I tried to shake off the gloom with chatter. “Where do you think they took Tony?”
“Better be a hospital.” Reuben pressed his hands to the table’s onyx surface and left behind palm-shaped imprints of moisture. If either of my friends were terrified, they refused to mention it.
“How many doctors have actually seen hydrogen sulfide poisoning?” Tricia wondered aloud. “What if they don’t recognize it?”
I was more worried about our own survival than Tony’s, but she was right. Misdiagnosis could be fatal.
Before leaving us alone, our captors had methodically unloaded and arranged the contents of our backpacks in the center of the stone conference table. Odd. Was it a Rudolph request, as if an inspection might reveal something? But what could he be looking for? I reminded myself that our final measurements remained taped to Tricia’s upper thigh. Drax could confiscate everything else, including Alfred’s Hasselblad, if only we could save one film roll—along with our lives.
A door groaned open across the room, doubling our available light until Rudolph Drax entered and shut it more forcefully than necessary. He wore a dress shirt and slacks as wrinkled as a shopping bag, no doubt yesterday’s outfit thrown on in a hurry. How telling that the great and powerful Rudolph Drax had bothered with three lowly explorers in the middle of the night. He wanted something. I had to figure out what, and then use the knowledge to our advantage.
“Your numbers have swelled,” he said. “There used to be only two of you.”
“No, we had a spotter before,” I replied, irked at his insensitive memory, “but he quit when you threatened his sister’s life, remember?”
Rudolph brought a hand to his chin. “The Chinaman.”
“He’s Vietnamese,” I corrected and tipped my head toward Tricia. “She’s our replacement spotter, but that’s all she is, so let her go.”
Rudolph stepped under a light at the far end of the table, revealing a placid smile. He stared straight into Tricia’s eyes, though his words were meant for me. “You’re lying again, Mr. Tremaine, just like you lied about who shot the subway photos in the Sunday newspaper.”
Tricia jutted her chin. “I’m the granddaughter of Alfred Blumenfeld—”
“I know that.”
“—who your men put in the hospital while burning down his business. And you killed a decent human being. So no, I’m not going anywhere.”
Rudolph took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, as if trying to spread calm. “That’s right, Miss Blumenfeld, you’re not going anywhere, not until I get some answers.”
He strolled, stopping periodically to pluck an item from among our gear—a set of lens filters, an aluminum film can, a roll of electrical tape. “Miss Blumenfeld, why is your grandfather determined to destroy me? No, wait, I already know that. He thinks we funded the Holocaust.” He smiled as if remembering a joke. Then a steely expression snapped into place. “Let me rephrase. What do you three spelunkers and that useless subway have to do with Alfred Blumenfeld and his… his infuriating, self-righteous quest?”
Tricia stiffened. I wanted to whisper don’t say a word. We didn’t know what Rudolph knew, and tipping our hand could be disastrous.
The man didn’t look up for an answer but moved on as if he’d posed the question rhetorically. He leaned in and hefted the laser with both hands. My breath caught in my throat as he rotated the device, examining the black curved surface. Surely he wouldn’t identify it, not with our added gauges and levels.
“Your little mission is well-funded,” Rudolph remarked. “Industrial lasers are expensive. A few pioneers in our industry are testing them for land surveying. I like the old-fashioned methods, but we’ll see.” I said nothing. Rudolph picked up the photo Tricia brought along showing Alfred and Richard receiving their trophy cups.
She leaned forward in her chair. “Do you recognize those men?” I pressed my foot on top of hers.
“You obviously care for your grandfather to carry his photo,” Rudolph replied without rising to her challenge.
“They’re being recognized for excellence in journalism,” she said. “That’s Alfred and his—” I bore down harder “—colleague at the newspaper.”
I had to control the narrative, but before I could figure out how, a guard materialized at the door and beckoned Rudolph. The guard whispered and Rudolph’s forehead pinched with worry.
He spun to address us. “My son is still unconscious. What happened down there?” His tone fell short of demanding, the enunciation less clipped, the edge duller. He needed us.
If we chose to, we could bargain with Tony’s diagnosis and treatment to secure our freedom. We could fight fire with fire. The likes of Rudolph Drax would stoop so low without a pang.
But we wouldn’t. That’s not how we do things, Reuben had lectured Tricia.
I squared my shoulders. “He inhaled a toxin called hydrogen sulfide, same as me. But thanks to your man Valentine, his exposure was far longer.”
Rudolph took in Valentine’s name with a curious tip of the head, and I wondered how much he knew about his subordinate’s tactics. Too many generals overlooked the excesses of their foot soldiers. He scowled. “How long were you planning on keeping this toxin a secret?”
Tricia fired back. “Our kidnappers weren’t up for chitchat, so back off. Your son would be dead if we hadn’t lugged his carcass on a stretcher.”
Carcass. Not the best word choice. Reuben intervened. “There’s an effective reversal agent, sodium nitrite. Works fast if injected.”
“Are you a doctor?” Rudolph asked.
“No, an insurance actuary. We know what kills people.”
I could’ve chuckled but dared not, not with Rudolph’s expression toggling between fear and anger as if triggered by an electric jolt. I couldn’t predict his next move.
But perhaps predictably, he resumed command. “You’ll stay here,” he said before storming out ahead of the guard.
. . . . .
We waited. Reuben and Tricia grew bored. They stood and strolled among the shadowed models of office buildings and shopping malls. I kept my seat, my head angled to keep my peripheral vision clear of the missile silo replica.
The door reopened at 4:15 a.m., ninety minutes after Rudolph’s exit, and we soon understood the prolonged delay. Valentine showed first, moved to the table, claimed a seat, and crossed his arms, his haggard face wearier but still surly. Hard Ass and the two Gorillas followed and, per the pecking order, took up positions alongside the model of the Covington Mall. Standing erect, Hard Ass singled out Tricia with a sizzling glare, his broken arm now cradled in a proper sling instead of her sweatshirt.
The next arrival astonished me. Pushed in a wheelchair by his father, Tony Drax entered the room, staring straight ahead as if nothing warranted notice. Apparently the ultra-rich don’t visit hospitals; hospitals visit them. To my relief, Tony must’ve received the injection.
Rudolph positioned his son at the distant end of the glossy table and presided from behind the wheelchair. “Let’s get this over with.” In their own tight circle of artificial light, Drax of today and tomorrow assumed center stage, Rudolph more present than Tony whose gaze failed to focus on anything in particular.
“Sit down,” Rudolph said to Reuben and Tricia, his tone neither accommodating nor antagonistic. Perhaps all routine board meetings began with businesslike civility. I took some comfort, entertaining a shaky hope that cool-headed explanations and well-worded reassurances might secure our release.
Reuben shuffled to the table. Tricia hesitated, resentment like windburn on her cheeks, before plopping into her cushy hot seat.
Rudolph kicked off the proceedings. “You trespassed at
the train station—our job site—struck my son unprovoked—”
“Not unprovoked,” I corrected. “Unprovoked was how you slugged me at Alfred’s shop.” The memory clenched my stomach muscles.
“You took and published photos of the subway to undermine a public safety project.”
I snorted. “More like public fantasy. You wanted to scare the city into funding your fill-in project, and somehow along the way, Delbert Turkel lost his life.”
Tony shook his head with small sideways jerks.
Rudolph appeared not to notice his son, or perhaps he’d ignored him. “And now you’ve injured Drax employees and exposed Tony to a deadly poison.”
“No.” I raised my voice. “We rescued him from a deadly poison.” I jabbed a thumb toward Valentine. “G.I. Joe over there detained us at gunpoint and planned to kill us. We took exception.”
“This is stupid,” Tricia said, her tone more controlled than mine.
“What’s that, Miss Blumenfeld?” Rudolph elevated his eyebrows with feigned curiosity.
She upped the volume. “I said this is all stupid. You’ll stick to whatever lie fits with all your other lies.” She turned toward me, exasperated. “Why argue with these people? They don’t care about the truth.”
“Wrong,” Rudolph responded, still unflappable. “I want to know the truth.” He reached into our pile of gear, picked up the Hasselblad, and held it out as evidence. “I want to know only one thing… why did Alfred Blumenfeld send you into the subway?”
Up until that moment, doubt had sapped my confidence. Surely we’d be found out. Surely Rudolph knew. He was relentless and brilliant, with limitless resources at his disposal.
But with his question, my confidence blossomed. The man apparently didn’t know, and was willing to throw on yesterday’s clothes in the middle of the night, roust his driver from bed, and travel to HQ to find out. Otherwise, he would’ve hung up the call from his security people and drifted back to sleep.
The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced. Rudolph and his thugs had dropped by Alfred’s business, beaten me unconscious, and stolen our test photos, the bright green laser dots clearly visible. But they’d never entered Mr. Smith’s war room. They’d never seen the subway maps and mathematical formulas plastering the walls.
They’d no doubt studied the swiped prints with magnifying glasses, trying to ascertain their purpose. But they’d fallen short. And even though Rudolph had recognized the laser for what it was, his question remained: what were we trying to accomplish in the subway?
Freedom could be ours with a believable and innocuous answer. When equipped with the accoutrement of a plausible profession, N. Jefferson Chapel had written, you hasten property stewards toward their own erroneous explanation of your presence.
But plausibility required proof. I scanned our accoutrement on the tabletop and the answer appeared, as if by magic. So simple.
“That’s what this is all about?” I laughed out loud, part performance and part relief. “You’re all idiots,” I said, collecting my breath.
Valentine jumped to his feet, hands curling into fists. Hard Ass the brownnoser pushed himself off the wall.
Rudolph halted the security men with an open hand. “Let’s hear him out.” Then to me, “But it better be good.”
I intertwined my fingers behind my head and leaned back. The chair squeaked. “Mother Nature put that poison down there and we would’ve avoided it, but guns at our backs gave us no choice.” I aimed my index finger at Tony. “He got hurt for nothing.”
Rudolph stepped from behind the wheelchair, his irritation growing. Convincing him without snapping his patience would be a challenge.
I gave a glance over my shoulder. “Same with Mr. Daley’s broken arm. All for nothing.” I shook my head as if confounded by absurdity. “You’re all idiots.”
Rudolph slapped his palm on the table’s rock surface. “The next time you say that, this meeting’s over. Answer my question.”
I crossed my arms and leaned forward on both elbows. “Alfred didn’t send us. He’d never do that. He hates my guts, almost as much as his granddaughter hates his guts—even if he’s in the hospital, thanks to you. He’s like her parole officer, part of a court settlement because she got her ass in trouble. She can’t take a piss without asking the old man’s permission.” Everything I said was either a lie or a twisted truth, but the pieces had to form a plausible whole.
“Shut up, Lucas,” Tricia said, roasting me with a fiery glare. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or playacting, but no matter. I would apologize later.
I plowed ahead. “I don’t do favors for Alfred. We risked our necks shooting the train station, and what did he do? He gave Tony our film just to get his damn camera back.” Film that he later rescued from a burning building, but that detail would stay unspoken.
Rudolph glanced down at his son. “Is that true?” Apparently the details of our fracas with grandpa Walther and grandson Tony had never reached the middle generation.
Tony gave a weak nod. His glassy gaze darted randomly, the result of profound exhaustion or neurological damage, I couldn’t tell which.
Tricia spun her chair toward me, her eyes brimming with emotion. “You stole that camera. He had no obligation to save your fucking photos.” Role-playing or not, her words contained enough truth to sting.
“But he should’ve saved them,” I said, sliding deeper into my role. “The art is everything, and he knew it. He believed in art once, but not anymore. So I stole the Leica, just like I stole the Hasselblad.” I gestured to the camera in Rudolph’s hands. “He loves that more than his own family.”
Tricia brought her hands together in her lap and looked down, a tear glinting off her cheek in the weak light.
“Interesting.” Rudolph laid the Hasselblad on the tabletop and again hoisted the laser, his meaning clear. “Again, why were you in the subway?”
“Painting with light,” I declared without delay, not only to our adversaries but to my friends. I needed their backing.
Rudolph let out a sigh of doubt.
“My grandfather taught you that technique,” Tricia said to me with believable bitterness.
“But I perfected it.”
Rudolph narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“How much do you know about photography?” I asked.
“I don’t need to know about photography,” he replied with a stiff jaw. “But you need to wrap up in twenty seconds.”
“The subway photos in the newspaper,” I explained, “with big splashes of color running the length of a long tunnel. We didn’t drag a dozen spotlights belowground. Instead, we opened the camera’s shutter and groped along in total darkness, firing the flash a dozen times, each time with a different colored filter, painting a single frame of film with light.”
Rudolph appeared to relax his shoulders a smidge. “Okay, so that got you in the newspaper. Why do it again?”
“Because of the laser.”
“The electronic flash is like throwing a bucket of paint against a wall,” Reuben said with the assurance of a mountaintop holy man. “Beautiful but imprecise. The laser’s different, all detail, more like drawing with India ink, only it’s laser green.”
Damn, he was brilliant. I wanted to applaud. Instead, I grabbed the baton. “When you lock open the lens and start moving the laser with deliberation, you’re drawing, etching the film with green light.” I pointed my finger at the device. “We attached those levels to guide our movements. Otherwise we’d end up with scribbles.”
“But the pictures we—ended up with,” Rudolph said, “had green dots on them.”
“Of course,” Reuben said. “Strictly test photos to determine aperture—the lens opening—so the film wouldn’t get overexposed. We knew we had only one chance, so everything had to be perfect.”
“But lasers cost thousands of dollars,” Rudolph pressed, still short of buying what I was selling. “Do you expect me to believe no one’s funding this? Blumenfeld perhaps?”
“Are you kidding?” I risked another laugh. “We didn’t buy the laser, we borrowed it. I’m a student at Xavier and I pick locks. It’s from the physics lab.”
Rudolph paused, thinking. He glanced at Valentine who remained tightlipped. Same with Hard Ass from his outpost along the wall. But Gorilla One broke the silence with a grunted declaration. “He picks locks.”
Rudolph set down the laser and rummaged further, retrieving and unsnapping my set of lock picks. “Aren’t you clever,” he said, unamused. He tossed the kit on the pile and became stern. “Well, good luck explaining to the dean what happened to his property. You’ll be leaving it behind along with everything else, including the camera and film.”
“What?” Tricia said angrily.
Rudolph ignored her and singled me out. “You’re officially done sabotaging our projects. Am I understood?”
Tricia leapt to her feet. “You already took everything else he owns. You can’t keep his camera!”
My mind staggered like a drunk in the no man’s land between performance and reality. Rudolph had just proclaimed the terms of our release—our freedom. In exchange for a pile of replaceable stuff, we could keep our lives and the only physical object that really mattered, the roll of film that would bring down Drax. Had she forgotten? Or had the heat of our charade scorched her judgment?
Rudolph brushed her off. “You’ll leave this building with only your filthy clothes. Mr. Valentine, search these river rats.”
Follow Me Down Page 27
