Cold Spectrum

by Craig Schaefer

  One kiss . . . and I’d feel all right again. The itch and the ache would all go away.

  I couldn’t tell them that. Not now, not when we were so close to the truth, with so much riding on the mission. It didn’t matter that I was still fighting it: an addict was an addict, and nobody trusts an addict. I needed to be solid for my team. I needed to smile and pretend. Just for a little while longer.

  The belly of the Diamondback smelled like stale cigarettes and cheap gin. Glass chandeliers that hadn’t been dusted since the late ’80s glowed over dirty diamond-patterned carpets. We skirted around a gambler with a walker—hobbling with his oxygen tank in one hand and his change cup in the other—and rented a room. Low in the tower, close to the exit.

  “You two can set up base camp in the room while we do recon,” Jessie said. “April, you’re on background: I want to know who really owns this place and what kind of opposition we’re looking at. Kevin, dig in to their financials. While I doubt they’ve got a file on their computer marked ‘illegal activities and kidnapping’—”

  “You might be surprised,” he said.

  Jessie and I stopped off at the cashier’s cage and traded two fifties for a stack of colorful chips. Protective camouflage as we circled the casino floor, blending in the best we could with the sparse crowds. Banks of slot machines emblazoned with cobra heads jangled and flashed in our wake.

  “They’re really working the snake theme,” Jessie murmured. “That’s not sinister or anything.”

  I pretended to check my phone for messages, putting my back to a diamond-patterned pillar and tilting the screen close. I was really refreshing my memory. RedEye hadn’t given us Houston’s picture, but the envelope of photographs Douglas Bredford left behind for us had included—we assumed—snapshots of all his former teammates. Now we had them on digital, an electronic epitaph. If Houston stood numbered with the pictures of the condemned, I’d know him when I saw him in the flesh.

  We played some halfhearted blackjack at the smallest-stakes table, five dollars a hand, and watched our chip stacks rise and fall for a while. The crowds filed in, tourists shuffling from the elevator banks in a slow and steady stream, but I had my eyes on the staff. Mostly Atlantic City lifers who would die with a deck of cards in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Nothing sinister, nothing unexpected.

  That’s when I spotted Houston Dalenta making his way across the casino floor with a bull of a pit boss at his shoulder. He looked like his picture, just older and with a few more wrinkles, his sparse blond hair going white and thin at the temples. He held a stack of chips, eyeing the tables as he passed.

  I nodded. Jessie followed my gaze, her eyes widening. We tipped the dealer and pushed away from the blackjack table, quietly tailing Houston and the pit boss.

  “Okay, something’s weird here.” Jessie murmured low, leaning close as we walked. “He tells his boyfriend that he got caught cheating, the casino’s holding him hostage, and not to call the cops. Are we sure that wasn’t just his twisted way of breaking up with him?”

  “I’m not sure. He doesn’t look happy. And check the guy with him.”

  His minder was never more than two feet from Houston’s shoulder, and the thick bulge under his jacket probably wasn’t a rolled-up newspaper. We stayed out of sight and watched close. They walked under an open arch, into a parlor set aside for high-limit games. Gamblers hooted and smacked the felt as black chips flowed in a serpentine river. Hand to hand, dealer to player, and back again. Judging from the shouts and high fives, the players at a horseshoe-shaped poker table in the heart of the lounge were on a hot streak.

  Houston Dalenta took a seat. He anted up, nodded politely to the dealer, and started winning.

  There wasn’t anything subtle in his approach. Houston hit the table like a wrecking ball, turning the cheers to anguished groans as the cards turned his way again and again. He was a human vacuum cleaner, sucking all the luck and joy out of the room. Jessie sat at a slot machine near the archway, and I stood beside her, a good vantage point to watch the action from a distance. As one player threw down his cards and stalked out with a vintage Stetson in his angry fist, I put the pieces together.

  “He’s not a player,” I said. “He’s an employee. They caught him cheating, and they gave him a job.”

  Jessie pulled the slot-machine handle and glanced sidelong at the table, her brow furrowed. “Usually casinos toss you out for that. Or call the cops. Or break your fingers. Making you work there? That’s a new one on me.”

  “Old gambler folklore. The story goes, casinos would have a guy on staff called a cooler—his whole job was to ruin a table’s luck. Break a hot streak, turn a winner into a loser. I think that’s what they did with Houston. See, he’s pretending to be a player, mopping everybody up.”

  “And once he leaves the table,” Jessie said, “he hands the chips he just ‘won’ back to the pit boss. He’s cheating for the casino now.”

  “What do you do with a man who has an unbeatable system?”

  Jessie fed another bill into the slot machine, barely glancing at the reels as they whistled and spun. “You put him to good use. Okay, so what’s the scam? How’s he pulling it off?”

  I doubted a covert-ops program recruited him for his card-counting skills, and most of the obvious cheating techniques needed the help of a partner or even a corrupt dealer. Houston Dalenta worked solo. Even through the ache in my veins, I could smell the faint tang of magic clinging to his long-fingered hands as he tossed another black chip into the pot. Could he literally be stealing the other players’ luck? I’d never seen a magician capable of that, but it would explain his unbreakable winning streak.

  Then I thought back to when we rescued Luis, and how he’d described his partner in a fight. Houston knew every move the guy was going to make; he blocked punches the mugger hadn’t thrown yet.

  “He’s a precognitive,” I said.

  “In English?” Jessie asked.

  “He can see into the future. A friend of my mother’s, when I was a little kid, she had the gift, too. When she’d concentrate just before making a decision, she’d catch glimpses of possible outcomes. The power was strictly short term, very hazy, and only a few seconds long, but she always knew the right choice—because she’d already seen all the wrong ones.”

  Houston flipped a card, responding to the table’s groans with a casual shrug as he raked in another stack of chips.

  “Every time he plays,” I said, “he’s seeing every move that everybody else at the table is about to make. He knows what the dealer’s going to do and what cards are coming up next. In other words, if there’s any mathematical way for him to win the hand—”

  “He will win the hand,” Jessie said. “Imagine how that would work in a gunfight. Hell, I want to recruit this guy. So how are they keeping him here? One pit boss with a gun isn’t a big deterrent against that kind of power.”

  “Maybe they’ve got something on him. Come to think of it, he got a message out to Luis—we assumed he sneaked it out, but maybe they let him. He can protect himself with his ability, but that won’t stop these people from going after his boyfriend.”

  “As long as he does what he’s told, Luis is safe.” Jessie nodded, adding it up. “Houston’s been on the run for years, living under a fake name—he can’t go to the authorities anyway, not without blowing his cover. He’s all alone.”

  “He was alone,” I said. “Now he’s got us.”

  “How do you want to play it?”

  We needed more information. We weren’t sure who was running the Diamondback, or how many unfriendly pairs of eyes—and how many guns—stood between us, Houston, and the exit. Getting sloppy could get Houston killed, and considering the other Cold Spectrum survivor had vanished off the grid, he was our best and maybe our only connection to the truth.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I need a napkin and a pen. We’re going to make Houston’s powers work for us.”

  FIVE

&nb
sp; A cocktail waitress had everything I needed. I tipped her and clicked the ballpoint pen, flipping a napkin over and writing on the back.

  “If his ability works the way I think it does,” I told Jessie, “he can see immediate near-future possibilities. Like, if someone’s about to step in front of him—assuming he’s concentrating—he’ll know to move out of the way.”

  “So you’re writing him a note?”

  I had to keep this short and simple. Houston Coe, I scribbled, using his original name, we know who you are. We are here to help.

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  Houston pushed his chair back. He’d left the opposition in ruins, and his stack of chips had grown from a cottage to a skyscraper or three. The pit boss with the gun eased around the table, looming over his shoulder.

  “How are you going to pass it to him without the gorilla seeing you?” Jessie asked.

  “If this works how I think, I won’t have to. Or, that is to say, I will, but then I won’t.”

  “You know, usually it’s Kevin who makes my brain hurt. Also, I’ve been known to smack Kevin up the back side of the head every once in a while. You should contemplate these facts and how they may be connected.”

  I held up the note for Jessie. “If I approach Houston with every intention of handing him this note, then in some iteration of his future sight, he takes it and reads it a few seconds later, right?”

  Jessie broke into a smile. “Which means he doesn’t have to take it. Because he did read it. He’ll know what you wrote without ever touching the napkin.”

  I added the final words: If you can read this, give me a sign.

  “It’s an experiment,” I said. “If this works, we know we can get messages to him without his captors noticing. We can work out a plan from there.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then we may have to escalate things a lot faster than I’d like. Get ready.”

  I set myself on a collision course with Houston, two passing planes on a runway lined with dirty diamonds. A wall of slot machines let out an electronic cheer on my left, lights cascading in time with my footsteps. For this to work, I couldn’t just hold the napkin: I had to approach with every intention of handing it to him. Which meant if I was wrong about Houston’s powers, I was about to pass him a note in plain view of his minder. Bad news for everybody involved.

  I never had the chance. As the gap between us shrank to five feet, then two, Houston locked eyes with me. He gave a short, firm shake of his head. “Uh-uh,” he said under his breath. I pocketed the napkin and kept walking.

  From behind my back, he spoke up. “Miss?”

  I paused, turning. Under the pit boss’s glowering stare, Houston crouched to scoop a plastic key card from the grimy carpet. He held it out to me.

  “I think you dropped this.”

  I took the card. His minder gave him a nudge, steering him toward the elevator banks. Jessie fell in at my side as I quietly followed, trailing them at a distance, stepping behind a slot machine as they waited for the elevator doors to whisper open. Once they were on board, I watched the glowing orange numbers climb.

  “Did you see where the card came from?” I asked Jessie.

  “Yeah, it was slick. He palmed it from his hip pocket and dropped it down to his foot, out of the gorilla’s eye line, and gave it a little kick for distance. I think we can assume he got the message.”

  The numbers climbed. First floor, second, third . . . all the way up to twelve, where the elevator paused long enough to let its passengers off. Penthouse floor. I twirled the key card in my fingers, one side solid black, the other embossed with the Diamondback’s swirling logo.

  “And we got his.” I tapped my earpiece. “Kevin, are you in?”

  “Eh, sort of? They’ve got crazy-good security on some chunks of their system, but the rest is a joke. If there’s anything incriminating on here, they’ve got it locked down tight. I’ve got employee schedules, catering department, and the reservation system so far.”

  “Good. Hit reservations—pull all the room assignments for the twelfth floor. Looks like that’s where they’re keeping Houston, and he just slipped us a key.”

  “Probably not alone,” Jessie said. “If they won’t let him walk around without an armed escort, I guarantee they’ve got extra security up there.”

  “You’ll need to do more than bypass a few thugs, I’m afraid.” April’s voice chimed in over the line. “I’ve traced the ownership records. While the Diamondback—and four other Atlantic City properties—is held by a trust, said trust can be traced directly to one Big Jim Ammandola.”

  Jessie scrunched up her face. “I’m guessing he’s not an Eagle Scout.”

  “Regrettably, no. After a Bureau operation led to the arrest of most of the DeCavalcante crime family’s associates, Mr. Ammandola stepped in to fill the power vacuum in Atlantic City. He holds strong ties to New York’s Five Families, is a ranking member of the local chamber of commerce, and donates generously to the police widows’ and orphans’ fund.”

  “In other words,” Jessie said, “we don’t need to get Houston out of this casino. We need to get him out of this city.”

  “That would be prudent, yes. Also, I’m not finding any indication of occult underworld ties, but one doesn’t rise to a position like Mr. Ammandola’s without some measure of supernatural support. I would prepare for physical and magical opposition.”

  Jessie looked my way. She turned off her earpiece. “You good for this?”

  I felt angry, defensive. I bit it back.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, that thing with Nadine at the Bast Club, it hit you pretty hard—”

  “We all took some hits,” I said. “That’s part of the job. We take it so other people don’t have to.”

  She reached out and put her hand on my arm. I must have been bristling harder than I thought. Jessie softened her voice, fixing her eyes on mine.

  “I’m just saying, we’re in for a fight here. I need to make sure you’re at a hundred percent.”

  What was I going to say, no?

  If we had the luxury of time, if we had any choice at all, I would have told her the truth. But we didn’t. So I had exactly two options. I could level with her, tell her that Nadine’s psychic poison was like a serpent chewing its way through my veins, and go into battle with Jessie distracted and worried about me. A recipe for disaster. Or I could suck it up, put on a fake smile, and deal with my problems on my own time.

  I put on the fake smile. My fingers brushed over hers.

  “I’m fine. What’s the plan, fearless leader?”

  “Let’s wait for tonight,” Jessie said. “I want to move when the casino’s at peak hours: the gangsters who own this place aren’t going to open fire in a room crowded with civilian customers, and outside we’ll have the cover of darkness. We go up to twelve, take out the security, and exfil Houston through the casino and into the parking garage. We’ll drive back to Philly and . . . well, from there, I guess it depends on what Houston has to tell us.”

  I checked the time on my phone. “We should split up for a couple of hours. Less chance of attracting attention before we make our move.”

  “Good idea. I’m gonna take a stroll up to twelve, pretend to be a lost tourist, and get the lay of the land. Keep watch down here in case they trot Houston out for another dog-and-pony show; maybe he’ll try to pass you a message.”

  She left me alone on the casino floor. Alone with the file on my phone, and the list of suspects and targets I’d requested from Vigilant Lock’s archives.

  AN ASSESSMENT, the prim black type read, OF INDIVIDUALS BELIEVED TO POSSESS INCUBUS/SUCCUBUS-CLASS ABILITIES.

  Scraps and rumors, mostly, partial write-ups of people who hadn’t quite gotten high profile enough to join the Hostile Entities register. Potential targets for future investigation. And one of them was a local. A gigolo and a hustler with a reputation for leaving his cl
ients inordinately satisfied.

  Just one kiss. If he could do what Nadine could, that’s all it would take. All I’d need to make the aching go away, to feel like myself again. To have my magic back, to be ready for the fight we knew was coming.

  All it would take was making a mockery of everything I claimed to stand for. Becoming a hypocrite, trafficking with the powers I’d sworn to destroy, and putting my own life in danger behind my partner’s back. That’s all. Not much.

  I argued with myself up and down the casino floor. I had a hundred reasons to say no. I just didn’t know how to say it. Only one or two reasons to say yes, but they were big and loud and drowning out the others. I told myself it wasn’t about the hunger, it wasn’t about relief, it was about being reliable. We were about to go up against the Atlantic City Mob, with the life of an informant—a man who could crack open the mystery that had dogged our heels since our first mission together—hanging in the balance. I couldn’t risk my powers fizzling out when I needed them most.

  I was being a good partner. That’s what I told myself as I logged into Atlantic City Backpage with a throwaway e-mail address and tapped out a private message. Five minutes later, “Romeo” pinged me back.

  Sure, he wrote, always happy to meet new friends. Three hundred roses is the tribute for one hour. Where are you staying?

  The Diamondback, I responded.

  You won’t be sorry, he told me.

  I tried to make myself believe it, but I wasn’t that good a liar yet. I found the ATM, used my cover identity’s card, embossed with the Oceanic Polymer logo, and took out three hundred in cash. The money felt grubby under my fingers, faded and worn. Then I waited and I paced until my phone pinged again and Romeo was waiting for me in the hotel bar.

  Last chance to turn back, I told myself, standing in the bar doorway. But that wasn’t true, either. I’d already made my choice. Only one thing left to do.