Peter looked around. There was no one in the church that he could see, and from a sign on the front door it looked as if afternoon Mass wouldn’t be starting for another few hours.
“Well,” Peter said, “let’s start with Bangkok.”
* * *
Peter had been talking for the better part of an hour, and he was starting to get a sore neck from being on the phone so long. Every now and then a member of the church personnel passed by, tossing him a curious look. He just grinned, pointed to the earpiece, and mouthed, my mother.
That seemed to satisfy them. “An Englishman,” Stokes said.
“Yeah,” Peter replied. “I’m thinking there might be a connection between Julia’s guy, and the one I saw in Bangkok.”
“First-name basis already?” Stokes paused. “You slept with her, didn’t you?”
“Focus, Stokes. The Englishman.”
“Right. Interesting. Have you ever heard of a man named Richard McCoy?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Should it?”
“Not unless you’re a fan of Royal Shakespeare wash-outs, London dinner theater, or early nineties British horror films, no. He’s an actor, if you can call it that, who had some minor fame in the late eighties until he drank it away.” Peter could hear the tapping of a keyboard and wondered what sorts of databases Stokes could access.
“He’s been doing bit parts since then,” Stokes continued. “Barely staying one step ahead of the bill collectors. He disappeared about three months ago, and his name’s been bouncing around the sorts of message boards the authorities would sell their grandmothers to get access to. Talking about wanting to move some merchandise. Somebody’s taken him up on it, too. Though his messages are rather cryptic, epilepsy figures prominently in them.”
“What the hell would a has-been actor be doing with an epilepsy cure?”
“No idea. Might not even be him. Identity theft is big business, as you well know. That’s not the strange thing, though. I’ve moved medications like this before, and there’s a particular pattern these sorts of deals take. A particular way the language is used.”
Peter was beginning to get a sinking feeling.
“It’s not a drug deal, is it?”
“No, I don’t think so. Particularly because it looks like they’ll be moving the merchandise at”—Stokes paused as he typed some more—“the Ambassador Hotel in Manhattan, the day after tomorrow.”
“Why would that be unusual?” Given the types of people Stokes dealt with, he saw no reason why McCoy and his people wouldn’t stay at a high-end hotel like the Ambassador.
“Because the hotel’s going to be crawling with police and federal agents,” Stokes said. “There’s a fund-raising dinner that night for the black guy who’s running for president. If that’s not a place for a terrorist bio-weapon, I don’t know what is.”
The Ambassador Hotel, tucked away in the theater district in midtown Manhattan, was famous for political and presidential goings-on. It was a venerable old building, full of history and secrets. Its turn-of-the-century splendor had been lovingly maintained through the decades and it had recently been granted historic landmark status, assuring that it would remain pristine and unaltered well into the future.
With the security surrounding the presidential candidate and his party, Peter and Julia weren’t going to be able to get anywhere near the place without Curt.
Curt Caldwell, like many chefs, had a checkered past.
He had long since gone straight, and worked his ass off, scrubbing pots and deveining mountains of shrimp in a dozen New York kitchens. He’d risen through the ranks, made his bones, and finally scored a plum gig as executive chef in the Ambassador’s massive kitchen. It was a pretty stodgy, old school steak-and-chocolate kind of operation, all Waldorf salads and Beef Wellington with no room for culinary creativity, but Curt was glad to be there.
Especially considering the alternative.
Peter figured his best bet would be to give Curt a little reminder of that alternative, and the person who’d helped him avoid it. It was time to cash in a favor.
* * *
He and Julia sat in the Stage Deli, a touristy restaurant on Seventh Avenue just north of Times Square. It had been decorated with a ham-fisted New York theme, but just as easily could have been in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or Atlantic City.
Julia was picking apart a dry, crumbling black-and-white cookie without eating it, while he forced down a culinary abomination that had billed itself as a “Pastrami Burrito.”
“I don’t know how you can eat at a time like this,” she said, shoving away her plateful of crumbs and downing the dregs of her third black coffee.
“Gotta feed the machine,” Peter replied, shrugging. “That’s biology 101, isn’t it?” She just grimaced.
“Are you sure this friend of yours can be trusted?” she asked for the umpteenth time.
“Positive,” he replied. “Given everything I know about Curt Caldwell’s less-than-kosher past, it’ll be in his best interests to keep me happy.”
As if on cue, a tall man in his mid-forties walked into the restaurant, scanning the tables. He was thick through the middle, with a pale, nocturnal complexion and full sleeves of ink on both arms. Dark, messy hair and bloodshot blue eyes, dressed in civvies—jeans and sneakers with a vintage rock-and-roll T-shirt under a battered leather jacket. But his relaxed clothing clashed with the tense, tightly wound body language beneath. He had a black canvas duffle bag slung over one shoulder.
Peter held up his hand and Curt spotted him, heading over to their table.
“This is a really bad idea,” Curt said, not bothering with a greeting. He stared straight at Peter, and if he even noticed Julia, he gave no hint of it.
“Duly noted,” Peter said. He gestured to the bag. “That the stuff?”
Curt nodded, setting the duffle on the booth seat next to him.
“Uniforms, IDs, everything you need to get into the kitchen,” he said. “After that, you’re on your own.”
“Curt, you’re a lifesaver,” Peter said. “You have no idea.”
“I don’t want an idea,” he replied. “I don’t want to know nothing. All I want to know is, are we square?”
Peter nodded.
“Square,” he said. “More than square—I owe you one.”
“No,” Curt replied, eyes narrow and face gone hard. “You don’t owe me a damn thing, kid. We’re square. That’s it.”
He turned and walked away without another word.
“Nice meeting you, too,” Julia said to his retreating back, her eyebrow arched.
“Forget it,” Peter said. “That’s the best you’ll get out of him on a good day.” He unzipped the bag. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
Inside he found two chef jackets with the Ambassador Hotel logo on one breast and last names embroidered on the other. The larger jacket said Wheatley, while the smaller was labeled Cooper. Also included were two pairs of checked pants, two pairs of sturdy clogs, and two laminated IDs, complete with photos so badly blurred that they were rendered useless.
Peter handed Julia the ID with the name “Lucy Cooper.”
“We don’t have time to go back to our hotel. Hit the restroom and get changed,” he said. “We need to hurry.”
* * *
They walked briskly up 5th Avenue toward the Ambassador, just a couple of harried line cooks, running late for a shift. The streets were closed for several blocks in every direction around the hotel.
Peter whistled inwardly at the security, which was tighter than he’d ever seen it. Not really surprising, though, what with the combination of post-9/11 paranoia and the fact that an African-American was running for president—and looked like he might actually have a shot at winning. Not that Peter paid any real attention to politics, unless there was a way he could turn them to his advantage.
On this particular day, the politics presented a serious disadvantage. And while the security was crazy over-the-top, they w
ere right to be paranoid, for once. Someone really did want to kill the candidate, and all his supporters. Even crazier was the fact that if all that security succeeded, and managed to keep Peter and Julia out, the real terrorists would succeed.
They’d infect the entire city, regardless of political affiliation. The virus was naturally bipartisan.
First Peter and Julia needed to get past the street cops. Several heavy wooden barriers had been placed to block off the street, while knots of police in full SWAT armor patrolled the sidewalks. There were pretty big crowds milling around the edges of the secure area. Curious natives and confused tourists mingled with a smattering of nut jobs carrying handwritten signs. As Peter led Julia through the onlookers toward the checkpoint, he gripped her elbow and spoke in a low voice.
“Act bored,” he said. “Like this is just a minor annoyance, and all you want is to get to work without being hassled. Let me do the talking.”
“Right,” she said.
He started shouldering his way through the crowd with Julia in tow, allowing his expression to go soft and neutral with just the slightest hint of mild annoyance in the brow. When he reached the barrier, he was stopped by a handsome Puerto Rican cop with a clean-cut, central-casting kind of face.
“Street’s closed,” the officer said to Peter with the air of a man who had said the exact same words so many times that they had lost all their meaning. He might as well have been a tape recording.
“We’re line cooks at the Ambassador,” Peter said, holding out the ID Curt had provided. “And we’re already late for the banquet prep.”
The cop took his ID and scowled at it, then did the same with Julia. Peter glanced over at her, and saw that she was giving an Oscar-winning performance of bored New York indifference. Impressive—better than his, even. She continued to surprise him with her hidden talents.
“Okay,” the cop said, handing back the IDs. “Go on through.” He turned and called over his shoulder. “Shulberg, you wanna escort these two around to the service entrance.”
Another cop, presumably Shulberg, came over to the barrier and moved it aside just enough for Peter and Julia to squeeze through. He was tall and lean, like an upright greyhound, even with the added bulk of the body armor filling out his long narrow torso. His eyes were cold and blue, all business.
“This way,” he said, and nothing more.
He led the two of them around a variety of large, bulky vehicles that looked more military than police, and down a gauntlet of armed and surly men who all glowered at Peter as they passed. He didn’t let it rattle him.
The service entrance was around the corner from the showy main doors, almost hidden between a large parked van and a locked dumpster. Standing by the dented metal door was a fed wearing a rumpled suit and a grim, humorless expression. His body language was all stress and anxiety, shoulders pinched and hands fisted, and a tic at the hinge of his jaw. But he was fighting not to let it creep into his eyes.
Peter could relate.
“Cooks,” the cop named Shulberg told him, presenting Peter and Julia like a hunting dog dropping a dead duck at his master’s feet.
The fed nodded and sized them up.
“IDs,” he said.
They presented the IDs again, and this time, the fed pulled out a little hand-held device to scan the barcode under each of their fake names. Peter had to force himself to breathe, calm and slow. Beside him, Julia was a brick wall. Unflappable.
The device pinged its approval, and Peter fought a smile.
Mr. Caldwell, you are a miracle worker.
“Go on in,” the fed told him, pushing the door open.
On the other side was a short hallway containing two other feds, one black and male, the other white and female. The male agent was a stocky little bantam rooster type, shorter than his red-headed female partner, and he didn’t look very happy about the fact. The way he held his shoulders and chin, Peter would have bet money that he felt threatened by her.
The woman, on the other hand, was calm and confident, her body loose and relaxed, but far from lazy. If things went bad, she was going to be the one Peter would have to worry about. She had it under control, and that made her the most dangerous person in the room.
The fed from outside nodded, silently indicating that Peter and Julia had been cleared. It was like a worker ant passing signals to its sisters. The two partners nodded back, and motioned for them to step forward.
The man took Peter by the arm, while the woman took Julia, placing her purse and shoulder bag on a table. Electronic wands were passed up and down their bodies, and then they were patted down thoroughly by hand.
At least buy a guy dinner first, Peter thought.
“What’s this?” the female agent asked Julia.
Peter craned his head to see what she was talking about, and then he fought to keep his expression neutral.
The female agent was holding up the unzipped case that held the antidote and a syringe.
“It’s my insulin,” Julia said. “I’m diabetic. See?”
To Peter’s amazement, she pulled a blood glucose monitoring kit from her purse. He was impressed, and let himself start breathing again.
“Fine,” the female agent said, zipping the case again. “Go ahead in.”
* * *
“Now what?” Julia said as they rounded a corner. “We’re not going to the kitchens, are we?” Now that they were out of sight of the feds, her hands began to shake. She closed her eyes and steadied herself.
Peter had kept most of the plan to himself—partly because he wasn’t sure how much it would freak her out, but also because he was making a lot of it up as he went along. He probably should have given her more credit, but she had been ready to bolt once before. While it was one thing to be chased by crazy thugs with guns, it was another to actively go looking for them. She’d gotten this far, but how much further would she go?
“No,” he replied. “Me cooking would be a bad idea. We’re here to prevent a terrorist action, not create one.” He hoped the joke would get her to crack a smile, but her face remained stone-cold serious. “Now that we’re in, we should be able to move around without anyone questioning us, but we’re going to need to steal another ID.”
“Why?” she asked, a puzzled look on her face. “Can’t we get around like this?”
“Yeah, but we don’t know where we’re going. We need to access the hotel’s reservation system, and see if we can find out where these people are. Most of it’s online, but to find out who’s actually here at any given moment, we need to get into the records of who they’ve scanned using the ID cards. A line cook isn’t going to have access.
“If you have the right card,” he continued, “The system knows who you are and logs you in the moment you swipe it at one of the terminals.”
“Where do we get one of those?”
“We’re going to start with the staff locker room. If we don’t find one there, we’ll see if we can lift one from someone on the desk staff.”
“Lift?” she said. “Like, steal?”
“Don’t tell me you have a problem with that.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve just never done it before.”
“If it comes to that, I’ll handle it. I’ve got enough experience for the both of us.”
The Ambassador’s service corridors were like every other hotel all over the world—drab, utilitarian passageways with scratched and scraped white walls, allowing the staff to scurry through its innards like rats in a maze, invisible to the guests until they were needed. Peter found the employee locker room by watching people in their civvies passing through the corridors, and tracing them back. He needn’t have bothered, though. It was exactly where he thought it would be.
He had seen this kind of layout in every hotel he’d ever been in. He found himself flashing back to the hallways of the Infinity Towers in Bangkok, where this all had started. It was almost identical, save for the language most of the signs were in.
; “Okay, the locker room’s going to be split between a men’s and a women’s section,” Peter said quietly as they approached. “We’ll split up. You’re looking for anyone in a blazer, or an open locker with one hanging in it. Those people are going to be with guest services, and probably have access to the front desk for reservations, concierge, that sort of thing. One of those ID cards should get us what we need. You see one of those, you poke your head into the men’s section and grab me.”
Julia nodded, and Peter slipped away from her, speeding up to make it appear as if they weren’t together when they got to the locker-room doors.
Inside, Peter found row upon row of orange lockers with worn, wooden benches sitting between them. A few men were changing into their uniforms—cook’s whites, every one of them.
He walked the aisles looking for an open locker, or an unattended pocket he could pilfer. He found a blazer hanging over a hook next to the bathroom and quickly checked the pockets. Nothing. But it wasn’t a total loss. Some hotel staff members were less visible than others, so he switched his cook’s jacket for the blazer.
He had timed their arrival in the hope that they would catch a shift break, giving them a greater opportunity to find a card, but though the corridors all looked the same, different hotels adhered to different schedules. It didn’t look as if there was a changing of the guard happening at the moment.
Suddenly, Peter heard a loud banging coming from the women’s locker room, then unintelligible yelling. Somebody was having a fight. A sinking feeling crawled through his stomach and he ran over to the other side, doing his best to look like a concerned employee.
What he saw was pretty much what he’d expected. Julia had tried to lift somebody’s ID card and gotten caught. A short Latina woman in a rust-colored blazer, whose ID card was clipped to her left breast pocket, was yelling at her, accusing Julia of theft. To her credit, Julia was throwing accusations right back at her.
A few other people were gathered around them, but as soon as he appeared they scattered, and did their best to act as if nothing had happened.
Fringe 03 - Sins of the Father Page 16
