In the morning, Olivia was going to do a two-mile run along the water. But something out of the ordinary happened to her.
She was running along Riverwalk, on the side of the palms. The ocean was on her left and office buildings on the right. Her morning routine always took her past the front of Wolfgang Steakhouse. Then, on through the intersection at the Wells Fargo Bank. She'd usually turn back at South East Third Avenue.
She noticed a truck coming towards her as she rested by a light pole. It was a Ford F-series pickup truck, and its paint was shiny red in the morning sun. The driver wore a white cap, dark shades. His beard had a lot of grey in it; his flannel shirt was also red. He drove past Olivia without looking and turned back up the Riverwalk.
Olivia crossed the road and continued on towards Cushman and Wakefield. She saw the truck reflected in the glass panel of the Cushman building but made nothing of the ever-expanding image. Brickwell, with its waving palms and the banner over Regus billowing in the wind, was almost within Olivia's sights. Hello, America was written in blue and red on it. Olivia was practically out on the corner when she saw the red-blue in her peripheral vision.
Olivia was fast. She ducked back, over the sidings in the parking lot, scraping her elbow on the concrete. She heard the yell of people calling out to her, and the grazing sound of metal against the edge of the siding.
Olivia rolled back on her knees to see the truck again on the road and racing up the street.
"Are you alright?"
A big hairy man was looking over the siding at her. He wore a big white t-shirt. I eat American food was written on it in blue and red.
"Yeah, I'm alright."
She checked the bloody cut on her elbow. It stung with tiny pins when she flexed her hand.
"Better get that checked," the man said again, genuine concern on his face. "It'd soon catch a bug or something and swell. I can take you in my car to a hospital if you don't resent hospitality."
Olivia looked at the man's face. It was deeply lined on the forehead; he had a black mustache over his thick lips and white beard. He was stretching his hand to Olivia. Those are really thick arms, she thought.
"Come on," the man closed in.
Olivia backed away. The man's left hand was going to his hips where something hard and dark bulged.
Behind her, onlookers were dispersing.
"He has a gun!" Olivia yelled and stepped off the curb, bumping into the people standing there.
The man cursed and quickly walked across the street. He got into a waiting car that zoomed off.
—
Bordeaux, France.
Hotel Campanile Bordeaux.
The invitation came in a yellow envelope. The hotel's symbol was engraved on the back, two golden lions standing on their hind legs, paws in the air, and maws were frozen in their eternal roar. In the middle of the two lions was the crest bearing the hotel's initials—HCB.
It came with a bottle of chardonnay. The hotel attendant was a young, handsome boy, his chin smooth and infertile. With a bashful smile, he told Frank Miller that the wine was a complimentary gift from management.
The billionaire had only been at the hotel once before. Perhaps the management checked clients' portfolios to see how much hospitality they deserved. He picked up the bottle of wine to open it, but the young chap took it. "May I?"
"Yes, of course."
The waiter poured the wine in a glass and put it on the tray provided on the cart. Frank's cellphone hummed on the bed, and he went to it. The boy's countenance fell, something tightened in his neck, and the boyish, innocent look disappeared.
There was a hardness about him that Miller missed as he answered his phone.
"Olivia? What's up?" he said softly.
"Someone tried to kill me, Frank, right in the street, this morning while I was running."
Miller frowned, confused.
"What?"
"Be careful, Frank. Watch your back."
"Will do."
He put his cellphone in his back but didn't turn around immediately.
"Will that be all, sir?"
Miller looked at the lad again. The puerile look was back on the moon-like face. He smiled at him. "Yes, yes, you may leave."
The boy bowed, the act was stiff, hesitant. But Miller was preoccupied with the news he had just received from Miami. The boy was gone and the door shut behind him. Miller went to his bag on the bed. He took his gun and checked the chamber. It was loaded.
He put it in his hip and took the envelope.
Good evening, monsieur Frank Miller.
It is the tradition of the Hotel Campanile Bordeaux to welcome second-time customers with a complimentary meal of their choosing. We'd love you to take advantage of this offer this evening in the lounge. Please do come with this invitation. Our trained waiters are at your service.
Do have a lovely stay.
HCB.
He put the envelope in the inner pocket of his suit and stepped to the door. He looked in the peephole. There was no one there, just the thick Venetian red carpet stretching the length of the hallway out there.
He was in the lounge minutes after. The lounge was a big hall with tables for two in the middle. Miller took one in the far corner near the wall and screened off the center of the hall by a massive pillar.
The place tingled with little sounds—small talk, whispered gossips, the cluck and thud of shoes and stilettos of French ladies and their gentlemen, the hymnal of cutleries. Miller observed it all with a certain suspicion. For the first time since his itinerary in Europe, he felt like a stranger.
He watched the wonderful amenity of the French and did not notice the waiter walking towards his table. Miller also missed a distinct feature of the night in the dining hall. The waiter who served him in his suite was in the hall. He stood in the far corner near the door that led into the kitchen. The young man stared at Miller.
“Bonsoir, monsieur Frank Miller.”
Miller looked into the eyes of the plain French maitre d'hotel. He was hairless everywhere except his head of red hair. Miller had never seen a French man with red hair; it was out of racial character, in his own observation. This waiter wore a red blazer and white pants, unlike the others.
"Bonsoir."
"The menu, sir. Have you checked to see what you like? There's a special, sir. May I delight you with the evening’s special, 'soupe à l'oignon?'"
Miller said he'd like whatever.
"How about some wine while you wait, which, of course, will take only a few minutes? I promise."
"Wine would be just fine."
"Good." It came out as kuhd!
Miller smiled as the maitre d'hotel looked in the direction of the kitchen. He flicked his fingers at a waiter. The young man snaked his way around tables and arrived with a dry smile.
They spoke some French, and the waiter left. The maitre d'hotel said Miller would be taken care of. He moved on and repeated his ritual at the next table.
Miller continued to watch the night's drama. Two tables away, a woman was weeping. She wore a black dress laced around the neck. Her skin was the color of milk. She was beautiful. Her hair was combed to the side of her head. She held it there by a pin that Miller couldn't see. The man with her was staring with glum interest.
Something good just came to an end, perhaps, Miller mused.
"Your wine, sir."
There was a waiter before him. He popped the bottle open and poured white wine in a tube glass. He pushed it two inches close to Frank Miller's hand, resting on the white cloth.
"There, sir."
Miller glanced only once at the face of the waiter. The young man walked away quickly. Across the hall, by the kitchen door, there was standing the waiter the maitre d'hotel assigned to Miller earlier.
The billionaire frowned. Something is not right.
On a second look, he saw that the one that just delivered his wine was the same guy who came to his room. Miller had left his suite without touching the wine there, distrac
ted by the news Olivia gave him.
Miller picked up the glass of wine and the bottle. He followed the waiter. The maitre d'hotel was a few feet away ministering over a table in clipping but musical French.
He was quite sure now that this was the waiter, the guy with the boyish look. And he was walking away from the kitchen. He struck down a narrow hallway. Miller knew this part of the hotel, the lavatories were that way and probably a back exit, he assumed.
"Hey."
The lad turned back when he saw Miller. His eyes widened, and he quickened his pace. Miller looked at the wine in the glass.
"Son of a bitch…!"
The waiter dashed in through a door. When Miller got to the door, he saw written on it, EXIT. A cool breeze and sewer smell hit his face when he opened the door. A rat scampered into hiding behind a collection of trashcans. He saw the dark figure of the waiter escaping down the alley.
The maitre d'hotel looked horrified when the results of the wine came back. It had been heavily laced with strychnine.
"I know all our waiters." The maitre d'hotel pointed at the waiter by the kitchen door. "He is our sommelier. He never had the chance to serve you because the young man that served you lied to him. We are indeed, very sorry."
Miller packed minutes after, booked a flight, and was on his way to Miami.
—
Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The job was simple. Fix the earthing, get the neutral wires appropriately separated, then the incessant burning in Oberst Zarevya would stop.
By 3 pm, he would meet Marie, his girlfriend, across the district for dinner and then off to Moscow by a night train to see her parents. The day, and also the week, was pretty much planned. It would be Miami next week to join his team of “treasure hunters,” as he liked to call the group now.
But when Victor arrived at the Oberst house, the scaffold was missing, or it hadn't been delivered yet. He walked around the house and saw a black van with muddy tires parked at the back.
He knocked on the screen door, but there was no one there either.
He was walking back to the street, disappointed that he would not be earning any wages that morning when he saw a man come down the steps of the house, two toolboxes hung from each hand. He wore a white sweatshirt and a green down vest over it. His face was red under the yellow fold beanie on his head.
"Hey, where's the scaffold? I can't find any scaffold here," Victor said.
The man looked at the wall where torn wires, red and black, were exposed. Several of the cables ran up to the deck roof. The broken spire of earthing was hanging loose over the edge.
"Sorry about that. There's a ladder in the back."
"Come on. It's too high for a ladder."
The man squinted at the house, five stories tall. Some twenty feet of hulking concrete, protruding slabs, and open windows. Two spiky rods jutted from the side of a window on the fourth floor, right in the line of the wires and where the damages were worse.
"Where's Oberst Zarevya? I have to talk to him."
"He's out," the man answered quickly.
"I can't—" Victor's phone beeped.
It wasn't Marie checking in on him, it was Frank Miller. What did he want? The man put the phone away. He had told the team he wasn't available until next week. That's final.
The man had marched around the house. His black leather boots dug into the soft soil. The boots were the same color of mud, like the tires of the van. He opened the van and pointed at a ladder.
Victor Borodin considered his options. Then he made an unreasonable decision; he pulled the ladder out and took the wall. The folds opened into four sections. It touched the base of the ledge up there.
"Not bad," he breathed.
He would have to go through the house and up the roof to work on the broken spire. He picked up his tool bag and strapped himself. He also carried his safety ropes. Halfway up, Victor glanced around the base of the house. He saw the man going back into the house. On the fourth floor window, Victor stopped when he heard a door open there.
Someone was standing behind the shut window. He saw the yellow beanie of the man who gave him the ladder. He was looking at Victor Borodin.
His cellphone started ringing again.
The man was now at the window, eyes like flints of plain glass. Victor sensed the fall even before it happened. He knew because the man's eyes said it. They looked like ruthless killers. When the man pushed the window open slowly, Victor fingered the hook of his rope. He had forgotten to hook it in his hurry up the ladder. But he missed the rung of the ladder. The hook would hold only after Victor Borodin had broken his right thigh bone on the third-floor ledge.
—
Brooklyn, New York.
Liam Murphy answered his cellphone instantly. He was coming out of the Sheepshead junkyard on Emmons Avenue when it hummed in the pocket of his tight jeans.
"Hey, Frank."
"Liam, you alright, man?"
"Yeah, how about you, you spending all that money alone, or what?"
Frank quickly told him about his shave with death minutes before. Liam stopped walking. He looked up and down the dirt road. He could see the bay in front of him and the Holocaust Memorial Park on the right. A small fishing boat was coasting into the bay. A half-naked boy was throwing something into the water.
"Be careful man, Olivia almost got killed by a hit-and-run."
"Damn." Liam shook his head. "Are we still set for tomorrow?"
"Yeah, I'm getting in the plane now."
Frank Miller said he'd be dialing Anabia Nassif too.
The junkyard was all the way on to the end of Emmons Avenue, right to the point where IS 98 Bay Academy building began. The fence was broken there, and the dirt road culminated in a couple of broken slabs over the gutter. Most of the sewer from downtown Brighton and Belt Parkway, Liam had heard, passed under this side of Sheepshead.
Sometimes, stray animals that were small enough got dragged into drains and are deposited alongside the road here. It was why the city maintenance had probably refused to tar up the dirt road that led to the junkyard.
Liam was walking close enough to the fence of the junkyard when he heard the sound a dog in pain makes. He went near the wires and listened more closely; the sound was coming from one of the gutters in the yard. To get to it, Liam would have to go back around. So he searched for a cut in the fence. He found one and went through.
It was a big German Shepherd.
"What the hell, big guy. How did you get in there?"
The dog was wet up to his snout with running water. He was still holding on because the current wasn't strong enough to drag it along.
Its big brown eyes pleaded with Liam, who himself was a dog guy. He pulled the sleeves of his shirt back and kneeled. He tried to reach down but couldn't get his hands all the way in without falling over too.
"Shit."
He tried three more times with the same difficulty. He found that if he knelt on the muddy floor, he'd have a better chance. That meant soiling his jeans with yellow mud.
"Urgh, fuck it, we're doing this!"
He put his knees on the mud and tried again. He hooked his hand behind the dog's foreleg and pulled him up. The dog was heavy, but Liam had been practicing karate on Olivia's recommendation for three months and had gotten quite muscular.
The dog started licking his face as they both fell in the mud.
"Ohohoho, what an appreciation, thank you, thank you—"
The dog barked twice at something behind him. Liam looked and saw a blue van coming into the yard.
"Oh shit, we can't be here, come on, let's get out of here!"
He heard the men come around the heap of twisted metals close by. There were three of them. Liam pushed the dog through the cut in the wire and shooed it away. "Go, big guy, come on, get on!"
The dog wagged his tail and sauntered off.
Two men came out of the side of the heap. Liam wasn't fast enough, thinking they were guys who wor
ked shifts at the cruncher tower he decided to talk his way out.
"What are you doing back there?" one who wore a flat cap asked.
"Guys, I was just helping a dog out of the drain here. I'll just be on my way."
"Did you cut the wire there?" the other guy asked. He was taller, and he held a rope in his hand.
Liam looked at the place where someone had taken a plier to it. He shook his head, lamely.
"No, man. I didn't do that, that was like that when I got here."
"Was it?"
Liam turned around and saw the third guy. He was an even heavier man with pork marks around his neck. The man grabbed Liam in both arms and put his knee in Liam's back.
Liam fell on his knee. The one with the rope rushed in and tied a noose around Liam's neck.
"What the hell, let me go!" he screamed.
City sounds started fading as the noose tightened. He choked, his eyes bulged. Hot and foul breath wet his face as the men struggled to stop his breathing. Liam kicked. His boots hit something, and he heard someone groan with pain.
"Shit, he got my balls!"
Someone punched the side of his jaw. It creaked, and Liam reeled. His mind slumped. Woozy with the burning in his head, he stretched out so that he took the guy behind him down too.
"Don't struggle, man, just die!"
"No, I ain't dying, not today!" Liam hissed through a constricting throat.
The man behind him pulled the rope even tighter. Liam wrested his right hand from the other two guys’ hold. He reached behind and scratched the face of the guy with the rope. He found the soft skin of his eyes and dug his nails. The guy threw his head back. His hold weakened with the movement. Liam sucked air.
Liam's head cleared a little. His left eye stung with salty sweat running down his forehead. His right eye opened a crack, and he saw the dog, the German Shepherd, was back, and he was mad.
The dog barked. It boomed through Liam's chest. The men's hold let up as they turned to see who had come to join the party.
Fangs bared, forelegs dug in the ground, the dog jumped into the air and sank his canines in the throat of the nearest man, the dog pulled flesh and screams of pain. The hold on Liam's neck loosened utterly.
The dog pounced on the second guy. He bit into the man's chest. He squealed like a pig. The third one bailed. The dog went after him. He tripped on a piece of metal that had fallen off the heap there. The dog bit down on his hamstring, and blood spurted from the tear in the man's jeans.
The Inca Temple Page 8
