Crisscross

by F. Paul Wilson

  The mouse was cool.

  “Good,” Aveline said, nodding. “What was the biggest thing you’ve ever stolen?”

  Jack put on a show of deep thought, then said, “The Almond Joy is about it.”

  A squeak from the mouse as it jumped two inches off its cage floor.

  A queasy feeling stole over him. The XSA was right. He’d boosted plenty of things, plenty of times—usually from thieves, but it was still stealing. So far the XSA had been right every time.

  Had to be coincidence. But still…

  “You’re acting like I’m a criminal. I’m not.”

  The mouse jumped again.

  This was getting spooky. He’d lied…his everyday existence was a criminal act…and Mr. Mouse had paid for it.

  Jack released the bar and waved his hands in the air. “I’m telling you the truth!”

  “The truth as you know it, Jack. What you say may be true in this life, but your xelton must have inhabited the body of a thief sometime in the past.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “It is all part of the process, Jack.”

  Mr. Mouse had backed into a corner where he crouched and trembled.

  “Please don’t hurt that mouse anymore.”

  “He is not being hurt. Not really. But I am doing nothing to him. You are. You are in charge here. Now please grip the XS conductor bar again and we will continue.”

  Jack did so. He noticed his palms were moist.

  “Have you ever killed anyone, Jack?”

  He stared at the mouse and said, “No.”

  No reaction from Mr. Mouse.

  Gotcha, he thought. A number of people were on the wrong side of the grass because of him.

  Somehow, maybe with a floor button, Aveline was triggering an electric shock in Mr. Mouse’s cage. Pretty damn potent way to mess with a new member’s head. The psychological impact of causing an innocent animal harm with every untruth was enormous.

  “Are you heterosexual?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Mouse maintained his nervous crouch.

  “Have you ever raped anyone?”

  Here was another one he could answer truthfully. “No way.”

  Mr. Mouse’s squeal of pain was a signal to end this bullshit. A tantrum was in order.

  Releasing the bar, Jack shot to his feet and began pounding on the desk.

  “No!” he shouted. “Impossible! No, no, no! I’d never do something like that! Never!”

  Aveline’s face paled. “Calm down, Jack. As I have told you, it is probably from some past life—”

  He pounded harder on the desk. “I don’t want to hear that! I don’t want a xelton that would be party to such a thing. You’re mistaken! It’s wrong! Wrong-wrong-wrong!”

  The door swung open with a bang and two shaved-headed, burgundy-uniformed men burst in.

  The taller of the pair grabbed Jack’s arm and said, “Come with us. And don’t make a fuss.”

  “Who are you?” Jack cried, cringing.

  “Temple Paladins,” Aveline said. “You must go with them.”

  “Where?”

  “The Grand Paladin wants to see you,” said the shorter one.

  Aveline’s eyes widened. “The GP himself? By Noomri!”

  “Yeah,” said the taller one. “He’s had his eye on you since you stepped into the temple this morning.”

  Just as Jack had expected. He went without a fuss.

  4

  “My name is Jensen.” The big black man said as he loomed over Jack. Jack detected a vaguely African accent filtering through the subway rumble of his voice. “What’s yours?”

  The two TPs had brought Jack to the third floor, which seemed to house the temple’s security forces, and seated him in a chair in a small, windowless room. They made him wait ten minutes or so, probably looking to up his anxiety level. Jack accommodated them by fidgeting and twisting his hands together, doing his best to look like a house cat in a dog pound.

  Finally this huge black guy who made Michael Clark Duncan look svelte—hell, he looked like he’d had Michael Clark Duncan for breakfast—swung through the door like a wrecking ball and stopped two feet in front of Jack. None of his bulk looked like flab. The overhead fluorescents gleamed off the bare scalp of a head the size of an official NBA basketball. His black uniform could have doubled as a comforter on a king-sized bed.

  Pretty intimidating, Jack thought. If you’re into that sort of thing.

  He started to stutter a reply. “I-I-I’m—”

  “Don’t tell me you’re ‘Jack Farrell,’ because we ran a routine check on you and learned there is no Jack Farrell at the address you gave. As a matter of fact, there isn’t even a house at that address.”

  “A-all right,” Jack said. “My real name—”

  “I don’t care what you’re real name is. I just want to know your game. What are you up to? You work for that rag, The Light, is that it?”

  “No, I’ve never even heard of whatever it is you’re talking about. I’m—”

  “Then why are you coming to us under false pretenses? We don’t allow lies in Dormentalist temples—only truth.”

  “But I’ve a good explanation about why—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. As of this moment you are officially designated UP and banned from this and all other Dormentalist temples.”

  Jensen turned and walked back to the door.

  “It’s not fair!” Jack cried but Jensen didn’t acknowledge him.

  As soon as he was gone, the two guards who’d brought Jack here led him back down to the Male RC Changing Room, watched him change, then escorted him out the door to the sidewalk. All without a word.

  Jack stood in the late-morning sun, looking dejected, then turned and began walking uptown. Pulled out his wallet and checked the slot where he’d stowed the Jason Amurri ID. The hair he’d tucked around the top of the card was gone.

  Perfect.

  He hadn’t gone three blocks when he spotted the tail. But he wasn’t going to try to lose him. He wanted to be followed.

  Let the games begin.

  5

  Jensen’s secretary’s voice rasped from the speaker on his desk. “TP Peary on line one, sir.”

  Jensen had told Peary to get into his street clothes and follow this phony bastard Amurri. At first, when the routine background check on “Jack Farrell” had come up blank—name, address, SSN, none of them had connected—he’d suspected the usual. Most troublemakers for the Church were either members of another belief system who felt Dormentalists had to be “saved,” or former members with an imagined score to settle. Occasionally one turned out to be a muckraker like that Jamie Grant bitch.

  Just as Jensen had expected, when he called a raid on “Jack Farrell’s” locker during the Reveille Session, they came up with a whole different set of ID. But not the ID of someone who fell easily into the usual categories.

  Jason Amurri. Okay. But from Switzerland? That had thrown Jensen. Why would a guy come all the way from Switzerland to join the New York Dormentalist temple under an assumed name? Granted, this temple was the center of the Church, its Vatican, so to speak, but why the lies? And bad lies to boot. Obviously he’d never thought they’d check up on him.

  Couldn’t let anybody get away with that. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Switzerland or Peoria—you lie, you get the boot. That was the rule.

  Jensen stared at the phone and frowned. Kind of early for Peary to be calling in. He’d only started tailing the Amurri guy a little while ago.

  Unless…

  He snatched up the receiver. “Don’t tell me you lost him.”

  “No. Only had to follow him to Central Park South. He’s staying at the Ritz Carlton.”

  Another surprise.

  “How do you know he’s not just visiting someone?”

  “Because I called the hotel and asked to be connected to Jason Amurri’s room. A few seconds later the phone started ringing.”

&nbs
p; The Ritz Carlton? Jesus. Years ago, while the luxury suites were being refurbished here in the temple, Jensen had had to book rooms in the Ritz for visiting Dormentalist celebrities. He remembered how a rear single with a view of a brick wall had cost almost seven hundred a night. And, of course, none of the visiting high rollers wanted that. No, they wanted a park view. Cost a damn fortune.

  “What do you want me to do next?” Peary said.

  “Come back in.”

  He hung up. No sense in having Peary waste his time watching a hotel. Jensen now knew where the guy was and who he was.

  Well, not really who. Just his name. And home address in Switzerland. And that he was staying at just about the most expensive hotel in the city. That meant he had some bucks. This Jason Amurri was full of surprises.

  A worm of unease wriggled in Jensen’s gut. He didn’t like surprises.

  He reached for the buzzer and hesitated. What was his new secretary’s name? The brainless little twits came and went so quickly. He seemed to go through them like a fox through chickens. No one applied to be his secretary anymore; they had to be drafted from the volunteer pool. Was he that hard on them? Not that he cared what they thought, it was just that some of them had long learning curves.

  He decided he didn’t give a shit about her name.

  He buzzed and said, “Get me Tony Margiotta.”

  Jensen loved what computers could do for him but, beyond e-mail, he let other people deal with them. Margiotta was the computer whiz among the TPs. He’d find out what Jensen needed to know.

  He just hoped it wasn’t something he didn’t want to know.

  6

  “Here you go,” Richie Cordova said, handing a five to the kid from the mail drop.

  Every time something popped into his box at the drop—hardly ever more than three times a week—the kid ran it up the two blocks to Richie’s office on his break. Worth the fiver every time. Saved Richie the trip, but more important, it meant he never had to show his face down there.

  A good thing to avoid. Never knew when one of the cows might get the dumb idea of watching Box 224 to see who opened it. Might see Richie and follow him back to the office, or home, and look for a chance to get even. Didn’t want none of that shit.

  With Richie’s delivery setup, they’d be waiting till they was dead and gone before seeing anyone so much as touch Box 224.

  “So what’ve we got today?” Richie muttered when the kid was gone.

  One manila envelope. Typed label. Hmmm.

  He pulled a folding knife from a desk drawer and slit it open. He found a legal-sized envelope within. Inside that was a note in a woman’s hand and a hundred-dollar bill.

  A hundred bucks? What’s this shit?

  The note was from the nun, whining about how she didn’t have no more to give. Richie smiled. Normally he’d be royally pissed at the short payment, but not with this little lady. Oh, no. He wanted her tapped out—at least personally.

  But was today the right day to put the screws to her?

  He picked up the Post and turned to the horoscope page. He’d been there once already this morning and hadn’t been too crazy about what he’d seen. He folded the tabloid into a neat quarter page for a second look.

  Gemini (May 21–June 21): It seems as if you have a dwindling safety margin. Don’t confuse aggression with initiative. Live in the moment, follow the rules, and close the week in triumph despite these obstacles.

  Dwindling safety margin…that didn’t sound so good.

  But it might not be so bad. His birthday was June 20, which meant he was officially a Gemini. But because Cancer started June 22, lots of astrology experts said people like him was “on the cusp” and could go either way.

  He checked the next reading.

  Cancer (June 22–July 22): It might be necessary to experience what you thought you wanted in order to better appreciate what you have. Dearest ones help you find fresh resources which might be able to hook you up in a surprising way.

  He read the first sentence three times and still couldn’t scope out what it was saying. As for the rest…

  Dearest ones? That would have to be the crowd at Hurley’s.

  Sure as hell couldn’t be a woman. He’d been split for seven years now from the stupid bitch he’d married, and his mother was five years gone. No gal at the moment—most of them were slobs anyway and the ones who weren’t never seemed to stay. His mother, God love her, had left him her house in Williamsbridge and everything in it. He’d grown up there and, because it was so much better than the crap apartment he’d been living in after his divorce, he’d moved back instead of selling.

  He decided what these horoscopes was telling him was that since he was going to find fresh resources today, his dwindling safety margin wouldn’t matter, and he’d close the week in triumph.

  Good enough.

  He unfolded the paper and laid it on his desk with the front page up. Then he used a Handi Wipe to remove the newsprint smudges from his fingers. That done, he wheeled his chair over to the radiator and pulled a padded envelope from behind it. He added the nun’s hundred to the rest of the cash. The total was up to about three thousand now. Time to make a trip to the safety deposit box. His office was alarmed, sure, but it wasn’t no bank. He’d head there come Friday.

  As he stuffed the envelope back into its hiding place and rose to his feet, he burped and rubbed the swelling dome of his belly. That liverwurst and onion sandwich wasn’t sitting too good. He loosened his belt a notch—to the last one. Shit, if he swelled any more he’d have to buy a whole new set of clothes. Again. He already had one closet full of stuff he couldn’t wear. He didn’t need another.

  He slipped on his suit jacket—didn’t even try to button it—and straightened up his desktop. Not much there. He kept a lean look in everything but his body. He realigned the photo of Clancy so it was centered across the far left corner, then headed for the waiting area.

  “Going out for a little walk, Eddy,” he told his receptionist. “Be back in thirty or so.”

  Edwina checked her watch and jotted the time on a sticky note.

  “Sure thing, Rich.”

  Uppity black skank, but she was good, one of the best receptionists he’d ever had. Wouldn’t come across with any extracurricular activity like some of them, though. Couple that with the way business had slowed, and he just might have to let her go soon.

  But he’d put that off as long as he could. A fair number of his clients had some bucks. Not big bucks, but comfortable. They came to him from Manhattan and Queens—first time ever in the Bronx for a lot of them. When they called for directions they were relieved to hear he was near the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Garden—civilization would be close by.

  The bad part about this location was that parking was a bitch and his clients wouldn’t see anyone like them on the street; the good part was they damn sure wouldn’t bump into anyone they knew, and that was important. Nobody wanted to run into a friend or acquaintance in a detective agency.

  So they hauled themselves all the way up here, and after that sacrifice they needed the reassurance of seeing a receptionist when they stepped through the door.

  He adjusted Eddy’s RECEPTIONIST sign, lining it up with the leading edge of her desk, and walked out.

  7

  Tremont was jumping today. But nobody on the crowded sidewalk seemed to be looking for a PI. They weren’t his sort of clientele anyway.

  Richie didn’t know why business had been off lately. He gave good service to his clients and got a lot of referrals from them, but things had been unaccountably slow since the summer.

  Which was why his second income stream had become more important than ever. The regular snoop jobs had always been the meat and potatoes, but the gravy had come from blackmail.

  Blackmail. He hated that word. Sounded so dirty and underhanded. He’d tried for years to find a substitute but hadn’t come up with anything that worked. Private knowledge protection…secret safekeeping ser
vice…classified information management…none of them did anything for him.

  So, he’d resigned himself to blackmail…which made him a blackmailer.

  Not something he talked about at Hurley’s, but not as bad as it sounded. Really, when you got down to it, he was simply supplying a service: I have information about you, information you don’t want made public. For a regular fee I will keep my mouth shut.

  What could be fairer than that? Participation was purely voluntary. Don’t want to play? Then don’t pay. But be ready to face the music once your ugly little secret gets out.

  Plus he had to admit he loved being able to pull people’s strings and make them dance to whatever tune he felt like playing. That was almost as good as the money.

  Richie rounded the corner and walked up past the newer apartment houses toward the zoo.

  Yeah…blackmailer. Not exactly what he’d planned for himself as a kid.

  What do you want to be when you grow up, Richie?

  A blackmailer, Mom.

  He hadn’t planned on being a cop either. Cops had been “pigs” back then. But as he grew older in a crummy economy and saw his old man lose his factory job, he started thinking maybe being a cop wasn’t so bad. Chances of getting laid off were slim to none, the pay was decent, and you could retire on a pension after twenty or twenty-five years and still have a lot of living ahead of you.

  He’d tried for the NYPD but didn’t make it. Had to settle for the NCPD—Nassau County—where the pay didn’t turn out to be all that decent. Didn’t take him too long, though, to find ways to supplement it.

  As a patrolman first and later a detective, Richie spent twenty-six years with the NCPD, twenty-four and a half of them on the pad. That got him into a little trouble toward the end, but he’d traded keeping mum about a certain IAD guy’s sexual tastes for a Get Out of Jail Free pass, and walked away with his pension intact.

  That had been his introduction to the power of knowing things he wasn’t supposed to. Instead of putting himself out to pasture, he applied for his private investigator license and opened Cordova Security Consultants. No big expectations, just someplace to go every day. Startup had been slow, but stuff sent his way by his old buddies in NCPD had helped keep him afloat. He found he liked the work, especially the spouse snooping. He’d got pretty good with a camera over the years and had taken some pretty steamy pictures. He’d kept a private gallery back at the house until this past September.