“Something I can do for you?” the guy said, shifting around behind the wheel to face him.
Ricci nodded, and as he did, moved slightly closer to the driver’s door and shot a right jab through the open window, getting most of his arm and shoulder into it, connecting hard with the side of his chin. The driver grunted with pain and surprise as his head snapped back, his hand going up to his face.
“You’re out of your goddamned mind,” he said.
“Rather be that than the one who got made,” Ricci said, and held out his palm. “Come on, show me your tag.”
The driver sat there massaging his chin.
“Up yours,” he said.
Ricci had kept his hand out.
“Your tag,” he said. “Either show it to me, or I can run a check on you. But I have to go to the trouble, you better believe I’ll have you busted down.”
The guy looked at Ricci a second, frowning. Then he dropped his hand from his chin, got a cardholder out of his mackinaw, and passed it out the window.
Ricci flipped it open, studied the UpLink Security ID card inside, read the name below its holographic Sword insignia.
“Bennett,” he said, repeating it aloud. “Cousins put you on me, or you pick me up on stakeout over at Kiran?”
The op stared out the window.
“You’re so smart, California, figure it out,” he said.
Ricci looked at him in silence.
“Atta boy,” he said. “Wouldn’t want a demerit on the report card.”
“Yeah, well, screw you, too.”
Ricci’s smile was cutting.
“Here’s one you can answer,” he said. “That van… it going to stay in sight?”
“What do you think?”
“I meant after your shift ends.”
“I know what the hell you meant.”
Ricci looked at him another moment, reached into his pocket for the sealed evidence bag, handed it through the window with the cardholder.
“I want what’s in the bag tested for prints right away… I’m talking first thing in the morning,” he said. “You ever try tailing me again, you might want to be smarter yourself, use a car I won’t have seen in the same req lot where I got mine.”
Bennett looked at him, flexed his jaw.
“Thanks for the advice, hump,” he said.
Ricci pulled into a public rest stop shortly before reaching the large barrier toll plaza between I-87 and the southbound Garden State Parkway to Manhattan.
In the empty parking area outside the visitor’s building, he got his palmtop out of a utility pocket in his tac vest and typed out a brief e-mail, addressing it to a Yahoo mobile account: O.W.K.Ready to meet tomorrow. Where and when — preference?R.
He sat for perhaps ten minutes afterward, staring at the computer screen, considering whether to hit SEND or DELETE on his keyboard.
Finally, his choice made, Ricci brought up the computer’s WiFi interface and zipped off his message.
He could almost feel the lion’s breath as he did.
Malisse’s elevator was dangerously out of control.
At first everything had seemed normal. He’d stepped inside alone, pushed the button for the tenth floor, and leaned back against the rear of the car as it rose. To his surprise, it had stopped on the third without opening either its inner or outer doors. When he’d pushed the DOOR OPEN button to get them to retract, his car had plunged down the shaft so sharply his stomach had lurched into his throat, jolted to a halt midway between the first and second floors, then reversed itself and shot up to the fifth. Again the doors had stayed shut, trapping Malisse behind them. Again he pushed ten on the number pad, repeatedly jabbing the button with his finger until his car had seemed to resume normal operation, its indicator lights telling him he’d begun to move up the shaft. Six, seven, eight, nine, and coming level with ten….
Then another sudden jolt and the elevator overshot his desired floor as if on high-powered thrusters, its hoist cables screaming, sides rattling, its decorative interior panels and mirrors shuddering and crashing down around him.
Malisse had been thrown about, on the verge of panic. How fast was he moving? Twenty meters per second? Thirty? Struggling to keep his feet under him, convinced the stress of rapid acceleration would break the car apart at any moment, tear it from its cables to send it freefalling down to the bottom of the shaft, he’d staggered toward the control panel and flipped the bright red EMERGENCY STOP switch.
An alarm bell kicked in at a deafening volume, but still the car kept ascending with rocket speed. On the verge of panic, Malisse wondered if he was a certain goner. What good would it do for someone to hear the racket if the elevator didn’t brake? If the alarm merely rang and rang and rang as it soared up, up, up, past the building’s highest story, staying in one piece only long enough to hit the roof?
Malisse grabbed the handrail, bracing for the inevitable collision, his ears filled with the clangorous, useless noise of the alarm bell—
And then he awoke to the ringing of the bedside phone in his room at the Mayfair Hotel.
Tossing free of his blankets, Malisse yanked off the black satin sleep mask he’d worn to foil the eternal and unspeakably intrusive lights of Manhattan. A moment later he glanced at his alarm clock, blinked twice as he groped for the receiver.
It was two forty-five A.M.
What boor, he thought, would call at this mad hour?
He jammed the phone against his ear.
“Duncan,” said the voice at the other end. “You sound kind of winded, Delano. I didn’t take you from any nocturnal diversions, did I?”
“Only my blissful dreams,” Malisse said. He took a calming breath. “Are you aware of the time?”
“Vaguely,” Duncan said. “We cardholders in the black-bag union keep odd schedules, and I hope you don’t expect any apologies. Fact is, you ought to be appreciative.”
Malisse sat up, shoved his pillows against the headboard, settled back onto them.
“I assume you’re about to tell me why,” he said at once.
“You wide awake?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Duncan said. “Because I’d hate for you to claim that I didn’t remind you about our meeting tomorrow. Or later this morning, I should say. Seven o’clock, Park Plaza, our usual table near those chess players.”
Malisse’s pique had melted away into eager curiosity.
“I don’t recall our having made the appointment,” he said, taking up the tease.
“No.”
“Well, maybe we didn’t have one before, come to think,” Duncan said. “Anyway, D, I’ve been to a tailor shop that had the coat you ordered in stock. They did while-you-wait alterations after all… though it took a cart full of my personal chips, and had me in the waiting room until maybe five minutes ago.”
Malisse straightened, drew an excited breath.
“Duncan, I truly
“Enough to treat me to breakfast?”
