Nora said, “Are we formulating a theory that someone got up into the overhead flight crew rest area from the cargo hold?”
Eph recalled the feeling he had gotten, standing in the cockpit with the dead pilots — just before discovering that Redfern was still alive. That of a presence. Something nearby.
He moved Nora away from the other two. “And tracked some of that…whatever swirl of biological matter in the passenger cabin.”
Nora looked back to the image of the black blur in the rafters.
Eph said, “I think someone was hiding up in that compartment when we first entered the plane.”
“Okay…,” she said, grappling with that. “But then — where is it now?”
Eph said, “Wherever that cabinet is.”
Gus
GUS SAUNTERED DOWN the lane of cars in the low-ceilinged, long-term parking garage at JFK. The echoing screech of balding tires turning down the exit ramps made the place sound like a madhouse. He pulled out the folded index card from his shirt pocket and double-checked the section number, written in someone else’s hand. Then he double-checked that there was no one else near.
He found the van, a dinged-up, road-dirtied, white Econoline with no back windows, at the very end of the lane, parked astride a coned-off corner work area of fluttering tarp and crumbled stone where part of the overhead support had cracked.
He pulled out a hand rag and used it to try the driver’s door, which was unlocked, as advertised. He backed off from the van and looked around the isolated corner of the garage, quiet but for those monkey squeals in the distance, thinking
But he had taken the $50 the dude offered him to do this. Easy money, which Gus still had on him, tucked inside the band of his pinch-front hat, holding on to it for evidence in case things went south.
Gus pulled open the door — waited; no alarm — and climbed inside. Didn’t see no cameras — but he wouldn’t anyway, would he? Behind the front seats was a metal partition without a window. Bolted in there, aftermarket. Maybe truck full of PD he’s driving around.
Van felt still, though. He opened the glove compartment, again using the rag. Gently, as if a gag snake might jump out at him, and the little light came on. Laid out inside was the ignition key, the parking garage ticket he needed to get out, and a manila envelope.
He looked inside the envelope and the first thing he saw was his pay. Five new $100 bills, which pleased and pissed him off at the same time. Pleased him because it was more than he had expected, and pissed him off because no one would break a century from him without a hassle, especially nowhere in the hood. Even a bank would scan the hell out of those bills, coming out of the pocket of an eighteen-year-old tatted-up Mexican.
Folded around the bills was another index card listing the destination address and a garage access code, GOOD FOR ONE USE ONLY.
He compared the cards side by side. Same handwriting.
Anxiety faded as excitement rose.
The last item in the larger envelope was a smaller, letter-size envelope. He withdrew a few sheets of paper, unfolded them, and a warm flame rose out of the center of his back and into his shoulders and neck.
AUGUSTIN ELIZALDE, headed the first one. It was Gus’s rap sheet, his juvenile jacket leading up to the manslaughter conviction and his being kicked free with a clean slate on his eighteenth birthday, just three short weeks ago.
The second page showed a copy of his driver’s license and, below that, his
He stared at that paper for two straight minutes. His mind raced back and forth between that missionary- looking dude and how much he knew, and his
Gus didn’t take well to threats. Especially involving his
The third page was printed in the same handwriting as the index cards. It read: NO STOPS.
Gus sat at the window of the Insurgentes, eating his fried eggs doused with Tabasco sauce, looking at the white van double-parked out on Queens Boulevard. Gus loved breakfast, and, since getting out, had eaten breakfast at nearly every meal. He ordered specific now, because he could: bacon extra crispy, burn the toast.
Fuck them, NO STOPS. Gus didn’t like this game, not once they included his
What was inside that van?
A couple of
He pulled out into the boulevard, continuing west toward Manhattan, one eye out for tails. The van bounced over some roadwork and he listened closely but heard nothing shift in back. Yet something was weighing down the suspension.