The Binding

by E. Z. Rinsky

  “You’re not my friend!” he screams so suddenly into the phone I feel like my eardrum shatters. “Don’t try to play games with me! Bring me the books by four tomorrow afternoon or so help me, I swear in his holy name I’ll make you two beg me for your lives! I swear it!”

  “Of course. Tomorrow at four,” I say, and quickly hang up. “Christ,” I say, rubbing my sweaty forehead. “What if we told him we don’t have them?”

  “He wouldn’t believe us,” Courtney says. “Remember, Oliver told him that the swap went through. So obviously he’d just assume that we’d taken them for ourselves.”

  I roll down the window and gulp down a few mouthfuls of hot air.

  “How did this happen?” My throat is raw. “How did we get in this mess? We didn’t do anything wrong. We don’t deserve this. This has nothing to fucking do with us!” I punch the dashboard of the shitty rental car. “Goddammit, Courtney. Sampson’s going to ruin our lives. I didn’t ask for this shit. I signed up to swap a bag for another bag. That’s it. And now we’re stuck in the most unimaginable storm of steaming shit I just . . . I just . . .”

  Courtney puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “Take some deep breaths,” he says in a soothing deep voice. “Just think about that. Slow, easy, deep breaths.”

  I try to obey.

  In. Out.

  “Now listen,” he says. “Here’s what I always tell myself when I’m tracking something, and it seems impossible: The books are somewhere. Okay? They didn’t just evaporate into thin air. Rico put them somewhere and they’re probably still there. We have a full twenty-six hours before we’re supposed to give them to Sampson. And we’re two very smart guys. This isn’t over.”

  I look down in my lap and realize my hands are shaking horribly.

  “I can’t think,” I say. “I’m exhausted. I need to sleep, even if it’s just an hour.”

  “Sure,” Courtney says, pulling the Honda back onto the road. “Let’s find somewhere for you to sleep for an hour or two.”

  “I’m sorry about Mindy,” I say. “I can tell you really liked her.”

  He keeps his eyes on the road. Doesn’t reply.

  “But Court, if she gets those books before us and leaves for London with them . . .” I’m too drained to describe the vivid image of strangling her with my bare hands, her eyes bulging out of her head.

  “She’ll call us if she finds anything,” he says, mostly to himself. “She just needed to concentrate.”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ll bet you were one of those kids who bought dime bags of oregano in high school and couldn’t tell the difference.”

  Courtney frowns.

  “What do you mean?”

  Exactly.

  We stop at Walgreens and buy three maps of downtown Denver, snacks and bottled coffee. It’s two in the afternoon when we check into a $39/night motel in Aurora.

  Courtney throws our bags on one of the two twin beds: He doesn’t expect to use his.

  He sits down cross-legged on the filthy carpet, pulls out his notebook, and tears the pages out—arranging them so he can see them all at once. Then spreads out the maps and circles the aquarium on all of them. He wants to chart logical paths Rico could have taken after fleeing.

  I collapse on my bed. Desperately want to sleep, but it will take me a little while to wind down.

  “Wanna talk anything over?” I ask.

  He doesn’t respond for a second, then sits back up and licks his lips.

  “Sure,” he says.

  That’s bad. If he wants to talk things over with me, it means he doesn’t have anything.

  “We start with the questions, Frank,” he says, in a tone that’s a little bit lecturey. I let it slide. “First the questions, then the answers.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “What are the questions? If you had a genie right now and could ask him three questions, what would they be?”

  I bury my nose in the pillow.

  “Never mind. You just do your thing.”

  “Just—”

  “Fine, fine,” I say, turning back to face him. “Um, first. Where did Rico put the books?”

  “Wrong,” Courtney says.

  “Wrong?” I say. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s not the right question. The question is: Where are the books now? Now, granted, the answer to both is probably the same. But we can’t discount the possibility that someone else has found them already.”

  I roll my eyes. Think he’s grandstanding a little, but whatever.

  “Fine.”

  “Now let’s call that question one,” Courtney says. “In order to answer question one, we need to answer at least one of a few subquestions. Namely—”

  “Where would have been the most convenient place for Rico to leave the books? Where would Sophnot ‘never go’?”

  Courtney nods, satisfied.

  “Good.”

  I clench my jaw. He doesn’t have any more idea about this than I do.

  “Okay,” Courtney says. “What’s the second question you’d ask the genie?”

  “Uhhhh.” I tap my chin. “Where is Oliver Vicks at this exact moment?”

  “Yes. And the subquestions?”

  I sigh.

  “There’s a million. Why did he write these books in the first place? Why did he kill Becky’s family—was it unrequited love? Why does he need forty-eight million dollars . . .” I stop. Expounding all the things we don’t know is making me feel a little sick, and even farther away from sleep.

  “Yeah,” Courtney says softly. “Right. All of that.”

  He slowly lowers his head to his notes, and his face reverts to his default frown, which means his brain is cranking up to full operating capacity.

  “Courtney,” I say. His head shoots up. “What did we decide about skipping town. If it’s five, six in the morning and we’ve got nothing . . .”

  Courtney’s face goes a little stony.

  “We’ll discuss that later,” he says. “I don’t like planning on failure.”

  “We have to be reasonable though,” I say. “I mean—”

  “Later,” he snaps, and returns to his notes. It’s not angry exactly, but I nearly jump at the sudden force in his voice. He’s obviously more upset about Mindy than he’s letting on, just swallowing it until this is over. Poor guy. Poor Courtney . . .

  “Frank. I have an idea.”

  Courtney is shaking me. I shoot up in bed and check my watch. I slept for seven hours, and it’s nine in the evening. Pitch black outside. I don’t feel the least bit refreshed. Was having nightmares, and I feel like I’ve been clenching myself into a ball and grinding my teeth.

  “Why did you let me sleep?” I snap.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “You just . . . you were so exhausted.”

  I stand up and rub my eyes. Grab for a bottle of coffee.

  “Have you just been staring at that thing for seven hours?” I ask.

  In response, Courtney shows me a map of Denver, now covered in a web of pen marks.

  “Rogers and Stern Partners is only three and a half miles from the aquarium. It’s where Oliver used to work, as an architect.”

  I blink at him.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Oliver would never go back to that place—he’d be too ashamed. But more importantly, he’d be recognized. So that’s why Rico left them there. Oliver couldn’t walk in there to get the books, even if he knew they were there. But we can.”

  I mull this over.

  “How would Rico know where Oliver used to work?” I ask

  “I don’t know,” Courtney admits. “But same as me, I guess. An hour of Googling.”

  I rub my bicep.

  “The office is definitely closed now,” I say. “We’ll have to wait till morning.”

  Courtney winces.

  “Actually,” he says, “it’s a big office space. They have eighty employees. That’s a lot to search so . . . I thought
it would be better to go in now. When it’s closed.”

  “Ugh, shit.” I rub my temples. “Breaking into an office?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to break in, exactly,” Courtney says. “It’s on the twenty-third floor of a huge office building downtown. There should be a guard downstairs around the clock, even though the front doors will be locked, and a few people will be working late throughout the building. We should just be able to talk our way in.”

  “Talk our way in?”

  Courtney nods.

  “This isn’t Manhattan, Frank. People here trust each other.”

  I eye him.

  “You really think there’s a decent chance the books are there?”

  He squirms a little under my gaze.

  “It’s the only thing I can think of,” he says—conveniently dodging the question.

  “Guess we don’t have a huge amount to lose,” I sigh and grab the Honda keys off the dresser. “Let’s take all our stuff with us,” I say.

  “So we can go to the airport after if the books aren’t there?” Courtney asks, clearly challenging me.

  I pat his stubbly cheek. He seems jarred by the physical contact. Or maybe he just noticed how grimy my hands are.

  “I guess a little sleep helped me think more clearly. I realized that if we flee, Sampson will cancel my passport immediately. And they’ll arrest me as soon as I come off the plane in Jakarta.” I smile grimly. “I think we’ll be in Colorado come Friday night, one way or another.”

  There’s a Walmart Supercenter a seven-minute drive from the motel that doesn’t close until ten thirty. We stop there and buy cheap suits—for Plan A. Then duct tape, women’s stockings and syringes (Courtney carries a few doses of injectable Propofol in his bag)—for the somewhat kinkier Plan B.

  The traffic as we get closer to the office building is absurd. Doesn’t take long to realize there’s a Rockies game tonight, and our building isn’t too far from Coors Field.

  “Shit,” I mutter, taking a sip of what will undoubtedly not be my last Red Bull of the evening. “Rockies game. Just our luck.”

  “I don’t know how people can watch football . . .” Courtney says. I don’t bother to correct him.

  It’s a quarter to eleven by the time we pass the building that contains the architecture firm. Problem is there’s no parking. Every lot is open and catering to people here for the baseball game. But the game must have started a while ago, because the lots are all full. And you can forget about parking on the street.

  Traffic is more or less gridlocked. Whether the game just ended, or these are people coming late to it, I don’t know. It’s taking almost four minutes to make it the length of a single block.

  “This isn’t gonna work,” I growl.

  “Keep looking, maybe we’ll find something.”

  “What? Courtney—there’s nowhere to park.”

  “Hold on, turn left here—we haven’t been down this road yet.”

  I start obeying, then slam on the brakes as I realize there’s only one lane on this road, and all the parked cars are facing toward me.

  “It’s a one-way road.”

  I reverse to get back into the “flow” of traffic—someone honks at me. I flip him off. Think about how unfortunate it would be if we get pulled over by the cops now.

  “We’re not gonna be able to park,” I say. “Not in any conventional sense.”

  “What do you—”

  I pull out of the traffic, and steer into a spot at the mouth of one of the full lots—in effect trapping several hundred cars inside the garage. Turn off the ignition.

  “Frank . . .” Courtney seems roughly as horrified by this parking violation as he did by Rico’s flayed carcass. “This will get towed in minutes.”

  “So we’ll get a new rental. On Sampson’s card.” I grin. “Take all your shit.”

  I grab my duffel from the backseat. Courtney takes his attaché and red acrylic tool bag. We’re already wearing the suits. Glad we packed light.

  People stare in disbelief as we leave the Honda there. Some people seem furious, but one guy actually rolls down his window and gives us a grinning thumbs-up.

  Courtney tries again Mindy on the way to the office building. Shakes his head in frustration.

  We’re the only people even remotely dressed up—everyone’s wearing jerseys or T-shirts of Denver sports teams. Lotta college-aged kids. See some DU and CU gear. Most of these people appear extremely drunk. I wonder if Thursday nights are always this crazy—or if a sporting event in the vicinity is excuse enough, even if you’re not attending.

  Our destination is one of the taller buildings. A soaring rectangular prism of glass. The whole lobby floor is a Wells Fargo, and the rest is offices. Didn’t have time to do much due diligence beyond that. Hopefully it won’t matter.

  “No guns,” Courtney murmurs to me, as we stand shoulder to shoulder across the street. “There are literally thousands of cameras in there. You pull out a gun, and the cops are swarming within minutes.”

  “I know,” I say. “Let me talk to him, okay?”

  “Sure, sure.” Courtney nods. “Honey, not vinegar, right?”

  I restrain myself from mentioning that he’s the one whose face always looks like he just swallowed a mouthful of balsamic.

  “I know.”

  We cross the street, climb the exterior steps up to the revolving glass doors at the main entrance to the lobby. Inside, as Courtney guessed, the reception desk is still manned despite the hour. But there are two guys there, not one.

  I breathe in deep, and then force a wide smile and rap on the glass of the locked revolving door. One of the guys looks up at me and points to a door to our right, then to the key card he’s wearing around his neck:

  To get in when the building is closed, you have to use your key card.

  The guy looks back down to whatever he’s watching behind the desk.

  I knock again, and he looks up, now annoyed.

  I spread my hands helplessly and pantomime: no card.

  He looks at me blankly.

  I wave him over. He looks at me like I’m crazy, and exchanges a look and a few words with his partner. They both look over at me. I smile and wave them over like, I’ll explain everything.

  Both of them wearily stand up and trot over to the revolving door. One is probably in his sixties, pink faced, probably a retired cop. The other is young and looks like a punk—I’m thinking he was a troubled juvenile who’s cleaned up, and is super grateful to get this gig.

  Stupid. They shouldn’t have both left their post.

  The old one unlocks the side door, the one you’d use your card to get in through. We rush over. The two of them are standing in the entrance.

  “Sorry sir, you need your card to get in after six thirty,” says the younger guy, clearly savoring his role as The Man.

  Six thirty. . . we left the aquarium around what, four on Tuesday? He definitely could have just waltzed in.

  “I know,” I say, with genuine exasperation. “Thing is, we rushed off to a dinner meeting that, as you can see, went late. And we left all our stuff in the office including our cards. Need those materials tonight—have a huge presentation tomorrow.”

  The young guy crosses his arms, trying to look tough, and looks up at the older guy.

  “You got ID?” Older guy asks. “Company ID or something?”

  “Left it all upstairs.” I shrug meekly. “Dumb, I know.”

  Old guy rolls his eyes, like what morons.

  “What office?” he asks.

  “Rogers and Stern, twenty-third floor.”

  The young guy just stands there with his arms folded. If it was up to him, he’d turn us away, I think. He’s too scared to fuck up and lose this job. The older guy’s just doing this job to keep busy in retirement; doesn’t really give a shit.

  “Alright. Come on in,” the old guy sighs and limps back to the check-in desk. “Lemme check the rosters. What are your names?”

/>   I bite my tongue.

  Gig’s up.

  I make a move to retreat but Courtney puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

  “Gregory White and Paul Buffet.”

  He clicks through something, breathing loudly through his nose.

  “Rogers and Stern, right?” he confirms.

  “Yes.”

  He frowns as he looks at the screen, then up at us.

  “I had to shave my beard.” Courtney smiles. “Wife wasn’t having it.”

  The old guy mulls this for a second, then sinks into his rotating chair, relief on his face evident.

  “Justin—take them up to the office and let them get their stuff.”

  Justin nods.

  “I’ll wait down here,” Courtney says. “We don’t both need to go up.”

  What the hell?

  Our eyes meet for a second, and Courtney’s eyes flit to the older guy. I get it, if we both go up, we have no control over the old guy. If the old guy sees anything fishy on the CCTV, he raises the alarm.

  Maybe Courtney plans to just talk this guy’s ear off. Try to convince him to go vegan. He’s got hours of material in that bag.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “Be back in a few.”

  “Come on,” says Justin, impatiently. I grab my duffel bag and follow him through the empty lobby to the elevators, the clicking of our footsteps echoing against the glass doors. He hits the up button, and smiles to me perfunctorily as we step into one of the six elevators.

  “What floor, sir?” he asks.

  “Twenty-three,” I say. There’s a magnetic reader on the elevator for cards, presumably needs to be used after hours. When the elevator doors don’t close, I smile at Justin. “We forgot our cards, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” He nods, and beeps his. Elevator doors slide shut. Justin has his hands folded over his crotch. I wonder if he realizes what a classic gesture of fear that is.

  That’s not good. He shouldn’t be afraid of me.

  “You know what the score to the Rockies game is?” I ask, smiling.

  He shrugs.

  “I’m from Arizona. Hate the Rockies.”

  My gaze zips to the mirrored camera discreetly tucked in the corner of the elevator. There are cameras everywhere in the public spaces: elevators and hallways. Only once we’re in the offices should the CCTV lose sight of us. Bulge in the right side of Justin’s tan suit jacket. Gun. Doubt night guards at office buildings keep them loaded, but you never know. They are right in front of a bank.