by Chris Vola
“I should have cut it off,” Ryan said. “I shouldn’t have let it get as serious as it did.”
Jennifer sighed. “No, I’m too stubborn. I would have never let you give up that easily. And besides, it wasn’t like we ever got that serious. I mean, it’s not like you even spent a night at my place.”
She watched Ryan try to hold back a grimace and put her hand on his thigh. “I’m kidding. I know you wanted to,” she said softly. “I feel just as bad about you coming here. I mean, you were going to live forever. We do live forever, right?”
“As far as anyone can tell, as long as you stay in Manhattan. I knew a guy who was like three hundred years old.”
“Wow. And I’ll look the same?”
“I look pretty much how I did in 1919,” Ryan said.
“Minus this stupid beard,” Jennifer said playfully, as she ran her fingers through it. “I guess there are some positives to…”
She trailed off, let go of Ryan’s face but kept staring at him, wrinkled her nose as if a curiously offensive scent had just entered the room. She inhaled again. “What am I smelling?” she asked, a look of concern flashing across her face. “Is that coming from inside you? Are you—”
“Dying? I am,” Ryan nodded. “Advanced lung cancer. A hundred years ago I thought I was special, that I was wasting away from some kind of exotic disease I must have picked up on one of the South American freighters that came through the shipyard. But I’m not special and the diagnosis makes sense. I didn’t exactly have the safest work environment before I was turned.”
Jennifer sat silently for a few moments. Her eyes reddened. She swallowed hard. Ryan knew that she’d be crying if she were physically capable. If there had been any minuscule shred of doubt that he’d done the right thing by coming to Manhattan, it was erased in that moment. “You really did give up everything for me,” she said after a while, smiling sadly. “And here I am talking about stupid shit like how I’m going to look. I’m flattered by everything you’ve done, I really am. But I’m not worth throwing away a hundred and twenty-eight years of someone else’s life. No one is.”
Ryan locked his fingers with hers. Jennifer leaned into him, kissing his neck lightly.
Vanessa stood up and made a noise that sounded like she was groaning or clearing her throat, or a combination of the two. “I hate to break up the reunion, but you need to eat,” she said to Jennifer in a businesslike monotone. “You may not feel like it, but you’re still unstable; your body is still acclimating to the change. We need to prevent the hunger before you ever feel it coming. We don’t want you reverting back to what you were when you were in that room.”
Jennifer nodded, picked up the glass, and downed most of the blood in two long gulps. She looked down at the bathrobe she was wearing, as if noticing it for the first time. “I think I’m going to try on the clothes you bought for me,” she said to Vanessa. “Are they upstairs?”
“On my bed,” Vanessa said nonchalantly. “The green top with the white pants would make a pretty cute outfit for you.”
Jennifer ran her hands through Ryan’s hair one more time before standing and heading toward the spiral staircase. Vanessa walked into the kitchen. Ryan got up and followed her.
After the initial jolt of seeing Jennifer and seeing her run out of the apartment, worrying about whether she’d come back or not, and the relief he’d felt when she’d finally returned a few minutes before dawn and hadn’t totally blamed him for everything that had happened to her, a slow rage began to work its way through him, bubbling closer to the surface with every second that passed.
A rage that found its target in Vanessa.
Karl was standing at the kitchen island, wearing the same pajamas he’d arrived in after Vanessa had called him about Jennifer’s disappearance. He was flipping eggs from a skillet onto open-faced English muffin halves. “You want two or three?” he asked when he saw Ryan approach.
Ryan ignored him and walked to the open refrigerator, where Vanessa was studying several rows of blood-filled water bottles. He shut the door in her face and glared at her, watching her subtle, plastic-stunted expressions shift from surprise to mild annoyance to outright anger. Karl grabbed a fork and knife from a drawer in the island and took his breakfast into the living room without making eye contact.
“What?” Vanessa growled in a low voice after a few uncomfortable seconds. She raised her arms and gave an open-palm shrug. “How the fuck was I supposed to know she was your girlfriend?”
“Is that really how you’re going to play this?” Ryan asked.
“How I’m going to play what? What do you want me to tell you?”
“I want you to tell me how you ended up with Jennifer,” he said. “The last I knew she was being tortured near the service entrance of a building we’re both familiar with, a building that allegedly isn’t connected to your tribe anymore, a building that you say is controlled by a guy who’s apparently so pissed at the elders of your tribe that he severed a multicentury relationship with them. You can stop lying now. If you want the statue for your masters, if that’s what all of this is still about, you can have it. I’ll bring it to the Committee myself, wherever the fuck they hang out, as long as you can guarantee that Jennifer doesn’t become a lab monkey, as long as you can guarantee me that she’ll be set up like you are. But who am I kidding? Guarantees are an ancient concept. You’re progressive on this side of the river.”
“The statues?” Vanessa looked genuinely confused. “What the hell do they have to do with anything? I’m as rattled by all of this as you are. None of it makes sense. I thought I’d been moving up the ladder the last few years, taking on important jobs, zero screwups. But the last couple days are making me think differently. Maybe I’m out of ‘the loop,’ as you called it. The only good thing is that Van Pelt is the one who called me in, and not some other board member. He’s the only person on the Committee who knows me as more than just a soldier, the only one who I have anything close to a relationship with. I won’t be able to ask him about you, obviously, but I’ll try to find out what I can about Jennifer. Where they found her, who brought her in.”
Ryan’s lips curled in disgust. “You trust someone whose last name is Van Pelt?” he asked. “Really?”
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
“Not at all. I don’t trust anyone. If you live long enough, you won’t either. That’s why I’m going with you to see this guy.”
It was Vanessa’s turn to let loose her own grating, sarcastic snicker. “That’ll go over just great,” she said. “Me bringing in a human to chat with Conrad Van Pelt in his private offices. Jesus Christ. You are hilarious.”
“I wasn’t always human. I wasn’t human for eighty-five percent of my life.”
“But you are now. And whatever you were, you were never in our tribe. Also there’s the minor issue of you being a material witness to a murder I committed on orders and me not only letting you live, but also letting you crash at my place. Why? Because you were some guy I fucked a few times forty years ago and I felt bad for you. Excellent logic on my part. They’ll probably ask me to join the Committee.”
“You can tell them whatever you want,” Ryan said, “as long as you mention that I’m Arthur Harker’s heir. After that it won’t matter.”
“Arthur Harker? Your maker?”
“He had something that Xansati wants, something that I’m sure your bosses want, even if they don’t act like it. Van Pelt will be interested enough to get me through the door.”
Vanessa thought about this and sighed. “If you’re wrong about this, it’s both our asses. I should have killed you.”
“I’m assuming that’s a joke,” Ryan said, though he wasn’t sure it was. “If anything, you’ll get a promotion for bringing me in. You can thank me later. Just make the call.”
Vanessa was about to respond but stopped abruptly. Ryan followed her gaze as she turned to look at Jennifer, who was standing in front of the partial wall that separated the k
itchen from the dining area, looking concerned.
She was wearing a vintage-looking forest-green peasant top and skintight white denim jeans. She’d brushed her hair and tucked it behind ears that were embellished with low-hanging gold-and-jade earrings that complemented the intensity of her sky-colored eyes. Besides her paler-than-usual skin—which was to be expected—she looked healthy, almost glowing.
“Everything okay in here?” Jennifer asked.
Vanessa opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle, and scowled. “You might want to ask him,” she said, jabbing a finger in Ryan’s direction without looking at him. “You should curl up on the couch for a nice long talk with your boyfriend, because it’s probably going to be the last one you two have.”
She walked up to Jennifer and shoved the bottle into her newborn’s chest before storming out of the kitchen.
27
“‘Conrad Jefferson Augustus Van Pelt, 1820 to 1858, was an American industrialist, tycoon, and entrepreneur. He invested in numerous business ventures and held executive leadership positions in the shipping, railroad, construction, and hotel businesses. By his early thirties, Van Pelt had already amassed a great fortune and founded the C.J.A. Van Pelt Company (later Van Pelt–Reinhardt International), which would become one of the largest commercial and residential building companies in the world. He was occasionally vilified in the press of his day as an archetypal robber baron, whose success at business—primarily the construction company he founded—made him the fourth richest U.S. citizen at the time of his untimely death at age 38 in a hotel fire.’ Very impressive,” Ryan said, looking up from the Wikipedia page he’d pulled up on his phone. “So how exactly did you come to be on friendly terms with this lovely gentleman?”
Vanessa, staring out the passenger-side window of the silver Range Rover at the postwork and touristy crowds that had begun to swarm along the sidewalks of Houston Street, didn’t say anything. Ryan couldn’t be sure if she was still angry at him for confronting her in the kitchen, or for convincing her to let him come to the meeting and what it might mean for her standing within the tribe, or if she was simply just apprehensive about what Van Pelt was going to ask her to do, or a combination of the three. Regardless, Ryan had been getting the silent treatment since they’d left Vanessa’s apartment.
Karl took a right on Broadway and headed south through SoHo’s cast-iron gauntlet of trendy boutiques and artists’ lofts. “Don’t want to toot my own horn, but I’m going to have to take the credit for that,” he said. Ryan, from the backseat, watched Karl’s smug smile in the rearview mirror. “It must have been what, eighty-eight, eighty-nine? There was a function to celebrate the orchestration of an East Asian banking crisis or something like that. V had made an attaché to the Japanese minister of trade disappear at a particularly crucial moment and was invited to the event. It was like her coming-out party. She had on this sapphire-blue gown—what was it, Dior?—that was just stunning, wasn’t it, V?”
Vanessa rolled her eyes. She kept staring out the window.
“Anyway,” Karl continued, “Van Pelt noticed more than the dress. He wanted to know how and where she’d gotten the work done on her face. He was impressed. V arranged for me to give him a consultation, which led to me performing several procedures over the next year, and led to V shooting right to the top of his list for when he needs something or someone taken care of in a prompt, professional manner. And he still calls me in every now and then for a touch-up. He got me my own place, this car, V’s latest kitchen renovation. It’s been a good deal for all of us.”
The fawning self-satisfaction that dripped from Karl’s mouth was more than a little creepy, but it didn’t bother Ryan as much as it would have a few days earlier when they’d first met. Karl was less the menacingly jealous boyfriend type than a harmless middle-aged fanboy who would do anything to maintain the fantasyland existence he’d stumbled into. It was a little funny, a little sad, more pathetic than anything else.
They continued south on Broadway for a while, where the upscale cafés and chain store outlets gradually gave way to dozens of nearly identical tiny alcoves selling cheap luggage and knock-off perfume and sunglasses as they trudged along Chinatown’s western border. Traffic was thick, more or less bumper-to-bumper. But Karl, ignoring the stink-eye Vanessa kept shooting in his direction, remained undaunted as he pointed out various buildings that were “friendly,” controlled, at least partially, by the tribe—a nondescript former post office that housed a laboratory where DXT was produced, a Duane Reade pharmacy with a safe room in the basement, a blood bank that had recently been opened two floors above a GNC storefront.
The extent to which the Manhattan tribe was inextricably woven into the fabric of the island was impressive, but Ryan already knew that. This trip was about obtaining fresh information, about taking everything from whoever had taken the same from him, even if those people happened to be the most powerful and well-guarded he’d ever encountered.
It was about payback, plain and simple.
He could figure out the details later.
Ryan zoned out from Karl’s tour guide spiel, which had gotten even more tiresome when they’d begun to pass some of Lower Manhattan’s older landmarks. He didn’t hear which members of the Committee had been present when City Hall’s cornerstone had been laid, or who had been turned on All Saints’ Day in the vestibule of St. Paul’s Chapel. Instead, he decided to follow Vanessa’s lead and focus on the increasingly narrow and jagged streets they passed, the rectangular green signs with Anglo and Dutch surnames, the buildings that had gotten taller, more imposing, their shadows casting a too-early gloom over the well-trampled pavement.
Karl pulled over to the curb near the intersection of Broadway and Fulton Street and put the SUV in park. Vanessa turned and looked directly at Ryan for the first time since they’d left her apartment. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her hair was tied in a neat ponytail, a look as conservative as the black long-sleeve top and matching slacks she was wearing. A sequence of images flashed through Ryan’s brain: the young guy in the black-and-red tracksuit who had shot him in Crown Heights, the girl in the black tracksuit outside Natalia’s house, Nicki in a black dress.
He told himself to remain objective, to try to disassociate Vanessa from everything that had happened to him before they’d run into each other, to not make connections before he knew in his gut that they existed. But it was nearly impossible. And his gut was on fire, rebelling against itself like the rest of his body, reminding him that whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it soon.
“Hey, are you all right?” Vanessa was asking when Ryan snapped back to reality. “You wanted to do this.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Okay, then listen. You’re going to follow me and do everything you’re told. You’re going to keep your mouth shut until you’re asked to speak. Oh, and leave your phone in the car. I’m not sure why you turned it on again if you were so paranoid about us being able to track you.”
Before he could respond, she opened the passenger-side door, slammed it shut, and crossed the street.
“See you in a bit,” Karl said as Ryan was exiting the vehicle, though he didn’t seem very confident.
Ryan caught up to Vanessa as she weaved under some sidewalk scaffolding, heading south. “There’s one thing I forgot to tell you,” she said as he pulled up even with her. “Something about Conrad. It’s a little weird.”
“Unless he looks like Derrick Rhodes’s evil twin, I think I’m beyond being shocked.”
Vanessa grunted in wry amusement. “Rhodes was something else, wasn’t he? No, Conrad’s, um, issues are a little different. He likes to listen to himself talk, a lot.”
“Okay, so he’s like every other high-ranking corporate executive.”
“That’s not the weird part. Have you ever seen those people who are big-time germaphobes, like they don’t want to touch doorknobs or shake hands because they think they’ll catch a dea
dly virus or get a major bacterial infection? He’s like that, but worse.”
“But he can’t get sick,” Ryan said.
“Things will go a lot smoother for both of us if you don’t mention that. Okay, this is the place, straight ahead.”
They crossed John Street where it intersected with Broadway and approached the Corbin Building. The narrow, brown-and-red structure, made of stone, cast iron, and terra-cotta in a Romanesque Revival style, was—according to one of Karl’s earlier ramblings—built by Long Island Railroad president Austin Corbin in the late 1880s. He owned the building for a decade until he took a liking to the daughter of a popular haberdasher who also happened to be Conrad Van Pelt’s personal donor. Overnight, the building became Conrad’s and Corbin left the city for an early retirement in New Hampshire, which ended a few months later when he was thrown from a carriage.
The building, at least on its Broadway-facing side, was connected by a glass wall to the sprawling Fulton Center, an ultra-modern, glass-windowed subway hub and shopping complex. The Corbin Building’s arched front entrance was closed, the view of its lobby blocked by frosted-glass panes featuring the Fulton Center’s logo. This apparent partnership between the city and the Committee seemed odd to Ryan.
“I thought Van Pelt owned this building,” he said to Vanessa as she passed the entrance and took a left onto John Street. “Did he sell it to the Transit Authority? Are they connected to your tribe?”
“Not that I know of,” she replied, glancing up at the longer side of the building that featured rows of windows with scalloped arches and vague floral patterns. “And he only sold part of it. The part you can see.”
About halfway down the block, the Corbin ended and another, newer building butted against it. The bottom level of 15 John Street was primarily occupied by Brasserie Les Halles, an upscale French eatery, and a slender door made of dark, weathered wood with no handle or signage that Ryan wouldn’t have noticed if Vanessa hadn’t stopped in front of it and pressed an antique-looking brass doorbell near its center. There was a brief noise, a soft metallic hum, and the door opened inward, revealing a narrow, dimly lit, smoke-filled hallway. The entire threshold of the door began glowing with what looked like infrared metal detector sensors. Vanessa stepped through and motioned for Ryan to follow.
