to wear her brand when I met. . . him.”
“And you just—?”
“You don’t understand,” Nadine said quietly. “But she does.”
“I—”
The phone rang.
“The woman with you—is she the one?” the voice asked.
“Yes,” I replied, knowing I could be talking to a tape recording, not wasting an atom of concentration on the voice.
“Turn around.”
I did it. Waited. Nadine didn’t move, so I was looking over her shoulder.
“You are under observation. Full thermal. Discard all weapons, recording devices, and transmitters now.”
“Don’t have any,” I told him.
“See building directly ahead of you to the right? Gray stone. Twenty-nine stories?”
“Yes.”
“Security box to right of door. Access code is: thirteen thirty-three thirty-nine zero three. Repeat.”
“Thirteen. Thirty-three. Thirty-nine. Zero. Three.”
“Enter building. Summon elevator. Last car on your left. Enter. Follow instructions.”
I heard a disengagement click!
“Let’s go,” I told Nadine.
The building had twin front doors of thick glass, each with a long vertical brass handle. I punched in the numbers. Pulled on the handles. Nothing. The muscles between my shoulders tightened. I took a deep breath through my nose and pushed. The doors opened inward. We walked across a medium-sized lobby with an unattended doorman’s desk. The last elevator to my left was standing open. We stepped inside. As the door closed, I saw a typed note taped to the control panel.
PRESS > 21-11-19-4
I did that. The car started to rise. A digital indicator showed each floor as we passed. When it reached 29, it kept on going.
The elevator door opened into an archway. I knew what it was right away. Security gauntlet. The most sophisticated detector made, as sensitive as an MRI. I’d seen one like it before. On the private penthouse floor of a terrified billionaire with enough cash to indulge his paranoia.
I didn’t waste time worrying about the zipper in my jacket or my belt buckle or. . . anything. He’d trust his machines. I just said, “Come on” to Nadine and started to walk through it.
The place was operating-room cold. I felt Nadine behind me, her hand fluttering against my shoulder. At the exit end of the archway was a small table, standing just off to the right. The only thing on it was a box about the size of an eight-by-ten photograph. I looked down at it. Greenish glow. I placed my right hand flat, making sure my fingerprints would register. I looked around. A tiny red light was standing above a door a few feet away. Even in the murky light, I could tell that the door was built hard and heavy. I could feel Nadine’s breath against my neck. It was ragged but not frightened. More like. . . excited.
The red light blinked off. I walked to the door. Couldn’t see a knob. I pushed gently. It opened, swinging free. I stepped inside, Nadine so close now she almost shoved past me.
The floor was carpeted. I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it. A single strand of blue neon tubing ran all around the walls. That was the only light. I could make out two metal chairs, a coffee table between them, standing lengthwise so the chairs were close together. On the table, a long narrow tray full of sand, like one of those miniature Buddhist gardens.
I took the chair to the right, furthest from the door, showing him I knew I couldn’t get out if he didn’t want me to. Nadine sat down next to me. The blue neon amped up just enough for me to see what was in front of us. A wall of thick plastic, like they use in liquor stores, only this one had no money slot. Lexan, probably. I could make out a shape behind it. Seated. Impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.
“The instructions I taped to the inside of the elevator car—did you bring them with you?” a voice asked. A man’s voice, coming from speakers somewhere on my side of the glass. No way to tell if it was his own or an electronically altered version.
“No. I left them there,” I said.
“Good. If your. . . friends overheard the coordinates to enter the building and try the elevator, I presume they will push the same sequence. It has been reprogrammed.”
“They won’t—”
“If they do that,” the voice continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “the doors will seal. And unless they came equipped with gas masks, they are already dead. The stairway is secured against anything other than low-yield explosive, and I have it on both visual and audio right in front of me. That option is closed as well.”
“I played this square,” I told him. “I’m alone. And unarmed. You must have your own way out of here.”
“Of course.”
“So. You want to do business or I wouldn’t be here, right?”
“Yes. Questions first.”
“Mine or yours?”
“Mine. Why is the woman with you?”
“Not now,” I told him.
“You have no options,” the voice said.
“Yeah, I do. If I gave a damn about dying, I wouldn’t have looked for you in the first place.”
“I would have found you.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t when I started. I know what you want. You can’t get it snuffing me. I’m sure you got gas jets in the ceiling. Probably got electricity in these chairs too. I got the message, pal. I’m surrounded. It’s no new experience for me. Your questions have nothing to do with her. She’s here because she wants to be. Ask her whatever you want. . . when you and me are done.”
“You are in no position to bargain.”
“No? You think you know me. You don’t. You think you know Wesley. You don’t know him either, for all your fucked-up ‘research.’ Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. What’s your problem? We can’t leave. And we can’t hurt you. Do what you want—I don’t give a good goddamn.”
The voice was quiet after that. Nadine twitched in her chair. I probably shouldn’t have said anything about electricity. I breathed through my nose, shallow.
Time passed.
“I thought you would have wanted one of your cigarettes by now,” the voice said, like he had all the time in the world. “By the way, purely as a matter of interest, what brand did Wesley smoke?”
“Dukes,” I told him. “Same as me.”
“Dukes? I am not familiar with—”
“New York has a humongous tax on smokes,” I said. “Lots of states do. Contraband creates opportunity. There’s major traffic in bringing them up from North Carolina. Tobacco country. ‘Dukes,’ get it? You buy them from a wholesale jobber down there, truck them up here, sell them for fifty percent retail, and everybody scores. Doesn’t matter what the brand name is—Dukes is what they call smuggled smokes. Me, I smoke whatever’s on the truck that month, understand?”
“Certainly. Nothing in your profile indicates a connoisseur’s taste, even in something so mundane.”
His voice wasn’t anything like Wesley’s. The voice coming through the speakers was machine-altered. Wesley
I waited.
“I am in no particular hurry,” the voice said, picking up on my thoughts. “Even if your. . . friends have this building under surveillance. . . even if you have notified the authorities. . . I am able to leave undetected.”
“And then blow the building?”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged, like it was no big thing. “I may choose to do so, but only if—”
“I understand,” I told him. I could feel shock waves of surprise from behind the glass partition, but he didn’t
