End of Secrets (19 page)

NINETEEN

The warehouse was easy to spot. White light poured from two open loading doors, spilling onto the quiet street. A gaff truck backed up to the dock was being watched over by a bored PA wearing a headset and playing with his smartphone. He looked up at Kera, mildly curious as she stepped past him, but then he only nodded hello before returning to his phone. On her approach sh
e’d
counted three cameras with coverage of the street and sidewalks along the block. She spotted a fourth now, this one trained on the loading dock from a perch twelve feet up the buildin
g’s
exterior wall. She turned her face away from the camera as she passed beneath it and slipped into the warehouse.

For all the powerful lights, the shoot was a lean operation. A single camera sat on a cart at the center of the vast room, aimed at the minimalistic set. In the foreground a mattress bed lay on the floor beside a standing lamp. Next to these was a turntable. Behind the turntable, and suspended only a foot or two off the ground, was a massive, curving rack of stadium speakers, the kind sh
e’d
only seen hanging from the rafters at major concerts. Up close the speakers threw off the whole scale of the set. Behind them the background was cluttered with large, graffiti-tainted objects made of concrete and steel.

She did
n’t
see Canyon, but no one seemed suspicious of her presence, so she stayed out of the way and waited for him to appear. She watched a lighting crew at work on a platform high up the warehouse wall. Using lights and reflectors, they created white and blue shafts that added texture to the scene below. Two men and a woman approached the camera cart and stood behind it, fine-tuning the frame on a large monitor. A girl, her head clasped in a headset, began calling for people to find their places.

Charlie Canyon came through a doorway with two men, one shirtless in jeans, the other dressed in a casual jacket. The half-nude actor strolled onto the set, his bare torso glistening in the shafts of light as if h
e’d
been sweating. He stood at the turntable and put large headphones around his neck. A woman ran up to him and adjusted his jeans, pulling down the waist so that the denim seemed to hang there, precariously at the mercy of the contours of his hips. H
e’d
looked a little thin when he walked out, Kera thought, but in the stage lights, which threw shadows that carved out the muscles across his abdomen, chest, and shoulders, he looked like the live-action version of a magazine cover. Colorful concert lights began flashing and dance music boomed from a speaker system off camera. A half-dozen figures wielding cans of spray paint and wearing all black appeared in the background and went to work defacing things.

Someone called “rolling” and the busy crew settled. Canyon and the man in the jacket stood off to the side watching. The woman behind the monitor yelled “action” and the acto
r’s
body moved, feeling the beat. As the scene progressed, the graffiti artists advanced from background to foreground. They painted lines across the speakers and the bed and then, as the camera pushed in, across the acto
r’s
body.

Mesmerized by the production, it was a minute, maybe two, before Kera looked over again at Canyon. When she did her breath caught. He was staring at her, a sly grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

The director ended the take and barked a few crisp instructions at the crew, who began to set up the shot from a different angle. Kera waited until Canyon was alone before she crossed the room to him.

“Yo
u’r
e less predictable than I thought,” he said, smiling.

“It was
n’t
safe to talk on the phone. Do you have a second?” she started to say, but Canyon put a hand on her upper arm to turn her toward the actor, who had come up behind them.

“Kera, this is Daryl Walker, my star client.”

“Hi. That wa
s . . .
what
is
all this?” she said, indicating the set.

“W
e’r
e shooting a commercial,” Canyon said.

Kera looked at Daryl Walker. He had a sturdy, stubbled jawline and walnut hair. If anything, it was his eyes, marbled green and brewing with a mix of earnestness and confidence, that elevated him from the merely attractive. She meant to direct the question to his face, but when she spoke her eyes had lowered to his abdomen. “For what?”

“Fashion. Jeans,” Walker said, giving himself a playful pat on the ass. He walked away and disappeared through the door where sh
e’d
seen him enter.

“The designer is over there. He goes by X.” Canyon pointed at the man in the jacket.

“Tha
t’s
his name? X?”

“Tha
t’s
his brand. They are one and the same.”

Kera smiled politely. “
I’m
sorry to interrupt you here. I do
n’t
think this will take long. I only have a few questions.”

“Have you figured it out yet?” he said.

She had rehearsed a few questions she wanted to ask him first, but his words threw her. “Wait. Why did you say that—that phrase?”

He shrugged, revealing a sly grin. “I
t’s
just a saying. I think i
t’s
growing on me.”

“It does
n’t
make any sense.”

“Lighten up,” he said and then changed the subject. “Did you mean that the phone was
n’t
safe for you or for me?” he asked.

“I think speaking in person is better for both of us. How did you know about
America
? That the studio would pull out at the last minute?”

“Oh, that. When you see the film, yo
u’l
l understand.”

“I guess now I wo
n’t
get that chance,” she said.

He shrugged. “I would
n’t
be so sure. Natalie Smith is
n’t
the kind of woman who backs down from a fight. That stubbornness is both a strength and a weakness when it comes to her career.”

Kera did
n’t
know what he meant by that, and she was mildly curious, but she had
n’t
come here to talk about Natalie Smith. She pulled her tablet from her shoulder bag and turned it on, angling the screen so that Canyon could see. She began swiping through the head shots. “I do
n’t
know how to preface this. I assume these people are familiar to you?” Canyon stared at the screen. For the first time, Kera felt the sensation of having the upper hand on him. “Charlie?”

“Yeah. They look familiar.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Acquaintances.” He touched her arm and guided her underneath a flight of metal stairs that led to a loft overlooking the room. Apparently, he did
n’t
want anyone overhearing this conversation.

“Acquaintances? Nothing more than that?” she said. He looked at her, sizing her up, but did not respond. “Any idea where they are?”

He shook his head. “I do
n’t
think I can help you.”

“I think you can. Yo
u’r
e aware that these people are missing? They vanished.”

“
I’m
aware of that, yes.”

“And
I’m
aware that you met with them—
all
four of them—in the months before they disappeared. In fact, you were the only person to meet with all of them. And now the
y’r
e gone.”

“I do
n’t
understand. Are you accusing me of something?”

“Not necessarily. But now that I know yo
u’r
e capable of grand art theft, it occurs to me to ask.”

“That was
n’t
theft.”

“It was. But that is
n’t
the point. Forget the paintings.
I’m
asking you a simple question: Where did these people go?”

“Wh
o’s
asking?”

“I am.”

She saw his eyes lighten with interest. “Oh? Has this become personal for you?” he said.

“Four people are missing, people who you knew. Should
n’t
you care a little more about that?”

“You do
n’t
know a thing about what I care about.”

This was truer than Kera was willing to admit. Sh
e’d
watched Canyon virtually around the clock for two weeks, and the man was still a complete mystery to her.

The director called out to Canyon from across the warehouse floor. Kera thought Canyon might hold up a hand to indicate he needed a minute so that they could finish their conversation, but he just shrugged and smiled and said he needed to get back to work.

“What do you know about It?” Kera called after him. Canyon turned and flashed her an amused look, as if the
y’d
been playing a card game with quarters and sh
e’d
just dropped a few twenties into the pot.

“What?” he said.

“The artist they call It. What do you know about that?”

Canyon smiled. “You have an interesting story on your hands. I look forward to reading it.” And then he walked off.

“Hey, Charlie,” she called after him. He stopped and turned. “
I’m
going to find those people. Things will be easier for you if you help me.”

“W
e’l
l see.”

She watched him walk toward the director as a graffiti-coated Daryl Walker, now wearing only underwear, emerged flanked by the artists with their spray cans. Kera started across the room. She wanted to leave before they called rolling again.

She got as far as the loading dock when a movement from the darkness of the sidewalk caught her eye. Her feet stopped beneath her. The man had his hands in his pockets. His features clarified gradually as he approached and hopped up onto the loading dock in one fluid, athletic leap. A thought formed sharp in Ker
a’s
mind and dragged out over the next few moments like an echo:
here is Rafael Bolívar
.

Their eye contact was brief, but she was certain she had not imagined it. In an instant he was past her, and she could no longer see his face. She watched him stride into the warehouse and then, knowing he would not look back, she turned for the street.

TWENTY

“Two kilo alfa, you are clear for takeoff.”

The Hawker 900XP with four souls on board accelerated obediently down runway nineteen and tipped upward, nudging into the clear morning sky.

“Two kilo alfa, turn east heading zero eight five. Yo
u’r
e free and clear climbing to twenty-two thousand feet.”

“Copy that, Teterboro. Two kilo alfa is free and clear.”

The continent of North America sank from view until it was a flat, distant surface shooting west. When the aircraft banked east, the sight that loomed through the cockpit window was one of natur
e’s
most startling boundaries—not between earth and sky, but between land and sea. The abrupt, brown-to-blue exchange formed a continuous seam along the edge of the continent, like two puzzle pieces that interlocked perfectly even though the
y’d
come from different puzzles. Dwarfed by these tectonic features, the tiny fuselage glided across the seam eighteen thousand feet above the coast, and then there was only the Atlantic, ahead and below.

The flight data recorder, once it was recovered by the NTSB, clearly illustrated the sudden pitch, led by the nose, that occurred seven minutes later, and the subsequent, irrevocable dive. No further audio communication from the crew was recorded. The final words had already been spoken:
free and clear
.

Very soon after the steep dive, the remaining instruments went quiet, and then there was only the Atlantic, in every direction.

TWENTY-ONE

Kera was in the shower, her face taking the full force of the stream, when she heard Parker enter the bathroom and pull back the curtain. She finished rinsing her hair before she opened her eyes. Parker was standing before her, naked and smiling. He always smiled when he was naked. It had been one of the most comforting things about him when they started living together. In those first few months, when they made love, or did
n’t
, even as they just slept beside one another, he was never ashamed of his body or hers. Before and after sex, he would pad naked through the apartment, to the toilet, to get her a glass of water, always with an uncontainable smile on his face. It was a nervous, happy, vulnerable smile, one that made her feel less self-conscious.

He stepped into the shower and embraced her.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Call in sick.”

The way she smiled reflected the impossibility of that, but not in a way that rejected him. She put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. They kissed in the downpour until he shut off the water and led her, both of them dripping, back into the bedroom. They fell onto the bed.
I love you
, he whispered in her ear when his hips brought him as close as he could be to her.
I’l
l love you forever
.

Afterward, they lay for several minutes, their thoughts drifting apart in the silence. The night before, after speaking to Charlie Canyon at the commercial shoot, Kera had gone back to the office. It was late by then, late enough that even Jones was
n’t
there. The time stamp on her access record would show that she was in the Control Room from 2335 hours to just before midnight. She had never initiated a surveillance order in HawkEye, but sh
e’d
seen Jones do it for Charlie Canyon.

She had
n’t
been after information about either Jones or Canyon. When she keyed the final stroke, there was an odd beat of stillness on-screen, as if to signal that a point of no return had been eclipsed. In fact, it was nothing as philosophical as that. It was simply a staggering amount of data that the computer was processing. Tha
t’s
what it was: a stagger. The system staggered briefly under the computational weight of her inquiry, and then there it was. The HawkEye surveillance map for Rafael Bolívar.

She lay lazily in bed now, listening to the city outside the window. The city was awake and sunny. It was out of character for her to postpone the start of the day like this. She knew she had to get up. When she came out of the bathroom after a second shower, Parker was in bed with his tablet in his lap.

“ONE announced the acquisition of another company this morning,” he said.

“Wha
t’s
that, three this month?”

“Something like that. Their corporate mission is to destroy as many souls as possible.”

“Only the souls of the willing,” she said.

“Come on. Give people some credit.”

“ONE produces the kind of crap they produce not because the
y’r
e evil, but because it works.”

“Yo
u’r
e defending them. Are you feeling well? Maybe you should call in sick after all.”

She smiled. She was enjoying herself. “
I’m
not defending anyone. Just pointing out that the way people spend their free time and money is a choice.”

“Well, if ONE gets their way, there wo
n’t
be very many choices left.”

“What kind of company did they acquire?” Kera asked, getting dressed.

“I
t’s
a PR agency.
I’v
e never heard of them. AM + Toppe.”

Her face whipped toward him.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing. I just—I know someone who works there.” She walked from the bedroom to the kitchen table where sh
e’d
left her phone, but then decided that it was too risky to call Canyon with Parker in the next room. Sh
e’d
try him on her way to work.

“What are you doing?” Parker said in boxer shorts from the doorway of the bedroom.

“Is it possible we do
n’t
have any coffee in the apartment?” she said. She was standing before the open cupboard, staring hopelessly at cans of tomatoes and beans and boxes of sugar, macaroni, and baking powder.

“
I’l
l go get some,” he said.

“Do
n’t
be ridiculous.”

“Really, I can run down to Starbucks. Be back in under ten minutes.”

“Parker,” she said, but he had already disappeared back into the bedroom. “I can wait till I get to work,” she called after him. “I have to leave now, anyway.”

She opened the freezer. Nothing there but a blast of cool air. She shivered, feeling baffled and irritated by the way Parker attended to her. It was
n’t
just his insistence on this particular coffee errand, but the way he was in a more general sense—so reliable, so perfect. Had she given some indication that she expected this sort of treatment? She had not. And it made her more aware of the fact that she rarely reciprocated his displays of thoughtful behavior. She wondered briefly, before closing the freezer door and turning to go, whether this inequity had begun to forge a widening gulf between them, one that would only grow more challenging to bridge.

She dialed Charlie Canyo
n’s
extension from the street as she walked to the subway, expecting to leave a message with his secretary. He snapped up the phone himself on the second ring.

“Can you meet for a drink?” she asked.

“I
t’s
barely nine in the morning.”

“After work, I mean.”

“No. Not today,” Canyon said. “Have
n’t
you heard?”

“Just now. What happened?”

“Money. Power. Destruction. Same thing that happens every day in this city.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Some other time. This week is a wreck. Let me give you my cell.”

She noticed in his voice an instability that she had
n’t
heard before. She hung up and was swallowed into the subway station. The stairs were like the esophagus of a creature that was eating too quickly, a morsel or two shy of choking itself. And then she was in the train, the digestive tract, a mush of humanity barreling through the bowels of the beast. The interior of the car was walled with LED screens that had been sold, fifteen seconds at a time, to the highest bidder. Ads assaulted the captive audience frantically, tempting eyeballs with humor, fear, sex, and beauty. Kera tuned out all of this, as well as the thirty-second news report—sponsored by ONE—that monopolized the screens once every five minutes. The president was on a trip to South America. The stock markets were opening up. A private plane had just crashed into the ocean off the southern tip of Long Island.