Then another sudden jolt and the elevator overshot his desired floor as if on high-powered thrusters, its hoist cables screaming, sides rattling, its decorative interior panels and mirrors shuddering and crashing down around him.
Malisse had been thrown about, on the verge of panic. How fast was he moving? Twenty meters per second? Thirty? Struggling to keep his feet under him, convinced the stress of rapid acceleration would break the car apart at any moment, tear it from its cables to send it freefalling down to the bottom of the shaft, he’d staggered toward the control panel and flipped the bright red EMERGENCY STOP switch.
An alarm bell kicked in at a deafening volume, but still the car kept ascending with rocket speed. On the verge of panic, Malisse wondered if he was a certain goner. What good would it do for someone to hear the racket if the elevator didn’t brake? If the alarm merely rang and rang and rang as it soared up, up, up, past the building’s highest story, staying in one piece only long enough to hit the roof?
Malisse grabbed the handrail, bracing for the inevitable collision, his ears filled with the clangorous, useless noise of the alarm bell—
And then he awoke to the ringing of the bedside phone in his room at the Mayfair Hotel.
Tossing free of his blankets, Malisse yanked off the black satin sleep mask he’d worn to foil the eternal and unspeakably intrusive lights of Manhattan. A moment later he glanced at his alarm clock, blinked twice as he groped for the receiver.
It was two forty-five A.M.
What boor, he thought, would call at this mad hour?
He jammed the phone against his ear.
“Who?” he demanded angrily.
“Duncan,” said the voice at the other end. “You sound kind of winded, Delano. I didn’t take you from any nocturnal diversions, did I?”
“Only my blissful dreams,” Malisse said. He took a calming breath. “Are you aware of the time?”
“Vaguely,” Duncan said. “We cardholders in the black-bag union keep odd schedules, and I hope you don’t expect any apologies. Fact is, you ought to be appreciative.”
Malisse sat up, shoved his pillows against the headboard, settled back onto them.
“I assume you’re about to tell me why,” he said at once.
“You wide awake?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Duncan said. “Because I’d hate for you to claim that I didn’t remind you about our meeting tomorrow. Or later this morning, I should say. Seven o’clock, Park Plaza, our usual table near those chess players.”
Malisse’s pique had melted away into eager curiosity.
“I don’t recall our having made the appointment,” he said, taking up the tease.
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, maybe we didn’t have one before, come to think,” Duncan said. “Anyway, D, I’ve been to a tailor shop that had the coat you ordered in stock. They did while-you-wait alterations after all… though it took a cart full of my personal chips, and had me in the waiting room until maybe five minutes ago.”
Malisse straightened, drew an excited breath.
“Duncan, I truly do appreciate this,” he said.
“Enough to treat me to breakfast?”
“Ja, ja… certainly!”
The FBI man chuckled at the other end of the line.
“I know you’re sincere when you stutter in Flemish,” he said. “Seven on the nose, Delano. And expect me to eat hearty.”
SEVEN
At a little past eight o’clock in the morning, Ricci left his hotel room, took the elevator downstairs, and, as he went past the restaurant’s lobby entrance, saw Derek Glenn stepping out with a cup of takeout coffee.
Ricci would have walked on toward the street if their paths hadn’t crossed.
They stopped in front of each other, exchanged glances.
“Am I early, or you late?” Glenn said with a wooden smile.
Ricci shrugged.
“I want to check on some things downtown,” he said. He continued to eye Glenn flatly. “Those are the same clothes you had on when I left there yesterday.”
Glenn’s expression grew more awkward.
“If you’re so bothered by it, I’ll just hurry on up to my room and change,” he said. “Meet you at HQ in a while.” And abruptly turned toward the elevators.
When Ricci got to her office, Noriko Cousins was at her desk behind her computer. She pulled her head up from an open file folder and waved him through the door.
“I’ve heard you had a busy night,” she said, sounding anything but pleased.
Ricci went to the corner chair and sat without hanging his coat.
“Wasn’t the only one,” he said.
She gave him a look. “Am I supposed to guess the meaning of that?”
“We’re talking work, it means your frequent spotter at Kiran better learn to be more careful. If I could pick him up, so could the guy in the van,” Ricci said. He shrugged. “There’s some other meaning of ‘busy’ you want to discuss, I’m all ears.”
Noriko was quiet a moment.
“I got your advance billing,” she said. “The tough-guy attitude. The lone wolf bit. But I hadn’t heard what a truly pathetic human being you are.”
Ricci’s smile slashed at her.
“Guess we’ll stick to talking work,” he said.
Noriko had kept looking steadily into his eyes, and she still didn’t flinch.
“I don’t care how you operate in San Jose, or what you’ve gotten away with under people’s noses out there,” she said. “But this is my city, and I’ve got no long leashes for anybody. Heading out on a surveillance last night wasn’t something you should have done without authorization. It wasn’t something you had any right doing in secret… and just so there’s no confusion, my problem isn’t with you getting your neck hacked open without anybody having a clue what’s happened. The important thing is that you could have put our whole investigation in jeopardy.”
Ricci stared back across the desk, shrugged his shoulders. “I was worried about keeping secrets from you, I’d have gotten myself a Hertz rental car instead of ticketing that one out of the req lot, where I knew you’d make sure somebody would notice.” He shrugged again and gestured toward the file folder that had remained spread open in front of her. “What’s important is if those printouts mean your boy Bennett got any results off the cigarette lighter.”
Noriko looked at him.
“Your partner called to say he’d be here any minute,” she said. “I want him in on this, too.”
It was, in fact, almost five minutes of chilly silence before Glenn arrived at her office. He moved past Ricci with a nod, tossed his coat up on a hook, and stepped toward Noriko’s desk.
“Good morning,” he said to her, smiling.
“Getting there,” she said, and flashed him a quick little smile of her own.
Glenn settled into a chair, waited.
“Time for us to share and share alike,” Noriko said. She gave him a revelatory look, then shifted her gaze to Ricci. “Starting with what you saw last night out at Kiran, and then afterward.”
Even as an expression of surprise began spreading over Glenn’s features, Ricci told of his observation of the plant, the loading and apparent unpacking of boxes aboard the U-Haul van, the dark-suits who’d done it, and the Tall Man. Then he went through his tailing the van to the trucker’s motel, his recovery of the tossed lighter in the motel lot, and his passing it on to Bennett for examination… recounting all of it in a precise but dispassionate near-monotone.