by Tim Lees
I moved towards the door by which I’d entered, but he told me, “Quicker this way. Less palaver. Come along.”
We passed through several further rooms where people stared into computer screens.
I said to him, “I didn’t realize you were here.”
“I wasn’t. I was up in Boston. Thought you’d like to see a friendly face. Eh now?”
“Very kind.”
Everyone, in fact, was being very kind. It was enough to make me worry.
We stepped into an elevator, down two floors, then through an unmarked door and suddenly we were outside. Warm sun struck my face. A row of cars shone in the light.
“I’ve got—there’s—”
“Bags? All taken care of. Now, let’s see . . .” He craned his neck. “There we are now.”
A car was parked a bit farther along; a chauffeur was loading bags into the trunk. My bags, in fact.
I said, “I was with someone. We ought to wait for her.”
“Miss Ganz? I think she’s quite able to find her way around, don’t you? A very competent young lady, so I hear.”
He managed to inject his voice with just the slightest hint of boredom, as if we’d already discussed the subject at too great a length. The chauffeur held the door; we slid into the back of this big, sleek machine. The seat cushions enveloped me like giant hands.
“I believe you’re booked into some squalorous old hole in Jersey, aren’t you? Well, I’ve arranged a couple of nights for you at my hotel. Expect you’ll need to relax a while. And you’ll be a great deal happier across the river. Don’t you think?”
The dirty brick and bright blue skies of Newark slipped behind us, and Seddon smiled his reassuring little smile, raising thick, white-tufted brows, wordlessly inquiring how I was.
I wondered if he knew how sinister it made him look: like a pedophile uncle, asking what you wanted for your birthday.
I’ve spent a lot of time in hotels. It goes with the job. But few were as luxurious as this one on the Upper East Side, just back from Museum Mile. The top floors must have looked across the park. I was a little lower, but in no position to complain. I settled on the bed and let its magic fingers soothe my aches. Yet the more comfortable my body was, the more my mind grew nervous, and the more the prospect of a few days’ luxury began to seem like prison in a different form.
I had no cell phone. I was under strict instructions not to contact Ganz or our “squalorous old hole” in Hoboken. “We’ll let her know you’re safe and sound,” Seddon assured me, assuring not at all. I started feeling sorry for her. True, she’d put me in a bad place for a while, but maybe she was telling me the truth. Perhaps it really hadn’t been her fault. She’d just taken precautions, after all. Someone else had had me banged up, questioned, and smacked about the head. Someone keen to learn about the Registry.
This wasn’t comforting, on any level.
Seddon called after an hour or two, inviting me for drinks down in the bar. “Still, I think, the only real way to unwind.” He drank a scotch and ginger ale, or maybe it was only ginger ale. I ordered G&T, which I don’t much like. I figured I’d stay sober longer with a drink that made my tongue curl up.
“So. Bit of a pickle over there, I hear?”
“I had my passport stolen. And a fair bit else.”
“Oh, I know, I know. Caused something of a diplomatic incident, too, in fact. We had to ask a few sharp questions, trying to get you out of there.” He nodded, sucked his lower lip.
I said, “What’s happening in Boston?”
“Oh—nothing of interest. One of those tedious liaisons we do so much of nowadays. Building bridges, all that guff. Frankly,” he said and gave me a direct look, his forehead wrinkling like a puppy’s, “I am rather more concerned with you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Hm.”
He raised his brows, attentively. Innocently.
I said, “I heard the Registry’d denied I ever worked for them. That wasn’t very helpful.”
“Really? From whom did you hear this?”
“Hungarian police. While I was in detention.”
“Well. I’d have thought that one explained itself, eh? Meant to make you feel helpless and abandoned. Interrogation technique, I’d think.” He paused; I heard him draw a breath. “They were interrogating you, I take it?”
“You could call it that, yeah. If you wanted.”
“About . . . ?”
“I was arrested on suspicion of being a Hungarian serial killer. The Budapest Bloodsucker, if you believe. Despite not having been there in years. But once they’d got me, they asked about a lot of things.” I looked at him, weighing the situation up inside my head. I didn’t much trust Seddon, but I told him what he wanted, anyway. “About the Registry,” I said.
He clasped his hands. He pursed his lips.
“And you said . . . what, exactly?”
“Very little. It wasn’t really torture. Well, they hit me round the head a few times, but that’s all. And locked me up. Not like I’ve much to tell them anyway, though, is it? I’m just a field op. No big thing.”
“Dear Chris. I’m sure that you could tell them a great deal if you’d a mind to. Luckily, I trust in your discretion.”
“Yeah. Well. My discretion’s great, it really is.”
He had his stare: face relaxed, voice casual, and eyes like knives.
“Still,” he said. “You feel all right? You’re not hurt? We can arrange for counseling, if that would help. And we’ve already put in writing a complaint to the Hungarian government. A complaint in the strongest possible terms, I might add.”
I said nothing. I downed my G&T. It was wearying, trying to duel with Seddon. It burned me out. I signaled for another drink. He had one, too. Then he said, “This killer, then. You tell me about him.”
And so I did.
Some, at any rate.
“And this was Adam Shailer’s sole request to you?”
I nodded. “He thinks it’s something in our field. He could be right. I used the reader on a crime scene there.”
“Mm-hm?”
“The whole place was just drained. No energy, no nothing. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that kind of thing before. Not to that extent.”
He pondered this a moment. Then, filing it away, said, “And why do you suppose that Shailer wanted you? Specifically?”
I shrugged. I could be disingenuous as well. “Because we’d worked together. Because he knew me.” I took a drink. “Who knows? Perhaps he reckons I’m a good op.”
“Which you are.” He trotted this out automatically. But then he said, “There’s a story come to me of late. About the last time you two worked together. I believe there was some sort of . . . error, yes?”
“We talked about this. A malfunction, not an error.”
“Yes, yes. Odd, don’t you think? It must have happened, what, six or seven years ago, old news, really. Yet, lo and behold—here it is.” He paused, and I refused, I totally refused, to prompt him. He said, “You see—as I heard it, there was an error. Your error, in fact. And Adam Shailer, young and inexperienced, tried to alert you to it. But you refused to listen. And you slapped him in the face.”
He sat, a little smile upon his lips, watching me, and waiting.
“So that’s what Shailer says.”
“Oh, I don’t know where it comes from. Gossip—really shouldn’t listen to it, not if you’re sensible. But it does so get around.
“Besides,” he added, “I’m quite sure Shailer would deny all knowledge. Too well-placed for that kind of behavior, I’d say. Don’t you think?”
I grunted, neither yes nor no.
“And nobody who knows your work would countenance a word of it. You’re too reliable. Nonetheless . . . this sort of tittle-tattle . . . a drop of pois
on in the well, you know?”
I shifted in my seat. “Can I make a formal complaint?”
“Oh, God, no! For what? Against whom? Dame Gossip”—his smile became a chuckle, an intimate amusement—“is a ripple on the wind.” He waggled his fingers. “Can’t catch her, can’t pin her down. But ignore her, and in no time, poof! Away she goes. You see what I’m saying?”
“I see.”
But I was angry now. I finished off my drink. Folded my arms.
“This killer you and your . . . girlfriend? No? Ah. Would there be anything to link this man to you? Besides stealing your passport?”
I had not told him the truth: he looks like me. Exactly like me. Otherwise, no link at all. But it didn’t seem to matter what I told him, what I didn’t.
Seddon raised a calming hand. His fingers, like the rest of him, were long and narrow. “Nonetheless—it must be said—the Registry is on the verge of great things, Chris. Great, great things. That also means that situations can be . . . delicate. Adverse publicity, for instance. Any little fly in the ointment. No reason to suspect that such a thing would come to pass, of course. But if it did . . . The blame would have to be deflected somewhere, at somebody. Away from the organization as a whole. Hm?”
“Delicate.”
“I’m very much afraid so, yes.”
He let that sink in for a while.
Across the room, a drunk in a good suit tottered between tables, moving cautiously, as if walking on ice.
I said, “You changed your mind, didn’t you? When I was locked up.”
Seddon’s eyebrows flicked up, little flags there in the half-light.
“You denied I worked for you, then got me off the hook. How come?”
“Oh, nothing to do with me, I can assure you, Chris. You know me—if I’d have heard you were in trouble, I’d have been on the phone immediately.”
“I’m asking why, not who.”
But Seddon was no longer smiling.
“If I were forced to speculate . . . then I’d have said, first response, a knee-jerk reaction. Deny everything. Rubbish the source of information.”
“What information? And who wants it, anyway?”
“I’d imagine someone with an interest in electric power. Wouldn’t you? That’s the main thrust of our business, after all. So, at a guess, I’d say—oh, someone wants our methods, and our knowledge, and doesn’t much want us. A little . . . industrial espionage, as it were. Hm?”
“Is that likely?”
“Oh, I certainly think so. There’s more than enough at stake to warrant it. Interest groups again, you see? At home, abroad, wherever.”
I wasn’t much convinced by this.
I said, “And that’s what got me out?”
“That . . . and your imposter at the airport. I’ve seen the police report. They’re baffled, naturally. But it did suggest to me a certain . . . expedience in your being here. Eh?”
“Expedience.”
“Yes. Because sometimes, well—sometimes one’s greatest problem can become one’s greatest asset. And if things go wrong—pray God they don’t—”
“But if they do, you’ve got a scapegoat, ready set to take the flack. I see.”
He held his hand up, pursed his lips.
“Please. Nothing so brutal or so callous. I have always tried to defend the members of the organization. Always. Of course, I’m sure you’re aware, Mr. Shailer has placed you in a rather tricky spot. You know this, no doubt far better than I. It would be . . . poetic, I think, if his plans backfired on him. Eh now?”
CHAPTER 25
GIFTS AND VANISHINGS
The phone rang. I was out cold; for a long time it was only ringing in my dreams. Then I woke and it still rang. I pushed myself up in bed and reached for the receiver, anticipating Seddon’s smooth and cheery tones.
“Copeland,” I yawned.
What hit me was a barrage like a road drill stuffed into my ear.
“Copeland! Copeland! Where in fuck hell are you, Copeland?”
Anna Ganz. In all that had been going on, I’d practically forgotten her.
I told her, “I’m in bed.”
“Not in Hoboken hotel. Where?”
Maybe I was slow. I’d barely woken up, when all was said and done.
“You know where. You phoned me here—”
“Name, number. No address. Where?”
So I told her, tried to outline, briefly, yesterday’s events.
“You say you are kidnapped? That is explanation?”
I contemplated a cheap crack about the last time I’d been kidnapped, except she’d called it arrest. Then I thought better of it.
“Seddon left the number with you, right? Or got someone to do it for him? Yes?”
“No one gave me number. I am still detective, Chris Copeland. And I have friends who are detective, too. Even in New York City, I have friends.” Her English left her for a moment, and she said a few words in Hungarian I didn’t need or want translating. Then, “It has taken afternoon, evening and morning. Just to make this stupid phone call. Waste of time, waste of time! What are you doing there? Why there, not here?”
“I said, I . . .” But memories of last night’s chat with Seddon started drifting back to me. Anna Ganz was not, perhaps, my notion of the ideal partner in what lay ahead. But so far, she was all I had. “Look. I’m on the Upper East Side. You come over and—”
“No. I have proposal. Coffee stand at Greeley Square, near Macy’s. Subway train stops there. One half hour. We are clear?”
“Yeah, that’s—”
But she’d put the phone down. End of story.
I got dressed. I made coffee with the coffeemaker in my room. Swilled it down. I wasn’t quite hungover, but I knew that I’d been drinking. Drinking, jet-lagged: eyeballs too big, head too small. I had a bad taste in my mouth the coffee couldn’t quite get rid of, and a film of what felt like dirt over my skin which the shower didn’t quite wash off.
I took the elevator to the lobby, stopped at the front desk.
“Can I leave a message here for Mr. Seddon?”
The desk clerk dabbed his keyboard.
“Mr. Seddon has already checked out, sir.”
I looked at my watch. It was barely nine. “You mean he’s gone?”
He was good about it; scratched his chin, took the idiotic question in his stride.
“Um-hm.”
“What time . . . ?”
“Around six. If you have a forwarding address or number, we’ll be pleased to pass on any message, sir.”
“Gone where?”
“That I can’t say.”
I digested all of this. Then the clerk said, “Are you Mr. Copeland? He left a package for you.”
It was not a package. It was a backpack. One glance and I knew what was inside, but I took a look, just to make sure.
All standard issue: reader, flask, cables. In addition: a new cell phone, which I shoved into my pocket, and still more—a brand-new passport, courtesy of HM Government. My name, my photo, and a lot of crisp, clean pages, waiting for their entry stamps. I’d thought these things took weeks to come through. Clearly not if you’d the right connections.
The passport, too, I pocketed.
“I’m booked in for another night?”
“Sir.”
“Well—put it in my room, will you?”
He said he’d call a cab. I said I’d rather walk and stepped out onto the street.
As if Seddon had been carrying a spare pack just by purest chance. Never left the house without one. Pure luck, pure fluke, pure happenstance.
Like hell.
CHAPTER 26
FANTINO AND THE VAMPIRE BOY
Anna was waiting there at Greeley Square, seated o
n a wall a little off the café area, clutching a cigarette and a paper cup, her sharp face circled in a halo of pollutants. Her legs were crossed, her shoulders hunched. She looked both angry and determined, small but strong, her body balled up like a fist.
I held my hands up, palms out.
“OK, OK. This wasn’t how I planned things, this wasn’t how I wanted it to go. I’m sorry, all right? I’m apologizing. Yeah?”
Her anger wasn’t aimed at me, though. Not this time.
“Here,” she said, and handed me the cup. “You try.”
I tried.
“Is good, yes?”
“Very good,” I said. “Is that vanilla . . . ?”
“French vanilla. Yes.”
I passed the cup back. She unwound a little; her head came up, and something like a smile touched at her lips before she cloaked it with another drag on her cigarette.
“Now we are both doing wrong to each other. I have you locked up, you have me abandoned in America. But we share drinks, we make up. Yes?”
“I wasn’t planning to abandon you. I said—”
She punched me on the arm. “Joke, yes?”
“Yeah. Joke. OK.”
“And now,” she said, “someone we need to see.”
Lieutenant Mike Fantino, Homicide, had known Ganz in her time here, and in Philly. He was waiting in the Old Town Bar near Union Square; they kissed each other on the lips, not passionately, but not like casual acquaintances, either. I stood back while they did their how-you-beens and you-look-goods. I won’t say I felt jealous; rather, ignored, and the whole reunion thing went on a great deal longer than seemed necessary. I shifted weight from foot to foot, I fidgeted, I sighed, and was at last reduced to stepping up beside her and announcing, much too loudly, “Copeland. Call me Chris,” holding my hand out meaningfully.
He took it. Didn’t shake it. But he gripped it, hard.
“Hi there, Chris.”
He was an average-size guy, wearing a sports coat and a check shirt, with a belly swelling out over his pants belt. He didn’t look that big or strong. But his handshake told me otherwise.
Perhaps it was professional. Dependable and reassuring. Bucks you up if he’s on your side. Worries you in the event he’s not.
