by Mike Cooper
“Hendrick doesn’t come into the city often,” I said. “And he barely leaves the hotel when he does. We’ll find his room.”
“Hendrick?”
“Dutch, I’m pretty sure. That annoying accent they have.”
“He’s a hacker?”
“No. Not like them.” I pointed at two teenagers with BitCon T-shirts, each holding a tablet with one hand, typing with the other, and not saying a word. “Hacking isn’t just about computers. Phone phreaks, biopunks, digital artists, you name it—they’re all here.”
“And Hendrick’s part of that.”
“In a way.”
“So what does he do?”
“Locks.” We pushed through a side door, and I looked around the Flagstone’s lobby. “He’s very, very good at locks.”
I found a house phone and called the front desk—yes, it was only thirty feet away, but why not make it hard on whoever might look at the security videos someday? Hendrick, unworldly naïf that he was, had registered under his own name, which kept it simple. The operator connected me, and a woman answered.
“Hendrick’s busy.” Noise in the background—voices, music, sudden laughter.
“Tell him it’s Silas.”
“Whatever.” She hung up.
I looked at Clara. “They’re having a party, I think.”
“Are we invited?”
“More or less.”
“So…”
“She forgot to give me the room number.”
Clara nodded. “Let me try.”
She took the phone, went through the operator, and waited through what must have been seven or eight rings.
“Hendrick? No? Who are you? Listen, I found Hendrick’s, like, backpack on the floor down here. I dunno, he left it on the table or something, it was just lying there. Some stuff was falling out, like tools and all, but I put it back in. Well, yeah, I think he’d like it back, that’s why I’m calling, okay? You want me to bring it up?”
She put the receiver down. “Fifty-four-eighteen.”
“Hey, that was pretty good.”
“Journalism 101.”
“They teach social engineering in J-school?”
“No one will ever tell you what you want to know unless you ask.”
“A profound insight.” We walked over to the elevator bank.
The fifth floor hallway was quiet, though we could hear the party noise closer to Hendrick’s door.
The woman who opened it wore an orange badge on the chain around her neck, identifying her as one of BitCon’s organizers. Apart from that she looked like a community-college student in from Great Neck—straight blond hair, Hollister jeans, a rumpled linen jacket over a plunging purple silk top.
“Silas,” I said. “We just spoke.”
“He does know you.” She sounded like this had been a surprise. “You have his backpack?”
“Backpack?”
“Never mind.”
Inside a half-dozen people stood around the room’s desk, which had been pulled away from the wall. Two men were seated, across from each other, working intently. Brass, tools and mechanical parts littered the desktop. Music thumped from a docked iPod. Bottles and beer cans and half-empty cups seemed to occupy every spare surface.
“Hendrick,” I said to Clara, pointing. Hendrick, who’d grown out his vandyke to an even more impressive point and apparently curled the mustache ends with wax, looked up long enough to glance at me, then went back to the lockset in his hand.
“Seven minutes,” said a guy standing next to us, “and forty seconds, so far.”
“What are they working?”
“Medeco. Right out of the factory box.”
I made an impressed sort of grunt.
“It’s a race?” Clara asked.
“Unofficial,” said the bystander. “The public competition is tomorrow. They’re just having fun.”
Each of the seated men held an unmounted cylinder in one hand, with the tension wrench, and manipulated a pick in the keyway with the other. Hendrick’s motions were sort of jerky, the pick moving in staccato twitches, while his opponent had a more deliberate style.
“It’s not very realistic,” said Clara. “Shouldn’t the locks be installed on an actual door or something?”
“Think of it like fencing.” I found a plastic bottle of soda and two cups. “Stylized. They’re not pretending to be burglars.”
“It’s purely about the locks,” said the man next to us, checking his stopwatch again.
“Medeco markets these as unpickable.” And just as I said that, Hendrick’s wrench hand twisted the cylinder. He swung the lock in the air and called, “Done!”
“8:52,” said the timekeeper. “Not a record, but close. Fucking A, Henny.”
The noise level rose as the bystanders called congratulations, refilled their drinks, slapped Hendrick’s shoulder. His opponent scowled for a moment, then withdrew his tools and dropped the lockset onto the desk. The scowl turned to a grin. “We’ll see what you can do tomorrow,” he said to Hendrick. “Under pressure.”
“Even faster.” The words were accented, like I’d told Clara. He wore a bush jacket, covered with buttons and zips and epaulets.
“No way.”
“Yes? You will put some money on it, then?” Hendrick rolled his shoulders. “Let us say, ten dollars for every second under nine minutes.”
They stared at each other, Hendrick kind of smiling, his opponent frowning.
“No thanks,” he said, finally.
Hendrick shrugged and stood up. When he turned around, he saw me again. The smile didn’t go away, but it didn’t widen, either.
“Silas Cade. What the fuck.” Pronouncing it fohk. He stepped forward.
“Long time, Hendrick.” I turned. “This is Clara, she writes for—”
That was it for introductions, because Hendrick took a short, savage swing at my face.
I hesitated, twisted a second too late, and the open heel of his hand grazed my jaw.
“Hey!”
But he didn’t stop, following up with an elbow strike at my ribs. This time I reacted—block, counterstrike and a trap, catching his arm under mine and locking his elbow.
An ounce of additional pressure would have broken the joint. He grunted.
My free hand was on Hendrick’s face, one further motion away from snapping his neck. For a moment we stood, not moving, in some sort of intimate embrace.
Then Hendrick laughed, and I shoved him away.
“You fucked up my mexican,” he said, and tweaked the end of his mustache, getting the curl back right.
“My fault?”
“Thought you were better than that, man.”
I looked at him. “What was that about?”
“Just to see if you are still in the game.”
“Jesus, I could have broken your fingers.” But he’d started with an open-hand blow, and the elbow. The piano player wouldn’t really risk his hands.
People around us were staring.
“My friend,” said Hendrick, gesturing at me and talking to them. Conversation slowly started up again. Someone took a heavy security padlock from the table—an Abus Granit, the sort you’d need a jackhammer to break—and started working it with a shim. Attention drifted away from us.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Clara, like this was all normal in her world. Who knows? Maybe it was.
“Yes.” Hendrick looked her over. “A writer, Silas says? Perhaps I have read you. What do you write?”
“Financial opinion, risk management, that sort of thing.”
“Perhaps not.”
But they had more in common than I would have thought. Hendrick had a real estate broker’s license—locksport didn’t pay the bills—which meant he followed the big Manhattan developers, which meant, in turn, that he had to know something about the money flow. Clara had written up some shady deals, and she knew someone at some REIT whom Hendrick had run into once, and did she ever talk to Charley Cox? Who w
as doing that fifty-story mixed block in Brooklyn? Why sure, Charley was a good guy! Apart from that business with the lawsuit and the restraining order, but hey. Charley’s partner was a dickhead, right, so there you go.
And so on. They were chattering away like stay-at-home moms at the playground. After a few minutes of standing around, I drained my soda cup and went looking for another.
“You know Hendrick long?” The woman who’d let us in poured us both another Sprite. She must have been another lock enthusiast—the computer guys could drink themselves blotto, but anyone serious about skills that relied on physical dexterity tended to be careful with the booze.
“Years.”
She nodded. I observed, in a detached way, how her top’s neckline gaped.
“He cracked an Abloy Protec last year,” she said. “First time ever. The company didn’t believe it, even after he put up a video on YouTube.”
“He’s good.”
She drank from her cup and then held it at her mouth, looking at me over the rim. “What do you do, Silas?”
“Tax consulting.”
“How interesting.”
“The new FASB ruling on amortization—did you hear about it?”
“Um.”
“Goodwill write-offs are going to have to be marked to market well within the acquisition window. My clients are furious.”
She smiled. “I’m sure they must be.”
Okay, I cheated. Any normal, sane person would have found that comment incomprehensible and uninteresting—unless they were in the business, which this woman sure didn’t seem to be. So she was pretending. Why? Had she figured out how I really knew Hendrick? He and I had done some jobs together; you can probably figure out what kind, given our respective skill sets. Had he talked about them? Was I burned?
“Are you competing?” I asked.
“In the locks?” She laughed. “I’m not very good.”
“Oh.”
“Some of these guys, they’re so impressive.” She leaned forward, and I could clearly see a delicate pink bra.
“Um.” I started to feel totally paranoid.
“How about you?”
“Me?”
“You don’t look much like a locksmith.” She smiled up. “More like mixed martial arts.”
“I hit the Y now and then.” I finished my Sprite, just for something to do.
“Oh, I suspect you do more than that.”
It says something about my current state of paranoia that the obvious reason for her curiosity didn’t occur to me until Clara appeared.
“I lost Hendrick,” she said. “See that guy in the green sweater? He said he had a Zamok 37.”
The woman shifted her gaze to Clara. “A Zamok? You’re kidding.”
“Some old lock. He claimed it came straight from a decommissioned Russian nuclear silo, but how believable is that?”
Pretty darn believable, apparently. The woman’s eyes got big, and she practically ran to the cluster of people around Hendrick. Clara watched her go.
“Amazing.”
“What?”
“That she found that lock more interesting than you.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, she was all over you. Did she manage to fall out of her shirt? Not for lack of trying, not with that neckline.”
Oh. I must have looked kind of stupid, with my mouth hanging open. But I recovered.
“They were kind of obvious, weren’t they? Not like yours.” I made a pointed show of checking.
Clara didn’t blush. “Maybe you’ll find out someday.” She looked into my eyes, not blinking.
Another long moment.
Clara broke it with a laugh. “Anyway, Hendrick said he’d be happy to help you out. With whatever it is you asked him about.”
That was the message I’d left him earlier that day. He’d called me back, saying he was in town, but we never connected directly. Thus the trip here.
“Which is what, exactly?” Clara continued.
“Huh?”
“What possible job might you have that requires a highly skilled locksmith?” She glanced over at Hendrick, gleefully disassembling the top-secret Soviet hardware while his fan club offered suggestions and comments. “Someone who can pick a Medeco in eight minutes?”
“My front door key sticks all the time,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Sometimes it takes three tries before I can get in.”
“That many?”
Damn it, there we were staring into each other’s eyes again.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked.
Clara grinned. “Always,” she said.
My phone rang.
Or rather, one of my phones. I’d put on the colored tape markers but already had forgotten which was which. Ganderson? Walter? Someone else? It took several rings as I checked pockets and pressed the wrong buttons.
Not exactly suave, and a little too distracting, considering the surprises my job was always offering up. I really had to figure out a better way of keeping in touch.
“Hello?”
“Cade? Is that you?” Ganderson’s voice was so loud the cheap speaker got buzzy. “What the fuck are you doing at this hotel?”
I instinctively clapped my hand over the phone and looked around, wondering if he was somehow in the room. Clara watched, amused. I whispered to her, “Just a minute, let me get rid of this,” then uncovered the handset.
“Ah, which hotel do you mean?”
“The Flagstone, you idiot. I can’t believe you’re there for the Galician Cooking Association Gala, so it must be BitCon. Aren’t you too old for that?”
Classy, my clients. “Personal errand,” I said. “Unrelated. How did you know I was here?”
“Following your phone. I’m outside. Something’s come up, I need you out here—now.”
Fuck. “Five minutes.”
“Don’t screw around. We’re triple-parked.” He hung up.
I looked at Clara. “Where were we?”
“On our way out of here.” She crossed her arms. The Avalon Shrike logo—all lightning and fireworks—pulled across her breasts. Jesus.
“It’s a client,” I said. “He apparently needs some hand-holding.”
She didn’t say anything, just uncrossed her arms and held out her own hand. A moment passed.
Oh, I was torn.
“Dammit, he’s paying cash money.”
Clara shrugged. “Your business.”
“Look, what would you do if Warren Buffet called and offered the exclusive of a lifetime?”
“Invite you along, of course.”
Oops, walked into that one. “Sorry, too dangerous. It won’t take long. Wait for me.”
“Sure.” She put down the cup of Sprite. “Not here, though. I’ll be in the bar.”
“With this crowd?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll buy my own drink.”
“Just let me say good-bye to Hendrick,” I said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I got out of the elevator on the mezzanine, found the fire stairs, and exited on 54th around the block from the main entrance. It was turning into a pleasant evening, still damp but not too cool, and enough people were on the sidewalk that I could drift anonymously back to 53rd.
Ganderson’s limo was obvious, even with blacked-out passenger windows. It was a silver Range Rover LUX, waxed and gleaming in the street’s neon, with aftermarket chrome on the wheels. The Connecticut livery plate read “GANDY.”
Like it was still 2008. I sighed.
I stepped into the shadows of the building, close to a group of smokers, and watched for two or three minutes. The Range Rover just sat there, and if another team was in place, they weren’t moving either, so I couldn’t spot them.
What the hell. I pulled out the G-phone and hit redial.
“You said five minutes!”
“I got held up. Are you driving?”
“What? Of course. I told you that.”
“Come ro
und to 54th Street, by Ezra’s Bagels. I’ll meet you there.” I clicked off as he sputtered.
After a moment the Rover’s turn signal came on, and it moved slowly into traffic, heading for the corner. I went the other way, faster now. By the time Ganderson’s ride appeared on the back side of the block, I was already there, across the street. When the SUV slowed in front of Ezra’s, I ran across the traffic lanes, dodging yellow cabs, and rapped on the rear window, behind the driver.
The lock clicked, so I opened the door and stepped up and in.
“What was that all about?” Ganderson had to slide over, but the interior had only one seat row, so there was plenty of room. I scanned for weapons, bombs, other hazards—didn’t see anything. The driver was on the other side of a heavy glass window, watching me in the rearview mirror. I waved hello.
“I think that’s my question,” I said.
Ganderson grunted, then said to the air, “Drive around for a while.”
“Yes, si–” The driver’s voice, over an intercom, was cut off as Ganderson jabbed a switch on the seatback in front of him. But the vehicle started up again, toward the left turn lane.
“There’s been a development,” Ganderson started. He seemed even bigger in the closed space of the vehicle. His chalk stripe looked like a Brioni, five figures easy.
“Hold on.” I adjusted my jacket, making sure the Sig was handy. “Tell me again how you tracked me down. I deliberately disabled GPS on that phone.”
“The carriers know where you are.” Ganderson rolled his eyes. “They have to, that’s how cellphones work.”
Yeah, yeah. “I know that. But it’s not public data.”
“No.” He chuckled. “But we’re not the public. Anything’s available if you know who to ask. And how much to pay.”
“Fuck this.” I shook my head. “I’m going back to carrier pigeons.”
“What?”
“Never mind. What’s so important you drove into Manhattan chasing after me?”
“Not chasing you. I was leaving the office, not far, and it seemed easier this way.”