Never Go Alone

by Denison Hatch

  “Now,” Jake replied.

  “What I like to hear,” Rory grinned.

  All three men opened the doors simultaneously. Jake didn’t even bother glancing back. He didn’t want to know or see. He could hear the screeching of another car racing up the circular parking ramp behind them. They had only seconds to spare—and no time to think. The three of them sprinted forward through the third level of the parking garage, like a slalom run through the other parked cars. The edge of the parking lot was a four-foot wall of cement. Beyond that, just the city ahead and a four-story drop to the ground. Placing both hands on the concrete wall ahead, they each jumped over the barrier. And within a split second, all three men had disappeared completely.

  ▪

  The tracking professionals careened up the last turn of the ramp and onto the third level, eyes on lookout for their intended targets. The driver slammed his brakes down just a foot from the Toyota—still cooling down in its parking spot. The trackers jumped out, anxious expressions drawn across their faces. No one was in the car. Their anxiety turned to confusion as their heads whipsawed around the parking structure, looking for signs. But there were none. Just silence, and the ghosts of targets they’d missed by the hair of a millisecond.

  ▪

  On the outside cladding of the parking structure, a few hundred feet from the aggressive trackers, Jake, Rory, and Castle were descending the building in silence. The back flank of the parking structure was composed of metal panels. Each panel was about three feet tall, forming a scaled-up ladder that the explorers were painstakingly climbing down. Within a few moments, they hit the ground. They raced across the street, where another Sprinter was waiting. The three of them piled into the van, driven by Nikolai, who ripped the hell outta there.

  ▪

  Villalon wiped a sweaty hand across his brow while Susan and Markle hovered over the tracking screens inside the vehicle. The dots had completely stopped moving. According to their viewpoint, the robbers were still located directly inside the parking garage.

  “They’re right there!” Markle yelled into the radio in the truck.

  They waited for a response from their surveillance team.

  ▪

  Back in the third story of the parking garage, the tracker whispered into his earbud microphone, “No one’s here. Car’s empty. Think they’re on foot.”

  The pro gestured to one of his colleagues who stood behind him. He was holding a crowbar in his hands. The man jammed it into the front door of Schaub’s Toyota, wrenching it open. The alarm began to blare, but the door eventually gave way with the window breaking first. Now they could clearly see the bag loaded with cell phones on the floor.

  The tracker got back onto his microphone. “We do not have eyes on them. Repeat. We do not have eyes. They slipped us. Sorry. Dammit.”

  ▪

  The mood in the NERV truck quickly transformed into a depressive and melancholy standby. The tracking coordinates glowed ominously in Brooklyn, apparently guilty of tracking nothing at all. In the meantime, all of the screens that were pulling visual feeds from Rory’s five “targets” showed normal patterns of high-end condo life. Nothing wrong. Nothing unusual. If a heist was occurring right now, it wasn’t anywhere near Tony’s or Susan’s radar.

  Noticing that Susan was involved in a close conversation with Markle, Tony moved to the other end of the NERV truck. He tapped his lead tech, Fong, on the shoulder.

  “If Susan asks, tell her I got sick. Need to clear my head.”

  “Seriously, boss? Where are you going? Now?”

  “Just for a second.”

  “She won’t believe you.”

  “Then I’m going out for a smoke,” Tony said.

  “Didn’t you quit?”

  “Pretty sure e-cigs are just as bad as the real ones,” Tony said as he headed down the steps.

  Another tech glanced over at Fong after Tony had stepped out, raising his eyebrow as if to inquire, “What was that?”

  Fonger pantomimed smoking a cigarette, complete with a gasping and deadly cough. Both techs laughed.

  ▪

  Standing outside the trailer, Tony Villalon glanced at the coffee and cookie tray. But he didn’t go for a bite, nor reach for his battery-powered addiction machine. Instead he pulled out his cell phone. Another location tracker blinked over a map of Manhattan. This blinking was emanating from Brooklyn, just a few blocks from the parking garage. It was moving at a quick rate of speed away from the Toyota’s location. Tony took another long glance and watched the trajectory of the dot.

  Tony pushed his hands through his hair and paced back and forth hyperactively. Jake Rivett was going to be the end of him, but he could never turn on the guy. Rivett wasn’t the problem—he was the solution. Jake was busy doing the same thing he always did: cracking the case. But that didn’t mean that Tony wasn’t worried. The stakes were massive now, and worse, the knives were out. Susan was expecting to season her steak, eat it, and have it too. And Tony knew that no matter how hard he tried to protect Jake, both of them would be cut loose if this ended badly. Tony stood outside of the most expensive apartment building in the entire world, and he worried. What the hell should he do? Keep hoping on a dream? Or go back in there and tell Susan what he knew? It wasn’t much. But it was certainly more than he was telling her now.

  ▪

  Jake was also experiencing the discomfort that accompanies a distinct lack of information. Now “safely” ensconced in the van, he was finally able to peer over Castle’s shoulder and figure out what profile Jack had been incessantly browsing: Cassandra Berg’s Instagram. The mayor’s wife. Her account memorialized the gilded and ultra-connected world that she and her husband occupied on a daily basis. It was a smorgasbord of elegant galas attended, speeches delivered, and close-ups of outrageously expensive flower arrangements. Every once in a while she’d turn the camera on herself for a selfie, just saucy enough to keep her followers interested—but with a distinctly socially correct flavor that said, “I’m one of the exciting ones, but I’m still a politician’s wife.” Jake watched with interest as Castle used his thumb to scroll to the top of the feed. Her most recent picture was the framed molding of a hotel window overlooking New York. She’d written a comment: “Home away from home! #Staycation” Jake could make out the location tag as well: the Waldorf Astoria.

  Meanwhile, Nik had navigated the van into Manhattan, where the rabid LED-scape of Times Square whipped past like a screensaver on crack.

  “We still good?” Rory asked Castle.

  “Think so, boss.”

  Jake couldn’t resist popping in. “We’re not going to any of those five buildings, are we? Metropolis and Berg. The handoff . . . It’s at the Waldorf. That’s where we’re going.”

  “I’m going to show those people. There’s nowhere I can’t touch in their city,” Rory replied.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL ROSE regally into the air at the bottom of Park Avenue. Forty-seven stories of art deco brilliance, the Waldorf was considered one of the most luxurious hotels in the world. An oasis of calm in the city, it offered more than peace. It was a place for the kings and queens of society to feel at home, a natural resting zone for multitudes of United States presidents and Middle Eastern sheiks—and every billionaire in between.

  As the Sprinter van raced along Park Avenue, it stopped just a few blocks from the Waldorf. Jake realized that Castle was exiting the van, completely decked out in a Waldorf Astoria uniform. Castle walked around to the back door. He rolled out out a large hotel hamper. He pushed the hamper along the sidewalk, and headed towards one of the hotel’s loading docks as the Sprinter accelerated away.

  “Four weeks on the job. Knows the place like the back of his hand,” Rory said.

  “Impressive,” Jake replied.

  “How does it feel to not be in control?”

  “I can flip a one-eighty at any time and take you down.”

  “And Mona?”


  “She’s the reason I won’t.”

  “I don’t want you out of the loop, Jake. Trust me. It’s the opposite. I need you. You need to take up Mona’s place in our plan. And you can. You’re good and you know it now. But I’m also helping you, ’cause the less you’re aware of? The better. Just in case those bosses of yours start to get real pissy. Right?”

  “Sure,” Jake replied, gritting his teeth.

  The Sprinter slowed down again. Jake and Rory jumped out of the van and padded into a small alleyway. As they dipped down a set of service stairs leading past the entrances to a couple of small businesses, including a Chinese restaurant, Jake began to feel a sense of déjà vu.

  “Brilliant,” Jake said.

  Rory turned and smiled. He didn’t have to say anything else.

  “The secret subway station, right?”

  “You’re gettin’ good, noob.”

  ▪

  Castle pushed his laundry hamper through the basement washroom of the Waldorf. Two ladies from Honduras folded towels across a long metal table. As he passed, one of them attempted to take the hamper from him. But Castle angrily tugged it out of her grip. She was slightly taken aback, but mostly entertained. The other lady leaned in conspiratorially and whispered in Spanish, “Beautiful face, but head’s as empty as the hamper he’s pushin’!” The two ladies started to crack up, causing a chain reaction of laughter throughout the entire laundry room.

  Except for one maid. She stared at Castle with suspicion as he pushed through the back exit of the laundry room into another service hallway.

  The hallway behind the industrial washroom led to a bank of service elevators. Castle pressed a button and waited nervously, watching the elevator tick down floors until finally reaching his level. The doors creaked open. He pushed the hamper into the elevator. He hastily scanned the floor options and dashed the PH1 button for the penthouse. With a long scrape and groan, the elevator began to ascend. It was clear to Castle, from the lack of velvet walls and neatly shined gold plating, that these service elevators did not receive the same high level of inspection that the guest elevators did. But that made perfect sense in the grand scheme of things—one side was paying the bills and the other taking the meager scraps.

  ▪

  Nikolai raced the Sprinter through the traffic of Times Square, now heading back in the direction of the Waldorf. He almost barreled over multiple bikers, honking as he careened past. Moving a touch too fast, Nik glanced at his watch. They were a few minutes behind schedule already. Even though he wasn’t going up into the hotel, his role was critical. Without him, his best friends would be stuck at the top of an ivory tower with no escape.

  ▪

  Rory and Jake walked through the abandoned-but-beautiful subway station, complete with mosaic tiling, that Jake had been introduced to during his first official night of urban exploration. But instead of exiting there, they continued through the station, staying on the old tracks and walking farther into the heart of darkness. As they moved through the eerie blackness, Jake eyed another old entrance to the hydra.

  “You know about this one?” Jake asked.

  “I know almost everything about the hydra.”

  “So, the next stop is the Waldorf?”

  “Yep.”

  “And we’re going to use Roosevelt’s car elevator?” Jake asked.

  “Close. Did you know that when the Waldorf was built, it defined the American cosmopolitan experience and became the basis of all modern hospitality?”

  “No. I didn’t know that, Rory. Don’t you think it’s a little late for another history lesson?”

  Rory shook his head as if to say, “You don’t get it.”

  The two explorers finally reached their destination. Multiple sub-basements underneath the Waldorf, their flashlights captured the end of the tracks. The terminus was a huge station platform, glazed in the familiar rusted brown of metal meeting its own half-life. Jake and Rory climbed off the tracks and onto the station platform, which was centered around a giant column the size of a car. The structure had a roll-up portal, similar to a garage door, and it led to an old hydraulic system connected directly to the tracks.

  “So they would literally drive cars off the train and into the hotel?”

  “Yessir,” Rory answered.

  “Who got to do that?”

  “Presidents.” Rory pulled his backpack off and tossed it on the floor. He rummaged through various devices inside before pulling out a gas-powered climbing ascender. About the size of a leaf blower, it was designed to help someone automatically rise on a rope. He also pulled out a large crowbar.

  “You’re going to make the elevator work . . . with that?” Jake asked incredulously.

  “Like I said, we’re going up. But not exactly how you think,” Rory replied. He stepped towards the control booth behind the elevator. It was protected by an old, rusted-over lock. Rory gripped the crowbar and smacked the lock. While pieces of rusted detritus flew off it, the lock held.

  “Let me have that,” Jake said. Seeing Rory’s eyebrow rise, he continued, “Crowbars are my specialty.”

  Rory handed Jake the crowbar and stood back. Jake held it with both hands and delivered a single, fatal blow to the lock. It flung itself open like a succulent accepting water. Jake tried the door. It was still tight and unwilling to open. He found an exposed air gap along the doorjamb and pounded the crowbar’s thin end into it then reared back his shoulders with a mighty yell.

  “YAYAYAAAAAAA!” Jake screamed.

  The door popped open abruptly.

  Rory and Jake walked inside the abandoned office.

  “Most important lesson about history is that it repeats itself,” Rory said as they disrupted the resting dust of the past. There was a corkboard on the wall with long-yellowed papers and work orders pinned all over it. “Just because you board up something doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.” In a sudden motion, Rory lifted the corkboard off the wall. Behind it were two wood-paneled doors. He opened the doors wide in each direction. “Ever heard of a dumbwaiter?”

  Jake could only smile in expectation as his mind filled with new possibilities regarding Rory’s planned infiltration.

  “In the early 1900s, if one was operating fine institution, which the Waldorf undoubtedly was, one had a dumbwaiter on the premises.”

  ▪

  Castle loitered in the utility hallway of the penthouse level. When he was sure that no other staffers were nearby, he eyed a rack of linens in a back closet. Placing his two paws on the shelving, he dragged it out of the way. Behind the shelves were the familiar doors of another old dumbwaiter opening. Castle opened the doors, reached in, and affixed a large carabiner to the bolted steel at the top of the dumbwaiter. Then he rolled the laundry basket—the one he’d been escorting through the building for the last hour—into the closet. He pulled four towels off the top of the laundry basket, and his ultimate cargo was revealed. Underneath the towels was a long climbing rope. It was tightly coiled and just fit inside the vessel chosen to transport it. This wasn’t just a few feet of rope. It was hundreds upon hundreds of feet in length—and thick. Castle attached the rope to the carabiner at the top of the dumbwaiter. He secured a large lead weight to the other end of the rope and began to carefully guide the rope down the dumbwaiter shaft itself.

  The rope fell through the air, aided by the force of gravity. Whenever it hit a snag, Castle would pull up a few feet, allowing the lead to swing free—and then drop it again. The rope continued to careen down all forty-seven stories of the Waldorf’s dumbwaiter channel. For a largely forgotten relic of the past, the dumbwaiter channel was proving to be quite useful in current day.

  ▪

  In the abandoned subway station’s office, Rory and Jake could hear a light clanging before they saw anything. Then the weight emerged, thudding against the floor at the bottom of the dumbwaiter. Rory reached for it and affixed the gas-powered ascending machine to the rope.

  “Now it’s real,” Rory
said. He slowly pulled his body into the dumbwaiter’s opening. He hooked himself onto the device. Rory ignited the ascender and gingerly rolled the throttle on the device forward, quickly rising six feet and disappearing into the channel. Rory dropped an auxiliary rope that was secured to his own harness. Jake latched his carabiner in. Now they were both attached to one another and operating as a single entity; an entity secured to a thousand-foot rope that was about to jerk them vertically through the bloodline of the old hotel. Rory took control of the ascender again, and before there was time for a prayer or even a breath—up they went.

  The two men flew vertical like Superman, with only fragmentary slices of light to illuminate their way. It wasn’t unlike riding the rollercoaster at Space Mountain. At any moment, an errant beam or incongruent piece of metal could rip them to shreds. But they had to cede control to fate—and the guidance of Castle above. They flew vertical towards the penthouse at the top of the hotel like two angels heading towards Mount Olympus. But these two weren’t actually angels. They were justice incarnate, one official and other never anything of the sort, moving ever closer to their final goal.

  ▪

  Jake and Rory safely reached the top of the dumbwaiter channel where Castle awaited. Jake reached for the ledge to pull himself into the service closet on the penthouse level, but Rory shook his head.

  “We’re staying in here,” Rory said.

  “Really?”

  Castle had now outfitted himself with a harness. He secured a strap to the inside of the dumbwaiter but didn’t step in. “All set for the gas?” Castle asked Rory.

  Jake rotated to see what Rory was doing.

  Rory had secured a series of carabiners to the steel girders at the top of the dumbwaiter’s ceiling. Rory addressed Castle through the door. “Ready.”

  Castle disappeared from the entrance for just a moment before returning with a giant gas tank—about four feet tall and eighteen inches in diameter. The tank had been smuggled into the hotel, by Castle, a few days earlier. As Castle tilted the gas canister into the dumbwaiter’s opening, Rory attached carabiners to closed steel loops that had been welded to its sides. A few hard pulls later, and the canister was also hanging in the dumbwaiter channel.