Chase Baker and the Golden Condor: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2) (19 page)

New York City

Two Weeks Later

I’m lying on the couch inside Leslie’s new agency office
located on the fourth floor of a newly renovated prewar building on downtown
Broadway. I’ve got a tennis ball in my hand and I’m playing pitch and catch
with the exposed brick wall in front of me.

Leslie is sitting behind her new glass and steel desk. She’s
reading the morning paper while sipping a cup of coffee and picking at a bagel
with her fingertips.

“Says here the bodies of financier and avid airplane
collector Peter Keogh the Third was uncovered inside the ruins of an ancient
Incan settlement which had been built into a mountain in the Amazon jungle not
five miles from Machu Picchu. The ruins are reported not having been touched by
human hands in nearly a thousand years. The entry had to be blasted in order to
get at the bodies. The only way they were located at all is by their cell
phones, which gave away their positions via GPS. Sources are still trying to
figure out how the men were able to enter into the ruins in the first place.”

I toss the ball against the wall, catch it.

“Guess we’ll never know,” I say.

I hear her put the paper down.

“Chase,” she says, “how come you never told me exactly what
happened to me up in the aircraft?”

“What’s to tell? We went for a ride and you passed out. End
of story.”

“But you saw something up there, didn’t you? What did you
see?”

I toss the ball again. Catch it again.

“I don’t know. Stuff.”

“What stuff?”

More pitch and catch.

“Let’s just say that maybe, just maybe, there is such a
thing as ancient aliens and that those ancient aliens might be more like God
than we know. Or vice versa, of course.”

“So what you’re saying is God and ancient aliens are one and
the same.”

“What’s so hard to believe about that? God rides around in a
chariot of fire while accompanied by a bunch of flying angels. Maybe they
helped out ancient man for a while. Taught him some things. Like flight, for
instance. That knowledge got lost over time until the Wright bros came along
and rediscovered it.”

She lets that one settle for a minute, picks off a tiny
piece of bagel, slips it into her mouth.

“How come the ruins we witnessed were in perfect condition?
How come whoever entered into them to recover Keogh the Third didn’t spot the
aircraft?”

“The old pilot must have known they were coming and took off
for greener pastures. So to speak. Maybe he destroyed the joint just to make it
look good.”

“Destroyed the place,” she repeats. “You think he was a real
man? A real man who was one hundred fifteen years old yet looked not a day over
fifty?”

I look at her over my shoulder.

“Up there in the sky,” I say. “Way up in the far reaches of
the universe … that’s where you’ll find the answers.”

“You mean I’ll find out how I was cured of a mortal bullet
wound in a matter of moments.”

“Among other things.”

“Keogh the Second was one of them, wasn’t he?”

“One of what?”

“Not sure I can get myself to say it, so I’ll just say it anyway…Aliens.
Ancient or otherwise. So was the grease monkey who thought the Dodgers still
live in Brooklyn.”

“He flew us to Cuzco in a biplane, didn’t he? That sound
like a little gray man in a flying saucer to you?”

“He dropped us off in an empty field and told us to walk the
rest of the three miles on foot when there is a perfectly good airport in
Cuzco. And did you notice that when he took back off, the plane didn’t seem to
fade into the horizon, it sort of suddenly vanished into thin air?”

“Optical illusion,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.

“You love this, don’t you?”

“Love what?”

“Being cryptic.”

“I like saving the juicy bits for my new novel.”

“Speaking of which, when do I get to see a first draft? I
got bills coming in now that the agency is back in action.”

“Soon. I’ll be done in a month. It’s called
Chase Baker
and the Golden Condor
. Whaddya think?”

“I like it.” Then, “When are you meeting your daughter?”

“We’re doing dinner at the pizza joint downstairs from my
apartment. You wanna join us? Or are you meeting back up with the gynie?”

“The gynie is long gone-baby-gone.”

I turn to her. “Me likey.”

I listen to her get up from her chair, come around her desk.
I bounce the ball off the wall once more, but this time, she snatches it up.
Making her way to the office door, she opens it just a tiny bit.

“Hold my calls until further notice,” she says through the
narrow opening. “And girls, no listening through the door.”

I hear the door close behind her, the lock engaged.

My literary agent comes back to the couch, sets herself down
on the edge, her skirt riding up high enough on her thighs to show some serious
smooth skin.

“Wanna play
breach-the-professional-relationship-between-author-and-agent?” She smiles.

“Okay, you play the hot cougar agent, and I’ll play the
struggling young author who just can’t seem to get a break.”

She leans into me while undoing the top button on her
blouse.

“Oh, I sooo love your writing, Mr. Baker,” she says in her
best Marilyn Monroe imitation. “It makes me sooo hot.”

“You’re hired,” I say, wrapping my arms around her, pulling
her into me.

“I’ll have my people draw up contracts right away,” she
whispers before kissing my lips softly, passionately.

Outside the window, a fire truck speeds past, its sirens
piercing the old brick walls of the new Leslie Singer Literary Agency building.
By the looks of it, this isn’t the only joint that’s on fire in New York City.

THE END

If you enjoyed
this Chase Baker Thriller you
will definitely want to check out the first adventure in the series:
The
Shroud Key
.

Vincent
Zandri
is
the
New York Times
and
USA Today
best-selling author of more than
sixteen novels, including
The Innocent
,
Godchild
,
The Remains
,
Moonlight Falls
, and
The Shroud Key
. A freelance photojournalist
and traveler, he is also the author of the blog
The Vincent Zandri Vox
.
He lives in New York and Florence, Italy. For more information and to join
Vincent’s “For Your Eyes Only” Mailing List, go to
http://www.vincentzandri.com/
.

First Edition: November 2014

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any
similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by
the author.

The author is represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.