“Sounds good,” Spider replied.
“Tonight, we’re going to find out what kind of security these places have and start breaking in tomorrow,” I said.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve broken into a building,” Spider said.
“It’s a first for us,” Alex said.
“Don’t worry, doll, I’ll show you the ropes.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. I punched him on the shoulder to get him to stop, and he grinned wickedly.
“Here’s club number one,” Alex said, coming to a stop on the sidewalk.
There were a few people hanging around outside the metal doors of the club, but it was too early in the evening for it to be truly busy. Spider leaned against a wall across from the club to watch the place in unobtrusive silence; he blended in seamlessly with the dark. Alex and I looked more out of place but we managed to not get noticed.
“This place is a joke. I could sneak in here blindfolded. Let’s move on to the next one, this place won’t bother us none,” Spider said finally.
“Okay,” I agreed.
Spider led us through back alleys to the next club, past rotting garbage and shadowy dealings. He was tensely aware of every danger, every law being broken, even as kept an outward appearance of cool indifference.
Before we could get to the next club, we were stopped. At the corner of a road bustling with traffic, two boys around fifteen were loitering. They had their hands jammed into their pockets and hoods pulled over their faces as they watched people pass them on the sidewalk. As we
rounded the corner, one of the boys caught sight of Spider. He perked up and nudged the other boy, pointing out Spider to the second boy. I immediately focused on them, hoping they weren’t more gang members come to hurt my new friend.
“Spider…hey, bro.” The boy who spoke had a voice full of nervous energy.
Spider’s face was immediately wary. “Hey, guys.”
“Man…can you spot me a couple bucks? I swear, I won’t ask you for anything again,” the same boy said.
“You already owe me for last week,” Spider said.
“Come on man, be a pal.”
“How much?” Spider asked.
“Ten bucks, man, just ten bucks.”
Spider sighed and pulled bill out of his pocket. “Last time, Chris.”
“Thanks, man.”
Chris took the bill and stuffed it into the pocket of his dirty hoodie. The two boys immediately walked away and met up with another figure down the street. This figure was less the giving sort, more the selling.
“What was that about?” Alex asked.
Spider watched the boys, friends from before he had met Eli, and didn’t reply. That could have been me. I shouldn’t have given them the dough… A vision of the boy named Chris protecting Spider from an older kid circled in my thoughts, and I knew Spider felt indebted to him. It was the same way he felt indebted to me.
“Drugs,” I said quietly to Alex, so Spider couldn’t hear.
“Oh.”
We followed Spider, feeling sobered by the meeting. Spider, however, wasn’t eager to dwell on the moment. He talked a million miles a minute, doing his best to get in a friendly argument with me. Aware of the distraction he was searching for, I kept up our argument until we reached the second club. He didn’t mention the boys again, but around his bantering and sarcasm, I could sense his pain. It was difficult being indebted to someone who was so determined to ruin their own life. It was difficult for Spider to acknowledge how close to being like those boys he had been…before Eli had taken him in.
After the second club, we moved on, carefully cataloguing the security of each place we visited.
Spider was confident in his ability to break in to all of the buildings. Though it was mainly just standing around and watching the partiers do what they did best, I had a lot of fun scoping the places out. Alex’s quiet disapproval of the scene and Spider’s purposefully controversial
comments kept me entertained.
By the next night we all felt ready to do some constructive breaking and entering. Beads of sweat rolled off me in waves from the heat of the night and the nervous energy as we started a more hands-on approach to collecting information. Alex was keeping a look-out from across the street, while Spider picked a lock on a window in the shelter of an alley. Around the corner from us blaring techno music echoed out from the front of the club.
“Do you need help?” I asked Spider as he worked at the lock. In my nervous state I felt he was taking entirely too long.
“Would you ask Boggie if he needed help with a scene? Would you ask Cagney if he needed
help memorizing his lines?”
“Boggie?” I laughed.
“Humphrey Bogart,” Spider said.
“I know…” I said, surprised a street kid knew anything about classic movies.
He was more than willing to explain his favorite pastime even though I hadn’t asked. “I sneak into the theater sometimes. They play classic movies after midnight,” Spider said, opening the window with a nonchalant smile.
I whistled to Alex for her to join us and followed Spider into the dark room. The room was a low-key office with desks separated by chest high cubicles. Pictures of people’s families tried to make the cubicles more personal though ‘personal’ was difficult to achieve anytime cubicles were involved. The architecture was old and unique, proof the building had, at one time, served another purpose, perhaps as a family home. Our feet made the old wood floor creak and groan in protest, but I doubted anyone would hear over the music. Spider disappeared in the dark,
scouting the area. As I helped Alex through the window, I called to him.
“Sh!” he chided me. “You two take the filing cabinets. I’ll sort through the computers.”
A dull blue light illuminated his face as he turned one of the many computers on. Alex and I started shifting through the papers at his command. It was obvious pretty quickly that the club owner had his hands in a lot of questionable businesses, and an obsessive compulsive habit of leaving those dealings on paper, but nothing that mattered to our search. We had all agreed to not take longer than five minutes, figuring our time for getting caught doubled after then, but we didn’t need five minutes to know this wasn’t our place. It was just too human; illegal in nature, but human. We sneaked back out, leaving everything as it was.
“I could make a fortune over what that guy puts on his computer,” Spider said. “I can’t
understand why anyone would put those sorts of things into a place so easily hacked.”
“Probably because he’s human and humans like to feel organized,” I said.
“It’s stupid,” he disagreed.
“Yep,” I agreed.
“You know, you dolls aren’t half bad at this. You got a natural talent for the larcenous arts,”
Spider complemented us.
“Oh, geez, you do know how to make a girl blush,” I said.
“You’re not blushing,” he pointed out.
“No, no I’m not.”
Spider made a face at me and led the way to the next club on our list. Behind us, the techno music continued its assault on the streets of New Orleans oblivious to the fact that we had paid the building a visit.
The night passed in repetitive excitement. We broke into three buildings after our first. None of them provided us with any sort of hint to the nest here, but I had a lot of fun. To me, the adrenaline rush was well worth the climbing and sorting through piles of papers in search of something that probably wasn’t where we were looking. It helped, too, that I finally felt useful –
my mind reading ability usually gave us plenty of warning before someone could catch us, even by accident. It was hard to hide my exhilaration from Alex, who, while happy to help, was not happy about the idea of getting caught.
It took us a week of long nights to find a clue. The long hours hadn’t affected me nearly as much they had Alex and Spider, and Alex seemed the most affected by the
lack of sleep. She took to using a good portion of her food money on buying coffee to stay awake during our midnight
adventures and shadows developed under her eyes, but she refused to stay at the theater when I suggested it. Spider was able to manage on a lot less sleep. I wasn’t sure if he napped during the day someplace no one would find him, or if it was the advantage of his upbringing, but he was always ready for a break in and was always in the bantering frame of mind. I knew he was
having a lot of fun.
“Get your hands off my ass!” I hissed at Spider as he helped me through another club’s window exactly a week after our first break in. We were on a metal stairway to the side of a brick building. Spider was helping me through the window, which was at an odd angle in relation to the stairway. Even with my height I was having trouble getting through.
“It’s the only part of you you’re currently offering me!” he hissed back.
“Shut it, you two! You’re going to get us found!” Alex said from the base of the stairs.
I grunted in agreement as I pulled and Spider pushed. With another grunt I fell hard on to the tile floor. I rolled to my feet, surveying the room for dangers, and moved back to the window to help Spider and Alex up.
“This place looks promising,” Spider said when I had helped him in.
“You said that about the others,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but this place is fancy,” he pointed out.
“Well, it’s settled, then,” Alex said. “Solved. We can all go home.”
“Hey, look! An old-fashioned French telephone,” Spider said. He picked up the receiver and listened. “It works, too.” His fingers itched with the impulse to take it apart and see how it worked.
“Fascinating,” I said. “Can you pick this?” I jiggled a filing cabinet drawer, its locked state intriguing me.
“Ouch, doll. It hurts you even have to ask,” Spider said, setting the phone down.
“I told you not to call me ‘doll’,” I said as he moved to the cabinet.
“Yeah, yeah…” he replied. He took out his lock picking tools and started on the lock.
I looked through the books along the wall as he worked. I shifted a couple, curious about the titles. They were all in French. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus – authors I had heard about but had never read. The music from the club below shifted into a different hard hitting beat as I looked. It pulsed through my body, cancelling out the other sounds from the club I had been having trouble keeping out.
“This is all paperwork for the club,” Alex said from her place near the desk. “Nothing
legitimizing abductions, murder, and mayhem.” She raised an eyebrow at me, and I smiled.
“I still think we should’ve taken advantage of that first club’s dirty little secret,” Spider said.
“Of course you do,” I replied. “You have the mind of a blackmailer.” I dug through another filing cabinet that wasn’t locked, trying to find my focus again around the sound of the music.
“Messing with mob-esk types probably isn’t a good idea right now, though. We’ve got enough on our plates.”
“You know…the Seekers are sort of like a mob,” Alex said thoughtfully as she read a piece of paper.
“A mob who has no loyalty to family,” I said.
“And one who doesn’t put dead horses in your bed,” Alex said.
“Well, there is that,” I said.
Spider opened the door to the cabinet and eyed the room for a second time now that his task was complete. “No computer. It might be in a different room…” he suggested.
“We’re not risking it,” I said as I started to thumb through the files in the cabinet.
“Third one from the back,” Spider said, pointing over my right shoulder.
“You looked through this already?” I asked, annoyed he hadn’t told me.
“Didn’t have to.” He pointed at the third file from the back. I saw that its lettering was larger than the others and had my first name written in elegant handwriting. There were more flourishes in my five letter name than I had thought possible. I pulled the curiously named file from the drawer, my mind racing over possibilities.
All three of us jumped at the sound of a door banging open from somewhere down the hall.
Deep, masculine voices slowly approached our door, voices which didn’t take super hearing to notice. “I’m tellin’ you, I heard something.”
“A mouse crapping, maybe,” the second voice said. “You always think you hear something, and it always turns out to be nothing…”
“Whatever, just help me look.”
All three of us started moving at the same time. Alex was to the window first. I helped her out, then Spider, who, with my added frantic push, landed with a hard thump. With the folder
clamped in my mouth I dove out of the window and hit the metal stairs hard. My hands stinging from the fall, I ran down the stairs as fast as I could. Alex and Spider were already at the end of the street. They didn’t wait for me, but I didn’t want them to. They split up, going in opposite directions like we had planned. We would regroup at the theater later, when we were sure we weren’t being followed.
I slowed down once I was off the side road and went in the direction of Canal Street, giving them space to get away. On the corner, a jazz quartet played, filling the streets with a soulful sound I loved. Wanting to be close to the melancholy peace of their playing, I ducked into the open bar they were in front of. I settled on a red stool, enjoying the anonymity of the darkness of the interior. Trying to look casual, I waited to see if anyone followed me in. Thoughts of drinking, of hidden secrets, of buying and selling, of flirting and loving, were all meshed together in the symphony of normal human thought, but nobody was unduly interested in me, no one even
looked twice. Except for one person.
“Can I getcha something?” The bartender leaned forward to talk to me, his bright white teeth a beacon in the dark.
“Soda,” I said. “Can I have this paper?”
“Sure.” He put a glass of coke in front of me as I slid the paper across the bar.
The title of the paper immediately jumped out at me. POLICE STILL HUNT FOR ARSON
SUSPECT. I read the first few lines of the article, enough to know the police still didn’t have a clue as to who had set the fire at my hotel. The people in the blaze still remained a mystery, no one coming forward to claim them as family or friends. Around my sadness that the real people in the fire, the people who were our stand-ins, might never have their stories told, I was glad for the mystery. It meant Alex and I stayed safe.
Hiding the file with the horoscope section of the paper I looked inside. The file contained a single photo. I felt an instant jolt of recognition when I saw it: it was Daniel. He was looking behind him, his eyes searching, perhaps feeling the eyes of the photographer. His dark hair and green eyes stood out against his white linen shirt. His face was changed – tense and full of darkness. The bank clock beyond him dated the picture. It was from two days ago. I turned the picture over. Written in that same elegant writing was: Jackson Park. Tomorrow, noon.
Jackson Park was the park with the church. It was the park I spent so much time in. Did that mean Daniel was in the park, and I had missed him? Or did it mean he would be there tomorrow?
Why did the folder have my name on it instead of Daniel’s? My leg tapped an irregular beat on the floor. Had I found the nest? And, more importantly, did they know about Daniel? Had his cover been compromised?
“Hear about that fire?” the bartender asked. I glanced up and saw that he was watching me. I didn’t need the visuals from his brain to know he was hitting on me and using the story in the paper as a conversation starter. His face said enough.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Crazy right? That sort of thing never happens here.”
According to you. “Yeah…crazy.”
“I’ve heard that it was a mob hit. The owner is connected or something.”
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“Yeah, well, I’ve heard it was done by half angels,” I said.
He laughed and nodded knowingly. “I hear ya, I hear ya. I hope they catch them at any rate. I know the son of the housekeeper who died. They were close, ya know? It’s hit him real hard.
Want another round?”
I hadn’t even touched my coke. “No.” I put a couple of dollars on the bar and tucked the paper with the folder inside under my arm.
“Come back and see me!” he called.
I didn’t reply. Instead, I walked out with a million more questions than I had walked in with.
“Where have you been?!” Alex demanded as soon as I appeared in the doorway of the stage.
The kids were still awake and were gathered on the stage talking quietly. Alex and Spider were taking turns pacing in front of the door like a pendulum on a particularly agitated clock.
“Wanted to make sure I wasn’t followed,” I replied absently.
“Were you?” Spider asked.
“No.”
“What’s in the folder?” Alex asked.
I pulled the picture out of the paper and handed it to her. She and Spider studied it. “Who’s the dude?” Spider asked.
“Jackson Park?” Alex asked. She had turned the picture over. “Was that where this was?”
“Definitely not,” Spider said. “That’s a bank from near the trade center. Who’s the dude?”
“You sure?” I asked Spider.
“Is it a yuppie idiot easy to con?” he asked back.
“It has to be a meeting place for tomorrow, then,” Alex said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“But which part of the park? Who are you supposed to meet? Did Daniel leave this for you?”
Alex asked.
“I dunno,” I said. “None of that changes the fact that I’m going to be there tomorrow at noon.”
“That’s stupid,” she said. “You’re just going to hang out there?”
“What other choice do I have?” I asked.
“You could break into the club again…” Spider suggested. “Find out more about who you’re
dealing with.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I disagreed.
“Could be.” Spider pointed at the picture again. “So, who is this?”
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