'I can hear you two, you know,' said the kid.
Anders replied, 'The way I saw it, without you around, we were as good as dead already. The number was a risk I was willing to take.'
'I'm standing right here.' Pinch spoke again, his voice tinged with impatience.
'Why in the hell was he following me in the first place?' I said.
'I told him if anybody else came looking for Kate, hang back and keep an eye on 'em. I hear you put on quite a show, questioning those homeless guys.'
'You coulda gotten him killed.'
The kid bristled. 'I can take care of myself.'
I replied, 'No offense, kid, but you have no idea what you're dealing with. You're in way over your head.'
Pinch just smiled and held a good-sized shard of ceramic up to the light and turned it over in his hand, inspecting it. My hand flew to my pocket. It was a whole lot emptier than I remembered. 'Did you just almost attack me with a cat?' he asked.
'Don't touch that,' I said, snatching back the catshard. 'It's dangerous.'
'Good thing you never tangled with my grandma, then – she had a couple dozen of these things. Coulda gotten messy.'
I said nothing, settling instead for seeing if maybe I'd spontaneously developed the ability to shoot death rays from my eyes. Anders took the hint, and pulled the kid aside. 'Listen, Pinch, why don't you take off? I'll catch up with you later, OK?'
'Whatever,' the kid said. He trotted back toward the fire escape he'd come up on. Before Pinch disappeared from sight, Anders stopped him with a shout.
'Hey, Pinch?'
'Yeah?'
'You did good today.'
The kid flashed him a smile, and disappeared behind the stairwell shed.
'You know you never should have brought him in,' I said. 'The kid's a liability.'
'The kid's a friend, Sam.'
'Yeah,' I said, 'same thing.'
Dumas, it turns out, was as good as his word – two weeks after our meeting at Mulgheney's, we got a call from the research group at Bellevue. They said that they had an opening in their program, and that Elizabeth looked to be a perfect match. She couldn't believe her luck. I hadn't told her that Dumas had promised to get her in, so worried was I that he wouldn't deliver. In fact, I hadn't told her much about the meeting at all – I didn't have to. She was so over the moon I'd found a job, she didn't care much what it was. Which was fine by me, since I couldn't have told her what it was yet if I'd tried. I hadn't heard a word from Dumas since our meeting, and were it not for the call from Bellevue, it may as well have never happened. In retrospect, I'm sure that was all part of his plan. Once he had Elizabeth to use as leverage, he knew he had his hooks in me but good – there was nothing I wouldn't do to get her well.
I got my first call less than twenty-four hours after they'd admitted Elizabeth to Bellevue. The assignment was simple enough: just pick up a package and drop it in a locker at Penn Station. I was given a car, an address, a time and date. The car was a '42 Studebaker. The address was on the waterfront. The time was 4am. I guess that shoulda clued me in that something was hinky, but those were different times. Least, that's what I like to tell myself. Sometimes, it seems to me the times haven't changed that much at all.
When I arrived at the pier, all was quiet. Though sunrise was still an hour away, the morning air was already stifling, and my clothes clung heavy to my skin. A cargo ship sat, moored and lightless, at the far end of the pier, a ramp jutting upward to her deck. I hobbled toward her, my progress tracked by a trio of crewmen who lounged smoking amidst the shipping crates that were scattered along the wharf.
By the flag flying from her mast, the ship was registered in Jamaica, but the crew mostly didn't look the part. Their appearance and the occasional snippet of Spanish that drifted to me through the still morning air led me to guess that Mexico had been this ship's last port of call. No one addressed me as I approached, nor did they object as, hesitantly, I mounted the ramp and limped upward toward the deck.
On the ship, I was greeted by a dark-skinned boy of no more than sixteen, who led me wordlessly to the captain's quarters, knocking twice on the open door before ushering me inside. The captain was a wiry man with eyes and skin of deepest brown, and an accent to match the flag atop the mast. He sat behind a massive wooden desk, scarred and pitted – and stacked high with books and charts. He didn't rise when I entered, and as I approached to shake his hand, he waved me off, instead nodding toward a worn leather suitcase standing just inside the door.
'I believe that is what you came for,' he said. 'Now take it and get the hell off my ship.'
His tone was angry, to be sure, but the quaver in his voice belied the strength of his words. This man was afraid, I realized. Of me. Of Dumas.
Unsure how else to respond, I did as the captain said, retreating from his cabin without another word. The suitcase was heavy, and cumbersome as well. Twice as I descended the narrow ramp to the wharf, I stumbled, and nearly fell. But if the crewmen watching from behind the glowing embers of their cigarettes found my lack of grace amusing, they sure as hell didn't let on – there was nary a snicker or chiding comment to be had. It seemed the captain was not the only one who was frightened by my new employer. I was beginning to wonder if I ought to be as well.
It was just past 5am when I arrived at Penn Station, suitcase in hand. A far cry from the modern monstrosity now crammed like an afterthought beneath the hulking behemoth of Madison Square Garden, the old station was a soaring structure of glass and granite, its imposing colonnades oddly out of place alongside
