Gideon’s Sword

Gideon slid onto the vinyl stool of the all-night diner and ordered coffee, poached eggs, hash browns, toast, and marmalade. The waitress, her zaftig figure bursting out of a 1950s uniform, took his order and bawled it into the back.

“You should sing opera,” he said distractedly.

She turned to him with a brilliant smile. “I do.”

Only in New York. He nursed his coffee, feeling numb.

I hope the guy in those X-rays isn’t really a friend of yours. Maybe O’Brien’s doctor was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. But this was the third opinion.

Would he have been happier not knowing? Just enjoying his final year of life in blissful ignorance? But no — this changed everything. Gideon felt a strange sense of dissociation, as if he were already out of his body, away from the living world. Suddenly, very suddenly, his priorities had shifted. No point anymore in meeting someone, raising a family. No point in advancing his career. No point in not smoking or worrying about his cholesterol count. No point, really, in anything.

He took another sip of coffee, trying to shake the odd feeling of nerveless disbelief. One thing at a time. There’d be plenty of opportunities to think about this later. Right now, he had a job to finish.

He forced his thoughts back to Throckmorton Academy. He’d been correct about the private school motto. Having perused the school’s website, he’d gleaned some important, if inadvertent, information about the place. It was very exclusive, highly protective of information regarding its students and staff, and sophisticated in the management of such information. But every person and organization had a weakness, and Throckmorton Academy’s was written all over its site: overweening self-?regard. Pectus Est Quod Disertos Facit. Yeah, right.

The question was how to devise a social engineering plan to exploit that weakness. These were not idiots. He couldn’t go busting in there as a hyper-successful, self-important billionaire hedge fund manager seeking to enroll his son. They would undoubtedly have seen that type before, many times. They would be immune. He couldn’t pose as a celebrity, phony or real: Google had ended that game. Something just the opposite would be required: something that would play more subtly on their hopes, assumptions, and—?perhaps—?prejudices. As he mulled it over, an approach began to take shape in his head. Unfortunately, it would take two to pull it off. Jackson wouldn’t do: she was off trying to scare up her own leads, and besides, she wasn’t the type. No, it would have to be Orchid. Orchid would be perfect. He pushed away the sting of guilt at using her again, telling himself the ends were worth the means. After all, hadn’t she said she wanted him to call her?

A man slid onto the stool next to his, laying a folded Post down on the counter. Gideon was irritated that, in an empty diner at three o’clock in the morning, some asshole had to sit down right next to him.

The waitress came out with his plate, laid it down, and turned to the other man. He ordered coffee and Danish.

She poured it, brought him the Danish, and retired into the kitchen.

“How’s it going?” the man murmured, opening his paper.

Gideon glanced sideways in irritation, decided to ignore him.

“You must be almost out of cash,” the man murmured, perusing the front page.

Gideon felt something touch his leg and glanced down to see the man proffering a fat roll of cash under the counter. Before Gideon could react, the man had slid it into Gideon’s jacket pocket, all the while reading his paper. Gideon raised his head, got a better look at the face.

Garza. Eli Glinn’s right-hand man at EES.

An unpleasant mixture of shock and irritation coursed over him. So much for his facility at staying below the radar.

“It’s about time!” he said, turning on the man, suddenly snarky in his embarrassment at being caught unawares. “I wondered when Glinn would be sending a messenger boy.”

Garza frowned, his previous unflappability fading slightly. “That’s how you say thank you?”

“Thank you? Obviously you people at EES knew a lot more about this situation than what you briefed me on. I feel like I’ve been hung out to dry.”

Garza took a sip of coffee, pushed the Danish away, rose, and placed a few dollars on the counter. “You’re doing okay — at least until now. If I were you, instead of complaining I’d be worried as hell that we were able to locate you. If we can find you, so can Nodding Crane.”

The man slipped back out into the night, leaving the paper unfolded on the counter, its headline displayed.

MURDER ON MOTT

Chinatown Resident’s Throat Ripped Out by Assailant

Below was a picture of Roger Marion.

42

The man known as Nodding Crane moved slowly, painfully along the sidewalk outside the diner. Crew was still in there, talking to the fat waitress. The man who had passed him money had come and gone. He wasn’t interested in that man. He was interested in Crew.

Coming to a halt next to the stoop of an abandoned brownstone, he eased himself onto it, placing the beer can wrapped in a greasy paper bag beside him, and lowered his head. A set of garbage cans, stacked in a row for morning pickup, cast a long shadow, further hiding his face. A group of noisy young people crossed the street at the corner of Avenue C and went on into the night, laughing and hooting. All became silent once again.

Right hand in the pocket of his old raincoat, he flexed his fingers, the razor-sharp picks clicking lightly against one another. He had been trained in the use of many exotic weapons — double sai, sweepers, flutes, walking canes, fire wheels, tiger forks, moonteeth — but the fingerpicks had been his own innovation. They were, in fact, genuine Dunlops he had modified, sharpened, and polished. As a boy in the training temple back in China, he had been immersed in American culture—?movies, books, video games, music. Especially music, as music was the soul of a people. On his own volition, he had taken up bottleneck guitar and learned the tunes of Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Willie Johnson, and Skip James. “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” Now, that was real American music.

If I ever get off this killin’ floor

I’ll never get down this low no more

As he hummed the music under his breath, his fingers, hidden in his voluminous coat pocket, picked out the imaginary notes, the sharpened picks making a clicking sound not unlike knitting needles.

He saw a movement in the diner out of the corner of his eye and, while continuing to hum, shifted his attention. It was Crew. The man exited the diner, crossed the street — walking with that characteristic loping stride of his — and turned, coming along the sidewalk toward Nodding Crane, moving toward Avenue C. Keeping his head down, the low brim of his old cap hiding his face, Nodding Crane waited for Crew to arrive. His humming continued, the fingers clacked.

Crew passed by and Nodding Crane let him go on, smiling to himself at how easy it would have been. But there were reasons not to kill him now — excellent reasons. As the man reached Avenue C, he held out his hand for a cab, and one almost immediately stopped. Nodding Crane noted the hack number, went back to humming.

Half an hour later, he stood up, stretched, and shuffled down the street, removing his cell phone. He called the Taxi and Limousine Commission hotline, explained he had left a PDA in the cab he had flagged down on Avenue C and 13th, about three thirty AM, the ride ending at Grand Central Terminal. He waited while the cabbie was contacted. The driver had not seen the lost PDA; but there was confusion over which fare was which, since the trip record indicated that the fare in that hack number had not ended at Grand Central, but instead at Park Avenue and 50th — in front of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Nodding Crane thanked the person, apologized for the confusion, and