The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery)

by Gaspard, John

  I pulled my car a discreet distance away and put it into park as I tried to come up with something that resembled a plan of action.

  I rejected my first two ideas and was forming a third when I looked up to see someone exiting the building and heading toward the van. It was Boone, his bulky frame covered in a dark wool overcoat. A black baseball cap was pulled down, shading his eyes. His stringy blonde hair stuck out from under the cap and he appeared unshaven and tired. Even at this distance he looked like a poster boy for disheveled.

  He started the van and pulled out of the lot. Since I had no real plan of my own, I put my car into gear and followed him.

  As it turned out, it wasn’t a long trip.

  Barely two blocks later, he pulled the van into the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes, which sits directly across a busy street from one of the multiple entrances into the Mall of America. I watched as he parked and shambled into the restaurant, which appeared to be in the midst of a mid-afternoon lull. Moments later, I spotted him again, this time through one of the restaurant’s windows as he took a spot in a booth and began to examine the multi-page menu intently. I pulled into a parking spot that afforded a better view of his location and sat back to wait. With nothing to occupy my mind, I flipped on the radio to help pass the time. NPR was once again asking me for money, so I switched the radio off and settled in to wait and see what would happen next.

  What happened next was that Boone had a visitor. I was at a bad angle to see exactly who it was, but while I’d been fiddling with the radio, someone had joined Boone and was now seated across from him in the booth.

  Their conversation appeared to be decidedly one-sided, as Boone looked to be doing all the talking, while his visitor merely smiled and dipped a teabag in a cup. And, from the looks of it, made an occasional note on a pad.

  I started the car and moved it to a better vantage point to see who the mysterious visitor was. The move was all for naught, though, as reflections on the windows made it impossible to see clearly who was seated across from Boone.

  I was so engrossed with trying to identify the mystery person that I barely registered when my phone beeped at me. A second beep finally got my attention and I yanked the phone out of my pocket to find I’d received a text message from Megan.

  “U around?” it read.

  “No,” I texted in reply, typing slowly and carefully on the small keypad. “I’m in the parking lot of the IHOP.”

  A moment later, she texted back. “Y?”

  “Long story.”

  “Lunch again? MayB 2morrow?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Gr8. C U.”

  I spent several minutes trying to come up with a clever closing salutation of my own. As I sat there lost in thought, I glanced up just in time to see Boone’s van pull out of the parking lot.

  I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and slammed my car into drive, pulling out so quickly that my tires actually kicked up dust, like Joe Mannix when he was on a case. I looked back at the restaurant in time to see someone who looked, and dressed, very much like Clive Albans also exiting the building, headed toward the other side of the parking lot. I decided that it was more important to follow Boone, so I sped across the lot toward the exit he had taken. I needn’t have bothered, as Boone’s van merely crossed the busy street and pulled into one of the surface lots in front of the Mall of America. He could have walked the distance in just about the same amount of time.

  I followed and found a spot two rows down from his. I then slumped down in my seat and peered over the steering wheel as he crossed the parking lot, heading toward the entrance door. I watched him go and then decided that, since I had trailed him this far, I might as well continue with this plan. I got out of the car and headed toward the entrance that he had just stepped through.

  The fourth floor of the Mall of America is referred to as their Entertainment Complex, although that’s really overstating it, as it isn’t all that complex or even vaguely intricate. It consists of a couple of bar/nightclubs and a massive, sixteen-screen movie theater. I stepped off the escalator in time to spot Boone as he bought a ticket from a theater employee ensconced in a glass booth and then walked into the theater lobby.

  From where I was standing, I could just barely hear the voice of the ticket seller as she said, “Enjoy your show.”

  Through the windows into the lobby I watched Boone as he got his ticket torn by a ticket taker, who then directed him to the left side of the lobby. Boone disappeared down the hall toward one of the eight theaters on that side. I stepped up to the glass ticket booth and had a sudden vision of myself stumbling into eight different dark auditoriums, trying to find the one the Boone had picked. I looked up at the list of movie choices and nothing screamed out as something that might have attracted the movie fan in Boone.

  Remembering that simplicity was always the simplest solution, I opened my wallet and said to the ticket seller, “I’ll take a ticket for whatever movie the last guy asked for.” I pulled a ten out of my wallet and looked up to see a blank-faced teenage girl, all red freckles and braces, staring back at me like a confused guppy.

  “What?” she asked, her voiced amplified and disembodied, floating out of a small speaker on the counter.

  “The last guy,” I repeated slowly, “I want a ticket for the same movie he bought a ticket for.”

  Another stare, blanker than the first. “I have no idea what movie he asked for.”

  “It was less than 30 seconds ago,” I said, trying to keep an edge of exasperation out of my voice.

  “It wasn’t a compelling choice,” she said flatly.

  I decided another approach was in order. I gestured toward the side of the theater he had gone into. “Which theaters are on that side?” I asked.

  She squinted as she thought about it. “Theaters one through eight.”

  “Terrific,” I said, “I’ll take one ticket for theater eight.”

  “It’s already started.”

  “I’ve made my peace with that,” I said through gritted teeth.

  She sighed as only a teenage girl can, took my ten and pushed a ticket at me under the glass. As I headed into the lobby I could hear her final, rote words echoing out of the small speaker. “Enjoy your show.”

  When I presented my ticket to the ticket taker, I put the same question to him. He was a very tall kid with a thick mop of brown hair and heavy black-rimmed glasses. “The last guy who came in here…which theater did he go to?” I asked, gesturing down the hall to the left.

  The kid perked up, clearly eager for any interaction above and beyond the traditional, repetitive ticket transaction. “Oh, let me think.” He screwed up his face and actually scratched his head in thought. “Auditorium three,” he said proudly. “I sent him to auditorium three.”

  “Thanks,” I said, as I handed him my ticket and headed toward the auditorium Boone had disappeared into.

  Several hours later I emerged from auditorium six, following Boone as he exited and moved mercifully toward the main lobby. If he had headed into another auditorium, I might have begun to scream. In the intervening hours, I had watched parts of five different movies with Boone, as he moved sporadically and nomadically from auditorium to auditorium. I had forgotten my phone on the front seat of the car, so I had no idea what time it was when we left the theater.

  I was thankful that Franny had forced two wrapped brownies on me, as they provided sustenance during movies two and three. I did sneak to the bathroom briefly during movie four, but that was really the only break I got.

  As to the movies we saw, since we went into each one after it had started and left each before it had concluded, they all had congealed in my brain as one long, epic romantic comedy with action and vampires. And there was something about a talking dog. The rest is very hazy.

  I stepped out into a sharp, cold night, feeling oddly jetlagged by the afternoon’s movie-going experience. I crossed to my car and tried to keep out of Boone�
��s line of vision as we traversed the parking lot in search of our respective vehicles. I found mine before he had located the gray van, which gave me a chance to check the time on my phone and see if I had any messages. I was surprised to see that it was only a little after eight o’clock—my internal clock would have believed anything up until eleven-thirty or twelve. There were no phone messages and no further texts from Megan. I turned on the car, flipped on the lights, and pulled out into traffic, right on Boone’s tail.

  He pulled out of the lot and hit the nearby freeway entrance at about fifty; it was all I could do to keep up with him. Traffic was light, so it was relatively simple to keep him in my line of sight as he sped down Highway 77, took the entrance to 494 West, and then transferred to 35W North.

  Boone surprised me by getting off the freeway before downtown, pulling off at the Lake Street exit. I followed, keeping several car lengths back, so as not to spook him.

  I thought he might be headed to one of the bars that line Lake Street near the freeway, to begin setting up for a DJ gig later that night. However, he revealed his true intentions by pulling up in front of a small but well-trafficked liquor store.

  By the time I found a place to park, he was already out of the car, into the store and back with a small brown paper bag in hand. He resumed driving and I followed as he continued north toward downtown.

  I still wasn’t entirely clear on why I was following him. His verbal tic certainly identified him as the man who called Franny that morning, and if Boone was truly concerned that he had killed Grey, then he warranted observation.

  By fate or chance I turned up in his apartment parking lot just as he was leaving, but there had been nothing outwardly sinister in his actions or behavior. However, something in my gut told me to keep following him. Some might call it intuition—Franny, I would imagine, might assign a more supernatural explanation.

  As we made our way through downtown I was jarred out of this train of thought when Boone made a sudden turn into a parking ramp. The ramp adjoined a high-rise apartment complex on Third Avenue, right near the river. The building, a 30-story tower called The Carlyle, was a relatively new addition to the Minneapolis skyline. I hesitated for a moment, not sure if I should risk following him into the ramp, but a honk from a car behind me made the decision easy and I hit the gas and pulled in.

  Boone found a spot right away, so I rolled past him, keeping my head turned away to avoid identification. I found a place several spaces ahead and slipped into the spot. I heard his van door slam just as I shut off the engine. I got out slowly, peeking over the top of the car next to mine to make sure he wasn’t headed my way. He wasn’t—he was headed toward the main door to the building. I got out and followed, stopping for a moment to peer in the passenger window of his van.

  The interior of the vehicle was a complete mess, a trash can on wheels, but one piece of garbage immediately caught my eye—a pint of Southern Comfort sat on the passenger seat, resting on top of the brown paper bag it had come in. The bottle appeared to be completely empty. Clearly Boone was fortifying his courage, for reasons yet unknown.

  As I approached the main entrance, I could see Boone standing in the building’s entryway, using the phone on the wall to call one of the tenants. I stepped back against the building, feeling a bit silly but recognizing that it would be even sillier to get spotted now, after all I’d been through with him today. I peered around a corner and saw him hang up the phone and then heard the distant sound of a buzzer as the electronic lock buzzed to admit him. He stepped through the door and across the lobby, into a waiting elevator.

  As soon as the elevator door shut, I sprang out of hiding and moved quickly into the entryway. The door to the lobby had relocked, barring my access. However, I could see the elevator from the entryway, and more importantly, I could see the floor indicator above the elevator door. I watched as the numbers climbed, finally stopping at twenty-three. The illuminated numbers held at that point for a few moments, and then began to descend. Since Boone had entered the elevator alone, I felt it was a safe bet to presume that he was now on the twenty-third floor.

  Next to the phone on the wall was a large display board, listing the last names of the tenants and their respective phone codes, which visitors could use to call to get buzzed in. Next to the phone was a cork bulletin board, with messages for the tenants from the management and listings of condos currently for sale or lease. I began to scan the long list of names and codes by the phone. I didn’t have to go any further than the Ds.

  The name ‘Dupree’ immediately caught my eye. Arianna Dupree, former lover to Boone’s current lover, Nova. Assuming, of course, that Boone and Nova were still a couple—given the way they were arguing at the reception, they could easily have since broken up.

  And now he’d waited all day to come down here and had even swallowed a pint of whiskey to get up the nerve to do whatever he was about to do.

  I yanked on the front door without really believing that it would open, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was about to pick up the phone and call Arianna’s number when salvation came in the form of two yippy little dogs.

  “Princess! Duchess! Princess! Duchess!” The dogs’ owner, a blue-haired woman of a certain age, perfectly tailored and coiffed, was doing her best to negotiate the lobby. For their part, the two little pedigree mutts were doing their best to head in completely opposite directions. Although their combined weight may have been pushing four pounds, their antics were overwhelming Mrs. Blue Hair. She pulled and tugged and cajoled and begged her way across the lobby. When she finally made it to the front door and hit the latch to open it, I was standing by at the ready. I swung the door open for her with one arm, and with the other reached across the small foyer and opened the outer door as well.

  “Thank you so much,” she said, barely registering my existence as she cooed and pleaded with the two little squeaky furballs. “Come on now, girls. Time to go tinkle before we go to bed. Time to go.” I could hear her voice as she struggled to maneuver the two dogs to a small patch of green directly in front of the building.

  Before the front door had even closed, I was in the elevator and on my way to the twenty-third floor.

  It was a quick ride up, so fast that I didn’t really have time to come up with a plan of action before the elevator came to a smooth stop and the doors slid open. I stepped out of the elevator and into a quiet hallway.

  I stood for a moment, listening for voices, hoping that would give me a clue as to where to head next, but the only sound was the elevator as its doors closed behind me.

  I looked to my left and saw four highly-polished wooden doors, two on either side of the hall. A look to my right revealed a mirror image of what I had just seen on the left. The only difference was that one door, at the far end on the right, appeared to be slightly ajar. It might have been a trick of the light, but I moved toward it anyway. The hall was deathly quiet and my shoes made virtually no sound on the thick carpet.

  The door was open a crack and a slim sliver of light shone through in the space between the door and the doorframe. I knocked on the door softly, pushing it open as I did.

  “Hello?” I said, my voice cracking from lack of use. I consciously lowered it an octave so as to sound less like a teenager. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  The apartment was dark, lit only by the ambient light from the skyline, visible through the large picture windows in what I guessed to be the living room. Something stirred to my left and I turned quickly, only to realize that it was merely the sheer white curtains that hung on either side of the sliding door to the terrace. The door was open and an intermittent breeze lazily swirled the curtains.

  I took another step forward and my foot hit something hard.

  At first I thought it might be an ottoman, but I quickly realized that the dark lump at my feet was Boone, crumbled over in his dark wool coat.

  I knelt down to check his condition, resting my hand on the carpet for support. The carpet seemed to slide
out from under me, and I realized that the spot was warm, wet and sticky.

  I brought my hand in front of my face and in the dim light I could see that it was covered with what looked like blood.

  Then something hit me, very hard, in the back of the head. I could hear what sounded like sirens off in the distance. And then everything went black.

  Chapter 15

  The blackness was like a deep hole—easy to fall into, but much, much harder to pull myself out of. However, that didn’t stop me from trying.

  Each attempt seemed to bring me closer to something resembling the real world, and then the fingers of my consciousness would lose their grip and I’d slide back down into the warm and comforting blackness. The state I was in was just this side of dreaming, but my battered brain made no attempt to construct a story out of the random images that flickered by.

  If this was my life flashing before my eyes, it was doing so in a very disorganized manner—someone seemed to have left out all of the good parts. I resigned myself to this feeling and floated in a field of nothingness for what seemed like a long time.

  And then, like a movie projector popping on after a power blackout, I suddenly opened my eyes and found myself staring at ceiling tiles that were whiter than white. I turned to my left and was blinded by the sun coming through an unfamiliar window.

  I squinted involuntarily and turned to my right, where I was surprised to see Deirdre, seated in a chair, casually flipping through a magazine. Her blonde hair was nearly blinding in the bright light that flooded the room. She looked up at the sound of me rolling over.