"You've got that 'key' you found. You don't need me anymore. In fact, it would probably be to your advantage if they got hold of me."
Jack stared at her, holding back his anger.
"No answer?" she said.
He spoke slowly. "No… just wondering if I should dignify that with an answer."
"Oh? I've offended you?"
"Damn right. You… you're a customer. We have a deal. A contract."
"I didn't sign—"
"We shook hands," he said. "That's a contract."
She flushed and looked away again. Her words came in a rush. "I'm sorry. Maybe I'm wrong but I just don't know what to think or who to trust anymore. Last night was very scary—you are very scary—and I've never been in this kind of situation. I mean, people are chasing me and the man I'm supposed to be partnered with killed God-knows-how-many of them last night. And maybe they had it coming but… do you know what I'm saying? You just flipped a few switches last night and boom!—people died. You wanted them gone, and they were gone. So is it so strange for me to wonder what happens if you decide you want me gone?"
He debated saying something about only killing customers who talk too fast, but decided this wasn't a good time to crack wise.
And maybe she had a point. Usually he had minimal contact with his customers. He made a deal, then went off and got it done—like with Jorge. They never saw the work, only the results. Last night had been an exception. He'd wound up playing bodyguard—something he'd never volunteer to do—and Alicia had witnessed some rough stuff.
Too bad, but he didn't think much of the alternative.
"I do what's necessary," he said. "But in your wonderings have you considered where we'd be right now if they'd caught us?"
She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "And the worst thing is that it didn't settle anything. We're still looking over our shoulders. I can't even go home."
"I'm sorry about that. But we're making progress. We know more than we did two days ago, and I've got a feeling we'll know a lot more when I find the lock to this key."
And get some more playtime with that little four-by-four, he thought. Something very strange about Clayton's "Rover."
He held the key in the direct sunlight and saw faint remnants of the words "Bern Interbank" embossed on the red vinyl case.
Hallelujah, he thought.
2
Yoshio took a deep, sharp breath when he saw the white Chevrolet, and nearly choked on his Egg McMuffin.
He had spent hours last night watching Alicia Clayton's apartment. She never appeared. Yoshio had been disappointed but not terribly surprised. He assumed the ronin had done what he would have done under those circumstances: rented a hotel for the night.
And so Yoshio was idling here on Seventh Avenue where he could see the entrance to the hospital and the children's center where the Clayton woman worked. His backgrounding on her had revealed how devoted she was to her small charges. He doubted she would stay away.
And now he had been proven correct.
Small satisfaction, but one took it where one found it.
He watched the ronin escort the Clayton woman to the hospital door. Yoshio was in gear and moving when the . ronin returned to his car. No question as to what his next step would be: follow the ronin. If he and the Clayton woman had learned anything last night, now was the time to act upon it.
Carefully keeping his distance, Yoshio trailed the ronin west on Fourteenth Street and then uptown on Tenth Avenue. He did not see anyone else following. He smiled. Certainly Kemel Muhallal had other, more pressing concerns at the moment—an acute manpower shortage among them.
He saw the ronin stop his car before a row of dingy storefronts. Yoshio drove past, adjusting his speed to catch the red light at the next corner. He adjusted his rearview mirror and watched the ronin enter a doorway next to a dirty window with a sign that read:
ERNIE'S I.D.
ALL KINDS
PASSPORT
TAXI
DRIVER'S LICENSE
Yoshio hurried around the block and was relieved to see the Chevrolet still double-parked on Tenth Avenue when he returned. He pulled into the curb by a bus stop on the far side of the street and waited, trusting the rush-hour traffic to hide him.
ID… why would the ronin enter such a place? Did he want to prove his own identity, or did he wish to identify himself as someone else? Ronald Clayton perhaps?
Yoshio rubbed his palms together to relieve the sudden tingle of anticipation.. He sensed he was onto something here.
And then the ronin emerged from the store and looked around before he reentered his car. As his gaze came Yoshio's way, a bus edged between them. Yoshio took advantage of the cover to nose his way into traffic and position himself so that he was behind the bus when it moved on. His car now looked like just another of the countless thousands crawling through rush hour.
He saw the white Chevrolet pull away and continue uptown. Yoshio followed him all the way to West Seventy-sixth Street where the ronin double-parked again and walked into a building.
Yoshio saw the sign as he passed: BERN interbank.
And now the tingle spread from his hands to the back of his neck. Yes. This was important. He couldn't say how he knew, he simply… knew.
Hurriedly he looked for a place to leave his car. He could park it illegally and hope his DPL plates would protect it, but he didn't know how much time he would need. The city had been cracking down on diplomats abusing their parking privileges. Yoshio did not want to return and find that his car had been towed away.
He saw a Kinney Park sign and accelerated toward it.
The success of all his efforts for the past two months might hinge on what he did in the next few minutes.
3
Powder from Alicia's latex gloves left white smudges on Hector's latest chest X ray as she held it up to the window. She didn't need a lightbox to show her how bad it was. His lung fields were almost entirely opaque. Only small dark pockets of uninfected lung remained, and those were becoming progressively smaller with each successive film. Soon even the ventilator would be unable to force oxygen to his blood cells.
She turned and faced the comatose child, who seemed to have shrunk since she'd last seen him yesterday morning. Naked, spread-eagle on the bed, Hector seemed to be made more of plastic tubing than flesh—two IV lines, one in an arm and one in a leg, the ventilator tube down his throat, a catheter running into his penis to his bladder, the CVP line running under his clavicle, the cardiac monitor leads glued to his corduroy chest. His skin had a mottled, bluish cast. Sorenson was wiping the crusts from his eyes.
Tuning out the ICU Muzak of beeps and hisses, Alicia picked up Hector's chart and read his latest numbers in dismay. His O2 saturation was dropping, his WBC count had been 900 this morning, and his blood pressure was in the basement.
He's slipping away, she thought. And there's not a damn thing—
A change in the beeps from Hector's cardiac monitor caught her attention. She checked the screen and saw the dreaded irregular sine-wave pattern of ventricular fibrillation.
Sorenson looked up, eyes wide above her surgical mask. "Oh, shit."
She reached a gloved hand toward the code button.
"Wait," Alicia said.
"But he's in V-fib."
"I know. But he's also in immunological collapse. He's got nothing left. We can't save him. The Candida's in his brain, in his marrow, clogging his capillaries. We can break a few more ribs pounding on his chest, submit him to a few more indignities, and for what? Just to prove we can delay the inevitable for a couple of hours? Let the poor boy go."
"You're sure?"
Was she sure? She'd tried everything she knew. All the subspecialists she'd called in had attacked Hector's infection with every weapon at their disposal. All to no effect.
I can't seem to be sure of anything else in my life, but of this one thing I am absolutely certain: No matter what we do, Hector will not survive the morning.
br /> "Yes, Sorenson. I'm sure."
Stepping aside from all her emotions, Alicia watched the sine waves slow, then devolve into isolated agonal beats, then flat line.
Sorenson looked at her. When Alicia nodded, the nurse checked her watch and recorded the time of death of Hector Lopez, age four. As Sorenson began removing the tubes from Hector's lifeless body, Alicia ripped off her surgical mask and turned away.
Staggering under the crushing futility of it all, she leaned against the windowsill and looked down at the street. The cheery glare of the morning sun seemed an affront. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks. She could not remember feeling this low in all her life.
What good am I? she thought. Who am I kidding? I'm useless. I might as well call it quits now and end this charade.
When she caught herself eyeing the cars below and wondering how it would feel to plummet toward them, she pushed herself away from the window.
Not yet, she thought. Some other time, maybe, but not today.
4
Jack had debated going home and changing, but Ernie had let him borrow a razor to shave and had made sure that his hair in the photo on the brand-new Ronald Clayton New York State driver's license was combed a little more neatly than Jack's usually careless look.
He'd passed the ID check, the bank officer had used her key along with Jack's on the double-locked safe deposit door, and now he was alone with box 137.
He flipped up the lid and found a stack of bulging manila envelopes, maybe half a dozen of them, each sealed with fiber tape. As much as Jack wanted to rip them open, this wasn't the place. It might take some time to sift through these and find the one that answered all the questions. Besides, he was double-parked outside. Better to bring them home and take his time.
He gathered them up, made sure he wasn't missing anything, then headed for the street. The car was where he'd left it—not something one took for granted in the city—but a meter maid had stopped her scooter at the corner and was working her way down the street toward the Chevy. Jack dashed to his car, hopped in, and took off.
He was just congratulating himself on how smooth the morning was going when he sensed movement behind him. Before he could react, something cold and metallic pressed against the back of his skull.
Jack stiffened in shock and gripped the wheel. He wasn't being car-jacked—he'd been followed, damn it! He raged at himself for being so careless. First getting caught flat-footed in the Clayton backyard last night, and now being in such a big hurry that he hadn't bothered to check the backseat. He cooled as he seined his mind for options.
An accented voice said, "Please keep driving."
Please?
Jack glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a thin Oriental face, clean-shaven, late thirties maybe, eyes hidden behind fashionably round lightweight shades.
"And please do not try to accident the car or attract the police. These are hollow-point bullets filled with cyanide. Even a scratch will murder you."
Despite his weird verbs, the gunman's English was pretty good. He had the L's almost right.
"Hollow points and cyanide," Jack said. "Kind of overkill don't you think? If you were a good shot, you wouldn't need all that."
"I am a very good shot. But I do not leave anything to chance."
Jack believed him!
He forced himself to relax. At least the guy wasn't one of the Arab's men—or didn't appear to be. And then something occurred to him.
"That wouldn't happen to be a small caliber job, would it?" Jack said. "Like a twenty-two?"
"This is correct."
"And did you happen to use it on Thirty-eighth Street last night?"
"That is also correct."
"And can I assume that you're not working for Kemel?"
"Correct again… although I do not understand how you are so familiar to use the first name of a man you should not even know about."
I'm so familiar with him, Jack thought, I've been assuming it was his last name.
He settled back in his seat as he turned onto Broadway and joined the downtown crawl. He'd wondered who Kemel had meant by "the wrong hands," and had assumed he'd meant Israel. But this guy was anything but Israeli. He looked Japanese.
"I tell you these things," the gunman went on, "because I do not wish to be placed in the condition where I must kill you. Condition—that is the correct word?"
Swell, Jack thought. He's got a gun on me and he wants me to help him with his English.. But then, he does have the gun.
"'Position' might be better."
"Position… yes, that is better. Because I am very admiring of how you disposed of your attackers last night. You are very clever."
That's me… Mr. Clever.
"Was that you following me to the Clayton house last night?"
"You saw me?"
He sounded offended. Time to repay a compliment in kind.
"No. Not once. Sensed you but didn't see you. You're very good."
Let's form a mutual admiration society, he thought.
"Thank you. What is your name?"
"Jack."
"Jack what?"
He thought a moment. "Jack-san."
Jack saw the gunman's eyes narrow, then crinkle as he smiled. "Ah, yes. Jack-san. That is very humorful."
"I'm a bundle of laughs."
"And now you will please give me the envelopes you brought from the bank."
So polite… but despite how "admiring" this guy said he was, Jack had no doubt he'd end up like the two corpses outside the Clayton house if he tried anything. Might end up like them anyway.
With that pleasant thought bobbing through his brain, Jack handed the envelopes over the seat.
The pistol muzzle was removed from his neck. Jack watched the gunman glance down at his lap as he fumbled with the envelopes. This might be his chance… but he vetoed the thought. No sense in precipitating something right now. Take it easy and see how this played out.
More rustling as other envelopes were opened.
That's what I want to be doing, Jack thought.
He kept glancing at the rearview trying to read the gunman's expression. His narrowed eyes, his grimace, as if someone had shoved a rotten fish under his nose.
The blare of a horn jerked Jack's attention to the road and he saw that he'd been drifting toward a Volvo with a very frightened-looking woman behind the wheel.
"I warned you," said the gunman.
"Sorry," Jack said, giving the Volvo an apologetic wave. "Not on purpose. It's just that I was really looking forward to poking through those envelopes myself."
"Then, these are not yours?"
He checked out the gunman's expression as he opened more envelopes. The nearest Jack could describe it was… disgust.
What was going on?
"Well, they were for a few minutes. Now they're yours, I guess."
"How did you acquire them?"
Should he tell, or play dumb? He had a feeling dumb wouldn't work with this guy, and what harm in telling him what he'd probably figured out on his own?
"From old man Clayton's safe deposit box. I found the key in the house last night."
"Then, these belonged to Ronald Clayton?"
Why do I feel like I'm on trial? "Yes."
"And this was all you found?"
"Absolutely."
"And you do not know what is in them?"
"I was hoping to find out."
"You wish to see them?" the gunman said.
Something strange in his voice. Almost… fatigue.
"Uh… yeah." Where was this leading?
The envelopes dropped unceremoniously onto the front seat.
"Then you shall. Find a place to stop where no one will see us and you may look all you wish."
Normally that would have set off a chorus of alarm bells in Jack's head, but strangely enough, it didn't.
Something weird going down here.
He turned off Broadway in the Thirties and headed west. He found a
deserted stretch of curb past the post office and stopped, but left the engine idling. He glanced into the rear of the car and saw the gunman staring out the window, but he didn't seem to be focused on anything in particular. His pistol was out of sight. Farther behind them, on the corner, an Oriental woman stood on the sidewalk with her video camera trained on the columned front of the post office building.
Lady, he thought, moving pictures were designed to record things that move. That's why they call them "movies."
Jack picked up the top envelope, reached inside the open flap, and pulled out a pile of negatives and three-by-five photos. He let the negatives drop back in and checked out the prints.
His stomach turned.
"Oh, jeez."
Children… naked children… having sex with each other.
He dropped them onto his lap, then picked them up again for a closer look at the little girl.
"Aw, no."
Alicia… no question about it… seven years old, maybe eight, the face was pudgy, but it was she. And the boy she was with looked about twelve, and he was unquestionably Thomas.
He let his head drop back and closed his eyes. He swallowed hard, afraid he'd lose his morning coffee.
When was the last time he'd cried? He couldn't remember. But he felt like crying now.
That innocent little face looking out at him as her brother…
The sheer monstrousness of it, the utter evil, the mind-numbing rottenness of a soul that could besmirch the innocence of any child like that… but your own daughter… someone who trusts you, looks up to you, depends on you for guidance and protection from the nastiness of the world… to take that trust, that responsibility and do… this…
Jack had run across the scum of the earth in his day, but Ronald Clayton took the prize. If he weren't already dead, Jack might consider correcting that situation.
This confirmed what he'd suspected about Alicia. Now he understood why she wanted nothing to do with her father or her brother or that house, why she'd looked ready to jump out of her skin last night.
What a thing to have trailing after you all your life.
"Are they all like this?"