Cold Spectrum

by Craig Schaefer

  “Good news and bad news,” Kevin said. “Good news is, Linder just contacted us on an encrypted channel. They bought his story. He’s back in Vigilant’s good graces, though Crohn’s pretty much frozen him out of the hunt at this point.”

  “Good enough,” I said. “What’s the bad news?”

  “Linder’s tracking Panic Cell’s plane. It just touched down in New York.”

  A cold hand gripped my spine. The walls of the subway car closed in around us, and suddenly it felt like every other passenger was staring right at us. Every cell phone in every tight hand tapping out our location.

  “What?” I said. “How? We were careful.”

  Kevin lowered his voice to a muffled whisper. “Our new teammate is pissed. Aselia thinks Linder snitched on us.”

  I frowned. Easy conclusion, but it didn’t scan.

  “No,” I said. “If he betrayed us, he wouldn’t call to warn us about it: he wouldn’t want us to know Crohn was on our tail. His hands are clean—this time. What about Aselia’s buddies at the airstrip? She’s positive we can trust them?”

  “As positive as she can be, but she’s still working double time on the plane in case Panic Cell shows up here. Harmony, if they do—”

  “Leave without us,” Jessie said.

  I heard Kevin swallow, hard. “Boss?”

  “That’s an order. If you spot anything that looks like it might possibly be trouble, I want you, April, and Aselia out of there immediately.”

  “We’re not abandoning you—”

  “Kevin.” Jessie’s voice was as firm as a hand on the back of his neck. “I said it’s an order. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does, you can and you will fly out of here. Now give April the phone.”

  We waited as he passed it over.

  “Jessie,” April said, in a tone I couldn’t quite read.

  “I assume you heard that.”

  “I caught the gist of it from Kevin’s end. You don’t want us to wait for you if Crohn’s men come poking around.”

  “I expect he’ll try to disobey that order,” Jessie said. “I expect you won’t.”

  “You expect correctly. Be safe, Jessie.”

  “You, too.” Jessie nodded at me, and I hung up the phone.

  We listened to the rattling of the subway wheels. Lights strobed in the tunnel dark, flashing off grimy windows.

  “We messed up,” Jessie said. “Obviously. Just can’t see where.”

  “Could have been a street camera. We’ve been as careful as we can be, but New York is blanketed with them. If Crohn’s got people running traffic cams through facial recognition—”

  “Every cam in every city in America? Not even the Bureau can do that. No, it’s got to be something else.” She bit her bottom lip, thinking hard. “We’ll figure it out. Let’s just keep moving, and cover our tracks as best we can.”

  Once we got off at the Twenty-Third Street station, our tracks led for six minutes through Manhattan’s skyscraper canyons. They ended a stone’s throw from Broadway. Vlad gave us the secret lay of the land: our final destination was Wycombe’s, a two-story bookstore built into the gray brick facade of the Saint Francis Building. We camped at a table in the Starbucks down the block, watching the clock and watching the street. Dashwood Abbey didn’t open its doors until moonrise, as a rule.

  I sipped my hot coffee—black, one cream, one sugar—and waited. The shadows grew long, sunset dipping below the skyline, the streets choked with taxicabs and blaring horns. The commuter stampede was still under way by the time Jessie slurped the last dregs from her plastic cup through an oversize straw. She’d opted for some mocha monstrosity under a boulder of whipped cream and sluiced in caramel sauce. Then she’d had a second one with double the caramel.

  “I have been adequately caffeinated and sugared,” she said. She eyed my paper cup. “And you have been . . . bored.”

  “Nothing wrong with classic black coffee.” I pushed my chair back and stood on weary legs.

  “Sure, if Joe Friday is your role model.”

  “Just the facts, ma’am,” I deadpanned, following her to the door.

  Jessie stopped in her tracks. She looked back at me, wide-eyed.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’ve just . . .” She clapped her hands to her chest and batted her eyelashes at me. “I’ve never actually heard you say that out loud. And I didn’t know how much I wanted to until this very moment. Harmony . . . you complete me.”

  I grinned and gave her shoulder a push. “C’mon, let’s get to work.”

  Wycombe’s revolving door drew a stark dividing line between the night chill of the street and warm, soft ambience. Piped-in chamber music swallowed the muffled traffic noise, and the smell outside—musty cardboard and car exhaust—gave way to the scent of lavender. Track lighting cast sleek circles along the polished hardwood floor and wide, welcoming aisles. The bookstore kept late hours—the sign out front said they didn’t turn off the lights until midnight—but I only saw a handful of shoppers browsing the stacks.

  “Even if I didn’t know this place was off,” Jessie murmured at my side, “I’d still know it.”

  “How do you figure?”

  Jessie nodded at the shelves. “You tell me.”

  I put my detective hat on. There weren’t many New York Times bestsellers on display. No popular authors, or authors I recognized at all, really. Wycombe’s specialized in foreign translations and imported hardcovers, scholarly dissertations, entire sections on high cuisine and musical theory.

  “Cultured,” I said.

  “Mmm-hmm. And cultured doesn’t pay rent on two floors of Manhattan real estate, one street down from Broadway. Judging from the lack of customers, they’ve got champagne tastes and a ginger-ale budget.”

  “They’re making their money elsewhere.” I approached one of the clerks, a rail-thin woman in a black turtleneck sweaterdress. “Pardon me. Have you seen the abbot?”

  Her eyes widened, just a bit. Recognizing the pass phrase Vlad had taught us.

  “They say he’s gone away,” she replied, glancing left and right to ensure we were out of her customers’ earshot.

  “How far has he gone?” I asked.

  “Too far, perhaps.”

  I shook my head and folded my arms. As I did, I pressed my index and middle fingers together, tapping my elbows twice.

  “You can never go too far.”

  She favored us with a smile, and I lowered my arms. The ritual exchange complete. She pointed toward a short hallway in the back of the shop, under a plaque reading EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  “Just through there,” she said. “Please, enjoy yourselves.”

  Jessie looked over her shoulder and dropped her voice as we crossed the sales floor.

  “Thing about these occult-underground types,” she said, “they love their complicated, stupid-ass passwords. That was just embarrassing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I noticed you made me do it.”

  She rubbed my shoulder. “I wouldn’t have kept a straight face. You’re good at being stoic. It’s your superpower. Now, what do we have here?”

  At the end of the hall, past a sharp left turn, an elevator door with a single button waited for us. A pale stone plaque hung over the door, engraved with the words Fais ce que voudras. Jessie leaned in, punched the button, and glanced up at the carving.

  “What do you think that means?”

  “My high-school French is rusty, but . . .” I thought back, knowing I’d seen those words somewhere before. “Oh, right. It’s a quote from Rabelais. Means ‘Do what you will.’”

  The door rumbled open. Beyond, a small and empty cage with stainless steel walls awaited us.

  “Thank you,” Jessie said to the plaque. She stepped into the elevator. “Don’t mind if I do.”

  The panel offered a pair of buttons, 1 and 2. I tapped 2. Nothing happened.

  “Looks like we’re going down,” I said, and hit 1. The door shut, sealing us in, and the
elevator shuddered as it slowly descended.

  “Ominous.”

  “I assume it’s supposed to be,” I said. “So, what we’ve got here is basically the New York City version of Chicago’s Bast Club. On the plus side, it couldn’t possibly be more obnoxious than the Bast Club.”

  Jessie turned and gave me a long, hard look.

  “Why do you have to go and tempt fate like that?”

  The elevator chimed.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The elevator door opened onto darkness, and the music washed in. A thrumming bass line, deep and sinuous. It rumbled through the floor, up my legs, and straight into my spine like a writhing serpent made of sound. The walls beyond the door were painted midnight black, the only illumination coming from a tiny white plastic pyramid set into one corner of the floor where the hall bent to the left.

  Another bend, then another, and the serpentine hall opened onto a murky lounge half-lit in pale blue. Knife-scarred tables sat at odd angles with mismatched chairs. Sofas ringed the room, all upholstered in fraying velvet. Couples sat here and there; others lingered by a bar. The shelves behind the bar were lined with empty bottles, foreign brands with names I’d never heard of, and the barflies pantomimed sipping from dry and dusty glasses. Some of the couples, most dressed in tailored suits or haute couture, whispered under the thrumming bass. Others stared at one another in perfect silence. A few wore masks, pale white and sculpted to resemble the faces of animals.

  “What was that you were saying a minute ago?” Jessie whispered in my ear.

  There were no rules posted, but raising my voice instinctively felt like a bad idea. I whispered back, “Let’s keep moving.”

  The lounge had three exits, open archways spaced at random along the walls. We chose one and navigated between walls of bare wood slats. Up ahead, beyond a closed and unadorned door, a cry of pain rang out. Then another, along with a muffled crack, as my shoulders tensed and I reached for my holster.

  Jessie stepped ahead of me, the hall barely wide enough for two people to move side by side. She paused at the door. She opened it, barely an inch, and peered inside. Then she closed it again. She looked back at me and shook her head as she whispered, “Nobody’s getting hurt. Well, they are, but—” She shook her head again. “It’s a play party.”

  I blinked. “What’s a play party?”

  Jessie patted my shoulder. “Dear, sweet, innocent Harmony. Sweet, impressionable, naive—”

  “It’s a sex thing,” I whispered. “Isn’t it?”

  “C’mon.” She nodded ahead. “Y’know, normally I might check this out . . .”

  “There are things I don’t need to know about you, Jessie.”

  “My safe word is Oklahoma.” She winked and kept walking.

  We skirted through a small octagonal room filled with dangling glass wind chimes. Underground, in heat that grew more stifling the longer we lingered, there was no wind. Yet as we turned our backs, they chimed anyway. Jessie opened a random door, and we stared into a lightless chamber, squinting to see. Someone was in there, huddled in the farthest corner, clutching their arms and slowly rocking from side to side as they faced the wall.

  “Uh-uh,” Jessie said. She shut the door.

  Another archway opened onto a second lounge. Unlike the first, this one had full bottles behind the bar and an actual bartender—dressed in red suspenders and his cuffs rolled up to show off his tattoo sleeves—to serve them up. His golden septum piercing glittered as he gave us an inviting nod from across the room. This was the real lounge, I assumed, as far as anything in Dashwood Abbey felt real. The room thrummed with low conversation, partygoers casting smoldering glances, dark laughter and clinking glasses. Everything—the tables, the benches, the bar—was gray. Draped in gray velvet or painted the colors of smoke, fleeting, like the world around us could vanish under my fingertips.

  “Ladies,” the bartender said. A light strip along the bar shone up and onto his face from below, like a counselor about to tell a ghost story around a campfire. Jessie slid onto a padded stool. I stood at her shoulder.

  “Evening,” Jessie said. “Quite a place you’ve got here.”

  He gave us a knowing smile. “First-timers, huh? Thought so. From out of town?”

  “Chicago,” I said. “Traveling on business. Some friends of ours at the Bast Club said we had to check this place out.”

  Never hurts to drop a name or two. Our credentials established, his smile grew a bit more familiar. He reached for a tumbler behind the bar and wiped it out with a storm-gray terry cloth.

  “I like to think we have a little something for everyone,” he said. “Patrons come to us with healthy desires, and we try to . . . facilitate them.”

  “What about the unhealthy ones?” I asked him.

  He chuckled and picked up a smoked-glass bottle. The label, scarlet with black letters, was in Cyrillic. “Those, too. But let’s start where we start. Drinks?”

  “How about a manhattan?” Jessie said.

  The bartender gave her a patronizing look. “Oh, your friends didn’t tell you.”

  “Tell us what?” Jessie said. “Is a manhattan called something different in Manhattan? Like how french fries are called pommes frites in France?”

  “Drinks at Dashwood Abbey don’t work that way. You order by flavor or feel, whatever your palate is craving, and I mix something to suit. Perhaps you’d like something fruity and cold, something tangy and hot? Maybe something recklessly erotic, but with an aftertaste of next-morning regret. Something mournful, perhaps.”

  “How can a drink be mournful?” I asked.

  He turned to regard me, his face underlit by the bar, and the hint of a dare dancing in his eyes.

  “Ask for one,” he said, “and find out.”

  “Spicy,” Jessie told him. “Spicy sounds good.”

  He flipped the bottle, catching it in his other hand, and gave it a shake. “Spicy like dancing the tango with your lover, or spicy like a back-alley knife fight?”

  “Let’s go with the knife fight.”

  He poured from unrecognizable carafes, shaking thick cubes of ice in a tumbler, and looked my way. “And you, miss?”

  I wasn’t sure. As I thought it over, he took another long look at me.

  “Those aren’t your usual clothes,” he told me.

  I glanced down at my thrift-store disguise. “Oh?”

  “They fit you fine, but you wear them like they’re made of burlap. Your every move, chafing.” He snatched up another bottle. “No, you . . . I see you in a battered trench coat, the kind that fits you like an old familiar song. Leaning against the bar in some low-rent dive, marinating in bourbon and misery, contemplating the dame who did you wrong.”

  I forced half a smile, even as his gaze dug a hole straight through me. He poured the contents of the tumbler into a cocktail glass without even looking at it, not missing a drop.

  “You’ve mistaken me for an old private-eye movie,” I told him.

  “Have I? I get impressions about people.” He tapped the side of his head and swapped bottles, reaching for a blue glass decanter.

  The label bore characters in a language I couldn’t even recognize, a disjointed mash-up of Chinese letters and Nordic runes.

  “Definitely a trench coat. Alone, your back to the wall, coming around to the terrible truth that every noir hero must eventually face.”

  “Which is?” I asked.

  “That the world as you wish it to be, and the world as it is, are two very different things and always will be. That happiness is fleeting, that pain is the human condition, and that life is a string of short-lived ports of solace in one long, dark storm.”

  He slid two glasses toward us. Jessie’s was lobster pink and speckled scarlet, bits of red pepper bobbing on the surface. Mine was umber brown, served in a lowball glass with an octagonal stick of ice leaning to one side like a garnish.

  “Cheers,” he said. I raised my glass and took a sip.

  It tasted
like a saxophone melody playing in a cold summer rain. Smoky and swirling and pulling me down, a little come-hither, a little lonely.

  Jessie blinked at her glass, wide-eyed.

  “This is . . . really damn good,” she said.

  The bartender just whistled, wiping down another tumbler and looking smug.

  “You must know your clientele,” I said.

  “I’m a bartender. People tell me things, with their words or their faces. I listen.”

  “We’re looking to meet up with a friend of a friend. Tonino Giannetti.”

  He glanced up from his work. “Tony Four-Ways? Now, why would a couple of nice ladies like you want to talk to a nasty piece of work like that?”

  “Like I said,” I told him, “we’re traveling on business.”

  The bartender’s gaze dropped to my side. I cut a slim profile, but his eyes still latched on to the gun under my windbreaker as if he could see through the cheap fabric.

  “Word of advice,” he said. “I don’t know what your line of business is, but if you’re into hostile takeovers, Dashwood Abbey has ways of protecting itself. And our valued clientele.”

  “You make it sound like Tony has enemies.”

  “Tony likes the ladies,” the bartender said, “and he likes dropping names to make himself sound more important than he is. Names that certain people might not want dropped. Play gangster games, win gangster prizes.”

  “We just want to talk to him,” Jessie said. “We’re basically friendly people.”

  The bartender gave a casual nod over my left shoulder. Steering my attention to the back of the lounge.

  “Far sofa, against the wall,” he said. “Wears his hair in a side part, under a fistful of grease. Powder-blue suit.”

  I paid for the drinks with cash. We carried our glasses across the lounge, winding between tables and murmured conversations. Giannetti’s voice rang out over the rest, drenched in alcohol-infused bravado.

  “So then I said,” he laughed, “you ain’t apologized to my other fist yet.”

  The women to his left and his right—a blonde and a brunette in minidresses the color of smoke—giggled politely. He had a chubby arm around each of their shoulders, leaning back on the sofa with his knees spread. His gaze swung our way, hungry, taking us in from head to toe.