“He was probably just lucky.”
“Well,” said Trejador, “at least someone is having luck. Certainly not you.”
Ernst stiffened at the tone. “As fellow actuators, striving to achieve the Order’s goals, I would consider this a joint venture.”
Trejador smiled. “So now it’s a joint venture? Last I heard you were going to ‘settle this affair.’ Now two of your people are dead.”
He’s enjoying this, Ernst thought.
Well, were positions reversed, Ernst would be reveling in his discomfiture.
“We need to cooperate.”
“Well, of course we do. But I’m of the school – perhaps you’d call it the ‘old school’ – that believes in making luck. And one accomplishes that by being there. But we’ve had this conversation before.”
Yes, they had.
Ernst said, “How, pray tell, would my presence in the car have prevented it from running off the road, most likely killing me as well?”
The Spaniard allowed a brief smile that Ernst attributed to pleasant contemplation of such a possibility.
“Putting yourself in the same car? Absolutely not. An unthinkable redundancy. No, I would have been following behind in a second car, just in case something catastrophic – like being run off the road – or some mundane mishap – say, a flat tire – befell the first.”
“And once the first car had stopped the truck, then what?”
“Stop the truck? Did I say anything about stopping the truck? That is cowboy stuff. I simply would follow at a discrete distance and find out where he made his delivery, and then follow him home from there.”
Follow him home… what a simple solution. Why hadn’t Ernst thought of that?
But Ernst knew his mind didn’t work that way. He had a confrontational nature. He believed in facing problems head on – gripping them by the throat and bending them to his will. But from a distance.
He’d approached the driver with that in mind: Capture him on a lonely road, take him to a secure location, and extract whatever he knew about the missing millions. Father had often warned Ernst about the use of force.
Father… ever the manipulator of men and circumstances. A whispered word, a planted suggestion… he hadn’t needed to bend people and circumstances to his will… he merely paved a certain path, and people followed it of their own accord, thinking the choice of direction was theirs, when it was anything but.
Another question: If that would have been Trejador’s course of action, why hadn’t he suggested it? The obvious answer: He’d wanted Ernst to fail. No… too paranoid. Ernst sensed that Trejador perceived him – quite accurately – as a threat to his position. But despite his excesses, Trejador’s loyalty to the Order was unquestioned.
“My dear Ernst,” he said, waving a hand. “That is all water under the bridge, as they say. My latest interview with the slaver – conducted by phone only an hour ago – has convinced me that the driver you seek is clueless. He was there by happenstance, unwillingly recruited due to a mishap, and, according to the slaver, seemed genuinely afraid of whoever killed the Arabs. He is a dead end.”
Ernst wasn’t so sure about that. “The slaver says this Lonnie saw the killers. And he has a recollection of someone with Lonnie when he broke his knees. Where did he get help?”
“Certainly not from the gunmen who were out to kill him and his fellow driver. I think we should concentrate our efforts on finding those abducted girls. There are twenty-eight of them. Can someone move that many children around and leave no trace? Find the girls and we find the men who stole the money.”
The logic was unassailable, but Ernst could not get past the feeling that this Lonnie was the weak link. The attack on the Arabs smacked of a certain level of professionalism. Stumble upon the perpetrators and one might fall into a snake pit. However, the driver was, by the slaver’s account, a callow bumpkin. Ernst saw no downside to learning if he had indeed seen the killers. Should that turn out not to be the case, then only a little time and effort were at risk. However, if he possessed a single scrap of useful information…
He saw no point in arguing, however.
“Then we agree to concentrate our efforts on finding the girls?”
Ernst nodded but wasn’t giving up on the driver. Not yet. He should have known Trejador would not give Ernst free rein in finding the money. This had become a contest between the Spaniard and himself, one he was determined to win.
SUNDAY
1
They lay gasping, tangled in each other’s arms, until Cristin slid off and rolled onto her back beside him.
“You’ve improved since last week,” she said.
She’d somehow managed to be even more voracious tonight than last Sunday. After all the excitement of Tuesday morning, the rest of the week had seemed empty and endless. He’d survived near-terminal boredom only through fantasies about tonight.
“I have an excellent coach.”
“Who hardly had to do a bit of coaching this time.”
“I’m a quick study.”
She pulled up the covers and snuggled beside him and they lay in silence for a while.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“About what an almost perfect night it’s been.”
She lifted her head. “Almost?”
“Well, dinner…”
“I loved it.”
He shook his head. “I’m glad.”
“You didn’t?”
“Not my kind of food.”
“You chose it.”
“I know. I consider it a learning experience.”
He’d heard Le Cirque mentioned on the radio and so he’d wrangled a reservation for two. He knew it would be expensive but that wasn’t an issue. He’d wanted to treat Cristin to something really special – take her someplace she wouldn’t take herself.
Maybe it was their young age, but when they arrived at the Mayfair Hotel, home of the restaurant, they were treated like second-class citizens. Despite their reservation, they were kept waiting for forty-five minutes. Cristin didn’t seem to mind, but it rankled Jack. When they finally were seated the service was perfunctory and the food… well, Cristin enjoyed all the sauces and such, and the pinot noir was delicious, but Jack would have much preferred a cheesesteak and a good lager.
He left the restaurant hungry – for food and for Cristin. He delighted in her company and wanted to immerse himself in her. But she wanted to go to a place called Wetlands down on Hudson Street. Someone named Joan Osborne was singing there tonight and Cristin had heard she was good. Jack put on a brave face and hailed a cab.
Turned out she was very good. After the show they made a beeline for Cristin’s apartment. No dancing around with Cuervo shooters and admiring her artwork this time. As soon as the door closed behind them they were ripping at each other’s clothes and stumbling toward the bedroom.
“Well, I disagree with your ‘almost’,” she said. “I don’t see how it could be improved.”
“Then my work here is done.”
She gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. “Hey! That’s my line. And buster, you’re not done yet.”
He smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
She snaked a thigh across his pelvis. “What’s your agenda for the coming week? No more hijacking attempts, I hope.”
During the seemingly interminable wait for their reserved table, Cristin had questioned how he could afford Le Cirque on a delivery man’s earnings and he told her about a bonus for a special delivery – true in a way – and from there he’d slipped into a mention of the attempt. He skimmed the details, saying only that he’d managed to elude the would-be hijackers. He hadn’t let on that the hijacking hadn’t been random and that he rather than his cargo had been the target.
He hugged her closer. “Worried about me?”
“You’re a friend. And I’m just now getting you properly trained. I don’t want to have to start breaking in someone new.”
H
e barked a laugh. “Now that’s what I call concern for a lover.”
“We aren’t lovers, Jack,” she said evenly. “We’re friends–”
“–with benefits. Right. Is it okay if I love the benefits?”
“Perfectly okay. Just don’t start attaching strings.”
“Gotcha.”
Right. No strings. The way he wanted it too. And yet… at a moment like this, as physically close as could be to another person, feeling deliciously intimate, he could imagine how a string – just one, a little one – wouldn’t seem so bad… wouldn’t seem bad at all.
“So how about it?” she said. “What’s in store for the week? Going home for Thanksgiving?”
T-Day was this Thursday, wasn’t it. Where’d the time go?
And jeez, home would be the last place…
“No. You?”
“I wouldn’t mind, but I’m running three parties.”
“What happened to home cooking?”
“You get well-heeled families scattered all over the country and the world who want to fly everyone in for a holiday feast but don’t want to do the leg work, who you gonna call? Moi.”
“So no family turkey for you?”
She shook her head. “Nope. And no more driving for you, I hope.”
“You got that right. Not worth the risk.”
“Taking the week off then?”
“Not exactly.” He hesitated, then decided to plunge ahead. “Looking for a way to con a con man.”
He couldn’t help it. It felt right telling her. It added a new layer of intimacy, and tonight, for some reason, he found himself craving intimacy.
“And what qualifies you for that?”
“Absolutely nothing. Well, I’ve gamed one or two people over the years with varying results.”
She rose on one elbow and stared at him. “When?”
“High school…college.”
“High school…you weren’t behind that locker thing, were you?”
Jack knew exactly what she meant but kept his voice flat as he offered a puzzled expression.
“What locker thing?”
“Oh, come on! It was all anyone talked about for most of freshman year!”
He’d never told anyone that he’d been behind the pranks and wasn’t about to start. It had ended in a death, after all.
“Oh, you mean with Oliver What’s-his-name.”
“It was Carson Toliver and you know it.” She smiled. “I had the weirdest feeling it was you.”
Jack felt his neck muscles bunch. “Me? Are you crazed? Me a frosh and him a senior, captain of the football team, no less. Where’d you get that idea?”
“Like I said, just a feeling. He started talking trash about your friend Weir – Weezy Connell and within a day or two all this weirdness starts coming down on him. And pretty soon no one’s talking about Weezy anymore.” She cocked her head and stared. “Funny thing about that.”
“Pure coincidence.”
He managed to return her stare, but it wasn’t easy. It became harder as her slow smile spread to a grin.
“It was you!”
“No way.”
“It was! How did you beat that lock – the one he’d glued and nailed? How did you get past that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do! I’ve wanted to know for seven years now!”
“Seven years… has it been that long?”
Seemed like a lifetime.
“Yes! And you’re going to tell me!”
“Can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“Oh, reeeeally? Vee haf vays of making you talk.”
She slid her lips down his belly and began flicking her tongue against him. Immediately he hardened.
He laughed. “You don’t really expect me to say, ‘Oh, no, not that, anything but that, please stop, I’ll tell you anything if only you’ll stop,’ do you?”
She ran her tongue up and down the underside of the shaft, sending a delicious shiver through him.
“Not yet, but you will when I don’t let you come.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You’re going to get the worst case of blue balls you’ve ever had – epic blue balls. You’re going to beg to come but I won’t let you.”
He laughed again.
She looked up at him, a challenge in her eyes. “You don’t think I can?”
“Do your worst.”
She bent to her work.
Eventually he told her everything.
MONDAY
1
Jack had wasted better than an hour following Vinny Donuts after his weekly payment pickup from Julio and learned nothing new. It looked like The Spot was the last stop on Mondays, after which Vinny drove his fellow hoods back to that appliance store and then took himself to the salvage yard.
Jack made a mental note to find out who owned that car cemetery, although he had no idea how to go about it. Maybe Abe would know.
He’d stopped for some bread and sliced ham at a mom-and-pop deli on West 21st and had just kicked his Harley to life again when a car screeched to a stop just ahead of him.
He heard “Jack!” followed by a stream of excited Spanish, then “Jack!” again. He looked up and saw a familiar face leaning out the window of a Plymouth Volare junker that had to be ten years old. Who–?
Oh, Christ – Ramon, one of the Dominicans from the landscaping crew.
Jack gunned the engine, wheeled around, and roared east, back toward Sixth Avenue. Had there been traffic coming he would have been running against it, since 21 was one-way westbound. He turned onto Sixth and raced uptown. Horns blared and tires screamed behind him. A glance in his left mirror showed the Plymouth reversing out of 21 the wrong way. It slewed to a stop, then, with Ramon still hanging out the window, waving his fist, it screeched toward him with smoking tires. The sun glaring off the windshield obscured other occupants in the car. Rico too?
Up ahead traffic had stopped at 23 Street. Every eight or ten blocks or so, from the Village up to Central Park, New York enlarged one of its streets to accommodate two-way traffic, and 23 was one of those.
Jack steered his bike between cars. No way the Plymouth could follow. He looked over his shoulder to see Ramon jumping out of the car.
Okay. If he wanted to go mano a mano right here, okay. Then he saw the machete in his hand.
“Oh, shit!”
He’d reached 23. Pedestrians and four lanes of crosstown traffic blocked his way.
Screw it. He gunned forward and, to a chorus of horns and angry shouts, wove his way through the slow-moving traffic. One lane, two lanes, three…
And then some belligerent taxi driver – yes, a redundancy in New York – pushed to get bumper to bumper with the car ahead to block Jack, as if it mattered one way or another to his life if Jack slipped past him. He half succeeded. Jack forced his way between the bumpers but had no room to squeeze his foot pegs through. Empty pavement waited less than two yards away.
He gave the cabby a you-asshole look, then turned and saw Ramon a car length away, shouting something as he charged between the cars with the machete waving over his head. The cabby spotted him too as the car ahead inched forward. Wide-eyed, he didn’t push to close the space but waved Jack through.
Jack opened up the Harley and did a wheely up Sixth Avenue. He passed his apartment and the garage where he kept the bike, and kept going.
Close. Way too close.
Maybe this was the city’s way of telling him it was time to move out of the flower district and into a quieter neighborhood.
THANKSGIVING
1
Look at us, Roman thought as he turned away from the window and caught sight of the two other occupants of the room. What an unlikely trio.
Drexler sipping a Dutch pilsner, Nasser some club soda, and me swirling some Balvenie double wood around a single ice cube.
Drexler in that ridiculous white suit, Nasser in a thobe, and me looking oh-so
-American in my flannel shirt and jeans.
Room service offered limited choices because of the holiday, and so they'd all decided to go their separate ways for dinner after the meeting.
How did we ever agree on a plan of action?
But somehow they had… up to a point.
“So, it’s settled?”
Drexler sniffed. “I still think this Lonnie character knows more than you give him credit for, but I'm game for the sting – as the Americans would call it. It’s all moot, of course, if you don’t secure funding from the High Council.”
“I will be at my most persuasive. Nasser?”
“I’m sure I can involve our young Palestinian friend. He had jihadist contacts at the refugee center and the mosque, plus he was friends with Tachus and I’m positive he wants some payback.”
“The broken-kneed Reggie also wants payback,” Drexler added.
“As do we.” Roman took a dramatic sniff. “The air is redolent of revenge. That is good, as long as it is served cold. If we allow it to overheat our judgement, we will fail. We mustn't forget that we are dealing with bloodthirsty people.”
Drexler raised a pedantic index finger. “But bloodthirsty people on a mission. Our advantage increases in proportion to their devotion to that mission. The more fanatical and emotionally involved they are, the better for us.”
Roman could not disagree. “But we don’t know their ideology or their religion. What is the threshold that will set them into motion? One child? Five? Ten?”
Nasser said, “I would say a single child would trigger them – if they know about it. But one child might well slip under their radar. We must assume they are not fools, so they must learn of the ‘shipment’ through their usual channels.”
“Five then,” said Drexler. “Boys? Girls? A mixture?”
It didn’t matter, so Roman flipped a mental coin. “Let’s make it boys, this time.”
Nasser al-Thani frowned. “Assuming all goes according to plan, once we’ve captured our prey, what do we do with the children?”
Roman smiled. The answer was so obvious. “Capturing the killers is only step one. Our goal is the return of our investment. We will need a means to induce them to tell us where the money is. The children will make excellent persuaders.”