by R. J. Jagger
“What’s long term?”
He lit a cigarette.
“Long term, we need to be sure she stays safe tonight, which is going to put a crimp in those plans you have for the drummer.” He blew smoke. “To be more accurate, I need to be sure she stays safe tonight.”
Secret kissed him.
“You had it right the first time—We.” A pause, then, “We need to find out if he recognizes me.”
“That’s a dead issue,” Wilde said. “At this point he obviously will and we’ll never know if it’s from the other night or from the stage or from both.”
“We’ll know if he hunts me down,” Secret said.
Wilde nodded.
“Yeah that would answer the question.”
Secret punched him.
“Don’t be so laid back about it.”
“Trust me, I’m not.”
38
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Night
Waverly twisted and jerked and did everything she could to get away from the grip that had her ankle. That did nothing but send her over the edge headfirst into the cold black waves.
Water filled her eyes and ears and nose.
She couldn’t breathe.
Panic gripped her body and made it jerk.
Her head stayed under.
Her lungs burned.
She wanted one thing and one thing only, to breathe.
Seconds, that’s all she had left.
Suddenly an arm came around her from behind. She tried to twist around and climb up the person but couldn’t break loose.
Her head came above water.
Air.
Air.
Air.
She sucked it in so fast that water came with it and sent her into a coughing fit. She got a second breath, a clean one this time. Then she was over by the finger, the solid finger, and held on for dear life.
“Boost yourself up.”
It was a man’s voice.
Bristol’s.
She tried.
“I can’t!”
“Yes you can, do it.”
She pulled again with all her strength. This time Bristol pushed from behind. Her chest got up onto the wood then she pulled herself until her whole body was safe. Face down, she breathed. Nothing had ever felt so good. Splashing sounds came from behind her. Bristol was muscling his way out of the water. Then he was out, standing over her, dripping even colder water onto her already freezing body.
He tapped a toe into her ribs.
“Get up.”
The finger rocked—someone was running down it towards them. Waverly looked in that direction and saw the black silhouette of Su-Moon charging. The woman flung her body in the air over Waverly, hitting Bristol and sending him into the water.
She pulled Waverly to her feet.
“Come on.”
That was last night.
Now it was Tuesday morning and she opened the copper designer door of The Bristol Group and stepped into the frantic offices as if nothing happened. Last night had been dark and her face had been down. It was doubtful Bristol got a good enough look at her to recognize her in a different environment.
She’d find out soon enough.
Most of last night had been for naught. The only thing of interest in Bristol’s boat was an architecture file relating to some kind of terminal and docking layout for a ferry company on the Hong Kong side of Victoria Harbour. Even that wasn’t of much interest, being noteworthy only in the fact that it was at Bristol’s house rather than at the office, and was three years old.
Why would he have a three year old architecture file at home in the bottom drawer of his dresser?
Sean Waterfield spotted her and headed over.
“You look nice,” he said.
She lowered her voice.
“What do you know anything about a Hong Kong project?”
“You mean an architecture project, here at the firm?”
Right.
That.
He scratched his head.
“No.”
“It was three or four years ago.”
Three or four years ago.
He reached back.
“Wow, I hadn’t thought about that in years,” he said. “It wasn’t a project. It was something we bid on. It never materialized. Another firm got the bid.”
“Who.”
“I can’t remember. Why?”
A man’s face appeared.
“Are you the temp?”
Yes.
She was.
“I need you to make a donut run. Please and thank you.” He handed her money. “Two dozen assorted.”
Ten minutes later, picking out two-dozen from behind a glass display at Rudy & Summer’s World Famous Donuts, she had a nagging thought that she might not be able to take Bristol down if he turned out to be the dropper.
How could she do that to someone who snatched her out of the water?
39
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
River woke Tuesday morning in a panic. He was supposed to take the target, Alexa Blank, no later than yesterday. That didn’t get done. He needed to take her this morning, right now, before anyone found out he screwed up.
He rolled out of bed.
January reached over and grabbed his hand.
The covers fell off her body. The tattoo of a dragon started on her stomach, wrapped around her hip and over her ass, then around her left leg, ending slightly above the knee. Unlike the tattoos on her arm, which were a jumbled mess, this was a work of art with perfect colors and a fascinating imagination.
“Where you going?” she asked.
His instinct was to take her.
His body was strong enough now.
It hadn’t been last night.
He shook it off.
“Business.”
“This early?”
He nodded and kissed her.
“I’ll be back by noon,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”
She curled up and closed her eyes.
He was halfway out the door when he heard, “River, come back here a minute. I lied to you about something.”
He headed back.
“Lied about what?”
“About me,” she said. “My initial plan was to kill you. I was just going to be nice and bide my time until the right moment came. What you did last night to those two guys, that made everything even. You don’t have to worry about me any more.”
A beat passed while he processed it.
“Fair enough.”
He headed for the shower boxcar, got the temperature as hot as he could stand it and lathered up.
Don’t do anything stupid.
That was the important thing.
He needed to get Alexa Blank this morning but had to be careful to not be in such a rush that he did something stupid.
He had to be sure she didn’t see his face.
He had to be sure no one saw him.
More than that, he had to be sure no one even connected him.
How was he supposed to do that in the daylight?
Even thinking about it was stupid.
He took the car downtown and swung by the Down Towner on foot.
There she was, pouring coffee in someone’s cup.
She was fit.
Pretty, too.
She had a nice smile.
How did she factor into anyone’s equation? What made her important enough to be a target? She was basically a walking nobody. She hardly registered on the world. Did she see something she shouldn’t have? Did she know something she shouldn’t?
Maybe River would question her after he took her.
The answer might turn out to be a lot more lucrative than the payment. The information might be something he could use to blackmail someone. He’d just need to be careful that it never got traced back to him. Maybe he’d let January take the lead if it got that far—set her up
as the blackmailer.
Interesting.
Should he bring her in as a partner?
40
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
Tuesday morning at the office, Wilde paced, chain-smoked and drowned his stomach in coffee. When Alabama walked through the door at 8:15 wearing the same dress as last night, Wilde hugged her tighter than tight and said, “You’re alive.”
Alabama knew the reason for the statement.
She left the Bokaray with Robert Mitchum last night before Wilde could intercede. She spent the night with him.
“I was going to call and let you know I was okay,” she said, “but I didn’t want to blow my cover.”
“Blow your cover? You’re not supposed to have any cover. You’re supposed to be doing one thing and one thing only, namely not doing anything stupid. Do you remember when my lips moved in that direction, when they said plain as day, don’t do anything stupid?”
Yes.
She did.
But things got out of control.
She got dressed up last night to come down to the Bokaray. She spotted Mitchum at the bar and wandered over to see if he called himself Robert.
He did.
“He liked me,” she said.
“He wasn’t supposed to know you exist,” Wilde said.
She poured a cup of coffee and took a long slurp.
“You would have done the same thing if you were me,” she said.
Wilde set a book of matches on fire and lit a cigarette.
“Look,” he said. “We’re going to have this conversation one time and one time only. When I tell you what the risk boundaries are, you have to respect them. I set the boundaries and you stay in them, that’s the way it is. I can’t have you going rogue and doing your own thing. I can’t be worrying about you when I need to be thinking about other things. When I tell you not to do something, you have to not do that something.”
She smiled ever so slightly and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“You were worried about me?”
“Alabama, I’m serious.”
She pecked a kiss on his lips.
“You’re so cute when you’re all protective,” she said. “Do you want to know what I found out?”
Wilde took a long drag and blew smoke to the side.
“Just don’t tell me you slept with him.”
She ran a finger down his chest.
“Maybe you didn’t get a good look at him,” she said. “He actually is Robert Mitchum, only better.”
She drank the last of what was in her cup and went to get another. Over her shoulder she said, “He’s not the killer.”
“How do you know?”
“I can’t tell you. You’ll get mad.”
41
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
Tom Bristol passed by Waverly three or four times and didn’t once emit a glimmer of a reaction to indicate that he recognized her from the little fiasco at the houseboat last night. Every time Waverly saw him she pictured his hand slapping down on an ass.
She needed to find the owner of that ass and warn her.
Bristol was dirty.
Waverly could feel it.
At 9:30 Su-Moon called with some unexpected news. “I’m down the street from the marina. I’m going back to the houseboat.”
“Are you nuts?”
“He’s at the office right now, right?”
Yes.
He was.
“Write this number down,” Su-Moon said. Waverly picked up a pencil and wrote numbers on the top sheet of a scratch pad. “That’s Bristol’s home phone number. If he leaves the office, call that number and let it ring twice. That will be my cue he’s loose.”
“What are you trying to find?”
“Whatever it was we missed last night.”
Waverly exhaled.
“Don’t do it.”
“Talk to you later.”
“I’m serious. I have a bad feeling.”
“You always have a bad feeling.”
An hour passed then another. Bristol didn’t wander from the office haunts and Su-Moon would have been long done by now. Still, when Sean Waterfield swung by and asked Waverly if she wanted to go to lunch, she dialed Bristol’s number and let the phone ring twice before leaving, just to be safe.
They ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf with takeout plates of shrimp and rice, which they ate on the edge of a dock.
Their legs dangled over the water.
The boats were out to sea.
Mooring posts were wrapped in tires.
Seagulls filled the air.
The street buzzed with vendors.
The sky was clear but the temperature wasn’t more than seventy.
“That Hong Kong deal was weird from the get-go,” Waterfield said. “We were big in Europe but hadn’t done anything in Asia yet. This would be our first. Tom Bristol went there to personally meet with the owners and go over the specs. He came back as excited as I’ve ever seen him. He worked up all the drawings and bid documents himself, working until who-knows-when every night after the rest of us left. The bid got submitted and then he crossed his fingers and waited. In the end, another firm got the project.”
“Which firm?”
“I can’t remember,” Waterfield said. “It doesn’t really matter. It wasn’t ours.”
Suddenly a figure appeared in Waverly’s peripheral vision and sat down next to her.
It was the last person in the world she expected.
Tom Bristol.
He looked at Waterfield and said, “Sean, are you putting the moves on our new temp?”
Waterfield nodded.
“Got to,” he said. “Look at her.”
42
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
With no good way to abduct the little-nobody-waitress target at the moment, River headed back home to the rail spur to find January scrubbed up and looking pretty damn nice. She handed him a sealed envelope and said, “This was taped on the outside of the door.”
“Did you see who put it there?”
“No, why?”
“Just curious.”
Inside was a short, sweet message: “You missed the deadline. Contract is rescinded.”
River tore it in half, then another half and another, and threw it on the ground.
“What’s wrong?”
River heard the words coming out of January’s mouth but his brain was on too much fire to process them.
“What’s wrong?” she repeated.
“Later,” he said.
His body was already in motion, trotting for the car.
January was suddenly running at his side.
“Let me come with you.”
“No.”
“River—”
He swung her to a stop and held her at arms length. “Stay here.”
“But—”
“I’ll explain when I get back,” he said. “Right now it’s best if no one sees your face.”
“Why?”
He kissed her.
“Just trust me,” he said. “Stay here ’till I get back.”
Then he was in the car and gone.
He pointed the front end downtown, paying just enough attention to traffic to not bend someone’s fender.
Worst-case scenarios pounded through his brain.
He’d never had a contract rescinded before.
This was bad.
Bad.
Bad.
Bad.
Bad.
Bad.
It might even be the end.
Not just the end of his tenure but the end of his life. If they weren’t going to use him anymore, why would they let him keep breathing? What was the upside?
There wasn’t one.
He’d be a lot less risky six feet under in a wooden box. Let the spiders crawl over his face.
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How would they take him out?
A cowardly bullet from the distance?
A knife in the back?
A rope around the neck?
More importantly, when would it come?
Tonight?
Yeah.
It would be tonight.
He could feel it moving in like an ugly black sky.
One thing was clear, crystal clear, crystal clear beyond belief, namely he’d been a fool for working all these years without knowing who he was working for. He should have never let the money lure him in. That would never happen again, guaranteed.
He parked a block down the street and headed to Alexa Blank’s restaurant at a brisk pace.
Through the window he saw her.
She was in a white dress and a black apron carrying two plates of food to a table.
He opened the door, stepped inside and took a seat in the corner booth.
She smiled at him and said, “Be right there.”
“No rush.”
43
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
When Wilde pressed Alabama to tell him how she knew Mitchum wasn’t the dropper, she eventually relented even though he’d get mad. “I told him I had a secret place where you could see all the lights of Denver. When he asked where it was, I said, It’s up on a roof over on Market Street. You want to go there with me?”
Wilde frowned.
“That was stupid.”
“Yeah, well, if he’d said yes, I wasn’t really going to go,” she said. “I was going to pretend to sprain my ankle or something. The important thing is that he wasn’t interested. He was more interested in a nice soft bed.”
“And that’s what happened, the bed?”
She nodded.
Wilde pictured it.
He must have had a look because Alabama punched him on the arm and said, “You’re jealous.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are.”
“No I’m not.”
“Just say the word,” she said.
“What word?”
