Cyber Genius (14 page)

“He’s a boffin, but if he’s got our backs, that’s what
matters,” Tudor said sensibly, examining the recessed lighting in the tunnel walls—presumably
looking for their source of power.

I wouldn’t call Graham a nerd, precisely, but the latter
part had been my conclusion—he had our backs. I still didn’t fully trust an
unknown cipher in the equation of my life.

The tunnel didn’t seem to run further than the length of the
back yard, maybe a little more. At the end, we climbed a short flight of stairs
to a metal door. I had a pretty good sense of where we were and really wanted
to smack our uncommunicative landlord. I slammed the door open instead.

Gaping at the vast open space we entered, I swore. Well, at
least I now knew what the warehouse/churchlike building was on the block behind
us. I’d stupidly thought it abandoned.

Men who kept secrets like an enormous carriage house
suitable for hiding limos—and possibly helicopters, tanks, and an arsenal—ought
to have their heads chopped off. You had to know men like that were up to no
good.

I examined the gleaming antique Packard Phaeton I’d once
seen Mallard drive. Then I studied the empty concrete floor that could have
held a private plane had there been a runway and uttered a few more choice
words that I tried not to use around the kids.

“You didn’t know this was here?” Tudor concluded, whistling
as he examined the gleaming classic. “Is this ours?”

“Like, I know?” I glanced overhead, wondering if the Mansard
roof would hold a helipad. That would explain Graham’s magical disappearances
and appearances. Cops, doctors, Google Earth, newspapers—all had helicopters
around here, so I wouldn’t have noticed one extra drone from my basement
hideaway.

“A Phaeton isn’t exactly invisible, is it?” Tudor said
wistfully. “Maybe I could buy a motorbike and keep it in here.”

He was talking about our pattern of travel, learned at our
mother’s knees. When we wanted, we could be very, very inconspicuous.

“Should we live long enough for you to get a license, a bike
works for me. But that Phaeton screams ‘Look at me,’ so very not Graham. It may
be our grandfather’s.” I scouted around for the exits and decided on a small
door at the side.

“There’s a good film in Georgetown,” Tudor said, following
me and punching the door lock with a code that I memorized. “How difficult is
it to get there?”

Leave it to a kid to have a show already picked out. “I
don’t suppose you mean
The Three
Musketeers,
” I said in disgruntlement.

“
Monsters
, in 3D,”
he suggested with relish.

I politely refrained from rolling my eyes. “How about we do
some sleuthing instead?”

“Sleuthing?” he asked in incredulity. “Who says
sleuthing
?”

“I do. While Graham is covering your ass, we can help cover
his. How about a ride to our part of town?” Tightening my hood, I headed for
the street.

“I thought
this
was our part of town,” he grumbled.

“Did you earn the money to live here? Do you have money for
your own place?” I asked as we aimed for the Metro. I liked the kids to stay
humble.

“No. Dad gives me just enough allowance to buy games.” He glared
at my gloved hand when I held it out for money for the Metro. He didn’t offer
any.

“Exactly.” I slid my card through the ticket machine. “On
our own, we don’t even have enough money to travel by subway. So we’d be living
in the working man’s part of town.”

“That’s where you’ve been living until you got here?” he
asked with curiosity.

Worse, but he didn’t need to know that. It had been my
preference at the time. “In another city but similar housing, yup. And it’s
where we’ll end up if our lawyer doesn’t beat Graham and our grandfather’s
lawyers into submission. The law is on Graham’s side on the house. All we can
do is hope he’ll do the right thing once we have the funds to pay him back. He
laid down over a million in cash.”

Tudor didn’t like that answer. A silent Tudor was a
dangerous Tudor, but I let him stew for the train ride down to the apartments
I’d visited a few weeks ago for different reasons. I knew the neighborhood and
the police district. I’d feel right at home if we ended up renting there.

“Who are we looking for?” he finally had the sense to ask as
we got out at a station well past the usual tourist areas.

In the November gloom, the apartments looked dirty and
tired. At night, they were worse, I knew.

“Maggie O’Ryan.” I checked my phone directions and aimed
down a main thoroughfare.

Whereas Kita, the hotel’s fish chef, had found expensive
lodging in fashionable Adams-Morgan, the hotel’s best server lived two steps
above a slum. I’d done some cursory research into Maggie, knew she had grown kids,
an ex-husband, a bad credit record, and her last house had been foreclosed on.
Kids are hard to raise on tips.

“You going to just walk up to her and ask if she poisoned
Stiles?” Tudor asked.

“Lesson one: if you want people to talk, you have to be on their
side. Innocent until proven guilty should always be your motto.”

“You want to give me a clue of how we’re approaching her, if
she’s there?” Tudor took in our surroundings with interest, as if he was
learning a new video game.

“By knowing our witness,” I said, turning down a narrower
street lined with old junkers, mostly pickups. “She has a teen with an unusual
form of multiple sclerosis. He needs a new wheelchair. I think we can find
better use for our rainy day fund than paying taxis.”

Of course, since I was working Graham’s case, I’d probably
charge what I was about to do to his account.

“Taxi drivers have to live too,” Tudor muttered, but even he
couldn’t argue too much when it came to a kid with a harder life than his own.
Despite his last few years in a posh boarding school, Tudor had lived in slums
and seen the catastrophic results of war. He wasn’t completely rotten yet.

“My name is Patty Pasko, so yours is probably Paul Pasko,” I
told him. Tudor had been well trained in aliases under our mother’s aegis and
knew what I was telling him without further instruction.

Locating the building number, we studied the situation. A
row of cheap tin mailboxes lined the outside wall. Junk mail stuck out of half
of them. A walkway led along each side of the four-story brick structure, and I
sincerely hoped Maggie and her son had a bottom floor, because I didn’t see
evidence of elevators designed for wheelchairs.

Door numbers had been left to the whim of tenants,
apparently. We located 1G at the front left but the other doors had only empty
spaces. I followed the walkway around, looking for 4G.

I turned the corner to the back of the building. A paved lot
was apparently meant to be a patio. A rusted grill, a tattered sunbrella, and a
few filthy, dilapidated lawn chairs littered the cracked concrete, along with
half a dozen rusting bicycles.

Tudor studied the junk with disgust. “They don’t have
rubbish pick-up here?”

“They’re renters. Stuff gets left behind. If you don’t have
money to buy better, then you use what you find,” I said pragmatically, finding
a neat black metal 4G on the first door at the back. “Quit judging.”

I could hear yelling before I even knocked on the door. Out
of caution, I stepped aside after I knocked, motioning Tudor to do the same.

The door opened, and an old hand-driven wheelchair crashed
out, bumping over the threshold, onto the broken patio, and around the corner
as fast as the kid could wheel it. I caught a glimpse of a mop of dark brown
hair, a tall, skinny boy with bad acne—and no coat.

“Michael!” someone inside shouted.

A moment later, Maggie O’Ryan appeared. Graying brown hair
straggling from a loose ponytail, she looked weary as she saw us on her
doorstep. “If you’re the police, arrest me, please. Jail has to be easier than
this.”

Tudor’s take:

Tudor grimaced when Ana ordered him to go after
pimple-face, whose name was apparently Michael. Not having any good excuse not
to, he jogged out to the street and found the tosser making for the Metro. It
was boringly easy to catch up.

He didn’t have Ana’s handle on people, so he just said the
first thing popping to mind. “I think my sister hoped to have some barmy production
where she hands you a check for a new chair,” he said, strolling alongside the
frantic escapee.

The twit was running out of steam already. He glared at
Tudor. “The proceeds of crime already?” he asked in disgust.

Tudor’s interest picked up a notch. “You think the
non-profit is run by a
crime
syndicate? That would make a cool vid. I could work with that.”

Michael slowed down to stare. “You write video games?”

“Sometimes. School gets in the way,” Tudor said, voicing his
dream as if it meant nothing.

“How about a game where your mother kills people for money?”
the kid asked furiously.

Bugger it! That whacked him back to reality. Was the kid
saying his mother had actually
killed
Stiles? What the hell did he do now?

Tudor shrugged and played up his Brit accent, although his
nerves were now jangling. “For all I know, Mum has fragged dozens of pillocks,
but she’d make sure the buggers deserved to die first. So it’s just the usual
Robin Hood rubbish and would make a boring game.”

The kid looked glum and stopped wheeling at the corner.
“Yeah, if I’m translating correctly, that makes sense. Still, she’d go to jail
if she got caught.”

“Not if it was self-defense. My sister once drop-kicked a—”
He started to say
nanny
but realized
that wouldn’t go over well in this part of town. “...a prat out of a second
floor window after he set fire to our apartment. She didn’t go to jail.”

“Mom couldn’t drop-kick a dog,” Michael said in disgust.
“So, was that your sister at the door?”

“Yup. She’s tougher than she looks. Want to go back and see
if they’re plotting murder?”

The kid looked resigned. “I didn’t bring my Metro pass
anyway. You’re really here to give us a check? That doesn’t make sense.”

Tudor shrugged as the kid turned around. “You’ve got a
sister who makes sense?”

“Nah, she just took the cash Mom gave her and paid off
credit cards. I wanted to buy a car and get out of here.”

Crikey, that did sound daft. Tudor wondered how he’d convey
that info to Ana without getting them both killed—if his mother really was a
murderer.

Could Ana be in danger? Tudor picked up speed, forcing the
kid to wheel faster.

***

Ana gives away Graham’s money:

“Let me get this straight,” Maggie O’Ryan said as she
poured tea from flowered china. “You work for some fancy non-profit who wants
to give
me
a check for a new chair
for Michael—out of the clear blue sky and the kindness of your heart. But you
come here without a check and dressed like an undercover cop. Am I getting this
so far?”

I slid my Patty Pasko business card across the plastic
coffee table. “You want me to walk around here in Armani? Why are you expecting
cops at the door?”

“Because that’s how my life is. Until I see cash in my bank
account, I’m not believing you. And if you ask for my bank account number, I’ll
have to shoot you.” She tightened thin lips and stuck out a pugnacious jaw.
Weariness had carved as many lines in her face as age.

I liked her a lot already. “If you want to shoot scammers, I
can direct you to a nest of them in Canada. But getting guns across the border
isn’t easy these days.”

Maggie almost laughed. She’d returned her graying black hair
to its ponytail while the water boiled. She still wasn’t relaxed, but she took
a seat on the scuffed vinyl sofa and poured tea for herself. “You learn to look
gift horses in the mouth these days. I apologize if I’ve offended.”

“You’ll only offend if you insult my intelligence or my
siblings. And I’m not entirely certain about the latter.” I sipped the
tea—strong Irish breakfast, of course. “I didn’t bring a check for multiple
reasons, one of which is that sometimes we can get a group discount on whatever
appliance is needed. We might be able to upgrade your choice or give you a
little cash back instead of leaving it all up to you to figure out. I was
afraid if I arrived bearing catalogs, though, you wouldn’t open the door.”

“You’ve been doing this a while, haven’t you?” she said
tiredly. “How did my name get drawn?”

“I’m not on that committee, but it’s often teachers or local
cops who make recommendations. They’re in a better position to notice who needs
what. If you thought I was hauling you off to jail, I assume you’ve been in
touch with the local precinct recently?”

She rubbed a rough-looking hand over her forehead. “Not the
locals. The ones near my work. They’re more uptown and probably think I’m a
murderer. I doubt they know about Michael or care, but he’s got a few good
teachers. Who was that you sent after him?”

“My little brother. I promised him a horror flick if he came
with me today.”

I prayed Tudor remembered not to give out his name. It could
be in the newspapers any day now, and it wasn’t as if everyone in America was
named after English kings. Our mother had a thing about historical royalty,
which is why I’m Anastasia, named after a Russian princess—one who got
murdered, I might add. The life of royalty tends to be short.

“They look as if they might be the same age,” Maggie said. “Ever
since he ended up in a chair, Michael has been having difficulty with bullies
at school. We’re thinking of moving to a district with better policies for children
with disabilities.” She shifted uneasily in her seat.

I recognized nervousness when I saw it. But the boys burst
through the doorway, not leaving me time to gauge the cause.

“I don’t want a new chair,” the wheelchair-bound kid
declared. “We just need the money.”