First Class Killing (25 page)

“There’s one more thing, Harvey. Have you had any more conversation with the retired detective in Omaha?”

“No. Should I?”

“I think so. We need to look more closely at this Robin Sevitch murder.”

Chapter

29

I
CALLED
F
ELIX FROM THE CAR ON THE WAY TO
Monica’s. With the reintroduction of Felix to my life, I’d had to rearrange the turbo-dialing buttons on my cell phone. Felix’s number replaced the Majestic Airlines reservations line. The last electronic vestige of my association with my old airline got bumped down to regular speed dial.

“Hey, Miss Shanahan.”

“Hi, Felix. I’m just checking in. How are things?”

“I had an emergency at the airport. The bag belt broke down, and I had to go in and fix it.”

“We agreed that your airport job takes priority.”

“I know, but it shouldn’t be so much trouble, you know? The problem is, it’s such a lame program. It breaks down all the time. I’m working with the manufacturer to get some of the bugs out. It wasn’t designed to handle variable workload, which is really kind of useless when you think about the fact that it was built for an airline, an operation with variable schedule
and
variable workload. It needs to be run against dynamic—”

“Felix.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Have you had any progress on the case?”

“I’ve been looking around Mr. Margolies’s hard drive, and I found a couple of other bits and pieces related to that video. The one with—well, you know. Ohmygosh, Miss Shanahan. That was really something. Do you know that lady?”

I had to pause for a smile. Felix’s outsized competence made him seem so mature, it was hard to remember how young he was. He had hormones that raged like any kid barely out of high school.

“She had her clothes on when I met her.”

The red taillights were lined up for blocks down Commonwealth. “Hold on a second, Felix.” I put the phone down and cut across two lanes so I could turn, take Storrow, and miss the lights. That put me in a long line of left-turners but gave me plenty of time to listen.

“Go ahead, Felix. Did the bits and pieces tell you anything?”

“Just that he uses a lot of layers and misdirection. But I already knew that.”

“You said ‘he.’ You don’t think Monica could have sent it?”

“Well, I’m not saying she couldn’t have. I mean, she could be a hacker, too, that lady in the video. The hacker could be a she, is what I’m saying. Just because she looks the way she looks doesn’t mean…that would be sexist, right? To think that way would—”

“Felix.”

“Whoever he is, he’s the same person who set up that other site you sent me. The one using the reverse proxy server.”

“Wait a second. The guy who set up the scheduling site for Angel?”

“Him, yeah. I call him Web Boy because he’s like a super-hacker. Only he’s a dark force.”

“How do you know it’s the same person?”

“Because he left a fingerprint.”

“A fingerprint?”

“In the code. Hackers are like that. They like to sign their work, you know? For other hackers who know what to look for.”

“I’ll be damned. That means Angel’s Web master is in on this blackmail scheme.”

“Same fingerprints on both the Web site and Mr. Margolies’s stuff, basically. Only I don’t think he was as careful with the video program as he was with the site. If we could find the e-mails that came with it, I could probably tell you who it is.”

“Or”—this was starting to feel significant—“if we could find Monica, then we might be able to get to the Web guy through her. What did you call him?”

“Web Boy, the Dark Hacker.”

As distinct from Felix, the Boy Genius. I liked that. “Maybe Web Boy is the one who catalogues all of Monica’s videos.” Which meant both of them would have something to hide from Angel.

“He could be.”

My light had been green for a while, but the traffic wasn’t moving. When it finally loosened up, it was just enough to get me all the way up to the front of the line, where I was hitting the gas as the yellow light turned red again. I slammed on the brakes and sat back to wait through another cycle.

“Anything else, Felix?”

“Not so far.”

“Good job. Keep working on finding Web Boy. I’ll work on finding Monica.”

It had taken me longer than it should have to find Monica’s address. To its credit, the airline wasn’t too forthcoming with personal details about employees, even to other employees. If Tristan had been speaking to me, it would have been a snap to get it, but instead I had to go through Dan, who knew a Majestic flight attendant who was dating an OrangeAir flight attendant who sneaked it out of the system for me. I had tried to call Tristan several times since the disastrous dustup at the limo. He wouldn’t return my calls. Irene said to give him time. I knew her mainly through Tristan, so I had really lost them both. I missed them. I pictured the two of them on an overnight, sitting on a patio somewhere, perhaps in the Caribbean, having dinner alfresco under a softly swaying palm tree. That sounded a lot better than what I was doing.

No one had answered Monica’s buzzer in her North End building. None of the neighbors knew where she was, so I was climbing the fire escape to her third-floor unit, hoping she was in the habit, as I was, of leaving a window open. It was the right time of year for it. I didn’t think she was hiding in there, but I thought there might be something that would point me in her direction.

The fire escape was tucked into a vertical culvert behind one building and between two others. That and the fact that I had a flashlight were the only reasons I had the guts to climb up there. I crept past the window of the first-floor unit. The guy on the second floor was watching a baseball game. Was it a playoff game or the Series? I couldn’t believe I had lost track. When he got up and left the room, I tiptoed past his window and continued my climb.

When I got to Monica’s window, I found that she was not in the habit of leaving hers open. Or unlocked. That was inconvenient, as was the fact that she had not left on a single light in the place. It was pitch-black in there, worse still because of the outdoor floodlight shining from the building across the alley. Holding my flashlight up to the glass, I blocked off the space around my eyes and peered in. I could just barely make out the silhouettes of a couch and a television and a chair and—

My head snapped back, I lost my balance, and careened back against the railing. The base of my flashlight hit an iron strut and flipped over the side.

A man’s face had materialized directly in the beam of my flashlight, our noses separated by little more than the thickness of the glass. At least I thought it had. It was gone, and now so was my flashlight. It hit the pavement below with a heavy, muted pop. I looked down. I heard tapping. I looked back. The face was there, back in the window, looking even more ghostly in the reflected light from the neighboring building. A cadaverous smile formed and I knew what he was tapping with even before my eyes could register the image. I knew it was a gun. I knew he was tapping the glass with the barrel of his gun.

I lurched toward the stairs and stumbled down. I tried to yell, but anything that took energy away from getting down the stairs was taking too much. Halfway down, I heard the ghoul’s footsteps on the landing. I felt the structure shake. He had climbed through the window. He was coming down the fire escape behind me.

Holding tight to the railing, I took the last set of stairs in two giant leaps. When I hit the ground, I wanted to go right, to head for my car, but he was too close. I could never get to the Durango, get it unlocked, get in, start it…
try something else.

I turned left. All I knew of the North End was a few Italian restaurants, the Old North Church, and endless narrow, winding streets and alleys. It would be easy to get lost, or maybe lose him. When I emerged from the alley, I turned toward the sound of cars moving, toward where I thought there would be restaurants and liquor stores and people on the sidewalks.

I heard the scratchy sound of a walkie-talkie. It was in front of me…no, behind. I looked back. The ghoul had made the corner. He was still coming, holding a device, shouting into it. But his voice was coming out…somewhere else. I twisted back around, searched the street, and spotted him. A second man stepped out of a doorway half a block down and looked around until he caught sight of me. He wore a suit, a pinstriped blue suit with a vest, which struck me in that moment of absolute adrenaline overload as weird. He was also squeezing a walkie-talkie, and I realized he’d been standing in front of Monica’s building. I had made a loop back to her front door.

Now he was coming, too, and I took off. He had turned me around, away from the lights, and I was going the other way along a dark and narrow sidewalk, up and down on the curb, around parked cars and parking meters until I came to an opening. It was a yard, a way to get off the street and out of their sight. Then I was through it and into an open field, and I was running flat out again. It was a relief to have the space to move, and at the same time I was thinking if I could see ahead, they could see me. I thought I was going toward the harbor, toward the water, because of the vast stretch of darkness ahead. But a chain-link fence with orange reflector signs came up fast and I knew I was completely off course. It wasn’t the water I had run to. It was a construction zone, a massive construction zone. I had stumbled upon the Big Dig, the world’s biggest road project. With no one around, it looked a lot like the far side of the moon. Only instead of craters and mountains, there were backhoes and wheelbarrows, cement pillars and exposed cables and large mud basins where rainwater had collected.

I didn’t want to go in there, but they were coming. The ghoul, tall and bony, was out front. The other one lagged behind, his suit coat flapping behind him.

I looked for any sign of life. Security guard. Police cruiser. Someone armed would be good, because now they were shooting at me. A round pinged against a metal container a few feet away. I resisted the urge to drop to the ground and roll into a fetal position and went instead up and over the fence. I couldn’t tell where the second round hit, but it got me moving. I crawled on my belly around a thicket of Do Not Enter signs, got to my feet, and lurched down a ramp and into a tunnel.

At first there was enough light for me to make my way. I could see to move easily among the piles of wood and the bags of cement. But very quickly, it got dark, and soon I was tripping over coils of cable and stumbling into bags of cement. I had to move more and more slowly until I was stopped.

“…dark…motherfucker…crazy bitch…”

“Keep…down here…spread out…”

They were in the tunnel with me.

I couldn’t find the direction of their voices. They seemed to be coming from all around. I reached out with both arms and shuffled along until my fingers connected with…machinery…a machine. Cold steel. Solid. I grabbed onto it and felt my way along until I found one of its tires. Okay, a tire I could visualize. I crouched beside it and listened. They were closer. How would they approach? One on each side? Both up the middle? If I could figure that out, I could go the other way…but what if I…what if they…
wait.
Where was the middle?

I no longer knew where the walls were. I had turned to listen to them and lost my bearings, and now I didn’t know which way to go, and my heart was flapping around my chest, and I seemed to be taking in more air than I could let out. My lungs were about to burst, and it had been a terrible mistake to come down here, because now I was trapped, and they had at least one gun, and I had to calm down.

I turned away and closed my eyes and made myself breathe. Listening to them was causing the panic. I had to make my own plan and that plan had to get me out. I was too scared in the dark. I leaned over with my hands on my knees and eyes closed and listened closely. I pointed myself to where I thought the voices were coming from. When I figured out where that was, I decided they were still behind me, which meant I had to find a way to get behind them.

I got down on my knees and felt along the ground. Nails? Too light. Gravel. Too small. Something hard. Heavy. A brick. A stack of bricks. Too heavy for what I needed.

A crash not far away. “Son of a
bitch.”

“Shut up. I can’t hear.”

“Like we’re going to find her in here.”

I crawled along the ground, using their noise for cover, feeling with my hands. There was something cold…aluminum or metal…cylindrical with a label. It was a can. Maybe a paint can. Two cans, each with a handle. Perfect.

I grabbed one, but when I reached for the other, I tipped it over and made it clatter. When I tried to catch it, I only managed to make it roll farther. They shouted to each other, and one of them began to drift in my direction. His footfall sounded like leather soles on pavement and I thought it might be the one in the suit. I stabbed at the darkness around me, trying to touch something, to find something to flatten against. I was out in the open, exposed. For all I knew, he would walk right into me.