block away. He hadn’t flown across an ocean to hang out in the hotel room. The whole exchange upstairs was gnawing at him, particularly the part that Vince had told him not to take personally: “For whatever reason, Chuck doesn’t want you there.”
To hell with Chuck. Jack hopped into the cab and pulled the door shut.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
It suddenly amused Jack that this was his chance to say something Bond-like to a London cabbie-except that it sounded too goofy to actually say it.
“Do you see the taxi that just pulled out ahead of us?” Jack asked. “The one waiting at the red light?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well… just do whatever he does.”
The driver glanced over his shoulder and shot him a curious look. “You want me to follow that cab?”
Jack sighed, resigning himself to it. “Fine, if you must: Follow that cab.”
Chapter Fifty
Vince was halfway to the Carpenter’s Arms pub when his phone chimed. Again it was Chuck Mays.
“Swtyeck is following you.”
“How do you know?” asked Vince.
“I’m watching it right here on my computer screen.”
“You have a GPS tracking chip on Jack?”
“It’s a remote installation through his cell phone. I put one on you, too.”
Vince bit his lip to stem the eruption. “Chuck, you need to stop doing things like that without telling people. It’s a violation of privacy.”
“People need to stop telling themselves that there is such a thing as privacy.”
Spoken like a true data miner, but that was another debate. “Do you want me to go back to the hotel?”
“I don’t know,” said Chuck. “Let me think this through. You didn’t tell Swyeck who you’re meeting with, did you?”
“I lied and said it was probably a detective.”
“Good, then just lose him.”
“What do you expect me to do, roll down the window and throw a box of roofing tacks on the road?”
“Just give the driver an extra twenty pounds to ditch him.”
“That won’t work,” said Vince. “I told Jack the meeting was at Carpenter’s Arms at one o’clock.”
“Damn it! Why’d you do that?”
“Probably because I’m not at all comfortable lying to him. The three of us made a deal. This was supposed to be a team approach.”
“Fuck the team! Just call Swyteck and tell him that the meeting was canceled.”
The cab stopped, and Vince heard the meter register. “Seven pounds,” said the driver.”
Vince checked his wallet for a ten-tens were folded in half, twenties in thirds-and he told him to keep the change.
“Would you mind directing me to the pub’s entrance?” he asked the driver.
Chuck overheard. “Vince, don’t get out of the cab.”
“Sorry, I’m going in.”
“It took a lot of coaxing to arrange this. I promised it would be just you. You can’t go in with Swyteck on your tail. Let me reschedule.”
“I’ve waited long enough for answers.”
“You know how skittish she is. All I did was look at her and she ran from me.”
Vince climbed out of the cab. A cool mist greeted his skin, and he heard the Cockney accents of passing pedestrians-the nuances of northeast London in his perpetual world of darkness.
“I can’t look at her,” he said as he stepped onto the sidewalk, “which is why Shada won’t run from me.”
Chapter Fifty-one
Stop here,” Jack told the driver. They were in Bethnal Green, a half block away from the Carpenter’s Arms.
Like it or not, Jack had received a crash course in East End pub history from a driver who was apparently determined to become his new best friend. Plenty of pubs in the area claimed a connection to Ronald and Reginald Kray, the East End’s kings of organized crime in the 1950s and 1960s. Carpenter’s claim was more real than most. Once upon a time, it was actually owned by the Kray twins and run by their dear old mum. Somehow over the years the tiny old pub had avoided conversion to flats, and it stood in refurbished splendor at the corner of Cheshire and St. Matthew’s Row.
“Try the Greene King IPA or Staropramen ale on draft,” the driver said as Jack climbed out of the cab.
“Will do,” said Jack.
The cab pulled away, leaving Jack alone on the sidewalk. He was standing in front of a vacant shop that had apparently sold shoes of some sort; a tattered old sign in the window read THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, BUT THE PEOPLE WEAR PLIMSOLLS-?5. The narrow and crooked one-way street was made even narrower by a block-long construction site across from the Carpenter’s Arms. Jack peered through the cold mist and saw Vince at the pub’s entrance.
Jack felt a pang of guilt for tailing a blind man, but Vince’s claim that he didn’t know who he was going to meet was a crock, and but for the jet lag, Jack would have called him on it immediately. Factor in the pain he was still feeling over Neil’s death, and maybe Andie had been right about the wisdom of deferring to the police. Chuck Mays was not to be trusted, and even if Vince was reliable under normal circumstances, these were not normal circumstances. Jack was starting to feel used, and it wouldn’t be the first time that someone like Chuck had tried to hire the name Swyteck-the son of a former governor-to legitimize some scheme.
Jack was about two hundred feet away, his anger rising, when he saw Vince reach for the door at the pub entrance. Then Vince stopped. Jack’s cell rang, and he answered.
“Stop following me,” said Vince.
The words hit him like a brick. Jack didn’t know how Vince knew, but it didn’t matter. “If I go back to the hotel, I’m going back to Miami,” said Jack. “Either I’m part of this, or I’m not.”
“Don’t be a jackass. It’s not my decision. Chuck set up the meeting.”
“Chuck is about to be indicted for murder.”
“For the third time: That news story was a plant. Chuck didn’t kill his wife.”
“I’m talking about the murder of the guy who was sleeping with her. Who killed Jamal Wakefield?”
“Jamal was butchered. They cut off his foot.”
“I’ve seen more grisly murders for hire.”
“Now you’re talking crazy.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. But let’s have this conversation later. You have no idea what you’re screwing up.”
“Who is your meeting with?”
“I’m not meeting with anyone if you don’t get out of here.”
Jack picked up the pace, now almost close enough to read the chalkboard in the window. “Are you meeting with Shada Mays?”
“I told you: Chuck set it up.”
“That’s the point. I’m not going to lend my name and reputation to secret meetings that I’m not a part of.”
“What are you talking about?”
