Good.
It’s a very special door they will be opening tonight.
I have a little time so I decide to do some content moderating. I’m not in the mood for a beheading, but it’s always fun to check in on politics. I wonder what kind of crazy post Verum put up lately. I find it amusing in the extreme that I stand accused of being part of that secret cabal known as the Hidden.
Joanna Whittaker walked into her uncle’s apartment, whose view she had always admired.
New York City at your feet.
She smiled to Alicia Roberts, the security guard. “Where’s Averell?”
“In his office.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, making some calls.”
“I won’t bother him just yet.”
Joanna walked to the couch and sat in the embracing, luxurious leather. She wore a sober suit of black wool, an Alexander McQueen. She happened to glance at a picture of herself and her father, Lawrence, on the wall nearby. Together they were holding up a copy of the Herald, open to a page on which was a story she’d written exposing a philandering politician. She was smiling and pointing at her byline. In her younger days — which were, of course, not so long ago — she was quite the terror as an investigative reporter. Those were the days when her father was an equal partner in the company and you found more women in the halls of Whittaker Media.
She smiled at the memory of the assignment. Leveling her eyes at the squirmy politician, she’d asked, “You’re not answering my question, Senator. Did you tell your wife you were going to the Adirondacks with her attorney’s daughter?”
“It was nothing.”
“That’s not responsive. My question was: Did your wife know you were going to the Adirondacks with her attorney’s daughter?”
“I’m not going to answer that question.”
“I’m giving you the opportunity to counter her claim that you lied about the trip.”
“I... the girl, she was eighteen. It was just...”
“Did you tell your wife that you were going to the Adirondacks with her attorney’s daughter?”
“No, I fucking didn’t, okay?”
“When you two got to the Rosemont Inn—”
“This interview is over with.”
“I’m running the story. This is your last chance to comment.”
And on and on.
That job had been so much fun. Making the foolish squirm.
Seeing her byline too. That was a rush.
She looked over at the coffee table, which was stacked with documents about the Foundation for Ethical Journalism.
Nothing like it presently existed, at least not in the scale her uncle envisioned — and quite the scale it would be, since he was using ninety percent of the proceeds of his multibillion-dollar media empire to fund the nonprofit.
And what would her father, Lawrence, have thought about his brother’s grand plan?
Not much, she knew. He’d found nothing wrong in journalism as titillation and leer, which both brothers seemed to be fine with for so many years. The indisputable fact was that far more people cared about sex scandals and conspiracies than cared about the G20 or an antitrust investigation into Facebook.
Unless of course there were sex scandals and conspiracies at the G20 and within the halls of the SEC.
Joanna smiled at that thought, since, perhaps, there were. And they were just waiting to be reported on.
Her phone sang with a text. It was from her fiancé, Martin Kemp.
Just here, coming up now.
She replied:
Okay.
Joanna rose and walked to the front alcove.
Alicia looked up from the padded bench she was seated on, where she’d been reading emails or texts. “Ms. Whittaker, can I help you with anything?”
“No, nothing.”
From inside her jacket Joanna pulled the lengthy, razor-edge butcher knife and holding the handle in a plastic bag, she drew the blade quickly around the woman’s neck, once, twice and then again, severing veins and arteries.
Spitting blood, choking, eyes wide, the woman reached for her gun, but Joanna had dropped the knife and was holding the guard’s arm still with one hand. With the other, protected by the bag, she pulled the weapon from its holster and slid it far away from her reach, across the floor.
“Why?” Alicia whispered.
Joanna didn’t answer. Her thoughts had moved on.
Part Four
Bump Key
[May 23, five days earlier, 3 A.M.]
59
I am through the Andersen door lock and the EverStrong deadbolt in twenty-seven seconds. The door opens and closes with a click.
Five, four, three, two, one...
The wireless alarm, a sophisticated one, is under the spell of my RF box. The panel continues to emit its calming green light, oblivious to the intrusion.
I look around me. The apartment is magnificent. The blinds are now closed but I know the view is breathtaking; I’ve seen it in the day thanks to a video blog the owner has posted.
The door click troubles me some, so I pad fast to the bedroom.
The woman is all trundled and bundled, mouth open.
Her face is not beautiful, not like, say, Annabelle Talese’s.
But that has never been important to me. A woman asleep is a woman asleep.
And being inside their abodes is what I really care about.
Being inside...
I return to the living room and survey the sumptuous place.
Original art is on the walls, sensuous marble sculptures sit on black lacquer tables that are polished to dark mirrors. There are leather couches and chairs. A bank of extraterrestrial orchids sits against the window, their colors pink, white, blue.
I silently walk to the windows and, just as silently, draw the curtains.
Tonight is different.
Tonight is not like the Visits in February or March, where I intruded and moved things around and destroyed the tenants’ spiritual connection with their abodes.
Tonight I’m arriving where I belong.
I lift the brass knife from my pocket and open it with a click, just like the opening of a deadbolt.
Until now I’ve been fine opening doors.
Tonight I’ll use this brass key to open what I’m meant to open, explore what I was born to explore.
The lock of flesh.
I step to the kitchen pass-through to unplug the landline. It would be quite the coincidence for her to get a call at this hour. But the organized offender, the tension-bar-and-rake-picker within me, is taking no chances.
I freeze. I believe I’ve heard a noise behind me.
Then: a loud pop and an agonizing burst of pain and my vision is filled with yellow light, perhaps what a Los Zetas victim sees in the moment before there is no light.
The Taser barb has buried itself just above my kidneys. I drop to the floor as the searing pain rises through my chest and finally finds a home in my jaw and my world goes black.
From the floor where I’m sitting, my hands bound behind me — tied tight — I understand that she was faking sleep the whole while.
She’d heard me enter, I suppose. Goddamn click. Then she’d grabbed a Taser from the bedside table and slipped from the bed as soon as I stepped to the landline.
In the minutes I was out she’d changed clothing. I can see pink pajamas on the floor in the bedroom. She is now in black slacks and white blouse. She emptied the contents of my wallet and pockets on the kitchen counter and is photographing them and then, it seems, uploading or texting the images somewhere. On the island next to her is the Taser. Something else: A pistol. A semiautomatic kind.