Serpents in the City (Mac Ambrose Book 3)

by HN Wake

  Every weekday morning at precisely 6:45 a.m. a patrician older woman named Priscilla Schumer walked those eight blocks, entered Brighton Coffee, and sent the old cowbell hanging on the door clanging. Without looking up the barista began to make a single coffee in the Heston Blumenthal’s Sage express coffee machine using Fiji spring water. The process was precise and practiced.

  The coffee was delivered over the counter to Mrs. Schumer and the amount added to her tab.

  This particular morning, at exactly 7:05 a.m., Mrs. Schumer strode past a bank of glowing TV screens, two designer armchairs of red leather and steel tubes, and an enormous rectangular glass and chrome coffee table to very carefully place the coffee on the right side of the desk of Fenton Warrick, CEO of Patriot News.

  Warrick nodded without taking his eyes off the Financial Times. Long smooth fingers, the result of a twice-daily application of organic antibacterial foam specially ordered from a private spa in Southern France, circled the coffee. The hint of lavender hung in the air.

  Mrs. Schumer kept her eye on the top of his head and his pitch-black hair, kept dark through a regular Sunday appointment with a hair stylist, and cleared her throat.

  “Yes?” He kept reading.

  Warrick had been in media only the second half of his career. The first half he’d spent in politics. He started out as a very successful campaign manager to some of the most conservative politicians the US had ever known, running campaigns in Iowa, Alabama, and Pennsylvania. He was known to be ruthless at times, and his ability to pull a rabbit out of a hat at the last minute was uncanny. One confidante had commented that Fenton Warrick must have an arch-conservative guardian angel to have such a good batting average. After a remarkable gubernatorial election landslide in Pennsylvania, Warrick went on to run a presidential bid until his candidate bowed out over financial abuse charges in the summer of 2008 and left Warrick with down time.

  Mrs. Schumer said, “Mrs. Kugal asked that I connect you once you were settled.”

  Warrick glanced up, annoyed, his face unnaturally creaseless. “This morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please do.”

  It had been a sweltering day when Mrs. Schumer opened the door of his Washington, DC lobbying office and said stiffly, “Sir. A Mrs. Emmerie Kugal is here to see you.”

  Emmerie Kugal. The reclusive daughter and sole heir of Herman Kugal, the coal billionaire and one of the richest men in the United States, with an estimated worth of $42 billion—below the Berkshire Hathaways and Gates but still one of the richest. She had come to prominence five years earlier for her purchase of the New York News and four other newspapers around the world including the Protector in London and Nouvelles in Paris.

  Perhaps she was interested in funding a new client to run? Who could it be? He knew the landscape of potential candidates like the back of his hand. Maybe she had someone new in mind? A maverick, a fresh face. Warrick imagined a burgeoning bank account from the hours of guidance that would be required.

  Stepping into his office wearing a silk Mao style skirt suit in muted grey, Emmerie Kugal assessed him from behind thick glasses. Her handshake was a vise. “Mr. Warrick. I would normally make an appointment, but I thought rather do away with the formalities.” Her voice was scratchy with age, even back then.

  “Certainly.” The rules did not apply to the Emmerie Kugals of the world.

  He led her to two fabric chairs and they sat.

  She did not waste time. “I believe I have an offer for you.”

  “Indeed? This is intriguing.” In his mind, the bank account bulged.

  “I am interested in starting a news channel. A 24-hour news channel. A cable channel.”

  This interrupted his musings. Perhaps she wanted advice on how to structure the political shows?

  His voice was smooth as silk. “Fascinating. How can I be of assistance?”

  “I want you to run it.”

  He froze. But only for a second. Fenton Warrick was quick as a whip. “I’d be delighted.”

  On the desk of his Times Square office, the phone rang and Warrick answered immediately. “Mrs. Kugal.”

  “Fenton. I’ll be in the city tomorrow. Breakfast?”

  The skin around his neck itched. Years ago Warrick had noticed his Adam’s apple bobbing oddly during a heated argument and had begun wearing shirts with collars a 1/2 inch too small, the constriction reminding him to contain his anger. “Of course.”

  “And see to it that you clean up that Jane Glanville.” The line went dead.

  Warrick picked up a new line and dialed his Head of Programming. Jackie Pomeranian was a shrewd, savvy woman who had risen through the ranks at Patriot News. She had been one of the first of Fox News employees Warrick had poached. She understood his strategy, his biases, and his business interests and was the closest thing he had to a deputy.

  Jackie came on the line, “Fenton.”

  “What happened yesterday?” He meant the interview of one of the Republican presidential candidates with Jane Glanville, the anchor of Left to Right morning news show. The interview had been boring. The numbers had been abysmal.

  Jackie sighed. “I told Jane to amp it up before she went in. I’m not sure why she didn’t”

  “That’s not an answer,” Warrick said.

  “You’re right.”

  “Advertising will not be happy.”

  “I’m in to see them in thirty minutes.”

  His voice was a silky snarl. “Jane understands her job?”

  “I think she’s having personal issues at home.”

  He was running a business not a therapists group for bottle blondes. “She has one more chance.”

  “Got it.”

  “And tell wardrobe I want shorter skirts. She’s not getting any younger.”

  “Got it.”

  “Who is in today?” he asked. Jackie had been working their way through scheduling interviews on Left to Right with the ten GOP presidential candidates.

  “Governor Brand is in this morning.”

  “I want you to reach out to Senator Gillis.”

  Jackie paused, then asked, “The senior Senator from Pennsylvania? The Democrat?”

  His silence spoke loudly. It had been a stupid question that wasted his time.

  She rushed in, “Sorry. Got it.”

  Before he hung up, Warrick said, “And start digging into whatever is happening down in New Orleans on that Elijah Cade story.”

  6

  New Orleans, LA

  She had known something was going to happen. Something bad. She had felt it deep in her bones that morning. When your bones talk to you, you should listen.

  Instead, Alicia Cade had gotten together Elijah’s stuff—his baby food jars, snacks, and toys—and had put them in the $1 reusable shopping bag from Piggly Wiggly. She left his real baby bag in the closet, the blue, quilted baby bag her classmates had gotten for her down at the Clearview Mall Target. It stayed there. She didn’t want to use it. She wanted to keep it clean and new. It didn’t make sense, to not use a baby bag. But some things just don’t make sense. She wanted to have something clean and new and all his. They were only going across town to City Park. It didn’t matter that she carried her Elijah’s things in a plastic supermarket bag, not when nobody was going to see them.

  Because Alicia Cade was very proud. She had made it out of Ville Platte. Mostly ‘cause she was good with numbers. Alicia could see them on a page and know the answer. Just like when she was a kid and looked up into the branches of the big Evangeline Oak down by Miss Ford’s house and be able to start counting and not get lost.

  In school they tracked her. A genius, they said. That special ability got her all A’s in the math and science classes. Pappa and mamma were told to keep Licia on the straight and narrow. They didn’t let her go off with them other girls who sassed back. And no way, no how was she allowed off with boys in high school. Big expectations for a small town girl.

  They got her into the comm
unity college in the next city and a part time job at Piggly Wiggly that helped pay the fees. Two years, they said. Go there, get your grades, and then we’ll send you to a proper university.

  Her parents were proud of her. They talked about her all the time. They paraded her about on Sundays at church and everybody grinning and saying, “ya’ll good now, that Licia she smart. She make your family proud.”

  They were especially proud when she got her acceptance to Loyola University. Boy, they had a party then. Sent her off to the big city with a proper duffel bag and some new clothes.

  Even that dark day when she came home pregnant from the one time she’d been with a boy, her pappa and mamma had still been proud. They talked all that night about how they were gonna help her and keep her on track. Because the Cade family had already lost one child to the blight of poverty and hopelessness that had opened the door wide to the devil of drugs. They were not gonna let another child wander through that door. Not this time.

  They told Alicia how when she got too big with the baby, mamma was gonna come stay with her in the small apartment in New Orleans. To let Alicia stay at home, to gather her strength. They needed her to finish university. Mamma would do all the cooking and cleaning to keep Alicia on track.

  They had too. They had sent Mamma. On a bus. She had moved in. Slept on the floor at night, took naps on Alicia’s bed during the day. Did the cooking and the cleaning. Visited with relatives. Kept busy. Alicia kept up her studies.

  Then Elijah had come into the world. All yelling and hollering. Light skin baby with bold, thick hair on his finely shaped head. Eyes wide, clear and deep honey. Curious honey eyes. Always watching his mamma with them smart eyes.

  Now Alicia knew some of the secrets her own mamma had. How you stay up at night worrying, how you look for things that can be made into toys, how you check for sales on meat and vegetables because babies need to be fed right. How you look in the middle of the night at the crib and watch the breathing and pray nothin’ ever happens to this sweet little angel that God has given you to protect during his journey. How when he was taking his first steps, those timid legs pushing out, how part of her wanted him to lose his balance and land on his fat diapered butt, because she wanted to see how he would get back up. She wanted her Elijah to have resilience in this hard world. She wanted him strong and self-sufficient.

  Now she knew those secrets mothers shared.

  Her mamma had gone back to Ville Platte when Elijah went to day care. They found subsidies from the government and her adviser at university had helped her write in for them. Elijah was happy there. Mixed babies there. Not all of them black. Some of them white. A few Hispanics. Her boy didn’t care what color. He liked to pull hair and throw them stuffed animals and eat his cookies. He napped holding hands with a little white girl. She was his favorite.

  For two years, Alicia and Elijah have been making it. Keeping on track. She was gonna graduate in a year. With an engineering degree. Yes, she was gonna graduate in a year. Was gonna get a good job in a lab so she could be home in the afternoons with Elijah, after he got back from school.

  Today, she was grinning. Elijah always made her grin. It was nice out here in City Park, away from the neighborhood. It was open and green with big trees like back home. It was quiet here. And safe. The world open above giving off views of possibilities. Her boy could be whatever he wanted to be, here in this magical place. Anything. This is what she wanted for her boy.

  She’d told him to stay safe away from the pond’s edge. Even though he could be stubborn, he listened when she put on her rules voice. Told him them alligators he had to look out for. She told him that with a serious rules voice. He’d nodded, honey eyes wide, then he’d raced down there, all legs and arms, stopped just before the edge, and leaned over from his waist, searching the dark water.

  Early that morning, she should have listened to the pain in her bones. The ache had been growing, like the way frozen drumsticks from the freezer must ache, thawing on the counter all day in the heat, slowly coming back to life with the remembered pain of when they were hacked from the whole.

  It was always later, you found you should have listened to your bones.

  7

  New York City, NY

  The New York City subway was far cleaner than Mac remembered. In high school, she and Joe would play hooky and sneak up to the big city. Back then the subway stations smelled like urine, their walls covered with graffiti. She had heard a few years ago, maybe while she was in Hong Kong, that Mayor Giuliani had cracked down on small crime—jumping turnstiles and picking pockets—and the subways had become civilized. Softly voiced complaints of civil rights abuses were drowned out by the public’s longing for safer transport.

  The clean station was a welcome surprise. A great deal of her life had been spent on public transport. If you wanted to stay off the grid, the subway was the way to go: taxi drivers sometimes remembered where they dropped off a fare.

  She shared the platform with the commuter crowd. Business people dressed for work sipped coffees and read mobile phones. The rumble of an arriving train vibrated from the dark tunnel and lights emerged at the opening. The uptown B pushed dusty, cool air through the station and rustled her ponytail as it roared into the station.

  Pushing into the car with the commuters, she reached through the packed bodies and took hold of a center pole. A loud ping warned the doors were closing and the crowd shuffled tighter. A mother angled a stroller toward the seats and a large man with Maori tattoos on buff arms grabbed a hold of the rail above her. She eyed the crowd. Half the people were reading from cell phones, playing games, or scrolling through email. Five men wore blue suits. They must be headed up town to the banking section. Others sat dazed, blankly staring at nothing. All were quietly following the rules.

  A young man by the door was listening to music loud enough for her to hear the thump of a bass. The train’s wheels clacked as they raced over the rails. Beyond the car, lights flickered off black walls as they speed through the darkness.

  The train lurched, jostling her close in to the chest of the Maori tattoos. The unnatural intimacy startled her. For a brief, surprising moment she wondered what this man must be like in bed. The involuntary thought was soon replaced by an image of Joe.

  From a loft overlooking a park, she had watched him for two weeks. She determined he lived in a rambling old townhouse in the middle of a working class neighborhood in Philadelphia. She knew he had a dog. She knew he wasn’t married. She was pretty sure he wasn’t involved with anyone.

  She watched him walk his dog. She saw him head off to work in the mornings. One day, she planted herself in disguise on a bench and smelled him as he brushed past, fear overwhelming her.

  Three days ago she had finally made her approach. He was reading a book at a bar in a local restaurant. She sat down next to him. He hadn’t noticed her, even as every nerve fired under her skin and her hands dampened with sweat.

  After almost fifteen years away, and he hadn’t noticed her sitting within two feet.

  She said something. She couldn’t remember what it was.

  He looked up.

  His eyes widened in recognition.

  He said, “About fucking time.”

  Her heart had leapt. Right out of her chest.

  At the Times Square station she jumped off the train, happy to escape the crowd, and headed up into the early morning light and the cloying sweetness of roasting chestnuts.

  She emerged onto the corner of 44th and Seventh at the southern border of Times Square. On the corner of 7th Avenue, a stream of cars rushed past, the current of a river at the bottom of an enormous gorge whose skyscraper walls disappeared over the far horizon.

  Overhead, for as far as the eye could see, electronic billboards flashed advertisements in a cacophony of movement, a pulsing, glittering pantheon to products and brands. Their glaring demands intruded her senses. A jumbotron beamed a pink and black image of a cell phone with wireless speakers. Acros
s a second huge screen, a barely clothed woman sashayed in $12.99 jean shorts. The latest news feed from ABC News and ESPN sports sped across a bright LED ribbon.

  At street level, it was a dizzying display of fashion and consumerism. Glass storefronts presented the abundance of merchandise—shirts, pants, dresses, shoes—to throngs of pedestrians. Posters advertised the latest products. An industrious young woman stopped tourists to offer brochures for the latest Broadway show. “Looking for discount show tickets?”

  The crowd moved as a slow, undulating mass. People stopped to hold cellphones up in mid air, taking photos, posing at one the world’s busiest tourist attractions and the most used pedestrian intersection in the world. Children squealed at life-sized cartoon characters.

  Mac bought a Starbucks coffee and retreated to the wall of a Walgreens drugstore in the southeast corner. Wearing a disheveled trench coat, a worn baseball cap and a courier bag slung over her shoulder, she sipped her first coffee of the morning and got her bearings. Light broke through towering buildings and formed a block of sun on dirty cement. Tall round vents like barbershop signs exhaled steam from underground tunnels.

  Joe had closed his book, set it down on the bar, and cocked his head gently. He grinned. “Welcome back.”

  She had nodded, swallowed. “Good to see you.”

  “How have you been?”

  A small shrug. “Surviving.”

  “You look good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How long have you been back?” he had asked.