by John Griffin
The zip code led to a high rise on 26th Street. Solomon came alone. He had dropped Kevin off at the precinct. He checked his phone. He had ignored calls from Lisa and Sham. He stood in front of the building and looked at it. A block away he heard the sounds of children playing in the Penn South Playground and the cacophony of bouncing balls at the court next to the playground.
Solomon stepped to the door. It pushed open with ease. He stepped into the lobby and then looked at his phone again. He went back outside, still holding the phone in his hand. He sat on the curb and waited. Every thirty seconds or so for five minutes, he clicked the home button on the phone and waited. He stood up and walked down the street to the court and watched some teens play basketball. He leaned against the fence and forgot about his phone. He put it back into his pocket. After twenty minutes he turned away from the game and headed back toward the high rise, and then took his phone out of his pocket, looking at it one last time before putting it away. He walked past the high rise and kept walking to the subway entrance, getting in and heading to The Dog and Duck.
Sean stood behind the bar feeding dirty glasses into and taking clean glasses out of the dishwasher as quickly as it turned. Solomon sat in a booth at the far end of the room. There were six other people in dining room with him. Whenever someone new came in and made their way to the row of booths, Sean told them it was closed. One patron asked why that guy got to sit in the booth, pointing at Solomon. “Sol owns the fucking place,” Sean said. The patron nodded and found another spot in the bar.
Solomon was making notes and texting on his phone. After a few minutes it rang. “Sol,” Solomon said, answering. “Lisa, good. No, I’m out. Hand it all over to Roger and what’s-his-name.”
“Glad to hear it, Sol,” Lisa said. “Where did you leave off?”
“I was just running around,” Solomon said. “I wasn’t helping that girl.”
“It was a game, Sol,” Lisa said reassuringly. “Just a fucking game.”
“He’s here, somewhere. And if they find him first…”
“I’ll call you,” Lisa said before hanging up.
Sham came into the bar and walked up to Solomon. “So where we at?” Sham asked.
Solomon handed him the notes he was making. He was drawing on a blueprint of the house. “The house itself was torn down about a decade ago. They bought the design of the house from the builder, who has probably built a thousand of this exact house across Jersey.”
“This is shit right off the net?” Sham said. “What if he’s updated it? Made changes? Moved a fucking wall?”
“He hasn’t,” Solomon said. “We’ve been inside. It is exactly as he has bought it.”
“So, tomorrow we go in?” Sham said.
Reginald came into the bar next and sat next to Sham. They exchanged greetings and Solomon passed him a copy of the blueprint. “So, tomorrow is it?” Reginald asked.
“Tomorrow it is,” Solomon said.
“Should we wait for Vince before we go over this?” Reginald asked.
“He’s just a driver.”
“But he’s got a safe to crack and a bag to carry.”
Solomon shook his head. “No, he’s just a driver.”
“What you’re saying,” Sham said, “is he’s just an asshole and who gives a shit if he gets caught.”
Solomon put his right index finger to his nose.
“And what if he fingers us?” Reginald asked. “What if he gets caught and he implicates us?”
“I won’t be in the country by the time he gives his statement,” Solomon said. “And you two fuckers are cops, so I’m not sure why you’re so worried.”
Reginald looked at Sham. Sham kept his gaze on Solomon.
“We’re all on the same team,” Solomon said. “This isn’t about busting me, and it sure as fuck isn’t about busting Vince. It’s about our mutual employer. The guy is suspected of knocking off a dozen or so jobs worth almost fifty million. Our job is to get in, get out, get the goods, and get them to The Man in Black so that they can track it back to our employer. That’s our job.”
“Does Lisa know we know you know we know?” Sham asked.
Solomon shook his head. “If you’re asking if Lisa is aware that we are all in on the job, probably. She knows Reg, and I know. I don’t even know myself if she told either of you that you were both involved, though I assume she did. Look. I’m not a cop. I’m just not. I haven’t been for a while, and after the last week I probably never will be again. So there’s only so much she can tell me. But she did tell me about the two of you, and we probably should have had this conversation earlier. So go back and talk to her, and maybe we all meet up and go over the plan, because I’m not playing any games, here. I’m putting my ass on the line to help bring a bad guy in. That’s what I can do. That’s what I can control.”
“She thinks you were in on the other jobs,” Sham said. “She thinks maybe there is no big bad guy, and maybe they were your jobs.
“I was in on those other jobs,” Solomon said. “I absolutely was in on the other jobs.”
“So you are a crook,” Sham said.
“I am,” Solomon said. “And I’m proud of the work I did. Do you know how hard it is? And it isn’t the crime that’s hard — any ex-cop knows the system enough to do this. You know what is hard? Not being greedy. Sitting in a fucking vault with a hundred million dollars of gold and taking just twenty-five. Breaking into a bank and taking just the safety deposit boxes with stuff that no one will want to report stolen. Flying under the radar. I’m not just a crook, I’m a good one because I’m not being greedy.”
“So why hasn’t she taken you in?” Reginald asked.
“Because I’m not the mastermind behind it all. There’s a bigger fish. So if I get away with a few million dollars, she doesn’t care. The NYPD doesn’t care. The FBI doesn’t care. The world is full of small criminals who eked out a great fucking life bringing down men bigger than them, and my new retirement plan is to be one of those small criminals.”
“So,” Sham said, picking up the blue print, “where’s my safe?”
“The brown credenza is in the study,” Solomon said, pointing to the blueprint with his pen. “We will go in through the entrance off his balcony on the second floor, so when you go in, turn right.”
Solomon sat in his boxer shorts in his room at the YMCA. He wrote a short text on his phone and breathed heavily. The air smelled like fish — there was someone cooking it in the hall three doors down. A few other men gathered around the chef to chat and share a drink. Solomon waited.
His phone rang. He answered and said nothing.
“You told them everything?” Lisa said.
“Yeah,” Solomon said.
“That wasn’t the plan,” Lisa said.
“I needed to,” Solomon replied. “I was starting to think one of them would shank me on the job, or shank each other, or shank Vince. I wanted them to know we were all on the same side.”
“That wasn’t the plan, Sol,” Lisa said. “I’ve got two deep-cover kids who are barely onto the force, and now they are taking orders from you instead of me. One of them actually said he would check with you on something before taking an order from me today.”
Solomon smiled. “I can tell them this is still your operation.”
“I don’t have any operational control right now, Sol. You screwing with us?”
“No, Lisa,” Solomon said. “I’m just trying to make this work. The job was not going to work if they did not do everything I said, and they were not going to do everything I said if they did not trust me and trust each other.”
“Sol,” Lisa said, exasperated. “This is a shit-show. Captain wants to see you tomorrow.”
“No,” Solomon said. “She’s got eyes on me; always does this late in the game. If I step into a station now, it’s over, you’ll never get a c
hance to catch Mr. Big again. And I might end up dead. Your two cops, too, and that fuckhead Vince for good measure. It’s going forward. And now the kids won’t question me if something goes sideways. The plan’s the same.”
“Oh yeah?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah,” Solomon said. “It was always the plan. We go in. We get out. It’s a clean robbery. I get out of the country, you follow the money. That’s it. That’s my end.”
“Fuck, Sol,” Lisa said. “This is my ass.”
“It’s my life, Lisa. My life.”
Chapter Twenty-One:
Justin
Justin sat overlooking his laptop. He jumped back and forth between three different tabs on his browser — one for porn, one for goregoregore.com, and another showing a video feed for the high rise on 26th Street. It was dark, and he could not see much. He went back to his porn, then back to the video feed, moving his cursor over the bottom of the video and rewinding.
He pulled the video back to midday. He stopped when he saw Solomon in his taupe suit approach the building and go inside. Justin shook his head. “Why did you leave?” he asked. “Why the fuck did you leave?”
He shook his head and watched the video. Solomon came out, walked around, just off camera, and then came back and sat down and picked up his phone. “Did you get a call or make a call?” Justin asked. “Why did you just leave?”
Justin watched Solomon walk off camera and not return. He was furious. “What did you see? Why didn’t you go in?”
He stood up and paced the large, sparsely decorated room. It was bare except for a chair and a desk with his computer on it. He slept in a sleeping bag on the ground. There was plenty of room for him to pace and to think. “Why?” he asked, hitting himself on the head. “Why, why, why?”
He shook his head and went to his computer. He scrolled through a few porn sites, watching the loudest and most violent movies he could. He dropped his pants but could not get an erection, so he left the porn sites and went to a few gore sites instead. Those got him going. He blasted death metal into his earphones and masturbated to a disappointing finish before bringing up a game of online poker. He opened six games simultaneously, and after losing three or four hands in a row, he decided he was on tilt and stopped playing. “Oh,” he said. “I get it. You’re not playing my game anymore. Think we can play your game instead? Think you know my game? Think you know what is happening? Not fucking likely, Detective Roud.”
He took off his pants completely and walked around his apartment naked. He went to a bucket of phones in one corner and pulled a new one out of its wrapper, activating it and putting in a new SIM card. He went to his front door, opened it, realized he was naked, and went back to get dressed. Dressed, he left his apartment wearing a fake hipster moustache and thought about how much he would like to kill every hipster he met for the next thirty years, and maybe that would be his next engagement once Sol was dead.
He rode the subway to Queen’s and found a residential street where kids were playing stickball. He felt like he had gone back in time. Who played stickball? He was surprised to see that was still a thing, especially since gentrification guaranteed that these kids’ parents had money. Poor people did not live in New York anymore. There was poverty, yes, but that was always a relative thing. As far as you could go in any direction, if you could afford to live in New York for a year, you were wealthier by far than any average American.
He found a park and waited. He sat with his hands in his pockets playing with his pocketknife, opening it and closing it. The sun set, hidden by rows and rows of buildings. He did not see it dip below the horizon, but he did see the streetlamps light up slowly but surely, and soon enough the natural light had faded. He stood and he walked in no particular direction until the street started to come alive again with people returning from work, popping up out of subway exits with bags full of food to bring home to family.
Justin continued walking as the darkness of the sky descended and the brightness of artificial lights — streetlamps, neon signs, apartments — claimed just a little bit of that darkness’s territory. It was brighter at 9:00 p.m. than it was at dusk in New York. Always would be, Justin thought. So he waited until that tide turned once more, until 2:00 a.m., when the apartment lights would dim and the stores and bars started to close and turn off their lights. Those brief hours where darkness almost won out against the city.
Justin found his victim. He could barely make out what he was wearing or what he looked like, but he precisely fit the bill: smallish, alone, walking slightly askew and likely drunk enough to stumble in a light breeze. He followed off the main strip and onto the side streets once more, where either the man lived or he was visiting someone for the night. But either way, it was the man’s last stop.
Justin played with his knife in his pocket, opening it and closing it, careful not to cut his fingers on the blade. He sped up and was set to pass the man. As he pulled even with his victim, he pulled his hand from his pocket, jabbed the knife into his victim’s back, stumbled, pushed, and then righted himself, pulling the man back up. “Sorry,” Justin said.
“No worries,” the man replied.
Justin kept walking. He took the knife out of his pocket and looked at it — still closed, but that was not the point. It could have been open and, if it was, the man would be dead. “It’s still that fucking easy,” he said to himself. “It will always be that fucking easy to kill. Anytime I need it.”
He picked up the burner phone from his pocket, and he remembered when he first called Solomon in the middle on the night. It was just after killing Francine.
He woke Solomon at two thirty in the morning to the sound of his phone ringing. Solomon answered with a grunt.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Justin had said.
“Roger?”
“No,” Justin replied. “Psycho.”
Solomon pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the number. He grabbed a pen and paper nearby and wrote it down. “So when can we meet?”
“Soon enough.”
Solomon started getting dressed. “Tonight?”
“No. I’m busy.”
“I bet.”
“You’re getting close. In fact, I think you’ll figure out where I am soon. More importantly, you’ll figure out where she is.”
“Probably.”
“It means I need to kill again.”
“Think so?”
“Well, this is just a game. Detective, we are just playing a game. You and me. Except I’m playing chess, and you’re playing checkers. You’re not on my level. I’m out to kill someone, and you are out to stop me. It’s that simple. And if you are getting closer, I either stop or I kill sooner, before you have the chance.”
“But you can’t stop, can you?”
“No, Detective. I can, I assure you. But you need to beat me. Or you need to admit that you will never beat me.”
Solomon said nothing.
“Just say that I won. Say that you can’t catch me. Give up. You’re a rich kid. You probably grew up playing chess. Know what chess players say when they know they are beat? When checkmate is inevitable? I have checkmate. I’m going to kill again, and you can’t stop me unless you throw down your king and resign.”
“I’m not going to give up.”
“Admit checkmate. Resign.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“Fine. Then the game continues. Ready. Set. Go!”
Justin hung up as Solomon started to respond.
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Solomon
Solomon picked up his phone and dialed the last number that called him. Someone answered but said nothing.
“Justin,” Solomon said.
“Gave up?” Justin said.
“Not at all,” Solomon said. “We were not finished talking. Sounded like you wanted to ask me somethi
ng.”
“You just walked away from the clue. You miss it? You too old and dumb to save her?” Justin said. “Why did you just fucking leave? Don’t you care?”
“Justin,” Solomon said, “It’s two in the morning. I’m not playing this game.”
“Then the girl will die.”
“I didn’t say I would not pay the price to save her.”
“So you’re going to off yourself?” Justin asked.
“No.”
“What then?” Justin asked. “She dies or you die. That’s the game.”
“I’ll die,” Solomon said. “But you can kill me. Isn’t that a better idea?”
Justin did not respond. He took the phone away from his ear and paused.
“Did you hear me, Psycho?” Solomon said. “You want me dead be a fucking man and do it yourself.”
“I heard you,” Justin said. “I’m just trying to decide how I will do it.”
“Well, you just fucking think about that and call me back when you get a fucking clue.”
Solomon ended the call and tossed his phone back onto the dresser. He tapped his right index finger against his thigh and exhaled. He lay back down in bed and tossed and turned. His phone rang again, and he ignored the call. He stood up and stretched out as far as he could, wincing in pain and grabbing at his back when he went too far. He shook his head and grabbed a towel, walking out his door toward the showers.
He passed a trio of old men speaking Russian in the hall. They sat around an electric stovetop where large shrimp were grilling. They nodded at Solomon, and he nodded in return. He made it to the shower and took a short, cold turn, enough to soak himself but not to wash. He shut the water off and took a long breath, patting himself mostly dry and walking back to his room with the towel tied around his waist.
Back in his room, he closed the door and dropped his towel. He picked up his phone and made a call. “Clive?”
“Yeah?” Clive asked.
“What are you doing?” Solomon asked.
