Clawback

by Mike Cooper

  Unlike me, Clara picked up her phone on the first ring.

  “What were you waiting for? I called five times.”

  “I know,” I said. “I heard them all when I turned it on just now.”

  “Maybe it’s how I live.” She didn’t sound too annoyed. “Online publishing, you have to be available around the clock. Digital sweatshop and all that. But it seems like you’d be working inside the same set of parameters.”

  “Parameters.”

  “Life of danger? SMERSH operatives everywhere? If your job is to solve problems with guns, don’t enemies come looking for you?”

  “They don’t usually bother calling first.” I sat down on the Mallory’s squeaky bed, phone propped at my ear, and started pulling on my socks. “I like to think of them as counterparties.”

  “What?”

  “Not enemies.”

  “Whatever. Hey, I’m working at the athenaeum this morning. Want to meet me for lunch?”

  I looked around the depressing hotel room and saw nothing remotely edible. “How about breakfast instead?”

  “It’s already nine-thirty. Just getting up?”

  “A life of danger tends to run to late evenings. Brunch?”

  “Sure. Call me when you get here, I’ll come downstairs.”

  Of course I wouldn’t be allowed into the Thatcher by myself.

  “And read my story if you get a chance. From this morning. It’s running hot.”

  “Oh?” But she’d already hung up.

  I took the train downtown. Not too crowded, midmorning, which is an advantage to being self-employed. If you set your own schedule, you can avoid the awfulness of rush hour.

  Outside the Thatcher, Lockerby was just getting off his bicycle—another commuter on his own schedule.

  “Hi, Silas.” He was wearing khaki cutoffs and a sleeveless undershirt—okay for riding, maybe, but thin for the cool weather. His muscles were kind of wiry all over, like you see on those Tour de France dopers. He looked surprised to see me.

  “I’m meeting Clara. Where are you coming from?”

  “Bushwick.”

  “How’s the ride?”

  “Not bad, actually. And the Williamsburg Bridge is a decent way to enter the city.”

  His bike looked typical: a road frame, disguised in dull, mottled second-coat paint, with bullhorn handlebars and alloy, not carbon, rims. The fenders indicated a more mature sensibility, however—image-conscious riders would never use them—as did the ancient “Bikes Not Bombs” sticker on the down tube.

  “Tough in the winter, though.”

  He shrugged. “I used to see peasants in Panjwai pushing their bicycles over dirt roads in the mountains, loaded down with the harvest. This is nothing.”

  “Harvest?”

  “Opium, mostly. We were refereeing a civil war, not doing interdiction.”

  “I hear you.”

  A pair of men in business suits went past. Lockerby watched them, then turned back to me.

  “I was going to call you.”

  I thought about my throwaway collection. “That’s harder than you might think. What’s up?”

  “I’m worried about Clara. After she got mugged and all…I thought I saw someone staking this place out.”

  Now that was disturbing. “When?”

  “Last night. There was a car down the street, someone sitting in it.”

  Vehicles were parked all along the block. I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Lots of innocent explanations for something like that.”

  “It was there earlier in the day. That time with two heads visible.” Lockerby stooped to finish chaining his bike to an iron fence around a tree in the sidewalk.

  “All right.”

  He stood up. “You ever ride mounted patrols?”

  “Sure.”

  “Remember how it was, watching for IEDs? Pretty soon you’re so paranoid, every little pile of dirt looks like death?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I know what paranoia is. But I also learned how to pay attention to all the tiny details.”

  “Like a plate number?”

  “Yup.” He recited it. “New Jersey.”

  “Model?”

  “A silver Cadillac of some sort.”

  “Kind of fancy and memorable for a stakeout.”

  “They drove off when they saw me approaching.”

  If it weren’t for Clara’s involvement, I would have dismissed the whole thing. But Lockerby wasn’t a typical bystander, and Clara had already been attacked.

  “I’ll have the plate run,” I said. “Might take a day.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And let me know if you see them again—or anything else.” I gave him an unused phone number.

  After Lockerby went in, I surveyed the block once more. Nothing seemed out of place. I waited for Clara to emerge.

  A sausage-and-dog vendor was setting up at the corner, his grill smoke a reminder of how hungry I was. A claque of students went past, on break from the photography college down the avenue, most of them staring at their cellphones and talking to their friends simultaneously.

  “Silas!”

  She bounced down the steps, hair loose, a jacket tied around her waist, the ever-present courier bag in one hand.

  “You look great,” I said, and I meant it.

  I was ready to leave my entire life behind, right then.

  “Um, not you.” She laughed. “What happened to your face?”

  I guess the dings I’d taken from Hayden were more obvious than I’d hoped. “I’ll tell you about it, but let’s get that food first.”

  “This way.”

  We went up a couple blocks to a chrome-and-linoleum diner, the kind I never seem to find outside the city. The lumberjack special appealed, especially since a peek at the other booths suggested the owner had chosen “good food” over “huge portions” as a menu strategy. Clara ordered coffee—“And keep it coming, please.”

  “So what’s your big story?” I asked when the waitress disappeared back around the counter.

  “Plank Industrials. You didn’t read it?”

  “The Mallory Arms doesn’t provide en suite internet, surprisingly. But I heard last night—Plank’s in the batter’s box.”

  “I think that metaphor works only if the pitcher is throwing nothing but beanballs.”

  “Or grenades. You’re the wordsmith, not me. Anyway, where’d you pick up the rumor?”

  “It broke in London, about nine a.m. their time. Middle of the night here, of course. But I happened to be up early. Far as I can tell, I was first out the gate on this side of the pond.”

  “Congratulations. Are you getting source credits from Fox Business?”

  “Of course not. But plenty of links and hat tips in the feeds. Traffic is ticking over really well today.” She looked pleased. “The hosting provider says I may have to pay up a level—I’m hitting the monthly bandwidth limits in like four days.”

  “Will you still remember me when you’re famous?”

  “You can be a guest,” she said. “On my syndicated morning cable show.”

  She opened her laptop, found some wi-fi, and let me read the headlines. Maybe it was slow in the business bullpens—no bank collapses, huge fraud cases, or absconding fraudsters to talk about—but the Plank story dominated everywhere.

  Except print, since it had come too late to make it into the morning editions.

  Ill-informed pundits were pounding the airwaves—and the internet—competing to propose the most outlandish, yet believable, “analysis.” Predictably, the “main street is mad as hell and won’t take it anymore” meme was leading, with anticapitalist direct action a close second and “al Qaeda financial jihad” a distant third. Clara’s explanation—rational profit maximization—was the dark horse, a topic for odd corners of the blogosphere that seemed to understand how Wall Street actually worked.

  Our food arrived. I poured hot sauce over the egg-and-ham side of my plate and syrup ove
r the rest.

  “Why aren’t you camped out at Plank’s offices?” I asked, mouth full. “The attack on Faust came less than ten hours after the rumors appeared. An assault team is probably parachuting in as we speak.”

  “No one knows where he is.”

  “Really?”

  “Believe me, I’ve tried. But no surprise, right? After seeing what happened to Faust, Plank would be stupid not to disappear.”

  I’d read the Times that morning as I sat on the subway. They were too slow for the Plank story, but they had plenty on Faust’s sniper. The usual PR dynamic was at work, fortunately: NYPD and the FBI, both involved but each intensely resentful of the other, therefore willing to leak anything and everything that might demonstrate the prowess of their side of the investigation. That meant plenty of detail, the sort that really ought to have been kept in-house. You could almost follow the detective work in real time. If they ever got a solid lead on the sniper, the TV vans would probably get to his hideout first.

  Though that looked unlikely to be any time soon. Saxon had burned his tracks well.

  I wondered if I should drop an anonymous dime.

  “What I was thinking,” Clara said, raising her empty coffee cup toward the counter, “was that maybe you had access to other resources.”

  “Huh?”

  “To find Plank.”

  “He’s gone. Like you said.”

  “But you’re an investigator. Aren’t you?”

  And a damn good one, I felt like saying, but of course it wasn’t so. The sad truth of our profession is that mostly you just ask the same questions over and over, to more and more dull-witted participants, until you get lucky. I had a little more leeway than my state-licensed colleagues—I could hit someone in the face if they needed it, for example—but that helps less than you might think.

  Apart from internet databases, the job hasn’t changed much since the Pinkertons were tracking the James Gang.

  The waitress swung by with refills.

  “I could call around,” I said. “But it won’t get us anywhere. Plank has good reason to dive into a bunker. No one’s going to see him until he’s ready to come out.”

  Clara wasn’t giving up. “If you do find Plank, you call me first, okay? I’ll even cut you in on the exclusive, if you want. It’ll be worth a fortune.”

  Ganderson, Johnny and now Clara. Everyone wanted me to do their legwork for them.

  “You’re star-one on the speed dial,” I promised.

  Some syrup slopped, and I wiped my face with a napkin. I’d forgotten about the scrape from last night, and I must have winced when I rubbed over it.

  “So what happened?” Clara asked. “Fall off another helicopter?”

  “Feels like it.” I told her about running into Hayden, and the fistfight.

  “He was going to kill you? Did you call the police?”

  “He wouldn’t really have done it.” Shows how much perspective I was losing around Clara—I’d forgotten she was a civilian. “I wouldn’t have let him.”

  “But—”

  “And no, I didn’t call 911. The matter was settled.”

  She frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Well…”

  “Anyway, I thought you said the district attorney would put him in jail.”

  It was curious that Hayden was still out wandering around, waving a pistol at semi-innocent people on the street.

  “I’m not sure what to think about Hayden,” I said. “He couldn’t have shot Marlett. For that matter, he didn’t even know Marlett was coming after the money Hayden lost until I braced him that night. The timing doesn’t work.”

  “What you’re describing, though, he sounds fishy.”

  “Fishy.”

  “Crooked, even. He could be the kingpin.”

  “‘Kingpin’?”

  “The criminal mastermind.” She laughed. “Who hires gunsels to do the wet work.”

  “You don’t watch movies made later than 1940?”

  A group of kids came in, truants from some stratosphere prep school, and jammed themselves into a booth at the window. Two mothers dawdled over their coffee, children asleep in a double stroller blocking the aisle. A beam of painfully bright sunlight reflected off a glass skyscraper across the street, falling across one of the babies, who woke up with those tentative, prewailing coughs. The mother lifted him out and calmed him down.

  “I had a letter a couple days ago,” I said. “Out of the blue.”

  “A letter?”

  “You know—paper. In an envelope.”

  “And this is unusual, for you?” Clara didn’t seem surprised.

  “Right, well, he says he’s a long-lost brother I never knew about.”

  “No!”

  I told her the story Dave Ellins had written, and about looking him up online.

  “You think it’s true?”

  “His picture—it was like looking in a mirror. I don’t know what to think.”

  “Seems like there are only two alternatives. Either someone’s running an awfully complicated scam—”

  “The photos didn’t seem faked, but any idiot can use Photoshop.”

  “It’s not that easy.” She finished the last of her grapefruit. “The other option is he’s for real. Nothing complicated.”

  “No,” I said. “No such thing in my life. Everything’s complicated.”

  The letter had been on my mind. The more I ran the sentences through my head, the more ominous they became. I was out there, few years back. Guess I know what kind of accountant that makes you, huh?

  Dave could be my brother, or not. Either way he was a problem.

  “So write him back.” Her eyes were on mine. “Sometimes life is obvious.”

  “Maybe.”

  It was close to noon when we finally left the diner, forty bucks lighter but, at least in my case, completely stuffed. I wouldn’t need to eat for three or four hours.

  “I’m going back to the Thatcher,” Clara said. “I need to get a follow-up posted, maybe try to run down some interviews.”

  “Plank?”

  “I wish. Would you…”

  “What?”

  “I could get you into the Thatcher.”

  I smiled. “Sit around while you hammer away at the keyboard? Sounds exciting.”

  “The antiquarian map collection is quite good.”

  “You know, I’d love to.” In Clara’s company I could watch grass grow and be happy. “But I’ve got some errands this afternoon, before a job tonight.”

  “What’s that?”

  I hesitated. I’d told her about Hayden, but Riverton was different—she didn’t need to be an accomplice to outright, no-gray-about-it, illegal activity.

  “Running down a lead. I’ll let you know if it goes anywhere.”

  “Okay.” She turned toward the steps of the athenaeum. “Stay safe.”

  “Yeah, right.” I smiled. “You, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Zeke and I sat in the back of Hendrick’s car, which he’d driven into the city from his house in Westchester. Remarkably, he’d found a parking space exactly where he wanted, two blocks down Ninth Avenue from the Riverton Commodities office. It was dark, a little before eight, and the sidewalks were almost entirely empty. The district included office buildings and lunch restaurants and small businesses. The homeward commute cleared it out like a neutron bomb.

  “You have the supplies?” Hendrick asked, from the front.

  “Yeah.” Moonsuit, plasticuffs, utility clothes, and so forth. It had taken me hours, all the way to Newark and back, for most of the stuff. But out there you could pay cash and leave no trail.

  We checked our kit.

  “After I open the door,” said Hendrick, for the third time, “you wait at least twenty minutes. All understood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t be anywhere nearby when you go in. Not in my own car.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Zeke. “Silas is
a professional.”

  We pulled on unmarked, identical black ball caps, gray Dickies coveralls and light latex gloves in the color closest to skin I’d been able to find. I turned on a cellphone, connected to the other two on a conference call, and checked reception on the bluetooth earpieces. We then taped the phone’s switches to lock them on.

  Tactical Comm Gear for Dummies.

  “Right,” said Hendrick, and we all got out, slamming the doors simultaneously.

  The office building’s security was good enough to keep out panhandlers, ex-employees and the occasional midday con artist. But we weren’t in the diamond district, say, or on Fifth Avenue, where determined burglary gangs were a likely threat.

  At the head of the alley behind the building, I indicated landmarks in a whisper. Then Zeke shot out the neighboring wall’s camera with a pellet gun. It was accurate enough at twenty yards, and far better than any kind of real weapon, legality-wise. Those mandatory minimums for possession are a genuine deterrent.

  See? Gun control works.

  Of course, I had my Sig Sauer, but that’s because I’m a nonconformist thrill seeker.

  The metal utility door into Riverton’s building barely slowed Hendrick down. He scanned for alarms, double-checking my assertion that there weren’t any. Most management companies wouldn’t bother—too much expense, and individual tenants generally bought their own security systems—and this building was no exception. Satisfied after about ten seconds, Hendrick slipped his tools into the Sargent keyway, raked it, and pulled the door open faster than someone using a key might have managed.

  “Nice,” I mouthed at him, soundlessly, and he waved me in.

  Zeke disappeared back to the head of the alley, to keep an eye on both front and back entrances.

  “Go,” he said, his voice clipped, coming through the earpiece.

  “Right.”

  The emergency stairs were quiet, the air still and stale inside the closed stairwell. At the sixth floor Hendrick studied the heavy metal fire door for a moment, then simply slipped the latch with a strip of flat spring steel. He held it while I eased the door open, just enough to peer through the crack. The hallway was empty.

  I gave a thumbs-up, but followed that with one finger raised: wait a moment. Hendrick stood patiently while I unrolled the disposable Tyvek bunny suit from its plastic pouch and pulled it on. Elastic held the cuffs down over the latex gloves, and I tightened the hood drawstring enough to pull it around my cap. The thing was designed to OSHA hazmat standards, nice and snug.