End of Secrets (15 page)

FIFTEEN

Across the street from the entrance to the Empire Hotel, a small park sprung up between the colliding six-lane slabs of Broadway and Columbus like a blade of grass that had slithered through a crack in the sidewalk. Kera sat on a park bench and watched limousines and taxis glide up to the curb in front of the hotel. Across Columbus, the fountain in Lincoln Center Plaza danced, backlit by the giant chandeliers of the opera house.

She felt completely in the dark without HawkEye. Every fifteen minutes Jones sent her a text to say that Charlie Canyon was still at work. An hour passed. She stood up and walked the short perimeter of the park and then sat back down. Another half hour passed. When her phone buzzed to life, she sat up, alert.

“He just left the office,” Jones said. “H
e’s
on foot, headed north on Broadway. That should give you about seven minutes.”

Two minutes later Kera stepped off the elevator and onto the top floor of the Empire Hotel. By now it was after ten, and the crowd leaning into the bar was two deep. There were three bartenders. One of them was Erica. “Chardonnay?” Erica asked, remembering. Kera took the glass of wine and sat on a bench of low cushions that wrapped around a cocktail table. From there she had a view of both the door and the bar.

Charlie Canyon entered alone. He was shorter than sh
e’d
imagined, but he had a commanding presence, in subtler ways, to make up for it. He wore a black shirt, dark jeans, and a black leather jacket. When he crossed the room he moved confidently, his shoulders square, his eyes steady. Kera looked down. She texted Jones to say she had established visual contact.

Canyon made his way to the far end of the bar. As he did, Kera shifted her gaze back to Erica in time to see the moment when she spotted him. Dispatching the customer at hand, Erica approached Canyon with a smile and made him a drink he had not ordered. After a short exchange, she returned to her other thirsty, paying customers. Charlie Canyon did not appear to be self-conscious about standing alone in a bar on a Friday night, and this gave Kera hope that he was waiting for someone. She kept an eye on him and on the door, all the while pretending to be busy on her phone, which she hoped would lessen the chance that sh
e’d
be approached by some tipsy banker or lawyer. She loaded the Gnos.is home page and scrolled through the top stories. The Tribeca mural was still trending, although now vivid images of the mural were displayed side by side with photos of the whitewashed wall.

At ten thirty a new bartender relieved Erica, who disappeared for fifteen minutes. When she reemerged, her maroon shirt and bartende
r’s
vest had been traded in for a skirt and knee-high boots. She joined Canyon in the corner at the end of the bar. Kera watched them closely. They spoke; Erica laughed a few times. Canyon checked his watch. Their alliance appeared friendly but unromantic. They did not interact with anyone around them, nor did they seem to be waiting for anyone else. Kera thought about trying to move in closer to hear what they were saying, weighing that opportunity against the risk that Erica might notice her loitering nearby.

She never got the chance. As soon as sh
e’d
made up her mind to move in, Charlie Canyon looked directly at her. The eye contact lasted only an instant, far shorter than many of the random, curious glances that pass between men and women at a bar like this on a Friday night. But Kera, who felt the fine hairs lift between her shoulder blades and on her neck, was certain it had been deliberate. Erica was standing with her back to Kera in such a way that Canyo
n’s
face was visible just over her right shoulder. Erica had said something to him, then Canyo
n’s
eyes shifted suddenly, met Ker
a’s
, and then swept away. A few moments later, the two of them made a move for the door, Canyon guiding Erica through the crowd with a firm hand on her lower back. Neither of them glanced once in Ker
a’s
direction.

She was on her feet the moment they disappeared into the elevator. She rushed through the crowd and, instead of waiting for an elevator, pushed through the heavy door to the stairs. She descended all fifteen flights two steps at a time, cornering with her inside hand anchored hard against the railing. With her other hand, she extracted a wireless earpiece from her pocket and called Jones by voice command. He answered just as she emerged from the hotel.

“Which way?” she asked, looking up at the camera. He did
n’t
miss a beat, as if h
e’d
been sitting there watching the feed the entire time.

“Uptown. Toward the Sixty-Sixth Street subway.”

She spotted them on the crosswalk at Sixty-Fifth Street.

“Wha
t’s
the plan here, Kera?”

“I do
n’t
know yet. For now I just want to see where the
y’r
e headed.”

“Kera, you heard the director. W
e’r
e supposed to be finding missing people, not tailing Canyon while he goes barhopping on a Friday night, which, by the way, I can do from right here.”

“W
e’v
e been tracking him with HawkEye for a week and i
t’s
gotten us nowhere. I want to get close.” She knew she should have told Jones that Canyon might have made her at the bar. But she did
n’t
.

She kept a half block between them until they descended into the subway station. Kera swept her Metro card at the turnstile in time to see them cross under the tracks and head up the stairs toward the downtown platform. An express train exploded through the station with a force that rattled her brain. When she reached the platform, she searched in both directions, finally spotting Erica leaning over the tracks to get a look up the tunnel. Kera edged closer, taking cover behind a group of Juilliard students. She wanted to be no more than one car ahead of Canyon and Erica when their train came.

On the opposite platform, a bum played a flute, its woody notes echoing off the tile walls in unflattering pools of sound. Finally, another rumble, low at first, then piercing, and the headlights of a downtown 1 swung into view. Kera waited for Erica and Canyon to disappear through the doors before she boarded the adjacent car. Through the smudged windows, she could see Erica sitting midcar, her head thrown back against an ad for the new Jalen West album. Canyon was standing in front of her, leaning against a vertical bar.

“
I’m
on a downtown 1,” Kera said in a low voice.

“I can see that,” Jones said in her ear.

She glanced up. There was a camera at each end of the car.

“Perfect. How
’b
out letting me know when it looks like the
y’r
e about to bail.” Kera turned her back and sunk down in her seat so that she was
n’t
visible through the windows between cars.

After Twenty-Eighth Street, Jones told her that the girl was standing up. “The
y’r
e getting off at Twenty-Third,” he said thirty seconds later. Kera stepped through the doors at the last second and shuffled streetward, spotting them just before they disappeared into the city at the top of the stairs. She picked them up again aboveground and allowed some distance to open as she followed them west. They were headed into the industrial blocks adjacent to the West Side Highway.

“All right, Kera, how far are you planning to take this? You know I do
n’t
have eyes on you once you get past Ninth Ave.”

“All the more reason for me to stay on them.”

Though it had
n’t
achieved any special reputation for crime, this part of town was abruptly darker and quieter than the arteries of Chelsea that throbbed with nightlife only a few blocks to the east. She wondered briefly if she should stop. She tossed a wary glance back at Eighth Avenue before hurrying across the street to keep Erica and Canyon in sight.

Jone
s’s
voice was in her ear again. He seemed to have accepted that she was
n’t
turning back. “What do you see?”

Kera stopped.

“Hang on,” she said. It was quiet enough to whisper now and still be heard. Erica and Canyon had disappeared midblock. They were no longer in front of her. They had traversed the island to within earshot of the West Side Highway, and now suddenly, Kera was alone. She stepped across the street, slowing as she came even with a door she thought they might have entered and then finding cover in the shadows of a construction site.

“Wha
t’s
going on?” Jones wanted to know.

“I lost them outside a building on Twenty-Second. It looks like an auto body shop.” A pale orange fluorescent light flickered and buzzed over an aluminum door set into a brick wall soiled by layers of graffiti.

“W
e’l
l check it out tomorrow, OK? Do
n’t
go in there alone.” It went without saying that they could
n’t
call for backup on an unauthorized tail. Gabby had been clear: no NYPD, no Feds. Jones was right. The only reasonable thing to do was to hustle back to Tenth Avenue where she could flag down a vacant cab. Then she could come back during business hours and get a good look at the place. She sat thinking for a minute, hoping a better plan would come to her.

A figure approached on a bicycle. Kera watched from the shadows, intending to let the cyclist pass before making a break for more civilized streets. But the cyclist hopped the opposite curb and braked to a stop at the corner of the brick building. It was a young woman—Kera noted the ponytail under the cyclis
t’s
baseball cap as she dismounted, locked her bike to a chain-link fence, and entered the building through the aluminum door. Kera exhaled, unaware sh
e’d
been holding her breath.

“Kera?” Jones said.

Punches of laughter burst from down the block in the opposite direction. She turned to see two young men spilling out of a cab at the corner, walking toward her. They crossed the street and disappeared into the building. Like the woman on the bike, they had
n’t
used a key to get in. The door was unlocked.

“
I’m
going in.” She felt her legs carrying her across the street.

“Kera—”

“And
I’m
getting off the phone. I ca
n’t
be seen with this earpiece.
I’l
l call you when
I’m
out.” She hung up before Jones could protest. And with a quick, right-left glance to check that the street was clear, she reached for the doorknob.

She found herself in a near blackness defined solely by two opposing exit signs. The room was large. She smelled car oil and dusty concrete. Over the sound of her own heart came another noise, another rhythmic thump, which took her a moment to understand was a bass line. The music drifted from an opening somewhere on the far side of the room. She squinted, impatient for her eyes to adjust. Gradually, she discerned the outlines of what appeared to be a large garage housing a half-dozen taxi cabs in various states of disrepair.

Then she noticed the painting.

The canvas hung over an open doorway directly across the room. Dark red, blue, and green brushstrokes swirled around a darker core resembling, she thought, either the Milky Way or a human eye decorated with heavy makeup. Kera moved toward the painting, stepping silently between two cabs. The thump of the music grew louder, and she could feel the driving beat tickle the concrete underfoot. Her senses worked double-time, taking things in, identifying them, entering them into the matrix that informed her decision to keep going or to retreat. She picked up cigarette smoke, fragments of a garbled conversation. She kept moving. The voices grew louder. There were people just around the corner—two female voices and a male voice. They were discussing Background Noise Pollution, which had to be the name of a band or else their conversation was completely unintelligible.

She peered through the threshold. The smokers were standing on a steep stairwell that disappeared beneath the garage. The guy, spotting her, waved a casual welcome and then returned to his discussion. Kera nodded as she squeezed by and started down the steps, descending farther into the building as if sh
e’d
been invited.

She entered a cavernous basement space that made no sense in the context of the grungy auto shop overhead. The wall through which sh
e’d
entered was exposed, rust-colored brick. The remaining walls were constructed of smooth concrete. They all featured wide, floor-to-ceiling paintings that matched the style of the piece over the doorway upstairs. In one corner a short-haired DJ spun dance music from an elevated booth. A keyboard and drum set rested on a platform extending from the far wall. Two bars stocked with liquor were arranged between flickering tea candles.

Kera moved along the edge of the room, getting a feel for the space while she considered the paintings. The van Gogh swirls gave them life, but it was not clear what they were meant to depict. At first she thought she was looking at human features. But the longer she looked at them, the more abstract the paintings became. They seemed to mock scale the way a picture of the inside of an atom can at the same time look like an unbound galaxy.