special knowledge so he could consider himself a businessman. But the inquiries about Geiger were taps on his shoulder, whispers in his ear that made him look inward, and at those times his psychic Sheetrock couldn’t hide the Medusa’s head he’d grown over the last decade.
He unlocked and opened the building’s reinforced side door, revealing a wide, well-lit hallway. The center of the hallway’s floor was embedded with four rows of two-inch steel cargo rollers. Hall pulled out the van’s sliding ramp from beneath the back doors and laid the end down onto the rollers. He grabbed the handle of the trunk inside the van and pulled it down the ramp. When the trunk slid onto the rollers, he and Harry gave it a nudge, and then walked it down to an open freight elevator at the corridor’s end.
“Nice setup,” said Hall.
“Yup,” said Harry.
They shoved the trunk into the elevator and stepped inside. Harry pulled the accordion gate closed, worked the hand gear, and they slowly ascended with a jangle and rattle.
“Haven’t been in one of these in a long time,” Hall said.
Harry glanced down at the silver container between them. It was the same kind he used-a six-foot, seam- welded Zarges made of anodized aluminum. Harry had listed the brand in his prep e-mail.
“Have any problem finding a trunk?”
“No, not at all,” Hall said. He opened the attache case and showed Harry the contents. “Thirty-five thousand. Hundreds and fifties, as requested.”
Harry shifted the lever and eased the lift to a stop at the second floor. The room was bigger than the space in the Bronx-thirty feet square and twelve feet high, with speaker grids set into the glossy black walls and ceiling every ten feet. When Harry pushed the gate open the brassy clatter skittered off the surfaces like a handful of coins.
In the center of the room sat a motorized wheelchair, its black leather and chrome gleaming in the piercing overhead lights. Leather straps hung from the back, arms, and footrests. Otherwise the room was empty.
Hall glanced at Harry. “A wheelchair?”
Harry nodded.
“Is he here?”
“He’s here,” Harry said.
They dragged the trunk out of the elevator, and a tiny worm of thought wriggled to life beneath a rock in Harry’s brain. Something was not quite right. He was about to turn the rock over and have a look when Geiger stepped into the room.
“Geiger?” Hall asked, extending a hand.
Geiger came to them, giving a single nod, hands remaining at his sides. He was dressed in a black denim jumpsuit and high-top sneakers. Hall put the attache case down.
“Geiger,” he said, “there’s been a slight change of plans.”
Harry was perhaps the only person on earth who understood that the imperceptible shift in the muscles of Geiger’s face might be a frown.
“What kind of change?” Geiger asked.
“Matheson slipped us. He got away.”
Now Harry turned over that rock in his mind and winced. When they’d carried the trunk into the room, it had felt light. Too light.
“Then who is in the trunk?” Geiger said.
“Someone I’m pretty certain knows where Matheson is.” Hall flicked the trunk’s latches open. “His son.”
Hall started to lift the lid, but Geiger’s fingers came to rest on it, stopping its progress after a few inches.
“How old?” Geiger said.
“Twelve.”
Geiger pushed the lid back down until it closed. The action was relaxed but firm.
“I don’t work with children, Mr. Hall.”
“You don’t?”
Geiger’s fingertips did short drum rolls on his thighs. Hall’s hand went inside his jacket pocket, came out with a thick manila envelope, and dropped it on top of the trunk.
“Would another five grand persuade you to make an exception?”
“You should have let Harry know about the situation. He would have told you the policy. No exceptions.”
“You’re right, of course,” Hall said with a series of choppy nods, “but it never occurred to me that someone in your business would have any… exceptions.” He glanced at Harry, who was staring mournfully at the attache case as if it were a casket. The hundreds and fifties inside it were dead to him now.
“Listen, Geiger,” Hall said. “Seeing as how we’re here, let’s talk about this for a minute. The kid has been staying with his father for a few weeks, and we’re close to certain he knows where Matheson is, or where he’s headed. Now, my referral gave me two names for the job-yours and a Mr. Dalton. We came to you because we understand your methods are more understated, whereas Dalton has a reputation for getting carried away. I don’t want to see the boy hurt, Geiger, but I have to find out what he knows. We’re really fighting the clock now. So my point is this: if you don’t do the job, we’ll go to Dalton. So why not take the payday?” His hands rose out to his sides, palms up, as if he’d just finished a pitch at a sales convention. “And that includes the extra five thousand.”
Harry watched Geiger go into what he had privately coined “dead mode”-a state that visited Geiger when he seemed to be considering something. Eyes unblinking, chest unmoving, he stood completely still for several seconds. Then a single blink seemed to bring him back to life.
“Let’s get the kid in the chair,” Geiger said.
Hall’s eyebrows curled into question marks, and he turned to look at Harry as if Geiger had spoken in an unknown dialect and Harry was the official translator. Harry stared back silently. He’d never delivered an underage Jones, never even considered the possibility. It had been a long time since Geiger had surprised him.
“All right, then,” Hall said. “Great.”
He reached to the trunk and pulled the lid up. Harry bent down and caught the manila envelope as it slid toward the floor.
Geiger looked in the trunk. Matheson’s son was on his side, wrists and ankles cinched together with thin plastic self-locking ties. Three strips of silver duct tape circled his head, one across his eyes and two across his mouth. His long, wavy blond hair was sodden, stuck to his forehead and cheeks like seaweed on a beach. He was dressed in a blue T-shirt, silver gym shorts, and red-and-black Nike Air LeBrons. The skin of his slender arms and legs was tanned, and his head rested on a violin case. He looked asleep, or in a coma.
“His name?” Geiger asked.
“Ezra.”
“Did you give him anything?”
“No. But he was a handful.”
Geiger knelt beside the trunk. Harry thought there was almost something of the supplicant in the action.
“Ezra…” Geiger said softly, like a parent waking a child from a nap. The blinded, muted body showed no reaction to its name. “Ezra, time to get up.”
Geiger started to straighten up, and as he did he grabbed the handle at one end of the trunk and suddenly yanked it up, standing it on its end. The boy and the violin case came tumbling out onto the floor. Harry took two involuntary steps backward, staring at the moaning body.
Geiger took hold of the plastic cable tie at the boy’s ankles and began dragging him across the floor. The boy twisted furiously, like a marlin on a gaff, and muffled whimpers escaped from beneath the duct tape. At the wheelchair, Geiger grabbed the boy under the armpits and hoisted him roughly onto the seat. Then he began securing the chair’s straps around the boy’s ankles, arms, and chest.
Hall watched the proceedings with a hint of admiration at his lips.
“Ezra,” Geiger said as he worked, “you’re going for a ride now. You won’t struggle-you’ll stay completely still in this wheelchair. In a little while I’m going to ask you questions about your father, and you are going to tell me everything I need to know.” The strapping was finished. Geiger clicked his neck. Left, right. “I’m telling you the truth, Ezra, and you’re going to tell me the truth. That’s why we’re here. Any answer that is less than truthful-I’ll
