I risked a look over the nearest hood. Burke was gone.
Maybe he had stepped into the open elevator. Or maybe he was waiting until the new arrivals had left to emerge and finish me off. I ran to the Barracuda, diving into the driver’s seat, leaving thick black stripes on the asphalt in my haste to be away.
Driving out of the garage gave no relief. I expected Burke to appear from behind every car, around each corner. Only when I was on the street and roaring south did I unclench.
How had he found me? How the hell did he know who I was, even with the pictures from his camera trap at the house? It had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d darkened his doorstep. Goddamn.
Once I’d passed the stadiums and was sure no one was following, I pulled over and stepped out of the car. The way I was going I’d smash into a lamppost, or get busted for reckless endangerment.
My new tuxedo was beyond repair, torn and stained by my roll across the oily pavement. I could feel my knee seeping blood. I tore off the jacket and shirt and replaced them with the old flannel I’d started the night with.
Idiot. The only reason I wasn’t ending the night in a hospital or a morgue was dumb luck, emphasis on the dumb. I had been a step too slow in every single dance tonight.
I called Hollis. Maybe misery could do with company.
“You alone?” I said.
“For the moment. Matty and Fran from J dock are on their way over. We’ve a trip planned south to Cannon Beach after the new year.”
“I just met Sean Burke.”
“The man who might be—”
“The man who might be. We didn’t get into that.”
“So what’s he like?”
“Calmer than me. But he was the one holding the gun.” I told Hollis what had happened.
“Sly devil,” Hollis said, “with his hidden cameras.”
“In a home that might as well be a worm on a hook. An entire house, set up just to see who comes knocking.”
“Who does that?”
Somebody with serious enemies. If I had walked into Burke’s house with a gun in my hand, he’d have assumed I had broken in to kill him. In which case he might have ended me straight off, no need for interrogation.
“I can’t get distracted by Sean Burke right now,” I said, more to myself than Hollis. “Bilal Nath is still dead set on forcing me to crack Ceres Biotech tomorrow night. It’s more than just business for him, I’m sure. And I don’t think I can shake him loose in time.”
“And you need help.”
“I need a third option.”
I told Hollis what I had in mind.
“That’s possible,” he said, “but are you sure you won’t want a little—what do you soldiers call it—fire support?”
“Willard will be there if things get hot. My last resort.”
“Matty just stepped aboard,” Hollis said. “I can come by your apartment in the morning.”
“I’ll come to you.”
“You all right?”
“I’m rattled. Between Bilal knowing where all my friends live and Sean Burke tracking me down hell knows how, I’m not sure where safe ground is. Better to keep on the move.”
“Get some rest, lad,” Hollis said. “We’ll sort it out.”
He hung up. I knew he was right. I’d been on the move and on edge all day, and tomorrow would be worse.
The last day of the year. Time for resolutions. And fireworks.
Junior Year, Part Two
Seeing my friend Davey Tolan in the library was like spotting a coyote at the off-leash dog park. Out of place, and very likely up to no good. He was alone at one of the study tables, reading or pretending to read our English assignment of Brave New World. Really he was drawing robots and shit in his notebook like always.
“Davey,” I said, sliding into the chair opposite him. “The fuck?”
He smiled like he already knew the punchline to a joke I was telling and flicked his eyes toward a group of girls at another table I’d passed on the way in. “Kate Barra.”
“Huh?” I knew who Kate was. Honor Society, in every AP course ever invented and probably creating more they hadn’t. High-Quality Life. “You’re not horny for her.”
Davey leaned in so far he practically lay across the table. His dark hair flopped over his face. “I am since I saw her running in gym class. Katie Girl’s exercise necessitates an industrial-strength sports bra.”
I snorted. Davey’s dick was like a compass with a magnet nearby. Unpredictable. “She’ll never go for it.”
“You have no faith at all. One, Kate has agreed to help me with algebra. Two, she broke up with Pel Rosario last weekend. Time is ripe and so is she.”
How did Davey track all this stuff? Every time I thought he and I were roughly equivalent in our social status—somewhere north of the burnouts and south of everyone else—he proved he was tapped in. And despite my scoffing, I knew damn well Kate Barra might be in his range. Davey had those kinds of looks. Girls had been into him since before we knew what girls were.
“So that’s why I’m in the library . . .” Davey said, nudging.
“You remember a quilt? Used to hang on the wall right there.” I pointed to where a bunch of watercolors from Ms. Pico’s art class now covered the wall.
“That is maybe the weirdest question you’ve ever asked me.”
“Do you?”
“Whoa.” He mimed raising his hands to ward off a blow. “Yeah, sure I do. It got ripped off last year. So?”
“My mom made part of it.”
“Oh. And it’s gone now. Man, that sucks.” He thought about it as I stared angrily at the watercolors. The library smelled a little like old wool, even though the school had dehumidifiers running all year long to keep mold away.
“You talk to Colten?”
“Who? Colten Gulas?”
“He got fucking reamed by Mr. Lindhoff when the quilt disappeared. ʼCause I guess Colten was watching the library, part of his detention or some shit. So either Colten left when he wasn’t supposed to, or he knew who took the quilt and wouldn’t squeal.”
Mr. Lindhoff was the guidance counselor. I didn’t like him, and I probably wasn’t one of his favorite people, either. “Why’s Lindhoff care so much?”
“Dude!” Davey laughed. “He cares ʼcause Ms. Nasgate cares. They’re boning, man. How do you not know this?”
Because I rarely gave a thought to school, except to finish it and get away. I was starting to see the downside.
“I’ll find Colten,” I said.
“I figured. You got that look, like you’re biting on aluminum foil. But you’ll have to wait. The dork’s been out of class past three days.”
“He sick?”
“Dunno.”
“You know where he lives?”
“Man, you are caffeinated today. I don’t. He sometimes skips last period to hang with Singer Boeman’s Club for Shitheads, so maybe he’s skipping the whole week.”
I remembered Singer. The school’s dealer of tiny bags of pot or coke or whatever pills he’d been able to steal from somebody’s parents’ bathroom. Boeman and most of his bunch had graduated or finished their credits during summer makeup sessions last year.
“Kate’s friends are leaving,” Davey said, shrugging into his black leather jacket. My cue to make space. “I’m gonna see if she wants to go to Yvette Friel’s party this weekend.”
“Bet you don’t even get a hand in her sweater,” I said, standing up.
“You should have my back, dude,” he said. “Kate says Eden Adler likes you. I might be in a position to make that miracle happen.”
“Bullshit.”
“I mean it,” he said. “Swear to God. She’s no Kate”—he subtly mimed huge globes on his chest—“but if that’s your type, go for it.”
Eden Adler did not require a double-whatever-letter bra. Eden Adler didn’t require anything but being Eden Adler. And Davey really was just trying to help.
“Thanks, man,
” I said.
“If we all go out, you’re payin’.”
It was a Wednesday, which meant Mr. Lindhoff was in his office. Early in the school year he had come around to all the homerooms to introduce himself and had mentioned that most guidance counselors served two or three high schools depending on size. He meant the size of the schools, but I guessed it could also mean the size of the district budget.
Probably because he wasn’t there more often, his office was for crap. More a long closet with a high window, like a jail cell, and so narrow he would have to turn sideways to go between the wall and his desk, which was not exactly huge itself. Below the window, a hanging magazine rack was packed solid with brochures on universities and voc-tech schools, instructional packets for writing college essays, GED forms for students dropping out, and reams of other stuff I’d likely never give two shits about.
Lindhoff’s eyebrows popped over his bifocals as I entered. The idea of him and Ms. Nasgate as a couple was weird. She wasn’t young or anything, she’d been at the school for like twenty-five years. But Lindhoff seemed old. Like dentures old.
“Mr. Shaw?” he said. “Rethinking our talk about colleges?”
Right. Lindhoff had said something to me about my grades holding up for two-year colleges and maybe state school if I applied myself. I had forgotten what I’d said to get away from him at the time.
“Sure, but . . . I wanted to ask about the quilt from the library. The one that got stolen.”
“Ask what, precisely?”
“Did Colten Gulas ever say who took it?”
He removed the glasses entirely now. I’d gotten his attention, which may not be the best thing.
“Why,” he said, “do you want to know?”
Oh shit. I saw the leap he’d made. Now Lindhoff thought I was worried Colten had ratted me out.
Sometimes the truth really does set you free.
“My mom. She’s dead.” I let that hang in the air for a moment. Lindhoff nodded impatiently, but his expression eased back a little. “She made one of the squares, Miz Nasgate told me.” A one-two punch for sympathy, throwing out my mom and your girlfriend, dude.
“I see. And you’re hoping to recover it.” He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that’s a dead end, Mr. Shaw. Colten said he never saw who took it.”
Which was different than not knowing. I caught that, and Lindhoff saw me catch it.
“At this point it would be best to consider it lost,” he said. “That’s my belief as well as the school’s. Do you grasp my meaning?”
“Yeah.” Don’t go beating up Colten for answers, or the guidance counselor will guide me right into a suspension.
“Good. And I’m sorry. I remember your mother. Moira, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Unusual name here in the States. She and I talked about college options for her, even after her surprise.” He nodded toward me. “A very good student. I think she was looking at community schools, something that might allow her flexible hours. Do you know if she ever went?”
“No.”
“‘No, you don’t know,’ or ‘No, she never attended college’?”
Lindhoff could be such a dickwad. “I don’t know.”
“Hmm. Priorities, perhaps. Still, a bright young woman.”
He turned back to his paperwork. I left him.
At least Lindhoff hadn’t given me the old speech about doing a good job because Mom would have wanted that. People had been telling me that shit my entire life, like they’d known her at all.
And he hadn’t been convinced by Colt’s story. While I didn’t like Lindhoff much, I had to admit he wasn’t a dummy. If he thought Colten Gulas knew something about the quilt, then I’d bet he was right. Suspension or no suspension, I was going to find out what that something was.
Twenty
Returning to my apartment was too big a risk. Even though I’d kept my name off the lease, Bilal Nath had access to enough information that he might conceivably track me to my overpriced studio off Broadway. And there was no telling where Sean Burke and his silenced SIG might pop up again. Or the pair of men who had tailed me earlier in the day.
Less than a week ago, my biggest concern was how to mend fences with Addy. Now I was dodging at least three different menaces while setting up a score that might get me killed. I needed a new life plan.
The speedboat should be safe ground. Officially I’d sold the boat after Dono’s death and it was registered to a marine supply company in Everett. Which in turn was owned by a real corporation in Hong Kong, although those papers were false. I was subletting its moorage with cash. That made enough of a smoke screen that I could close both eyes to sleep.
In the morning, I rose to find the cloud cover had lightened to the point where I could at least guess at the position of the sun. The docks smelled of Canada geese and algae and clean ocean air every time the breeze picked up.
The Francesca wasn’t in its slip. Hollis might be offshore, out of the reach of Bilal. I texted him the number 16 and tuned the VHF radio to that hailing channel. I’d finished changing clothes when his voice came through the tinny speaker.
“Benning Boy, this is Francesca.” Fort Benning in Georgia was the home of the Ranger Regiment.
“Francesca, this is Benning Boy. Reply seven-one.”
“Seven-one,” he confirmed. We switched frequencies.
“Smart thinking calling on the radio,” Hollis said once we’d exchanged call signs again. “I’ve been nervous about using my cell phone since that—” He stopped himself from cursing over the airwaves. “Since our spot of trouble.”
“Where are you?”
“A few miles north. Have you heard from our large friend?”
I’d received a text from Willard overnight.
“I’m meeting him at ten,” I said. “You remember the place where Albie used to watch the ponies?”
There was a moment’s pause. “I do. It’s still around?”
“Sort of.”
“I can tie up at a guest slip in Edmonds and probably get there by then.”
“See you there. And thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. My head might just as well be on that same chopping block, you know.”
At a diner on Seaview Avenue, I drank too much coffee and picked at an egg breakfast, as I concentrated on reading details online about the CXS-3001 container I’d seen in Saleem’s hotel safe.
I’d been right about it being designed to transport biological material. The CXS-3001 was touted by the manufacturer as a new generation intended for small-scale transport, and top of the line. The heavy base of the aluminum bottle could receive a pressurized cartridge of liquid nitrogen that would charge the foam inside within minutes instead of the hours necessary for larger, older models, the advertising claimed. So charged, the bottle’s insulation and vacuum plug would maintain the temperature south of one-hundred-fifty degrees below zero, Celsius, keeping its contents viable for at least ten days.
Time enough for Bilal to escape. Far out of the reach of any law. He’d claimed he wasn’t after anything that would cause harm, but I trusted that about as far as I could fastball the runny egg yolk on my plate. Even if I were stealing some prototype vaccine that might help him avoid a slow death from ALS, who knew how that theft might set back research at Ceres, or how many lives a lost cure would impact?
I had to go through with the job or suffer the consequences. That, or call the FBI now and have them ready to bust all of us the moment I stepped over Ceres’s gleaming threshold. I’d keep Hollis and Paula Claybeck out of the story if I could. But if that was impossible, so be it. Better to have them in a cell than dead, or enabling the deaths of who knew how many others.
Would calling the cops even solve the problem? We’d all be stuck in holding tanks until Bilal’s lawyers arranged to cut him loose. Probably much sooner than I would be arraigned and make bail. He could be out and making his next move within hours, and I’d be trapped, unable to pr
otect anyone.
Yet I couldn’t let Bilal Nath get hold of whatever he was after. Regardless of the risk to me or Hollis or even Addy and Cyndra.
The whole puzzle was giving me a headache. I swallowed two aspirin from my pocket, which reminded me of Bilal and Aura’s lineup of prescription bottles in their hotel bathroom. What had Aura’s been?
Olaparib. I looked it up. A cancer cell inhibitor. Commonly taken as a long-term maintenance drug to help prevent recurrence. The description I read mentioned particular use for patients with advanced ovarian cancer after prior lines of chemotherapy, once the tumor had diminished or disappeared.
I knew just enough to understand heavy chemotherapy could impact or even end a woman’s fertility. A book on pregnancy had been on Aura’s nightstand. Was she healthy now, or waiting until her body could handle carrying a baby to term? Were they racing against time with Bilal’s worsening health? Any way it shook out, I didn’t see how knowing she was afflicted could help my problem.
First things first. I’d meet Willard and Hollis, and we’d see how tough a nut Ceres would be. Then, unless I had some brilliant idea before nightfall, I’d drop by the FBI field office downtown and hand whatever agent had pulled holiday duty a shiny gift for the new year.
Luce’s late uncle Albie Boylan had loved to gamble. He never had enough money or credit to get himself deeply into hock, but he seemed to get as much joy out of betting five dollars as five hundred. The bar he’d fronted for my grandfather—who had called the shots behind the scenes—didn’t carry the cable channel showing the action at the old Longacres track. So to watch whatever horse race he’d bet that week’s spare change against, Albie would toddle down to Alaskan Way and a billiard hall nestled under the viaduct.
Over the years the pool hall had been sold and partitioned, with half the space becoming a coffeehouse, which was eventually halved again into a sort of lunch bodega for commuters and tourists coming off the ferries and looking to grab a fast bite. But the television stayed in roughly the same place on the wall, upgraded to a flat screen now and showing a singing competition on Telemundo. I bought a Coke to claim space at the window counter.
A Dangerous Breed Page 13
