by Lisa Shearin
If Denton Sykes wanted to be in a public place and still have privacy, he’d done a fine job picking our meeting location.
He was waiting for us at the opposite side of the coffeehouse from web-surfer dude. He had his back to the wall and his eyes on the door. He also had a large coffee with barista shorthand for three shots written in Sharpie on the side. There were at least five empty, colorful packets of not-sugar next to the cup.
According to Ian, Sykes would have been nervous when he came in, and was about to toss enough caffeine and sweetened cancer powder on top of those nerves to be able to climb the wall behind him like a fly.
I flipped on my seer vision to take a quick look.
Denton Sykes wasn’t a fly, just a highly caffeinated human. Jeff Goldblum still had the neat, yet disgusting, human-turning-into-a-fly trick all to himself.
“That stuff will kill you, you know,” Ian told Sykes.
“It’ll have to get in a long line.” Sykes winked, though it might have been a nervous tic. “Sit down and let’s get this over with.”
“In a rush because you’ve got big plans this evening?”
“If by big plans, you mean leaving town? Then yeah, big plans.”
“Denny, this is my partner, Makenna Fraser. Mac, this is Denny Sykes. Denny’s usually a regular silver-tongued charmer. He seems a little out of sorts. Tell me, Denny, what’s got you out of sorts?”
“A line of potential customers from here to the East River docks, and nothing I’ve got to sell is anything they want to buy.”
“So who’s the lucky salesman who does have the business?”
“Nobody—at least not anybody I know. Those rotten eggs haven’t surfaced. It’s looking like the thief decided to hang on to his haul.”
“Or cut out middlemen like you,” Ian said.
“Possible, but even then I’d have heard something.”
“Quiet?”
“As a tomb—the kind with an actually dead occupant.”
“Letting the diamonds cool off?”
“Rocks like the Dragon Eggs don’t cool, not even a little. Even if they cut them up, the colors would be a dead giveaway.”
“We recognized a few of the interested parties on the security video from the Met, but some were from out of town. Your reputation runs far and wide. Any of the foreigners contact you?”
“If they did, it was through a local third party. Anyone who called me I already know. The Dragon Eggs aren’t a once-in-a-lifetime score; they’re a once-in-a-millennium score. When they were stolen, every wannabe buyer in that room knew that their competition now included Viktor Kain—and the Russian is deadly competition. Nobody’s taking any chances. If those diamonds were to come up for sale, and one of them had the winning bid, they’d know Kain would be hot on their trail. That was enough to make some turn tail and run.” Sykes grinned. “Most of them weren’t bothered by that at all and are sticking around to see what happens, though they’re taking precautions and operating through representatives. Hell, their aliases have aliases.” He took a goodly chug of his coffee. “The value of the stones has quadrupled overnight. I don’t think there’s a limit to what I could ask—if I knew where they hell they were, I’d never have to work another day in ten lives.” Denny spread his hands. “But it’s a moot point because I can’t sell what I ain’t got.”
“Never stopped you before,” Ian said.
“True. But there’s a difference between almost in my possession, and no way in hell I’m going to get them. Whoever stole those seven diamonds means to keep them.”
“Did any of your potential customers hire themselves some jewel thieves when they got to town?”
Sykes laughed loud enough to make the surfer dude look up and glare at us. “Every hotshot thief in town is on a retainer. Most of the foreigners brought their own. If there had been an auction, there were going to be a lot of losers. These people aren’t used to losing, and each and every one of them was prepared to do something about it.”
“Got any names?”
“A few, but I want to live to see the sun come up tomorrow. You don’t go around saying certain names out loud, especially those belonging to people who could pop my heart out with a spoon all the way from Jersey. Discretion is the better part of survival. My regulars have been calling. But like I said, whoever has them is keeping them. They’re also keeping quiet. There should at least be a rumor or two, but nothing. And the more cautious types scrambled back under the slime-covered rocks they live under once word got around that Sebastian du Beckett went and got himself stoned this morning.”
Ian gave him a flat look.
“Really? Nothing? That’s priceless.”
“Glad it tickles your funny bone. We found him, so we were less than amused.”
“Men like me and du Beckett gotta watch our backs and our fronts. When you have monsters and freaks for customers, chances are one day one of them will be the one to take you out.”
Ian leaned back in his chair. “And when it’s your turn, it won’t have happened to a more deserving guy.”
“Du Beckett’s customers dress nicer and talk better, but they’re all monsters and freaks.”
Oh yeah, somewhere a charmer was missing his snake.
“Your buddy Eddie Laughlin must have heard what happened to du Beckett this morning,” Sykes said. “He’s gone to ground. In our business, if your boss gets plugged, you start seeing bull’s-eyes on yourself, you know?” Sykes pushed back his chair and picked up his coffee. “If you’ll excuse me, those eggs aren’t the only action in town. I got people to see and customers to make happy before I make myself scarce for the night.”
Sykes left the coffeehouse, stepped out to the curb, looked both ways, and ran across Fifty-ninth Street and into Central Park.
“I thought you said that guy was a friend of yours,” I said.
“I never said ‘friend’; I said ‘contact.’ You assumed.”
“And I’ve never been more glad to be wrong. I didn’t get any more food dumped on me, but after sitting across from that guy, I’m feeling the need for another shower.”
“Denny has that effect on people. He also makes people want to kick his ass.”
“That’d involve touching him. Then you’d really need a shower.”
“Yeah, but the ass kicking would be worth it.”
Movement out of the corner of my eye caught our attention. A flock of birds that should’ve been roosting for the night by now flew out the top of the park’s trees. They scattered and didn’t come back.
It took a lot to scare birds once they’d settled in for the night.
Ian stood. “I’m taking a short walk in the park. Stay here.”
I stood. “Like hell.”
“Then stay behind me.”
“Could you at least say ‘cover my six’? Give me a little dignity here.”
“Okay. Cover my six—just don’t shoot me in the ass.”
“How about I kick it?” Sykes wasn’t the only one asking for it.
I heard the grin in his voice. “You’re always welcome to try.”
Ian and I crossed Fifty-ninth and entered the park.
It was quiet. Sykes’s analogy came back to me. Like a tomb.
It turned out to be accurate.
Central Park had a new statue complete with a pigeon perched on its head.
Denny Sykes was stoned. I’d bet he wouldn’t find that phrase nearly as funny now. The pigeon saw me and Ian and flew away, but not before leaving a gift on Sykes’s shoulder.
In the immortal words of the now late Denny Sykes—that was priceless.
Ian had his anti-gorgon-glare glasses hooked in the front of his shirt. He put them on with one hand, while getting his gun in his other—simultaneous and slick.
I was still fumbling in my purse.
&nbs
p; After meeting with Helena Thanos this afternoon, and hearing that we had a young and hungry gorgon aspiring to use the city as its personal buffet, the boss had deemed it prudent for field agents who’d be out in the city tonight to be carrying protective eyewear.
Ian scanned the surrounding area for threats. “Got your glasses?” he asked without looking at me.
“Trying.”
“Try faster, and don’t look up until you do.”
Oh crap. “Gorgon’s here?”
“Not yet.”
I fumbled, found, and put on SPI’s version of safety glasses. Guaranteed protection against gorgon stares, Mongolian Death Worm spit (normally found in the Gobi Desert, seen last month in the desert outside Vegas), and Amazonian chimera loogies (recently spotted in a Louisiana swamp).
We went back to back and scanned the area.
Plenty of trees.
Lots of almost dark.
No birds, no people, no gorgon.
And no way in hell this was a coincidence. Denny Sykes had been right to be paranoid.
He—and we—were being watched.
15
IAN called Yasha for pickup, and we hightailed it to Eddie Laughlin’s place, hoping we weren’t too late.
Why the sudden concern for Sebastian du Beckett’s picker?
One, Denny had said that Eddie Laughlin had gone to ground. Two, we hadn’t heard a peep out of Eddie since he’d offered us a ride at the Met last night. In light of points one and two—and what’d just happened to Denny—Ian thought it’d be a good idea to check in on Eddie.
The gorgon seemed to be starting a series of sculptures entitled “Still Life with Art Dealers.” Technically Eddie was a picker, not a dealer, but when you’re a hungry young gorgon on a killing spree/feeding frenzy, you probably didn’t bother with a little detail like that.
Eddie Laughlin’s apartment building wasn’t in the worst part of town, but with a gorgon running amuck, having a heavily armed werewolf friend two days shy of a full moon made me feel a lot less jumpy about being there.
Unlike last night at the museum, I had a gun and it was a comforting weight under my jacket. It’d taken me a while to get used to carrying, but now I felt downright naked when I wasn’t. My official security blanket was two pounds of steel with silver bullets. It wasn’t warm or fuzzy, but it was a heck of a lot better at keeping nightmares away.
Ian didn’t buzz Eddie to be let in. He put the face of his watch against the door’s locking mechanism. Like nearly every building in Manhattan and the outer boroughs, you could only get in if a resident buzzed you in—or if your employer’s R&D department developed gadgets that Q would have been proud to give to 007.
The door obediently opened with a click, and we were in.
Until we knew what, if anything, was presently visiting Eddie, my partner preferred to keep our visit a surprise. At the same time, we didn’t want any surprises of our own. It was dark, and we were wearing what looked like sunglasses.
That extended to taking the stairs rather than the small elevator. Ian had taught me from the get-go that unless you needed to get to the top of the Empire State Building and had to have enough wind to talk King Kong off the ledge when you got there, you always took the stairs. Elevators were just coffins with bad Muzak. When you dealt with shapeshifters that could go from two legs to eight, and could scuttle down an elevator cable like a web, stairs were the safest way to get where you needed to be.
It was also the best way to get the drop on a gorgon possibly getting the drop on a colleague.
There was no window on the fire door opening onto the fourth floor. I knew the drill. I stood with my back against the wall next to Ian as he opened the door just enough to know if anything was on the other side waiting to bite our faces off or stare us into statuary. If my partner deemed our faces and the rest of us safe, we went in.
In an ideal world, the door opened on silent hinges; on a less than optimal day, they had a creak that’d wake the dead. Believe me, if you’re tracking something dead, you don’t want it awake when you find it. Luck was smiling on us; the fire door was quiet.
Ian took a set of lock picks out of his jacket pocket, and worked his magic on Eddie’s five locks. Even in this part of town, five seemed a mite excessive unless you had stuff you didn’t want stolen or stuff you’d stolen yourself.
Less than a minute later, we were inside.
No Eddie.
No gorgon.
There were avid collectors and there were hoarders.
Looking around Eddie’s place, I decided that avid collectors were basically hoarders, only with better focus. And, fortunately for us in Eddie’s case, taste.
Sebastian du Beckett’s Upper West Side brownstone looked like a museum in need of a curator.
Eddie Laughlin’s Lower East Side apartment looked like a museum reject bin in need of dusting—and with entirely too many items that needed explanation. Eddie hadn’t been turned to stone, but from the looks of his wall art, he might have taken a left turn toward the dark side. He wasn’t at home, but he’d left us plenty of presents that were a veritable treasure trove of incriminating evidence.
Floor plans of the Sackler Wing. Photos detailing security camera placement. But most damning of all—up-close photos of the sloped wall of windows the harpies had broken through to escape.
Ian’s jaw was doing that clench/unclench thing that said loud and clear that Eddie better be glad he wasn’t here.
We’d had to leave Denny’s body in Central Park, but Ian had called Vivienne Sagadraco and told her what we’d learned from Denny—and the surprise Denny had gotten from the gorgon while strolling in the park. The boss would arrange to have Denny retrieved and taken to the lab where I guessed he’d be keeping Sebastian du Beckett company.
When what we’d found was evidence linking Eddie to the robbery rather than a gorgon turning Eddie into the human version of a garden gnome, Ian decided we should turn what’d been a search-and-rescue mission into a search-and-seizure operation.
The apartment wasn’t large, but there was a lot to go through. Ian and I didn’t trash the place, but we didn’t worry about being tidy or leaving fingerprints. The boss had given us the green light to do a little breaking and entering. Once we’d gotten to the apartment and seen what there was to see, Ian phoned home again, and the boss had added evidence collection to our list of permitted activities.
If Eddie came back while we were there, Ian had several very pointed questions to ask him; and if Eddie didn’t like that we’d let ourselves in and made ourselves at home, he could take it up with Vivienne Sagadraco, who’d authorized it. With Sebastian du Beckett dead, Eddie had already lost one employer today. If he wasn’t guilty of anything, I couldn’t see him pissing off the only other source of gainful employment he had left.
Our presence here was bound to surprise Eddie, but if he was taking a walk on the dark side, it’d be a bad idea to let Eddie surprise us.
Yasha’s job was to search the front of the apartment and keep his wonderwolf ears perked for any sign of incoming company. Like I’d said before, Yasha could hear a tick burp at fifty yards. Hearing a breathing human coming down the hall would be easy peasy. I was almost hoping that Eddie would come home so Ian could ask nicely for him to tell us what the hell he was up to. And if nicely didn’t work, Yasha could hoist him upside down by one ankle. That’d always had an encouraging tendency to work.
Ian had found Eddie’s laptop and I was going through papers on his organizational disaster of a desk, while occasionally peeking over Ian’s shoulder. I’m a multitasking snoop.
Presently on the screen was what looked like some kind of schematic.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Just the specs for the glass in the window wall of the Sackler Wing.”
So much for innocent. Eddie’s computer was d
oing a fine job of proving him guilty. “That little son of a bitch.”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re saying that Eddie is our criminal mastermind?”
“Hardly. More like a man on the inside of SPI.”
Yasha’s growl was rippling, drawn out, and perfectly conveyed his feelings.
Ian grunted. “Couldn’t agree more, buddy. You got anything?” he asked me.
The contents of the top of Eddie’s desk had yielded if not pay dirt, at least something worth sharing. “Looks like Eddie’s developed a sudden interest in Russia’s last royal family.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Maybe I just haven’t reached the promised layer yet. Yasha, some of these books are in Russian.” I picked up four old-looking books with cracked leather bindings, and handed them over. “Would you see if you can find any juicy parts? One has a lot of photos of handwritten pages.”
“Eddie can read Russian?” Ian asked.
“There’s a ton of yellow Post-its attached to the pages,” I said. “Comments are written in English. Unless Eddie has someone else making notes for him, it appears there’s quite a few things we didn’t know about him.”
I started speed-reading both the Post-its and the loose printouts of whatever I found that was in English. I ran across a couple of pages that’d been copied from handwritten Russian originals, and passed those off to Yasha.
We worked quickly and in silence for several minutes.
“I may have something,” Yasha said.
I went over to have a look.
“These are copies of letters from Rasputin to Alexandra. He tells her that he bought what she wanted, though it took all of the gold she gave him.” Yasha ran his finger down the page to the end. “Then here he promises to be back at court in three weeks and he will bring the two eggs with him—for young Alexei.”
“I don’t think he’s talking about either the fresh-laid variety or Fabergé,” I said.
“Agreed,” Ian said.
