“Just most,” Alex said. “Although I might make an exception for Evelyn.”
“The woman with the missing brother?”
Alex nodded.
“She must have made quite an impression on you.”
“She did,” Alex said. “Now, do you have my runes ready?”
Iggy sighed and rolled his eyes.
“There’s nothing better for a man than the companionship of a good woman.”
“How about not being thrown in jail where I’ll wait to be murdered by Danny’s father?”
“That’s good, too.” Iggy chuckled and shrugged. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out four folded pieces of flash paper. “I’ve marked them, so you can’t get them mixed up,” he said. “Each rune will work for five hours or until you cancel them. Have you figured out how to get the truth out of the Broker?”
“I just need some rope and a couple of pulleys.” Alex nodded. “I’ll stop at Ralph’s place, then I’ll be all set.”
“Sounds messy,” Iggy said, yawning. “I thought you were going to avoid that kind of thing.”
“Don’t worry,” Alex said, and chuckled darkly.
Iggy raised his eyebrows as if weighing whether or not Alex was being straight with him.
“You’ll have to tell me about it,” he said finally. “I’m spent, I’m off to bed.” With that, he rose and went upstairs to his room.
Alex headed up to his room and showered, then changed into some work clothes. He had a pretty good idea how to make Jeremy Brewer, A.K.A. the Broker, talk without having to beat the truth out of him. Such tactics were time-consuming and messy. His idea involved using his vault to transport Mr. Brewer and then to force him to reveal who stole Van der Waller’s stones. And, if he had time, he’d ask where Charles Beaumont lived as well. If Beaumont was the Spook, the Broker should know him.
Alex hurried out to a building supply company run by an Italian named Ralph. His parents were very proud to be Americans. Alex had helped Ralph uncover a competitor who kept vandalizing his storefront, and now Ralph sold Alex anything he needed at a discount.
An hour later, Alex was back at the brownstone with fifty feet of heavy rope, a sturdy metal chair, two pulleys, and a thick gauge U-bolt. He installed the pulleys and the bolt in his vault in a matter of a few minutes. The walls of the extra-dimensional space were a flat, seamless gray and hard as stone. Since Alex had created the space, however, he could mold it like clay with just his hands. All he had to do was push the pulley’s anchor bolts into the material of the wall then let it harden around them. The U-bolt went in just as easily, right beside the door.
That done, he cut a thirty-foot length of rope, looped it through the pulleys on the back wall, and tied the ends to the sides of the metal chair.
“That ought to do it,” he said to the empty vault. He pulled his watch from his pocket and found that it wasn’t even noon yet. He wouldn’t be able to make his appearance at The Emerald Room until after seven.
He paced back and forth in his vault for almost a minute before he switched on the light over his work table. Opening his kit, he took out a worn, dog-eared notebook and thumbed through to the last few pages where the handwriting changed from Thomas Rockwell’s neat lettering to Alex’s more loose script. He scanned through the notes he’d been making last night before Evelyn—
Before Evelyn.
Alex shook his head like a dog.
No time for that.
He pulled out the copy he’d made of the Archimedean Monograph’s runes when he first found Thomas’ lore book. The original finding rune was very different from the one Thomas had unraveled just before he died. The man had been sure he’d figured it out, sure enough to bet his life on it. Alex had seen right away that the rune was far more complex. Thomas simply didn’t have the skill or the training necessary to decode it.
Alex brought out his own notebook and set to work.
Four hours later, he finished deciphering it.
The taxi let Alex off in front of an all-night drug store, three blocks from The Emerald Room. He decided to splurge and bought a pack of cigarettes before heading to the phone booth to call Iggy.
“I’m here,” he said when Iggy picked up. “If all goes well, I shouldn’t be in there for more than half an hour.”
“If I don’t hear from you in an hour, I’m calling Danny,” Iggy said.
“All right,” Alex said, checking the time on his watch; it showed a little past eight.
Iggy wished him good luck and hung up. Alex replaced the phone’s receiver, but lingered in the booth. He pulled out Iggy’s disguise runes and spread them out on the little shelf beneath the phone. Licking the one labeled Clothes, he stuck it to his jacket, then lit the paper with a match from his pocket. A tingling sensation ran up his spine and when he looked down, his worn gray suit had been transformed to a lustrous black tuxedo. The ebon pips in his shirt gleamed in the diffused light of the booth and the lapels of the jacket were glossy.
The rune labeled Face came next and Alex stuck it to his forehead before setting it alight. He worried that the flame might burn his eyebrows, but the flash paper was consumed so rapidly, he didn’t even feel its heat.
Wondering if the rune had done its work, he opened the folding door of the booth and caught his reflection in the glass. Instead of his ordinary, serviceable face he saw an elegant one with high cheekbones, a pencil mustache, and slicked-back hair. He looked like a thinner Clark Gable. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. One thing was for sure, no one would recognize him.
The last rune for this part of the plan was labeled Money. Alex took a stack of six dollar-sized papers out of his wallet. Three of them had the number one-hundred written on them, two were labeled twenty, and the last had the number five scrawled on it. Alex licked each bill and stuck it to the rune paper, then lit it. When the flash dissipated, the paper looked for all the world like real bills. It wouldn’t last, of course, but it would be enough to get him through the evening. He had promised Iggy he wouldn’t spend any of it unless absolutely necessary.
He had a feeling that would be a difficult promise to keep.
Transformation complete, Alex checked the rest of his gear. He had two emergency runes in his right jacket pocket along with his rune-covered brass knuckles. The left pocket held the pack of smokes, a book of matches, and a card with the name Harold Troubridge, Antiquities printed on it.
He lit a cigarette to calm his nerves, then opened the phone booth and strode back out into the street. This was it. With any luck he was about to learn the name of the man who beat Jerry Pemberton to death. All he had to do was convince a vicious and well-connected criminal to tell him what he wanted to know.
Easy.
Outside the front door of The Emerald Room stood a man who had to be six-foot-four. He towered over people in the street and his thick neck seemed to strain the limits of the bow tie he had on. He wore the red jacket of a doorman, but Alex knew him for the bouncer he was. The man’s presence made a definite statement — unless you belong here, go away.
Alex took a long drag on his cigarette as he approached. The man mountain gave him an appraising look, up and down, but saw nothing amiss. He turned his attention back to the street as Alex walked right past him. Alex waited until he was inside before exhaling a cloud of white smoke.
The interior of The Emerald Room didn’t fail to impress. The floors were cherry wood, stained and polished to a red sheen. The walls were papered with a striped pattern, alternating green and white, and the lampshades were Tiffany, all made of green glass. A dance floor occupied the center of the club, with small and medium sized tables arranged around it in a semi-circular pattern. Every row of tables was mounted on a riser, each higher than the last in a stair-step pattern, so they looked down on the dance floor. The far side of the floor was occupied by a long bar made of some dark wood where three bartenders served patrons and the waitresses who took drinks to the semi-circle of tables. An orchestra played a swing tune and the whole club seemed full of the energy of the music. Running around the top of the ceiling were balconies that led to private rooms.