Just Watch Me

by Jeff Lindsay

  I smiled. I was feeling the excitement again. “Let’s just say these paintings are going to open a door?”

  Monique shook her head wearily. She knew there was no point in asking for any more detail. “All right, fine, we’ll open your goddamn door,” she said. “Three weeks, usual rates. And then what? If your door actually opens?”

  I couldn’t help it. Like I said, I was really feeling it. And I wanted Monique to feel it with me. I crept closer, just a half step, but she didn’t back away. I locked eyes with her, and my voice dropped to an intense purr just above a whisper. “Then, Monique,” I said, and I saw the hair go up on her neck and arms. “Then you will make me something amazing, something absolutely spectacular, and I will use it to perform the most astonishing disappearing act the world has ever seen.”

  Monique shivered. Her eyes never left mine, and for just a second she leaned forward, toward me. But as I swayed forward to meet her, something snapped awake inside, and Monique shook herself and stepped back. She took a breath and put on a face that told me she wasn’t getting sucked in by animal magnetism and melodrama. “And what’s the payoff, after all these ifs?”

  I felt the shark smile spread onto my face again. “Eight figures,” I told her.

  “Not bad,” she said.

  “That’s just your end, Monique,” I said.

  For a moment Monique forgot to breathe. She stared at me like she wanted to see some sign that I was kidding. And of course, I wasn’t. She saw that. “Jesus Christ, Riley,” she said after a long pause. “What could possibly—”

  I held up a hand. “It’s all hypothetical,” I said. “For now.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said again. She knew there was no point in asking for any more information. So she thought about it for a minute. I could see the wheels turning, and she started chewing on her lip as she figured it. She looked incredibly hot when she did that, and I wanted to help her. But I didn’t. I let her work it through—eight figures. That meant . . . ten million dollars? Twenty? Which meant my end would be—

  “For Christ’s sake,” she finally burst out. “What in the name of God could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars?”

  I just shook my head.

  “You do mean dollars?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Dollars,” I said happily. “In cash, untraceable. More dollars than you have ever seen before or will ever see again.”

  Monique took a slightly shaky breath.

  “Well?” I said. “Are you in?”

  “Hell yes,” she said in a husky voice just one step away from sex.

  That hit me like a two-by-four. I leaned close to her, and once more she unconsciously leaned toward me, too. That much money can do that to anybody. Closer still and her breathing got a little ragged. And then my breath brushed across her face, and for just a moment I was sure that—but no, goddamn it! At the very last instant Monique turned her head to one side and my lips landed on her cheek. I held my lips there a second too long, thinking maybe—but no. Not going to happen. I sighed and stepped back. “All righty then,” I said. I eyeballed her one more time and then turned and walked toward the window. “I’ll see you in three weeks,” I said.

  “Riley, use the fucking door!” Monique called, but it was too late. I was already out the window and away into the night. But just before I got out of range, I heard her say to herself, “Eight figures! Jesus Christ, Riley!”

  CHAPTER

  6

  The night air was cool. But after the heat I’d just gone through with Monique, it wasn’t cool enough. I needed a cold shower. An ice bath. Something about her got me going like nobody else. But Riley’s First Law: The job comes first.

  So save those thoughts for later. Out the window and away. This time I went up, climbing easily to the roof. There was a nice raised lip around the roof, and I stood on it for a moment, breathing in the night. There was electricity running through me, and I felt twenty feet tall and invincible. It was not just seeing Monique, although that was a lift of its own. Maybe even more this time, as if the sight of her was a first small reward for a plan that was riskier than anything I’d ever tried. In a weird way, seeing her, having her in on it with me, made me sure it was going to work. Shit, it almost had to work—and it would be my greatest achievement ever when it did.

  So I just stood there for a few minutes, watching the lights of the city and feeling pure delight. Say what you want about anyplace else. New York is the greatest city in the world. The air is different here. Just breathing it makes you think you can do great things. And goddamn it, I was going to.

  I took one more big hit of New York air. And then I gave in to the pure joy and electricity, ran to the far edge of the roof—and launched myself into space. For a moment I was flying, feeling the air rush past. Then the adjoining roof came up at me. I tucked, rolled, and let the momentum lift me up, onto my feet, and off the edge to the next roof.

  For ten minutes I raced across the rooftops, up walls, leaping out into the night air time after time and running full speed along the narrow rooftop ledges and then down the side of buildings and out into space again. It looked and felt like I was Spider-Man. I mean, I’m not. I’m just really good at parkour. It’s a way to move across a city like you really are Spider-Man, but without using webs. The French came up with it. Funny how many cool but very odd things come out of France. I was over there, and I saw it, and I knew I had to learn it. I saw right away that it would be incredibly useful as a tool of my trade. What I didn’t see until I got good was just how much fucking fun it is. It makes me feel like I own the night and everything in it. And it keeps me in top shape, which is also a good idea in my profession.

  So I let it rip, really blew out the carbon. When I finally came down to the street, in a dark alley, the elation that had sent me into my parkour jag had settled down to a quiet burble. I walked toward the subway, still thinking about Monique. Not professionally; I wasn’t worried about the two paintings. I knew she’d do a near-perfect job. She always did. No, I was thinking about that night two years ago. Couldn’t get it out of my head.

  I had just pulled off a very big score—not as big as this one would be, but way more than average. With Monique’s help, it came off perfectly. We got drunk to celebrate, one thing led to another, and somehow we ended up in bed.

  Sex is almost always a good idea. It’s fun, therapeutic, good exercise. But that night it was something else. We did the same stuff everybody does, but somehow it took us to a brand-new place. And yeah, I do mean “us.” She was feeling it that way, too—I know it. And naturally, I thought it would be a terrific idea to keep it going, turn it into a semiregular thing.

  Monique did not agree. She said it was a mistake, a onetime thing that shouldn’t have happened, and it wasn’t going to happen again. I tried to make her see how dumb that was. After all, we both liked it a lot, more than with other people, right? And I was really persuasive, too. The best I could do was talk her into the Bet.

  I smiled when I thought of that. “There’s always a way,” I said. The Bet was my way back into Monique’s bed.

  I went into a bodega a few blocks from my train station. I needed to buy a razor. But when I opened the door, I heard angry voices yelling. Two voices, one raspy and with a Hispanic accent, the other higher-pitched, much younger.

  Over by the cash register a man with a large mustache and a larger belly held a boy by the hair and hollered at him. The kid looked to be about ten, scrawny, and he was trying desperately to get away without losing his hair and yelling back at the same time. Scattered on the floor at their feet were a bag of chips, two Little Debbie pastries, a bottle of Gatorade, and a handful of Slim Jims.

  I knew right away what was going down. The kid got caught shoplifting. And from what the store owner was yelling, it wasn’t the first time, but it would damn well be the last.

  I couldn’t
figure why, but all of a sudden I felt the Darkness slipping in. It’s what happens when somebody is in my way, or when they’re some kind of threat to me. It’s like Riley fades into the background and whatever it is that lives in that dark cloud takes care of the dirty work. And there was just no fucking way in the world it should happen now. I mean, because some fat guy was yelling at a kid? Why did that matter to me?

  I froze there in the doorway and looked harder. The bodega guy was yelling, and the kid was trying to squirm away, and it was nothing to do with me. They could kill each other and it wouldn’t matter. I could find some other place to buy a razor.

  But still, the scene had a familiar look, like something I should remember. It stumped me for a second. Then I got it. That’s me a few years ago. The painful memories came back, from the time when I was learning about life the hard way, by making stupid mistakes. And yeah, I’d been caught shoplifting, more than once—but never for the same mistake twice.

  I pushed away the Darkness and just watched the struggle a few seconds more, remembering. And I knew I should avoid the hassle, find a different bodega. But the kid yelled again, in pain this time, and the owner said something about the police. Something kicked over inside me. And before I knew what I was doing, I was crossing the floor and putting a hand on the bodega owner’s arm.

  He looked up at me, angry. “Hey, the kid’s just hungry,” I said. “We all been hungry, right?”

  “That’s twenty-five dollar of hungry this time,” the guy said, really pissed off. “And he been in here before, who knows how many times?”

  I reached into my pocket and took out my roll. I peeled off a fifty and placed it on the counter, raising an eyebrow at the owner. The man scowled. “I tole you, he been here before!” he said. “An’ he come again!”

  “No, he won’t,” I said. I put another fifty down on top of the first one. “I guarantee it.”

  The owner looked at the money, licked his lips. “I gotta call the cops,” he said, but all of a sudden he wasn’t as angry.

  I could see those two big bills working on him. It made me smile. “No, you don’t gotta call the cops,” I said. I put one more fifty on top of the first two. And then, to make sure the bodega owner knew that was it, I put my roll back in my pocket. “Kids shouldn’t go hungry,” I said.

  The owner’s eyes were glued on the money now. “I catch him here again, that’s it,” he said.

  “He won’t be back,” I assured him. “Okay?”

  The owner looked at the kid, then at the money. Then he made the three bills vanish. “Get him outta here,” he said.

  Cash. The sovereign remedy for everything.

  I took the kid by the arm and led him toward the door. The boy thrashed in my grip. He was stronger than he looked, or maybe just desperate. His jerking and yanking threw me off balance, and I bumped into a couple of shelves on the way out. But I finally got him through the door and onto the sidewalk. I didn’t let go. I frog-marched the kid down to the corner and turned right. The side street wasn’t as busy, so I stopped. I pushed the kid against a wall and faced him squarely, looking him over. The boy was scrawny, undernourished, probably a few years older than my first guess. Maybe twelve? Probably Central American. Salvadoran or something. “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Monsy,” the kid said sullenly.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  Monsy shrugged. “Probably fucking some dude so she can shoot up again,” he said.

  “Father?”

  “Who the fuck knows,” Monsy said.

  I just nodded. It was about what I expected. Just the way I grew up, stealing because if I didn’t, I’d go hungry. I mean, Mom never whored, but for the kid it was about the same. I looked at him. Monsy met my eye for the first time. “Listen, mister, I don’t care how many dollars you pull out, I ain’t gonna do that stuff.”

  Yeah, same deal. It was exactly what I would have assumed at that age. The street teaches hard lessons. Some stuff never changes. I shook my head and smiled. “I’m not a chicken hawk, kid,” I told him.

  “Yeah, sure, a hundred fifty bucks cuz you a nice guy.”

  “Money is easy,” I said.

  The kid actually managed a sneer. “Yeah, sure it is,” he said. But his eyes went wide when I reached under my jacket and pulled out a bag of chips and a handful of Slim Jims. “How the fuck—oh!” Monsy said with a sudden look of comprehension. “When you bumped the shelf?”

  “Watch and learn,” I said. “And don’t go back to that bodega.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Monsy said.

  “Then stop acting like you are,” I said. I reached into my jacket and flipped him one last thing, a Little Debbie cupcake. He caught it, and I turned to go. “Later, Monsy.”

  I could feel his eyes on me as I walked away. I didn’t care. And I didn’t mind the hundred fifty bucks at all; it’s just money. Besides, it felt good to do a good deed like that. And anyway, I’d slipped a razor into my pocket at the same time, without paying. Riley’s Second Law: Free is always better.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Special Agent Frank Delgado was an unusual man. Not because of his appearance; that was completely unremarkable. He stood five foot ten, had a stocky frame and dark hair. You would pass him in the streets of any US city without a second glance. Delgado’s abnormality came in other, less visible areas.

  He said no more than he had to, kept his thoughts to himself, and maintained a stone face that showed almost nothing, no matter what the circumstances.

  And as a special agent of the FBI, he lacked many traits that are virtually part of the uniform. His hair was just a little too long, his suit was never quite pressed, he did not communicate well with other agents working with him, he seemed to lack automatic respect for superiors—suffice it to say that he would not have lasted two weeks if J. Edgar Hoover still ran the Bureau.

  But Frank Delgado got results. No one argued with that. If he set out to nail a criminal, that criminal was as good as nailed. Over a seventeen-year career with the Bureau, Delgado had a success record that was the envy of his peers.

  There was, of course, one glaring exception. Three times he had failed in his pursuit of a wanted criminal. Three times—the same criminal. And the same result: Special Agent Delgado could not make the collar. In Delgado’s most recent run-in, just a few months ago in Chicago, he had missed his man by a matter of only hours. But he had still missed.

  Aside from that, his record was remarkably good, and Frank had earned some true respect. With that went a certain amount of tolerance for his somewhat unorthodox behavior.

  And so it was perfectly normal for Special Agent Frank Delgado to walk into his supervisor’s office without knocking. On top of his reputation, Delgado had enough seniority to get away with it. In fact, he had been offered his boss’s job himself and turned it down. He said he didn’t like paperwork. The man who now held the job, Special Agent in Charge J. B. Macklin, was well aware that Delgado had been the AD’s first choice for this position. It didn’t bother him anymore. At least, not too much.

  But Macklin was a little irritated that Delgado just came in and sat down in the chair facing him across his desk without saying a word. So he finished reading the report he’d been working on, signed it, and pushed it into his out-basket before he sat back and gave Delgado his attention. Delgado didn’t speak, though. He just sat and looked back. “What’s up, Frank?” Macklin said at last.

  “Riley Wolfe,” Delgado said.

  “No,” Macklin said automatically. This was not the first time Delgado had asked to take off after Riley Wolfe. The master thief was, in his opinion, an unhealthy obsession for Delgado. Especially after the near miss in Chicago. Delgado said nothing and showed no disappointment, but Macklin was sure it rankled, and he suspected it was one reason Delgado had turned down the supervisory job—he wanted to stay in the
field until he caught Wolfe.

  Delgado’s face showed nothing, but he shook his head. “I need to,” he said.

  “Why, Frank?” Macklin said. “Or, more to the point, why now?”

  “I know where he is now,” Delgado said.

  Macklin blinked. “Where?” he said.

  “New York,” Delgado said straight-faced.

  Macklin waited, but there was no more. “You got something more specific?”

  Delgado gave one short shake of his head. “No,” he said.

  Macklin stared at him. “Just that? He’s in New York? As in New York City. You know he’s there, with nine million other people.”

  “That’s right.”

  “For God’s sake, Frank—seriously? You don’t even know what he looks like. And you think you can find him? In New York?”

  “Yes.”

  Macklin studied the semi-maverick agent. Delgado was known for saying little and showing less, and that was tolerated to a point. But if he wanted to take off solo on something that would probably turn into another wild-goose chase, Macklin, as his supervisor, needed a few details.

  And of course, Delgado offered none. “Did you have a tip, Frank?” he asked at last. “Somebody saw him in Times Square? Or on a Greyhound headed to Port Authority? He posted on Facebook? Anything like that?”

  “No,” Delgado said.

  Macklin sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. How do you know he’s in New York?”

  “He has to be,” Delgado said.

  “Sure, that works. He has to be there. And you can find him, pick him out of the nine million other people in New York,” Macklin said, letting a little sarcasm color his voice. “Because you are part basset hound and part Sherlock Holmes?”

  Delgado ignored the mockery. “I can find him,” he said, “because I know what he’s after.”