Crisscross

  They’d hired someone to wipe his computer clean and—

  Goddamn! It must have been the same guy who mugged him and stole his backup disk! Blindsided from two different directions.

  He rammed the handset against the face of the pay phone, slamming it against the switch hook again and again until the receiver end shattered. He dropped it and turned away, ignoring the frightened look from an old woman who shied away as she passed.

  Somehow they’d found out who he was. That made twice in the past few months—September and now. Where was he slipping up? The kid in the mail drop? Had he ratted him out? Richie’d look into that later.

  He knew neither Metcalf nor the nun had the stones or the know-how to break into his operation. So who’d they hire? Another PI like himself? Richie wanted the name so he could even the score and—

  Wait a minute…why was he assuming Metcalf knew who he was? Maybe he didn’t know. Metcalf had just warned him he’d have the police trace his calls. Why would he say that if he knew who Richie was? Obviously he didn’t.

  But the PI they’d hired did. Had to. And who else? Sister Maggie?

  Outfoxed by a nun…

  Metcalf was giving Sister Maggie the credit. That could mean only one thing: It was the nun who’d found someone to track him down and ruin his operation—and do it in such a way that Richie wouldn’t know he’d been sabotaged. Pretty smooth. It had almost worked.

  This guy knew who Richie was. Now Richie needed to know who he was. That would level the playing field. Then he could take action. Metcalf probably knew the guy’s name, but he was on his way out of town—or so he said. Richie would check on that. But if true, that left the nun. He needed a little face time with her.

  What had his Cancer horoscope said?

  Tonight, lots of action with you at the center is your idea of a good time.

  Oh, yeah. Tonight…if he could work it. If not, tomorrow for sure. Get some answers, and maybe grab a little payback along the way.

  No, not a little. She and her boyfriend and whoever they’d hired had screwed up his entire operation. Richie was going to need a lot of payback.

  13

  Jack was having no luck on the phone today. Repeated calls to Jamie’s house and office had left him no wiser as to her well-being or whereabouts.

  Same with Maria Roselli. After two calls this morning, and two more this afternoon, all unanswered, Jack had decided to visit Beekman Place in person.

  He wore a blue sweater this time, but looked pretty much the same as before. One difference was the small shopping bag he carried. Anya’s map was folded within. He’d started thinking of it as Anya’s “map,” preferring that to Anya’s “skin.”

  A woman with a dog had sent him on a mission into the Dormentalist temple, which housed a replica to the skin map from the back of another woman with a dog.

  He’d been told that there would be no more coincidences in his life; but even if he hadn’t, he’d have known this was no coincidence. Maria Roselli had more on her agenda than finding her son, and now Jack had to know what. He also wanted to know her connection to Anya.

  The only one who could fill in those blanks lived in the brick and granite building he was approaching.

  He found the uniformed Esteban in the white marble atrium.

  “I’m a little concerned about Mrs. Roselli,” Jack told him. “I’ve been calling her all day and she doesn’t answer.”

  Esteban smiled. “The lady, she’s fine. She’s been in and out—in fact, she’s out now—and probably missed your calls.”

  “No answering machine?”

  Esteban smiled. “Mrs. Roselli doesn’t like them. She told me if someone wants to talk to her about anything important, they’ll call back.”

  “Would you ask her to call me when she comes in? The name’s Jack and she has my number. It’s urgent that I get in touch with her.”

  “Jack.” Esteban nodded. “I will tell her.”

  Back on the sidewalk, Jack decided if he couldn’t speak to the mother, he might as well have a chat with the son. Maybe Oroont could fill in a few blanks.

  Oroont…sheesh.

  14

  Richie Cordova had positioned his car where he could see the front doors of both St. Joe’s church and the convent. He had the windows rolled up against a chill breeze and the doors locked against a chance visit by one of the locals. The Lower East Side’s slow gentrification hadn’t reached this area yet. He’d left the driver’s window open an inch or so to vent his cigar smoke.

  This afternoon he’d been all revved at the prospect of grabbing Sister Maggie and hauling her off to an old abandoned warehouse he’d scouted in Flushing. But sitting here outside her church had cooled him. Blackmailing a nun was one thing. But staking her out and snatching her if she showed…that would be a big step where anyone was concerned. But a nun…

  Must be all those years in Catholic school, he thought.

  He wished he was outside Metcalf’s place instead. But Metcalf had been telling the truth: He’d skipped town with his family. A call to his office confirmed that he’d be gone for a week.

  That left Sister Golden Hair. If she didn’t show tonight he’d be back here tomorrow, and the day after that. Sooner or later he was going to catch up to her.

  And then he’d treat her to a showing of The Catholic School Kid Strikes Back.

  15

  Jack had cabbed home and changed into something more suited to the far West Village—black jeans, a faded White Stripes T-shirt, and Doc Martens. He’d finished it off with an oversized black bomber jacket, big enough to hide the Glock in his SOB holster.

  He took a couple of trains down to the West Village. There, in the fading light, he stood on a narrow, debris-strewn street across from The Header and kept an eye on Sonny Boy’s window as an uneven stream of bikers pulled up and swaggered into the bar.

  He gave it ten minutes, letting the light dim more. No sign of life up there, so he crossed over and went to the side door where the apartment dwellers entered and made quick work of the lock with his autopick. On the third floor he found the apartment he assumed to belong to Johnny, and knocked. Picking the lock of an occupied apartment could be, well, embarrassing.

  No answer, so he again put the autopick to work and let himself in.

  Dark inside. He flicked his flashlight on for seconds at a time. The place seemed neat and clean, but stank from the rare delicacies nuked or fried in the bar kitchen two floors down. He spotted a poster of a robust-looking Cooper Blascoe on one wall and a shelf stacked with Dormentalist tracts on the other.

  Okay. This was the place. All he had to do now was wait for Johnny “Oroont” Roselli to show his face.

  A partially packed duffel bag sat on the bed. Planning a trip, Johnny?

  Maybe half an hour later footsteps in the hallway stopped outside the door. As a key rattled in the lock, Jack stepped behind the door and waited. Johnny flipped on the light as he closed the door behind him. Jack didn’t give him time to turn. He grabbed him from behind and took him down.

  “Not a sound!” he said into Johnny’s ear as he straddled his back. Jeez, his ratty clothes were filthy and he stank. “I’m not here to hurt you, just to talk. Keep it down and we both end up healthy. Start calling for help and one of us winds up hurting. And it won’t be me. Got that?”

  Johnny nodded, then whispered, “If all you want is to talk, why didn’t you just call me on the phone?”

  “I did, but you started calling me strange names and hung up.”

  “That was you?” He started to twist his neck, turning his scraggly-bearded face toward Jack. Jack pushed it back.

  “No peeking. You see my face, I’ll have to kill you.”

  Johnny pushed his nose against the floor. “For Noomri’s sake, what do you want?”

  “I was hired to deliver a message. Here it is: Call your mother.”

  “What? That’s crazy. You were hired? By who?”

  “Your mother. She’s?
??”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “She’s worried about you and—”

  “My mother’s dead!”

  Jack opened his mouth but closed it after a second or two. He felt his shoulders slump. He should have seen this coming.

  The problem now was how to salvage the situation.

  “Impossible. I spoke to her just the other day.”

  “You couldn’t have. She’s been dead four years.”

  “Skinny old lady with bad arthritis?”

  “Not even close. She was an Old World Italian mama.”

  “Shit. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake.”

  “Perhaps?”

  “Well, she told me her son was a Dormentalist.”

  “Well, at least you got that right. You—hey!”

  Jack was digging into Roselli’s back pocket. “Just checking some ID. How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “I’m not. Who are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

  “Can’t mention names. Professional ethics.”

  The expired driver’s license in the wallet showed a more clean-shaven John A. Roselli.

  “Okay. You’re not him. My bad. Sorry.”

  “Can I get up now?”

  “No. Remember what I said I’d have to do if you see my face?”

  Next to the license was Johnny’s temple swipe card. Jack glanced at the clothes-stuffed duffel on the bed. An idea began to take shape.

  “I see you’re packed for a trip. Skipping town?”

  “No. Going camping, if you must know. It’s the only place a person in my state of…”

  “Ripeness?” Jack said.

  “Well, yes. Plus being alone in the wild helps me commune with—oh, never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You never know.”

  Jack quickly pulled out his own wallet and extracted his temple entry card. No name on either card, no way to tell one from the other. He looked around and spotted a couple of magnets—with the Dormentalist logo, for Christ sake—on the refrigerator door. He leaned to the side and plucked one off.

  “What are you doing?” Roselli said.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not stealing your money.”

  He began rubbing the magnet along his card’s magnetic strip.

  If Jensen was worth a damn as security chief, and Jack believed he was, he’d have either inactivated the Jason Amurri entry code in the computer or tagged it with a detain-on-sight warning. Either way, it was useless for getting Jack into the temple. He hadn’t planned on going back, but now with Jamie incommunicado, it might prove necessary.

  Which meant he needed a working model.

  He slipped his card into Johnny’s wallet and pocketed the other, then dropped the wallet on the floor next to Johnny’s face.

  As much as Jack wanted to move a good six or ten feet away from this smelly clown, he couldn’t let him up yet. Also he was curious as to what Roselli had done to deserve being declared a lapser.

  Jack made a loud sniffing noise. “You ever hear of soap? Or dry cleaning maybe?”

  “Of course. Normally I’m a very clean person.”

  “Yeah?” What had Jensen called his punishment? Oh, yeah. Solitarian Exile. “So how long are you stuck in SE mode?”

  He felt Roselli tense beneath him. “How do you know about that?”

  “I know a lapser when I see one. Used to be in the church myself. That’s why I was hired to find this missing FA.”

  “Used to be?”

  “Yeah. Got out years ago.” He needed to stick to the Dormentalist patois here. He tried to picture the list Jamie had given him. What the hell did they call ex-Dormentalists? “They started saying I had Low Fusion Potential and wanted me to take all these extra courses to raise it. But I couldn’t afford it so I went DD on my own before they could kick me out.”

  Roselli laughed—a single, bitter bark. “That’s pretty close to why I’m not allowed to bathe or shave or change my clothes for a month.”

  “LFP too?”

  “No. Because as soon as fall rolled around the Church raised the fees on every course for every step of the FL. I said it was too much, that it would hold too many people back from FF. That was an unpopular position with the FPRB, so I wound up LFA for objecting.”

  “And you just take it? They say go make yourself dirty and stinky and you do it?”

  “I have given myself to the Church and must abide by its decisions.”

  “Does that also mean you’ve given up the right to your own opinion? Your pride? Your self-esteem? I once saw this film of thousands of Shiites whipping themselves bloody in the streets of Teheran during Ramadan. If the FPRB told you to do something like that, would you?”

  “I…I don’t—yes, yes, I would. The work of the Church is far more important than one man’s foolish pride.”

  Jack could only shake his head. True Believers never failed to amaze him.

  But on a more practical level, he wondered if Roselli was as rich as his ersatz mother had said.

  “Well, seeing how you live, I can see why you’d object to rising prices on the Dormentalist menu.”

  Roselli tensed again. “Too many creature comforts are distracting and clutter the road to Full Fusion. Money is not a problem for me. I live this way because I choose to.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I have a decent amount in the bank, enough to support me, but I gave all the rest—a small fortune, if you care to know—to the Church.”

  “And this is how they thank you?”

  “I didn’t give it for thanks. I wasn’t looking for special treatment. I gave it to further the Church’s mission.”

  Jack wished he could open this turkey’s eyes.

  “So after they pretty much sucked you dry, they gave you the shaft by raising the fees.”

  “No, that doesn’t affect me. I gave the Church so much that I’ll never be charged FL fees, no matter how high they go. It wasn’t—isn’t myself I’m concerned about, it’s the others who aren’t so lucky.”

  “Not so lucky? I’d say their luck will change for the better when they get booted from the church for not being able to come up with the necessary jing to stay in.”

  “So, that’s it. You’ve become a WA. Lots of DDs do.”

  “Wall Addict? Out to destroy Dormentalism? Not likely. You have to care about something before you want to destroy it. I don’t even think about the church these days.”

  That would have been true last week, even early yesterday. But after what had happened to Blascoe last night, and with Jamie missing, nothing would please him more than seeing Brady and Jensen and their whole crew brought down. Way down.

  But he couldn’t let Roselli know that. Blindly loyal Dormentalist that he was, he’d go running to Jensen.

  Jack rose to his feet and placed one of his Docs on Roselli’s back.

  “Don’t move.”

  He reached over to the wall and flicked off the lights. Then he paused, searching for the right parting note as he left this loser in his self-imposed filth.

  “Looks like I made a mistake about you. You’re not the guy I was looking for. We’ll let bygones be bygones, okay. I’ll keep looking for the right guy, you keep avoiding soap. And hey…sorry about your mother.”

  Jack slipped out, closed the door behind him, and hurried down to the street. On his march back to the subway station, he placed another call to the lady who called herself Maria Roselli. Still no answer.

  Are you avoiding me, lady? he thought. Hope not. Because I need to talk to you. I mean, we really need to talk.

  16

  Jack saw no sense in going back to Beekman Place, especially dressed as he was. Even if the mystery lady were home, the doorman wouldn’t let him past the front door.

  He picked up the late city issue of the Post before getting on the train. He paged through it on the uptown ride. His heart fell as he came across the piece he’d been looking for but hoping he wouldn’t find.

  Jami
e Grant, reporter for The Light, was missing. Police were speculating whether her disappearance might be related to the murder of the night security guard.

  Shit. Jensen had her. No question.

  Instead of going home, Jack got off at Columbus Circle.

  The first thing he did when he hit street level was dial 911 on his Tracfone. He hated to turn to the cops, but it was time. He was one man and Jamie could be anywhere in the five boroughs, maybe beyond.

  “Listen up,” he said when the emergency operator picked up. “I just read in the paper where the cops are looking for a missing reporter named Jamie Grant. She was kidnapped by members of the Dormentalist Church for writing exposés about them.”

  “What is your name, sir, and where can we reach you?”

  “Never mind that. Listen: She was kidnapped by a guy named Jensen who’s the Dormentalist head of security. Keep an eye on him and you’ll find Jamie Grant.”

  “Sir—”

  “Got that? Jensen. Dormentalist Church.”

  He broke the connection. Maybe they’d write off his call as the ravings of an MDP, maybe not. Jamie had been very publicly at odds with the Dormentalists, so the charge wouldn’t sound complete blue sky. Jack hoped they’d focus at least some of their manpower and resources on Jensen and his church.

  He walked down to the Avis place on West Fifty-fourth. He’d been using the John L. Tyleski identity for the past few months, and since he was a paid-up Visa Card holder with a current driver’s license—courtesy of ID-maestro Ernie—he was allowed to cruise away in his usual rental—a Buick Century.

  Jensen and his TP crew would be on the lookout for Jack’s Crown Vic. This would give him a different look.

  Jamie had said the Dormentalist bigshots kept their cars in a garage around the corner from the temple. Jack found a spot on the street downstream from the exit and parked. He checked his watch. Almost eight. He’d give it four hours, then call it quits.

  Could be a long night.

  But half an hour later, as he talked on his cell to Gia, he was pleasantly surprised to see a black Mercedes pull out of the garage. As it passed, Jack recognized Brady behind the wheel. Jamie had said he drove himself only on special occasions. Could this special occasion be a meeting with Jamie Grant?