Gone Tomorrow (21 page)

‘I was born on a military base. That counts as U.S. sovereign territory. My parents were married. My father was an American citizen. He was a Marine.’

‘Can you prove all of that?’

‘Do I have to?’

‘It’s important. Whether or not you’re a citizen could affect what happens to you next.’

‘No, how much patience I have will affect what happens to me next.’

The guy on the left stood up. He was the one who had held the Franchi’s muzzle hard against my throat. He went directly left from behind the table and walked out, through the wooden door, into the third room. I glimpsed desks, computers, cabinets, and lockers. No other people. The door closed softly behind him and the room we were in went quiet.

The main guy asked, ‘Was your mother Algerian?’

I said, ‘I just got through telling you she was French.’

‘Some French people are Algerian.’

‘No, French people are French and Algerian people are Algerian. It’s not rocket science.’

‘OK, some French people were originally immigrants from Algeria. Or from Morocco, or Tunisia, or elsewhere in North Africa.’

‘My mother wasn’t.’

‘Was she a Muslim?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m making inquiries.’

I nodded. ‘Safer to inquire about my mother than yours, probably.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Susan Mark’s mother was a teenage crack whore. Maybe yours worked with her. Maybe they turned tricks together.’

‘Are you trying to make me mad?’

‘No, I’m succeeding. You’re all red in the face and you’ve got wet pants. And you’re getting absolutely nowhere. All in all I don’t think this particular session will he written up for the training manual.’

‘This isn’t a joke.’

‘But it’s heading that way.’

The guy paused and regrouped. He used his index finger to realign the nine items in front of him. He got them straight and then he pushed the computer memory an inch towards me. He said, ‘You concealed this from us when we searched you. Susan Mark gave it to you on the train.’

I said, ‘Did I? Did she?’

The guy nodded. ‘But it’s empty, and it’s too small anyway. Where is the other one?’

‘What other one?’

‘This one is obviously a decoy. Where is the real one?’

‘Susan Mark gave me nothing. I bought that thing at Radio Shack.’

‘Why?’

‘I liked the look of it.’

‘With the pink sleeve? Bullshit.’ I said nothing.

He said, ‘You like the colour pink?’

‘In the right place.’

‘What place would that be?’

‘A place you haven’t been in a long time.’

‘Where did you conceal it?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Was it in a body cavity?’

‘You better hope not. You just touched it.’

‘Do you enjoy that kind of thing? Are you a fairy?’

‘That kind of question might work down at Guantanamo, hut it won’t work with me.’

The guy shrugged and used his fingertip and pulled the stick back into line, and then he moved the phony business card and Leonid’s cell phone both forward an inch, like he was moving pawns on a chessboard. He said, ‘You’ve been working for Lila Hoth. The card proves you were in communication with the crew she hired, and your phone proves she called you at least six times. The Four Seasons’ number is in the memory.’

‘It’s not my phone.’

‘We found it in your pocket.’

‘Lila Hoth didn’t stay at the Four Seasons, according to them.’

‘Only because we told them to cooperate. We both know she was there. You met her there twice, and then she broke the third rendezvous.’

‘Who is she, exactly?’

‘That’s a question you should have asked before you agreed to work for her.’

‘I wasn’t working for her.’

‘Your phone proves that you were. It’s not rocket science.’

I didn’t answer.

‘He asked, ‘Where is Lila Hoth now?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘How would I know?’

‘I assumed you scooped her up when she checked out. Before you started shooting darts at me.’

The guy said nothing.

I said, ‘You were there earlier in the day. You searched her room. I assumed you were watching her.’ The guy said nothing.

I said, ‘You missed her, right? She walked right past you. That’s terrific. You guys are an example to us all. A foreign national with some kind of weird Pentagon involvement, and you let her go?’

‘It’s a setback,’ the guy said. He seemed a little embarrassed, but I figured he need not have been. Because leaving a hotel under surveillance is relatively easy to do. You do it by not doing it. By not leaving immediately. You send your bags down with the bellman in the service elevator, the agents cluster in the lobby, you leave the passenger elevator at a different floor and you hole up somewhere for two hours until the agents give up and leave. Then you walk out. It takes nerve, but it’s easy to do, especially if you have booked another room under another name, which Lila Hoth certainly had, for Leonid, at least.

The guy asked, ‘Where is she now?’

I asked, ‘Who is she?’

‘The most dangerous person you ever met.’

‘She didn’t look it.’

‘That’s why.’

I said, ‘I have no idea where she is.’

There was a long pause and then the guy moved the phony business card and the cell phone back into line and advanced Theresa Lee’s card in their place. He asked, ‘How much does the detective know?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘We have a fairly simple sequence of tasks in front of us. We need to find the Hoths, we need to recover the real memory stick, but above all we need to contain the leak. So we need to know how far it has spread. So we need to know who knows what.’

‘Nobody knows anything. Least of all me.’

‘This is not a contest. You don’t get points for resisting. We’re all on the same side here.’

‘Doesn’t feel that way to me.’

‘You need to take this seriously.’

‘Believe me, I am.’

‘Then tell us who knows what.’

‘I’m not a mind reader. I don’t know who knows what.’

I heard the door on my left open again. The leader looked across and nodded some kind of consent. I turned in my seal and saw the guy from the left-hand chair. He had a gun in his hand. Not the Franchi 12. The dart gun. He raised it and fired. I spun away, but far too late. The dart caught me high in the upper arm.

FORTY-FOUR

I WOKE UP ALL OVER AGAIN, BUT I DIDN’T OPEN MY EYES immediately. I felt like the clock in my head was back on track, and I wanted to let it calibrate and settle in undisturbed. Right then it was showing six o’clock in the evening. Which meant I had been out about another eight hours.

I was very hungry and very thirsty. My arm hurt the same way my leg had. A hot little bruise, right up there at the top. I could feel that I still had no shoes. But my wrists and my ankles weren’t fastened to the rails of the cot. Which was a relief. I stretched

lazily and rubbed a palm across my face. More stubble. I was heading for a regular beard.

I opened my eyes. Looked around. Discovered two things. One: Theresa Lee was in the cage to my right. Two: Jacob Mark was in the cage to my left.

Both of them were cops.

Neither one of them had shoes on.

That was when I started to worry.

* * *

If I was right and it was six o’clock in the evening, then Theresa Lee had been hauled in from home. And Jacob Mark had been brought in from work. They were both looking at me. Lee was standing behind her bars, about five feet away. She was wearing blue jeans and a white shirt. She had bare feet. Jake was sitting on his cot. He was wearing a police officer’s uniform, minus the belt and the gun and the radio and the shoes. I sat up on my cot and swung my feet to the floor and ran my hands through my hair. Then I stood up and stepped over to the sink and drank from the faucet. New York City, for sure. I recognized the taste of the water. I looked at Theresa Lee and asked her, ‘Do you know exactly where we are?’

She said, ‘Don’t you?’

I shook my head.

She said, ‘We have to assume this place is wired for sound.’

‘I’m sure it is. But they already know where we are. So we won’t be giving them anything they don’t already have.’

‘I don’t think we should say anything.’

‘We can discuss geographic facts. I don’t think the Patriot Act prohibits street addresses, at least not yet.’

Lee said nothing.

I said, ‘What?’

She looked uneasy.

I said, ‘You think I’m playing games with you?’

She didn’t answer.

I said, ‘You think I’m here to trap you into saying something on tape?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘Those clubs on Bleecker are nearer Sixth Avenue than Broadway. You had the A train right there. Or the B or the C or the D. So why were you on the 6 train at all?’

‘Law of nature,’ I said. We’re hardwired in our brains. Middle of the night, full dark, all mammals head east instinctively.’

‘Really?

‘No, I just made that up. I had nowhere to go. I came out of a bar and turned left and walked. I can’t explain it any better than that.’

Lee said nothing.

I said, ‘What else?’

Lee said, You have no bags. I never saw a homeless person with nothing. Most of them haul more stuff around than I own. They use shopping carts.’

‘I’m different,’ I said. ‘And I’m not a homeless person. Not like them.’

She said nothing.

I asked her, ‘Were you blindfolded when they brought you here?’

She looked at me for a long moment and then she shook her head and sighed. She said, ‘We’re in a closed firehouse in Greenwich Village. On West 3rd. Street level and above is disused. We’re in the basement.’

‘Do you know exactly who these guys are?’

She didn’t speak. Just glanced up at the camera. I said, ‘Same principle. They know who they are. At least I hope they do. Doesn’t hurt for them to know that we know, too.’

‘You think?’

‘That’s the point. They can’t stop us thinking. Do you know they are?’

‘They didn’t show ID. Not today, and not that first night either, when they came to talk to you at the precinct.’

‘But?’

‘Not showing ID can be the same thing as showing it, if you’re the only bunch that never does. We’ve heard some stories.’

‘So who are they?’

‘They work directly for the Secretary of Defense.’

‘That figures,’ I said. ‘The Secretary of Defense is usually the dumbest guy in the government.’

Lee glanced up at the camera again, as if I had insulted it. As if I had caused it to be insulted. I said, ‘Don’t worry. These guys look ex-military to me, in which case they already know how dumb the Secretary of Defense is. But even so, Defense is a Cabinet position, which means ultimately these guys an’ working for the White House.’

Lee paused a beat and asked, ‘Do you know what they want?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Don’t tell us.’

‘I won’t,’ I said.

‘But is it big enough for the White House?’

‘Potentially, I guess.’

‘Shit.’

‘When did they come for you?’

‘This afternoon. Two o’clock. I was still asleep.’

‘Did they have the NYPD with them?’

Lee nodded, and a little hurt showed in her eyes. I asked, ‘Did you know the patrolmen?’

She shook her head. ‘Hotshot counterterrorism guys. They write their own rules and keep themselves separate. They ride around in special cars all day long. Fake taxis, sometimes. One in the front, two in the back. Did you know that? Big circles, up on Tenth, down on Second. Like the B-52s used to patrol the skies.’

‘What time is it now? About six after six?’

She looked at her watch, and looked surprised.

‘Dead on,’ she said.

I turned the other way.

‘Jake?’ I said. ‘What about you?’

‘They came for me first. I’ve been here since noon. Watching you sleep.’

‘Any word from Peter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You snore, you know that?’

‘I was full of gorilla tranquillizer. From a dart gun.’

‘You’re kidding.’

I showed him the bloodstain on my pants, and then the one on my shoulder.

‘That’s insane,’ he said.

‘Were you at work?’

He nodded. ‘The dispatcher called my car back to base, and they were waiting for me.’

‘Your department knows where you are?’

‘Not specifically,’ he said. ‘But they know who took me away.’

‘That’s something,’ I said.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘The department won’t do anything for me. Guys like these come for you, suddenly you’re tainted, presumed guilty of something. People were already inching away from me.’

Lee said, ‘Like when Internal Affairs comes calling.’

I asked her, ‘Why isn’t Docherty here?’

‘He knows less than me. In fact he went out of his way to know less than me. Didn’t you notice that? He’s an old hand.’

‘He’s your partner.’

‘Today he is. By next week he’ll have forgotten he ever had a partner. You know how these things work.’

Jake said, ‘There are only three cells here. Maybe Docherty is where else.’

I asked, ‘Have these guys talked to you yet?’

Both of them shook their heads.

I asked, ‘Are you worried?’

Both of them nodded. Lee asked, ‘Are you?’

‘I’m sleeping well,’ I said. ‘But I think that’s mostly because of the tranquillizers.’

At six thirty they brought us food. Deli sandwiches, in plastic clamshell packs that were turned sideways and pushed through the bars. Plus bottles of water. I drank my water first and refilled the bottle from the tap. My sandwich was salami and cheese.

Finest meal I ever ate

At seven o’clock they took Jacob Mark away for questioning. No restraints. No chains. Theresa Lee and I sat on our cots, about eight feet apart, separated by bars. We didn’t talk much. Lee seemed depressed. At one point she said, ‘I lost some good friends when the towers came down. Not just cops. Firefighters, people that I had worked with. People that I had known for years.’ She said it as if she thought those truths should insulate her from the craziness that came afterwards. I didn’t answer her, Mostly I sat quiet and re-ran conversations in my head. All kinds of people had been talking at me. For hours. John Sansom, Lila Hoth, the guys in the next room. I was running through what they had all said, the same way a cabinet maker runs his palm over a length of planed wood, looking for the rough spots. There were a few. There were strange half-comments, odd nuances, little off-key implications. I didn’t know what any of them meant. Not then. But knowing that they were there was useful in itself.

At seven thirty they brought Jacob Mark back and took Theresa Lee away in his place. No restraints. No chains. Jake got on his cot and sat cross-legged with his back to the camera. I looked at him. An inquiry. He gave a millimetric shrug and rolled his eyes. Then he kept his hands in his lap, out of sight of the camera, and made a gun with his right thumb and forefinger. He tapped his thigh and looked at mine. I nodded. The dart gun. He put two fingers down between his knees and held a third in front and to the left. I nodded again. Two guys behind the table, and the third to the left with the gun. Probably in the doorway to the third room. On guard. Hence no restraints and no chains. I massaged my temples and while my hands were still up I mouthed, ‘When are our shoes?’ Jake mouthed back, ‘I don’t know.’

After that we sat in silence. I didn’t know what Jake was thinking about. His sister, probably. Or Peter. I was considering a binary choice. There are two ways to fight something. From the inside, or from the outside. I was an outside type of guy. Always had been.

At eight o’clock they brought Theresa Lee back and took me away again.