The Inner Circle (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  “Those were the instructions?”

  “Yes. They were very simple and clear. The driver will take you to the Coliseum and drop you off, and once you step out of the limo, you should be wearing everything in that case. Nobody will know who you are. The driver will leave, and will not return until later in the morning.”

  “What time?”

  “The times are staggered throughout the morning, just as the arrival times are staggered. You know how New York traffic can be. Plus, you have to take into account that with over one thousand members of the Inner Circle, all arriving separately, they can’t all walk through the front door at the same time. I’m sure some others have already arrived. I’m sure they’ve been waiting for hours.”

  “So what time does the event start?”

  “Midnight.”

  • • •

  WE DIDN’T SPEAK for the rest of the ride. It was nearly eleven o’clock, which meant after I arrived, I would have about an hour to do nothing but wait.

  The congresswoman folded her hands in her lap and stared out the window.

  I sat staring down at the attaché case and didn’t say a word. Not when the limo eventually eased to a stop. Not when the back door opened and Edward Stark poked his head in and wished me luck. Not when Congresswoman Francis “Frank” Houser stepped out. Not even when she leaned back in and said, looking at me gravely, “Take care, Ben.” I just nodded, and she shut the door, and then the limo started driving again.

  61

  They entered the building through a service door on the street. Just inside the door, sitting at a desk with two computer monitors, was an overweight black man in his fifties. Gray in his hair, gray in his mustache, wrinkles around his eyes, it looked like he hadn’t left his station in over a decade.

  Drew and Beverly stepped up to the desk, neither of them smiling. Instead they gave the tired, irritated expressions reserved for those ready to start a long and boring shift.

  The man behind the desk wore a generic gray security shirt. His name tag said ANDRE. He barely even glanced at them as he reached up without a word, his other hand moving and clicking a mouse.

  They each had their employee badges ready.

  Andre took Beverly’s first. “You two fresh meat?”

  Drew said, “Started earlier this week.”

  Beverly said, “My first night.”

  Andre didn’t look like he much cared. He gave Beverly’s card a perfunctory swipe, expecting it to go through, for her name and picture to appear on one of his monitors. Nothing happened. He frowned, swiped the card again. Got the same result.

  “You said this is your first shift, right?” he asked Beverly.

  She nodded.

  He frowned again at his computer screen, then said to Drew, “Let me try your card.”

  Drew handed over his card.

  Andre swiped it, but slowly this time, like the speed in which the card traveled through the device would somehow make a difference.

  Just like Beverly’s card, this one didn’t go through.

  Andre said, “Hold on a moment,” and picked up the phone on his desk.

  • • •

  THE KID WAS in a dark room two blocks away. Three computer monitors and two laptops were set up on two tables that had been positioned at a ninety-degree angle. An office chair was between the two tables, and this was where the Kid sat, swiveling back and forth to whatever computer he needed. He wore a Logitech wireless headset, complete with a noise-canceling boom mic, which he used to communicate with the rest of the team.

  Like now, with Drew and Beverly, he said, “Stay cool, stay cool,” while he typed furiously on one of the laptops. Earlier today he had made sure everything was square with their cover. He had gotten them into the system, had made sure their cards would work just fine, but something had gone wrong. What, he couldn’t say, but if this was any indication of how tonight would go, they were all fucked.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a red light blinking on one of the monitors. He swiveled to the monitor, clicked his mouse, and heard a ringing in his earphones. He clicked the mouse again, and said, “Security IT.”

  “Yeah, this is Andre from downstairs. Is Bobby around?”

  “Bobby stepped out. Went to take a shit, I think. What’s up?”

  “I got two new employees down here who aren’t in the system.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Was hoping you could double-check them for me.”

  The Kid typed and clicked, closing out one window and opening another. He was hacked into the building’s system—he’d hacked in three days prior, just to test it out—and saw that for some reason Drew and Beverly (or at least their aliases) had been inactivated. But at least they were in the system, which made the Kid’s job a whole lot easier, just a few more clicks and a few more commands, and voilà, done.

  “Sure thing,” the Kid said. “What are their names?”

  One of the monitors to the far left showed Andre with Beverly and Drew. The security camera was in the ceiling corner. The quality was pretty shitty, as most security feeds are, but still the Kid watched Andre pick up both employee cards and then squint at the names.

  “Theresa Muniz and Alfonzo Jones.”

  “Okay,” the Kid said slowly, like he was typing their names into the system. He paused a beat and said, “I see them on my screen. What’s the problem?”

  “Their cards aren’t going through.”

  “Is that right? Hmm. How about you try them again.”

  The Kid watched Andre clamp the phone between his chin and shoulder while he swiped one of the cards again.

  This time—thank Christ—it went through.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” Andre said. He swiped the second card, which also went through. “Looks like everything’s fine down here.”

  On the screen, Andre handed Drew and Beverly back their cards and waved goodbye. Drew and Beverly, both wearing backpacks, turned and headed down the corridor.

  Andre said, “Bobby back yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If you see him tell him to give me a call. He still owes me ten bucks on last week’s Knicks game.”

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks. By the way, what did you say your name was again?”

  The Kid clicked the mouse to another feed, watching Drew and Beverly as they came to the service elevator.

  “Peter,” he said. “I have to run. Got another call coming in. I’ll take another look at the system to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

  He disconnected before Andre could say anything else. Then he switched over the communication feed to Drew and Beverly, both who wore tiny earpieces and both who had just stepped into the service elevator.

  “You guys okay?”

  “Shit,” Drew said. “That was close.”

  “I had it all under control. Beverly, you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, though she didn’t sound fine. She sounded scared out of her wits.

  “I’ll check back in with you guys when you hit the roof.”

  He clicked off and turned to another monitor. This one gave the location of each member of the team. When everyone was closer, he would open the communication feed so everyone could listen in and know what was going on. Now, though, he had to keep it separate.

  He saw Ben was still up in Harlem, waiting under that overpass, and clicked the mouse again.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Still waiting.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  • • •

  MASON COULTER SMELLED like shit. Literally.

  It wasn’t his idea. It was the team’s—God, how it felt weird to think of himself as part of a “team”—and when the idea was initially brought up four days ago, Mason didn’t object. He knew he had to carry his own weight. He knew he had to help. Despite everything that had happened to him and his family, Mason wasn’t about to give up. Even if Gloria and Anthony were dead�
��and Mason had to accept the fact they most likely were, based on everything he had been told by Ben and Ronny, after everything he had seen and learned for himself—he couldn’t give up. Those motherfuckers had taken them and killed them, and Mason was going to make them pay. Not every last one of them—he wasn’t that arrogant or delusional—but at least enough to clear his conscience and reset the skewed balance of his mixed up universe.

  He hadn’t showered in nearly a week. He hadn’t shaved. He wore a wig, a brown dirty thing that smelled like trash. He wore a dirty hat, a dirty coat, a dirty pair of jeans. His boots—yep, you guessed it—were also dirty. Every piece of clothing except his underwear had been taken piecemeal from other homeless around the city. They had done that on the first day. Had gone up to a homeless person, offered fifty dollars for whatever piece of clothing they needed. By the end of the day, Mason had his getup. He had been wearing it ever since. If he was going to do this, he was going to jump in with both feet. Hell, he was going to jump in head-fucking-first.

  And so for the past three days he had been literally living on the streets of Manhattan. Watching the other homeless to see how they survived. Picking up the same tricks. Relieving himself in pretty much the same places. Eating what food happened to come his way—a half-eaten soft pretzel dropped by a tourist, or a Burger King Whopper handed to him by a parishioner of a nearby church, who offered the sandwich in exchange for just five minutes of Mason’s time to hear about the Lord Christ Jesus. This very same parishioner even offered to let Mason spend the night in the church’s basement. Mason thanked him for the sandwich and the offer, but politely declined. Still, it warmed him, that little bit of humanity. It was nice to know he actually existed to some, as to most he had become invisible.

  He wasn’t sure why this surprised him. He had encountered his fair share of homeless people in the past, and had managed to ignore them just fine. It was what you did. An unspoken rule of conduct when in major cities. The homeless was there, an eyesore, and you simply walked by. Maybe threw them a few extra cents from your pocket. That was all.

  This was, of course, the reason why Mason was on the street to begin with.

  But there were rules—rules Mason quickly learned in the first two days. There were places the homeless were not welcome. Well, besides shelters, the homeless were not really welcome anywhere, but there were places that the cops let them slide, and there were places they were prohibited.

  The Theater District was one of those places.

  After all, it was a high tourist area—not to mention those in high society frequented the plays—so it made sense that the city did not want human trash littering the streets.

  So it was difficult, trying to figure out the patterns of the cops and tourists. It was difficult, because time was short. They only had days—mere seconds in the larger scheme of space and time—and they couldn’t waste a moment.

  Ben and Ronny walked past the Fillmore every day, yes, but it was Mason’s job to keep a constant eye on the place. Not that he could do this, because he was always moving, being hustled away by one cop or another, or moving on his own when he saw them coming. But the purpose was to become invisible, to hole himself up in a corner with a ratty blanket, and act like he had given up on life.

  Which he was doing that evening, around eleven o’clock, a block up from the Fillmore. The angle wasn’t very good, but he had been watching the limos and Town Cars entering the garage attached to the Fillmore. They would appear minutes later and drive away. For hours this had been happening, one after another, spaced maybe five or ten minutes apart.

  In his ear was a tiny transmitter that the Kid could use to talk to him, and Mason could use to talk to the Kid.

  In his pocket was a full-size Beretta nine millimeter. In his other pocket were three full magazines.

  Under his coat, strapped to his Kevlar-protected chest, was an Uzi. Just like the one that hotel clerk Kevin had fired back at the Beachside Hotel in Miami Beach at the start of this whole awful mess.

  Mason was sitting there a block away, watching the Fillmore, just waiting.

  Waiting to take as many of the motherfuckers out as he could.

  Waiting to die.

  • • •

  RONNY AND MAYA sat in silence. They’d been sitting in silence for nearly an hour. Neither of them had anything to say. At least, Maya didn’t have anything to say. Not right now. Not with the full weight of what they intended to do tonight pressing down on her shoulders. At times, the pressure became so much she barely knew how to breathe. This wasn’t like her. She was usually much more confident, much more in control. She’d killed people before—bad people—and while it had been difficult at first to accept and acknowledge that this was now her life, she eventually grew accustomed to holding a gun, to aiming it and firing it with the intention of taking someone’s life.

  She worried about Ben.

  She wasn’t happy with how they’d left things. At the same time, she wasn’t happy being lied to, either.

  But had she been lied to?

  That was the question. Something terrible had happened to Ben, just as something terrible had happened to all of them. Only, when Ben thought everything was over, something even more terrible happened: he watched his family die.

  Maya couldn’t even begin to understand just how awful that must have been. She thought she knew, but thinking and feeling and knowing were all completely different things. She hadn’t had a family in a very long time. Her game with Simon had been a fluke that way. She could have easily just said no from the very start, but she had gone along with it. Why? Because she wanted to know where she came from. She wanted to know who her true family was. Some people probably didn’t care much about those things, but she did. She cared so much sometimes it hurt.

  And so she sat there with Ronny and waited. Both with Kevlar vests. Both with rifles and guns and extra ammunition. Both with the tiny earpieces to keep them in contact with the Kid.

  Maya closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

  Ronny asked, “You okay?”

  She nodded. Opened her eyes. Stared out through the bug-splattered windshield.

  And waited.

  • • •

  THE KID KEPT his eye on the computer monitors. The one monitor he watched most was the middle one, the one tracking Ben’s movements through the city streets as he rode in Congresswoman Houser’s limo.

  While Drew and Beverly reached the roof of the building and began assembling Drew’s equipment, the Kid watched.

  While Mason Coulter hunkered down in his space a block away from the Fillmore, the Kid watched.

  While Ronny and Maya sat in silence in the truck, the Kid watched.

  He listened to everything Ben and the congresswoman said to each other. He listened as the congresswoman exited the limo. He listened to the quiet shush of fabric as Ben put on the robe and cowl and gloves.

  “How does the mask feel?” the Kid asked quietly.

  Ben was silent for several long seconds. “I haven’t put it on yet.”

  The Kid checked Ben’s current location in regard to the Fillmore. “You don’t have much time.”

  Ben said nothing.

  And so the Kid sat there and watched the monitors, keeping his eye on Ben’s location as it drew closer and closer to the Fillmore, while Drew and Beverly and Mason and Ronny and Maya all waited.

  Then Ben’s limo turned a corner, came down the block, and the Kid flicked the switch so that everyone could hear him.

  “He’s here.”

  62

  When the limo made the turn onto West 43rd Street, I finally put on the mask.

  I’d been putting it off since the congresswoman exited the limo. Just sitting there, the mask in my hands, as the limo weaved through the city streets. The Kid had spoken to me briefly, but that was it. It was completely silent in the back of the vehicle. The driver—and I still didn’t like the fact I had no idea who the driver was—may have been singing along to the radio
for all I knew.

  The mask fit snugly against my face. Despite how much the contacts irritated my eyes, I was thankful for them. There was no way I would have been able to wear this mask comfortably with glasses.

  The limo slowed as it approached the Fillmore. Through the window I saw people walking the sidewalks, oblivious to tonight’s special meeting of the Inner Circle. The limo’s rear windows were tinted, so I had no worries about being seen. At that moment I was, just like every other member of the Inner Circle, a voyeur.

  In my ear, the Kid whispered, “Ben?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine.”

  There was a long pause. Then the Kid said, “Good luck, dude.”

  The limo slowed even more, almost to a crawl, as it made the turn. It bounced slightly over the spot where street and sidewalk met, and then began to ride its brake down a decline.

  Out the window, all I could see was concrete.

  After several seconds, the limo slowed again. It came to a complete stop. Through the window on the other side of the limo, I watched a car pass by, going the opposite direction. Having deposited its own special member of the Inner Circle, it was headed back up to the street.

  Before, I had heard the faint city sounds beyond the limo. Now there was complete silence. Only the hum of the engine. A distant opening and closing of a car door. Then, after a few seconds, the limo moved forward again, only to once more stop.

  It went on like this for another five minutes. At one point, headlights splashed through the rear window as another limo came down the ramp. Then, suddenly, my limo pulled forward again and the concrete disappeared to reveal a dark overhang. There was motion beyond the window—someone approaching—and then the back door opened.

  I didn’t move.