parking in midtown Manhattan.
Parking condensed every fearful element of the city. You got your ticket from an angry foreigner in a tiny booth. You drove into a drafty underground garage that stank of urine and housed more species of wildlife than the Bronx Zoo. Muggers and murderers were likely skulking behind every other parked car.
And at Christmas? Forget it.
You'd be better off leaving your car in the middle of the Triborough Bridge and walking the rest of the way in.
Fortunately for Andy, the holidays were months away and so the crowds of people heading to work were no worse than usual. It was ridiculous, but ne-gotiable, which was good for him since he was already running late.
The parking garage was less than a block away from the bank where he worked, and as he angled down into the musty bowels of Manhattan, Andy took a moment to quietly curse his parents. Not for the first time today, and it surely wouldn't be the last.
They were the reason he had the car. In fact, it was their car.
The biggest, ugliest conglomeration of metal and plastic Detroit could produce, slapped front and back with the telltale orange-and-green Florida license plates. There was no doubt about it—if the Big Three started making cars with shark fins again, Andy's father would be first in line to buy one.
His parents were up on a visit with his mother's sister and they were going to spend the day taking Andy's aunt around town to see all the sites they had neglected to visit during their fifty-odd years of living in the Big Apple. It was an irony he had pointed out at least a hundred times during the past two days.
They had made Andy promise he would pick them up at Rockefeller Center at five-thirty that afternoon—a feat he still had no idea how to accomplish—and his father had dropped the keys to the Buick in his hand as he went out to work that morning. And so here he was, at 9:11 a.m. on a Monday morning, already more than ten minutes late for work, driving down into some subterranean nightmare and not knowing whether or not he was ever going to see a ray of sunlight again.
He did. In record time. Andy was up on the sidewalk and trotting along through the heavy pedestrian traffic three minutes later.
As he jogged along, he continually checked his watch at thirty-second intervals, each time stepping up the pace a little more. Plowing through the chok-ing throng of people, he caught a few angry glares from other pedestrians but in spite of everything that could have gone wrong, he was at the bank by twenty minutes past nine.
In front of the massive building, Andy noticed that the gutter had been marked off with several strate-gically placed orange traffic cones. These were obviously set up to discourage anyone from slowing down or parking in front of the bank's double doors.
The sounds of honking horns and angry shouts were proof that not everyone appreciated their careful placement.
At the center of the arrangement of cones, directly across from the glass foyer doors of the bank, a large white van sat soaking up the few feeble rays of di-luted sunlight that managed to penetrate the smog and towering buildings. The van's engine hummed softly.
As he approached, Andy noted that the cab of the van was empty.
Not a very wise move in New York. It was an open invitation to thieves. As he drew closer, Andy noticed the name PlattDeutsche A.G. stenciled in small black script above the door handle on the passenger's side. That explained it. This was the new security company which for the past few weeks had been installing the bank's new high-tech camera and vault system. Probably the van was wired to explode the minute somebody touched the door handle.
Suddenly the door separating the cab from the rear opened, and Andy got a quick glimpse of a distinctly high-tech environment A brief flash of computer monitors, blinking lights and men in white lab coats moving urgently around the cramped interior showed before the door was closed once more. A young man moved from the rear of the van to settle down in the vacant driver's seat behind the leather-wrapped steering wheel.
The man sported a mane of dirty blond hair swept carefully back onto the broad shoulders of his expensive suit, and when his gaze settled on Andy, the young mortgage officer found himself staring into a pair of the angriest blue eyes he had ever encountered. Looking at them was like peering into the eyes of a feral jaguar.
Andy didn't know what it was with those PlattDeutsche people, but ever since they'd shown up more than a month ago, they'd been giving everyone at the Butler Bank of New York a first-class case of the screaming- meamies.
Andy tore his gaze away from the feral eyes of the young man and hustled through the massive bank doors.
An hour later, Andy had settled down behind his desk on the main bank floor. He was a junior member of the bank's mortgage team, and even though his father referred to him as a 4'glorified teller,' he still hoped that one day he would move into the upper offices of the Butler banking empire.
As a junior officer in the banking industry, Andy generally considered his greatest misfortune to be the placement of his work space so close to the bank's main entrance. His proximity to the front door invited gentle queries on every imaginable topic from a wide range of the Butler Bank's many patrons. He felt that his desk was the informal information booth for the whole bank, and though he complained about it many times in the past, his supervisor had so far managed to avoid taking corrective action.
Today Andy wasn't complaining. He had completed the bulk of his work after a mere forty-five minutes behind his desk and he was intent on frit-tering away the remainder of the day until it was time to retrieve his father's car and battle his way through the insane rush-hour traffic. Most days when Andy goofed off, he had little to occupy his time save the endless shuffle of papers and an occasional trip to the men's room, but today he had a floor show.
Through the bank's hazy tempered-glass doors, he watched the activity around the white van.
The young blond man had remained behind the steering wheel for the better part of an hour, staring down pedestrians with his steely blue gaze. Only when another car pulled up into the cordoned area behind the van did the van driver exit the cab. He and the driver of the new vehicle stood together by the side of the large white truck. Their matching suits made them look like twins.
Andy tore his eyes away from the sidewalk and feigned interest in a document in his hand. The columns of numbers and dry words ran together in an incoherent jumble.
He looked back out the door. Several more men had joined the first two. They stood, glancing up and down the street nervously, as the man from the car spoke instructions to each of them in turn.
Every now and then, one of the newest arrivals would glance toward the bank entrance. Even though Andy was certain that the glare of the late-morning sun reflecting off the black-tinted main doors would be enough to shield him from view, he nonetheless felt himself growing more nervous with each subsequent glance.
What were those guys up to?
His hand began to snake toward the phone, ready to alert security to the suspicious activity on the sidewalk out front, when something suddenly popped into view. Walked into view, more accurately.
Somebody had come over from the main bank
floor, positioning himself before Andy Frost's desk and blocking his view of the men on the sidewalk.
Andy leaned to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was going on outside.
'Excuse me,' said a precise voice that reminded Andy of his grammar-school English teacher, Mr.
Henry.
He could no longer see the men on the sidewalk.
Andy leaned the other way, but his line of sight was still blocked.
'Excuse me,' the voice repeated. It was somewhat nasal and parched, as if the speaker's larynx had been soaked in a gallon of grapefruit juice and left to dry on a desert rock.
Andy looked up, exasperated. 'Yes. What?' he demanded.
'There is an error in my account.'
Andy rolled his eyes. Just another mindless questioner. He was going to kill his supervisor if he wasn't moved into a cubicle soon.
'This is the mortgage desk, sir,' Andy said in an icy tone.
