.
“We have to take him to the hospital,” I choke out, my voice a thick rasp. I use Mike’s headrest to pull myself forward in my seat.
She nods sharply and checks her mirrors.
“Is someone following us?”
“Nyet,” she says softly.
“What?”
“No. But we are lucky. We have little time.”
“Little time for what? Why are you doing this?”
She brakes hard and swerves into traffic on the boulevard. A brief wave of relief washes over me as I realize she really is taking us to the hospital.
“I told you to stay away, stop looking. Now you see what happens.”
“Did you do this? Why bother to destroy Ralph’s shop if you were going to rescue me?” I demand.
She swears softly in another language. “No! I’m trying to help you.”
Now, that is just crap. Crap, crap, crap, and I am not buying it.
“You ran us off the road!”
“It was the only chance I could have to talk to you without discovery.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I work for those who are trying to hurt you—”
“Well, that much is obvious.”
“Let me finish!” She flicks an angry glare at me through her rearview mirror. “I work for them, but what they are doing is wrong. I worked—I knew your father,” she finishes softly.
“Knew?” I say, my throat tight with more than smoke.
“Yes,” she says.
We pass a few blocks in silence, her focus on the road, mine on my lap. Tears stream down my face. It will take the smoke a long time to leak out of my eyes completely. A long time.
Thinking of smoke, I make a quick call to the police station about Ralph’s shop. The fire station has probably been alerted already by Ralph’s alarm-system company, but I want to be sure someone starts looking for Ralph.
I turn off the phone and sink into the enforcer’s coat, her smell starting to make its way through the brimstone—spicy, like clove cigarettes. I close my eyes and try to unhear her use of the past tense. Why would my dad have bothered to set up the clues if there was no one left to find?
I open my eyes again and see her watching me, with concern, in the rearview. Concern and regret. I imagine it’s not an expression her face wears very often.
Her tank top leaves a lot of skin bare, or rather not bare. Her arms and back are covered with intricate tattoos. The ink peeking out along her shoulder blades suggests the gothic ceiling of a cathedral. Her outstretched arms feature long pinion feathers ending in manacles at both wrists. I have no idea what it means, but it looks painful. The meaning, I mean. The meaning looks painful.
“Who is doing this? Who do you work for?” I ask, quiet but resolved.
“It is best you do not know. I promised him I would keep you out of it. Whatever it takes.”
“Telling me that will only make me look harder.”
She clenches her jaw. “Your father said you were stubborn.”
“He did, did he?” I am not amused. “Well, I’ll find out eventually, and better to be in on it with me than against me and in the dark about my plans.” Okay, I am not at all convinced I will find out on my own, but she doesn’t have to know that.
She gives me a sour look. “I can be stubborn, too,” she says.
And that is all she’s going to say on the subject. It’s obvious in the way she tightens her jaw, turns her steely stare back to the road, and squares her shoulders against my glare. We are at an impasse.
“What if I make a bargain with you for the information?”
She quirks her eyebrow at me in the mirror; she’s listening.
“I need to find the people who took my dad. In exchange, I’ll keep you out of it when I go to the cops.”
She shakes her head. “You cannot make any bargain that I will agree to for what you are asking. I already risk much by sticking my neck on the line as much as I have. You are not only endangering yourself. You are threatening—”
She shuts her jaw with a click, clearly having said too much.
“What? You?”
I know that isn’t it, though. I’m baiting her to see if I can rile her into telling me.
“You’re asking the wrong question.”
“Come again?”
“Haven’t you wondered at all why your father came to grief with the people we worked for?”
I open my mouth to retort that of course I have, but stop myself when I realize that I really haven’t. I’ve wondered at times if the clues were leading me to an object rather than to my dad. But I’ve never once asked myself how he angered the mob in the first place. He knows how the mob operates. He’d never be stupid enough to steal from them. And what’s more, he doesn’t have to. So why would he allow himself to get on their bad side? What could possibly be worth it?
She sees the chagrin on my face.
“You cannot understand what you are interfering with. Back off or you will ruin everything.”
“I’m supposed to trust you?”
“I saved your life.”
Well, she has a point there.
She pulls into the circular drive at the entrance to the emergency room and gets out of the
car. She comes around the back to our side. When she opens the passenger’s-side door, she has to stoop to catch Mike as he rolls, unconscious, toward the ground. She eases him out onto the concrete and a passing orderly comes to take our information. I climb out of the backseat, careful not to step on Mike’s still form.
The orderly leaves and comes back with a few nurses and a gurney. One of the nurses takes me aside to question me. His hurried questions touch on all kinds of topics I’m uncomfortable talking about, like who, what, where, when, and how. Actually, the when I’m okay with. Everything else hits too close to home. But I give what information I can, pulling the coat tighter around me against the night chill, which is becoming less welcome by the second.
Finally, the nurses wheel him into the emergency room, leaving me and my rescuer standing in the too-bright lighting of the ER entrance. I turn to her, sliding the jacket off my shoulders to hand it back.
“Keep it,” she says, seeming entirely unaffected by the wind. “They will find me out sooner or later. It might as well be my coat that gives me away.”
“I don’t need your coat,” I say, even as I slide my arms into the sleeves.
“Maybe not, but you do need my advice,” she says, stepping too far into my personal-space bubble. “Do yourself and your friends a favor—stay away from this. I promise your father will be avenged.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She seems to take offense, her eyes narrowing, as if I am saying she can’t do what she claims. I hold up my hand to fend off her protest.
“I mean I don’t believe he is dead.”
She sighs and puts her hand out toward me as if she means to touch my arm, to offer comfort. But instead she lets her hand fall awkwardly to her side.
“I’m sorry, milaya. I would not be the one to tell you this, if I c-could…,” she stammers, her English breaking up. “He is dead. I saw him die.”
THE FALLOUT
Sitting in the waiting room of a hospital is the least grifter-like experience I can think of. It involves waiting, for one thing. A lot of senseless, boring, ineffectual waiting. You have no control over the outcome. You have no control over when the outcome is even going to take place. You have even less control over the three-year-olds crying miserably in their mothers’ arms over ear infections, sick bellies, and sprained ankles.
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