Down in the Zero (8 page)

There was no lock on the bedroom door. I walked quickly through the rest of the floor. No locks anywhere. It wasn't doors that covered that house's secrets.

Back in Cherry's bedroom, I opened the address book. Nearly every page was filled with distinctively shaded block letters. The ink was a dark blue—looked like a fountain pen. I found the culprit in the nightstand drawer, a fat black Mont Blanc.

None of the names meant anything to me at first. I took it page by page. Nothing under "Burke." "Fancy" was under "F," but the phone number wasn't the same as she'd written on her After Dark card. Not quite the same.

Page by page. I came to a strange listing. "MERC" is all it said. I looked at the number. Looked at it again. It was the pay phone that

rings in Mama's restaurant, written backwards. A man for hire, that's what I must have seemed like to her back in England a lifetime ago. Some people grow, some just age.

I turned back to the page with Fancy's number. Read it backwards. It matched her card.

Was the code that simple? I found a listing for Rector's. Compared it to the card. It didn't match, backwards or forwards.

I went over to the control panel in her closet. Pushed buttons at random. String music came from the speaker again. Not the longhair stuff this time—Santo and Johnny's "Sleepwalk"—'50s steel guitar spooling softly strange in that lush room.

I laid down on her bed, staring at the ceiling, surprised not to find a mirror. Glanced over at the clock again. 5:19 on the dial, 8:19 on the digital. Three hours' difference.

Where the hell would that be?

I reached for the phone. Dialed the number on the card I'd found in the cape. A woman's voice answered, pleasant but loaded with the promise of something harder: "Rector's."

I hung up. Dialed the number under that name in her address book. A recorded message: "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Check the number and…"

I hung up on that one too. It's the message Ma Bell sends when the exchange isn't local.

I checked the book again. No area code. Maybe she didn't use them at all. But…no, she had a lot of them—Chicago, L.A., Houston— even some foreign ones.

I closed my eyes.
What's your secret, bitch?
I asked her.

W
hen I opened my eyes, the clock said 5:51. A long time to be out. I got up, put everything back the way it was. The closet speaker was playing something slithery…something I didn't recognize.

I went back to the bed, picked up the book, started to punch the number she had listed for Rector's into the control panel. Four buttons into the sequence I heard a sliding noise. I looked in its direction. A panel was opening in the seamless pink marble of the bathroom tile over the tub.

I went over, took a close look, not touching anything. I've been trained by the best—if you don't figure out how to close the wound, the autopsy will be too easy. I pushed the buttons again, in the same order. I heard the faint sound of an electrical motor, but the panel stayed open.

Okay. I tried it in reverse, last digit first. The panel slid back, closing with a barely audible click. From where I stood, I couldn't see where it had opened. You don't get craftsmanship like that from a local handyman—it had to be the work of the original architect.

Even up close, I couldn't find the seam. The white veins in the pink marble pulled my eyes into a swirling pattern, the recessed lighting bouncing off the slick surface blurred my eyes. Like the random stripes of a herd of zebra, making the lions dizzy, distracting the hunters from the target.

A four–digit code. Ten thousand chances to hit it by luck—no chance at all. I punched the Open Sesame again, one slow button at a time. The panel was about six inches wide. Inside was painted a flat black, a matte finish that would eat light, no reflection.

I pulled a thick white towel from a standing brass rack, laid it down in the tub in case something spilled. I started to reach my gloved hand inside the compartment when I remembered this was too elaborate a setup for a rich woman to hide her pearls. And remembered where Cherry came from, what she'd know.

I walked downstairs, looking around. What I really wanted was a pair of needlenose pliers, but the kitchen didn't have anything like a tool kit. Finally, I settled on a pair of long barbecue tongs, heavy steel with a rosewood handle.

Back upstairs, I used my pencil flash to check out the inside of the compartment. I could see some plastic cassettes, a padded jewelry box, and what looked like a black drawstring pouch. I wasn't worried about a burglar alarm—if I was right, the cops were the last thing Cherry would want if somebody got this far. I probed the air space inside the compartment with the tongs, testing.

Nothing happened.

I extended the tongs toward the pouch again, as delicate as plucking a butterfly off a flower. I closed the tongs slowly, standing well back. I felt the tips touch something and there was a sharp
clang!
It almost knocked the tongs from my hand. I pulled them back, used the pencil flash. A curved metal wand hung just over the pouch, still vibrating, three separate hooked tips pinpointing the light. An L–shaped lever dangled from the far corner of the compartment. I pushed it back toward the wall with the tongs. Watched as the wand retreated. Whatever it was, it could be reset.

The tips of the wand looked surgical. I could guess what she had painted on them—curare lasts a hell of a long time, but it only takes a few seconds to do its job. I shoved the lever back to disable the wand. Then I worked the stuff out of the compartment like I was defusing a bomb, working front to back. My hands were calm, but my knees were locked against the trembling. I dropped each piece lightly on the heavy towel in the same position it was inside the compartment.

Three VHS videocassettes. Blackmail maybe?

Seven audiotapes, premium–grade metal, ninety minutes each. The blackmail scenario looked better than ever.

A round disk I didn't recognize.

A pair of three–and–a–half–inch computer diskettes, Teflon coated, one red, one blue.

A mini–cassette backup computer tape.

Business records, maybe? Of somebody
else's
business? Had to be some pretty hot data to be this well protected. Industrial espionage?

No matter what all the stuff was, there was no way I could tell just by looking.

But then I found the black velvet pouch.

I gently pulled the drawstring, tipped the pouch upside down. Fire inside: red, white, green. Gems. Big ones, all faceted. And some smooth black stones.

I glanced over at the clock. 6:39. Enough.

I took one of each of the gems, one of each of the cassettes, both diskettes. Put everything else back in reverse order. If you took a quick look inside, it would look pretty close to normal. I pushed the lever home, watched the poison wand disappear, heard it snap into place. Then I went back to the control panel, pushed the buttons, and made the compartment disappear.

I carefully wrapped the gems in a piece of dark blue felt I carry with me for emergencies. The loot disappeared into the pockets of my jacket. The towel went back on the rack. I pulled off the surgeon's gloves and headed downstairs.

I
t only took me a few minutes to lock the stuff in the false bottom of the Plymouth's truck, right next to the fuel cell. I never went back to the upstairs apartment.

I was getting a traffic report from the all–news station by 7:08, heading for home base.

A
s soon as I crossed the bridge into Manhattan, I found a pay phone and started to work. Left messages for Michelle and the Prof. Called Mama, told her I'd be on my way before nightfall.

By eight, I was in my office, sacked out on the couch.

I
t was almost three in the afternoon as I worked the Plymouth through the maze of Chinatown's back streets. Clarence's immaculate BRG Rover was parked in the alley behind Mama's.

They were in my booth. The Prof had three playing cards in front of him, folded lengthwise, face down, showing Clarence the finer points of three–card monte. Mama was at her cash register. The joint had the usual number of customers—none.

I sat down in my booth, ignoring the questions in the Prof's eyes. Mama strolled over just as I was pulling the blue felt from my pocket. She nodded, snapped something in Cantonese to one of the hovering waiters, and sat down.

The blue felt sat between us on the table—Mama made no move to touch it. In a couple of minutes, the waiter came back. He cleared the table, wiped it down, spread a brilliant white bolt of heavy cloth over the top. Then he placed a black metal cube near Mama's left hand, spread a red silk square next to her right. Mama bowed her head, fingertips together, waiting. The waiter opened the top of the black metal cube, telescoped a long stem with a tiny quartz halogen light at the tip. He pressed a button on the side of the cube and a circle of pure light showed on the tabletop. On the red silk square, he carefully assembled a jeweler's loupe and several different–size tweezers. From one of his apron pockets, he took a miniature scale with an electronic dial. He placed it at the far corner of the table and stepped back.

Mama raised her head, opened her eyes. Nodded an okay at me. I unwrapped the gems. Mama plucked the diamond first, placed it on the table in front of her. Then she screwed the loupe into her right eye, picked up the gem with a pair of tweezers and took a look.

Nobody spoke.

Mama turned the gem back and forth with the tweezers, her fingers precision machinery.

"You remember what I teach you about diamonds? Five C?"

"Sure," I told her, remembering the lesson from so many years ago, when I came back from Africa and told Mama about new smuggling opportunities. Four C was the world standard: color, clarity, cut and carat. The last C was Mama's own—cash.

Mama nodded acknowledgment as she worked. After a couple of minutes, she put the rock down. Her smile was brighter than the light.

"Very fine stone."

"It's for real?" I asked her.

"Oh yes. Blue–white, brilliant cut. Maybe VVS, VS for sure. Three carats, pretty close."

"How much?"

"A hundred thousand, quick." Meaning it was worth a quarter million.

"What about the others?"

Mama didn't reply. She reluctantly put the diamond on a corner of the cloth, reached for the green. She did the same routine, switched to the red. Finally, she took up the smooth black stone, rubbing it between her fingers. After a few minutes, she switched off the light, looked across at me.

"All perfect stones. Ruby is pigeon blood, probably from Burma. Emerald is Colombian for sure. Very big stones to be so perfect."

"What's this?" I asked, touching the smooth black stone with a fingertip.

"Girasol," Mama said. "Black opal. From Australia."

"There's more," I told her. "This is just a sample."

"Passport," Mama said. I knew what she meant. There's no harder currency than fine gems. A universal language—you could turn these into cash anywhere from Bermuda to Bangkok.

"I told you, bro, I know what I know. We tap that vein, we feel no pain."

"It's not that easy, Prof. She had something else too." I showed him the diskettes. "You know what these are?"

"Sure, schoolboy. That's the cake—the rocks are the take."

"That's the way I see it too. We Hoover the place, she knows it was me. And she's got enough juice to buy trouble."

"But if we know what she knows…"

"Yeah."

"Let's ride, Clyde."

W
e picked up Michelle on the corner of Twenty–ninth and First. She climbed into the back of the Rover like it was a limo, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, settled back into the leather and lit a smoke.

"What's on?"

"I'm not sure yet. The Prof was right—the joint is rotten with money. I took some samples…gems. Mama says they're true blue. She's got seven figures stashed in the house."

"Oh honey, you know just what to say to make a girl crazy."

"It's trickier than that, Michelle." I showed her the disks.

"Blackmail?"

"That's my guess. I'm not sure. There's some tapes too. But either I put everything back or we're stuck with hit and run, see? We need a way to take a look."

"My man can do it," Michelle said, confident.

T
erry let us into the junkyard, greeting the Prof and Clarence with elaborate courtesy as Michelle looked on proud.

"Damn, boy, you getting
big
!" the Prof told him.

The kid flushed. "I told you, Mom," he said, holding his back real straight. "How tall am I gonna be?" he asked the Prof.

Clarence stepped forward, took both the boy's hands in his, turned them over, looked at the backs.

"You be taller than me before you a grown man," he said quietly, the Island lilt clear in his rich voice.

"For real?" Terry asked, joy all over his face.

Clarence nodded gravely.

The Mole was nowhere in sight when we pulled up to the clearing. Simba was lying down in front of the underground bunker, calm and watchful.

"You want me to get him?" Terry asked.

"We'll need to be in his lab for what we got to do," I told the kid. "Just go downstairs, ask him if it's okay, all right?"

"Sure," the kid replied, pushing Simba to one side like the killer beast was a stuffed animal.

I lit a cigarette in the South Bronx air, feeling safe like I always do around the Mole's base. Simba watched without interest.

The kid stuck his head out of the bunker. "He says to come down."

I went first, Michelle right behind. Clarence came last, walking backwards, one hand on his pistol…he doesn't feel the same way I do about the junkyard.

The Mole was at his workbench. Michelle kissed him. His pasty skin turned a mottled red, his lank hair falling over his forehead. Michelle slapped at his upper arm in pretended disgust at the Mole's lack of romance.

I put the computer disks on the workbench. The Mole looked at them and shrugged.