The blackout increased the panic on the street. The crowd still streaming from the building milled and shifted, people running chaotically by.
Wolfe put the phone and his gun away, climbed over the edge of the lodge sign, and dropped down into the darkness, narrowly missing a huffing man hurrying past. Wolfe flattened against the building, watching for the Graywater thugs. They were as hard to see out on this dark street as he was.
Wolfe decided he was pretty well hidden, and pushed his way through the crowd, almost getting knocked over in the darkness, to a car illegally parked on the sidewalk, maybe belonging to Graywater. It was a late model SUV. He pulled out his phone, found the app, and used it to trigger the car’s electronic locks. The SUV unlocked and the engine started for him before he’d even gotten in. He got behind the wheel, keeping his head down as much as he could. Up ahead he could see the Crown Victoria carrying Grampus had wormed its way through the traffic to the corner, and was just turning right.
Wolfe hacked into ctOS again, switched on the neighborhood power, turned the traffic lights on, and then drove to the corner—and turned right. The Crown Victoria was just a half a block up ahead…
CHAPTER NINE
Aiden Pearce had borrowed a pretty nice looking Porsche off the street to take him to the building where he’d put Pussler in storage.
It was late, and Pearce was wondering what was up with Wolfe. There’d been no report from him yet. But he wasn’t going to interrupt Wolfe with texts or phone calls. Probably be too dangerous to distract him right now.
There was the building—an old tenement Pearce had bought for a song, using money swiped from gangsters, on the Southside near the waterfront. He was renting most of the rooms out for about one tenth of the market value, chiefly to elderly people on a fixed income. He kept that upstairs corner room for his own safehouse. Maybe it wasn’t so safe now, if Pussler was to be believed.
Pearce parked around the corner, got out into a cold wind, and walked upstream through it to the old brick tenement standing alone on the corner. The buildings on either side of it had been demolished. The bricks of the tenement had gone black with pollution, but he’d had all the windows replaced, the plumbing fixed, and there were new lights around the building.
His head swam as he walked up toward the back door, and his stomach churned with nausea—it was the concussion. He was pushing it. Still needed some recovery time.
He circled the building, putting up his mask, one hand expertly activating the app on his ctOS control phone, blotting out the security cameras before he got into their range.
Pearce picked his way through the rubble left over from the demolition, keeping close to his own building. He hurried to the back door, and tapped the unlock combination on his phone that opened it electronically. The door popped open for him.
He drew his gun and looked around inside. He didn’t see anyone, but he could smell detergent from the laundry room, could hear a dryer humming in there. He hurried to the back stairs and started up them—then had to stop at the third landing to keep from throwing up. He waited till the nausea passed, then continued, more slowly this time, till he got to the top floor. He pushed through the door—and down the hall. No one there.
The only sign of life was someone’s television yammering behind an apartment door. Canned laughter. Theme music.
He moved on till he came to the corner apartment door. It opened with a conventional lock and key—unless you knew that there was an electronic control over that same lock, and you just happened to have Aiden Pearce’s smartphone. In which case you didn’t need the physical key.
His fingers found the black market app, and the door clicked.
Pearce flicked his gun’s safety off, then put his left hand on the knob, turned and pulled it open.
Immediately he saw Pussler, slumped on the floor, leaning crookedly against the wall of the small living room. Pussler lay in a spreading pool of blood. A large hunting knife was sticking out from under his ribs. But his mouth was moving, his eyes opening.
He was alive. Barely. And probably not for long.
“Jesus, Pussler,” Pearce muttered.
He stepped over to Pussler, went down on one knee by him—and Pussler whispered. “He’s hidin’ in the bathroom, bro. You were… my friend… he’s…”
Pearce straightened, spun, pointing the gun at the bathroom door, just as it opened. There stood Clyde Merwiss: a rotund, slack-mouthed man in a stained t-shirt, pointing a pistol at Pearce.
Pearce recognized the gun as the one he’d given to Pussler. Merwiss had somehow decoded the door, gotten in, stabbed Pussler, taken the gun…
But Pearce let Merwiss squeeze the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Pearce had seen that Merwiss had left the safety on.
Merwiss stared down at the gun.
“You left the safety on the gun, Merwiss,” Pearce said.
Merwiss fumbled at the gun, Pearce stepped in and tore it from the programmer’’s grasp.
Merwiss gasped, and took a step back. “Look…”
Pearce kept his pistol on Merwiss and glanced around. “This is the place I was in when I made the appointment with Wolfe. I sent the message to Blank, from the PC in the bedroom. And Blank decoded it from the electronic billboard, and he told Wolfe. And you must’ve had some transmission bug in that PC. I shouldn’t have trusted anyone to set it up for me. You just seemed…” Pearce shook his head sadly. “I have a tendency to try and help out losers.”
“I… wasn’t going to hurt you, Pearce. I just…”
“You just sold information to my enemies about where I was going to be? So you came here to try and clear that PC, in case I found that bug… and Pussler caught you at it. And you stabbed him…”
“I didn’t want to! I… you’re Aiden Pearce! I knew they couldn’t hurt you! I just needed the money!”
“Because you’re a gambling addict. My own stupid fault for not researching you well enough, maybe. But you know they nearly did kill me, Clyde. Who’d you talk to about where I was?”
“I… there was a cop named Tranter. He was the only one. I heard at the casino he was looking for you and I knew him.”
“How’d you know Tranter?”
“He was collecting gambling vigs for the Club—moonlighting when he was off duty. I swear that’s all I know! He said he could get me off the hook if I could tell him where you might be! So I came over here and…”
Pearce nodded. “I figured.” He tossed the fallen pistol at the programmer’’s feet. “Here. Pick it up… Go on, pick it up or I’ll shoot you dead right fucking now. Make your move, Merwiss.” Pearce lowered his own gun. “You see? I’ve lowered my gun. Grab your weapon. Maybe you’re faster than you look. I’ll let you straighten up.”
Merwiss licked his slack lips… and then bent over, hastily grabbed up the gun, raised it toward Pearce…
And gasped as Pearce shot him through the heart.
Merwiss tried to aim the gun… but it dropped from his limp fingers. He fell on his heavy belly, bouncing a little on it, twitching in death.
Pearce turned and inspected Pussler. He was gone.
“Sorry… bro.” Pearce said.
He put his pistol away, and quickly left the apartment. His own belly was twisting, his head swimming again, from the concussion. He tried to ignore it.
Have to get those bodies cleaned up. What a pain in the ass. Maybe Blank could find someone to take them out of here.
Before dealing with that, Pearce had something else to look into—it was time to find out exactly what Mick Wolfe was up to. If he was up to anything.