The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams (17 page)

I kept driving. Circled
around two blocks and came up in front of the Executive Center
again. No place to park. Tough shit. I double parked right in front
of the building. If I got a ticket, I’d charge it to
work.

Still hot outside. It felt
like the earth was on fire. I hit the lobby and took the first
elevator up. Fifth floor. The plants, the paintings, the boredom. I
went into the stairwell at the far end, waited with the door open a
crack just like the first time.

Why would Georgiana be
going back to the Trident office? What the hell was in there?
Didn’t know, but I was gonna find out. Even if I had to break in
there later, I was gonna find out.

Waiting, waiting. Weird
moment: I thought it was raining. For a few dreamlike seconds I
thought a soft summer drizzle was falling in the stairwell. It felt
like I was standing in a gentle June rain.

Ding.
The elevator slid open. Georgiana and Marco stepped out,
started walking away from me. They passed the potted plants, the
restrooms, heading to the other end of the hallway. Going the same
way they must’ve gone before, like they were fated to go that way,
like they were caught in some eternal replay.

Then something went wrong.
In two seconds it all went wrong. They didn’t go to Trident. They
went next door instead, to the suite of doctors’ offices, to the
same place we’d taken Wooly.

So much for
my
psychic
ability.

I just stood in the
stairwell. It was all too much. This whole fucking town with its
myths and mysteries and secrets and legends. I wasn’t losing it.
I’d
lost
it.

I took the stairs
down—needed to walk. I’d been so sure Georgiana was going back to
where she’d been, back to where I’d seen her…

But wait. I stopped on the
fourth floor landing. I hadn’t actually
seen
her go into the Trident office.
I remembered it now. She’d come out of the ladies’ room and Marco
had started taking her back to that end of the hall, but then a
woman and a boy got off the elevator—I’d had to duck back and just
listen. I was counting their steps when the boy began whining and
his mother was telling him to keep quiet. Could the noise have
screwed my hearing and my timing? Could I have miscalculated the
number of steps they’d taken? Shit, I sure could have. Meaning
Georgiana never had anything to do with Trident or Monte Slater—it
was just a coincidence that Monte was suing Wooly. Was that
possible?

Yeah, it was very
possible.

I kept walking down.
Third-floor realization: If God had ever made a bigger fool than
me, I didn’t want to know about it. One consolation: My strange
little premonition had been right. Georgiana
had
returned to the first place
she’d gone.

But that left another
question. Second-floor thought: Who goes to the doctor twice in
four days? You don’t do that unless you’re sick, or have an
unhealthy attraction to the medical profession. Was something wrong
with Georgiana? Or was there something in that office she badly
needed?

By the time I hit the
bottom floor, I felt like I was back to where I was when I’d walked
in. My original instinct, I believed, hadn’t been off. Something
kept bringing Georgiana back here. Something was going in this
building.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

TUESDAY JUNE 19, 5:30
p.m.

YOUR FINGER UP YOUR
ASS

Wooly didn’t sound good on
the phone. Lot of fractured thought going on, lot of Howard Hughes
rambling. Plus he had the TV blasting. I asked why. He said the
sounds of the woods outside were really getting to him, crawling in
the house, throwing him off, so he’d pushed the volume all the way
up.

Like I said, long
day.

I told him to turn it
down, we needed to talk, what was going on? Simple, he
said—
blood will stream across the
earth
. He couldn’t get away from it. He’d
tried to take a nap but he could feel Georgiana thinking inside his
head.

Good opening. I told him
what I’d seen, what I’d
really
seen, Georgiana going to one of those doctors on
Friday and again today. Could he describe the office to
me?

Well, sure. He answered
every question I had. Where was his doctor located? How about the
other doctors? Where were the exam rooms? And those charts and
folders that’d been piling up on the front counter—where did they
get filed? Where were the filing cabinets?

Hold on
, he said.
Hold on one sec. Why’re
you asking?

I told him: I was breaking
in there tonight. I’d checked the building before I left, found a
rear door off the lobby, studied the make of the lock and the
wiring on the alarm system. I also remembered something I’d seen in
the waiting room—a security keypad on the wall by the
door.

Wooly was dubious.
You know, it’s a good thing to check your
prostate. But sticking your finger up your ass is not the way to
go.

“I’ve already made up my
mind.”

Just seems a little
reckless is all.

The pot calling the kettle
black maybe should’ve been taken as a warning sign, but I passed it
over.

And what if it goes south?
What if you get caught?

“I’ll try not
to.”

But what about
ME?

“What
about
you?”

I don’t need you busted. I
need you to be here to help protect me. And what’s with you and
Nickie? How come you’re not here?

“We’re having a
disagreement.”

Lovers’
quarrel?

I guess I should
show
some
respect
for her privacy. “Something like that. Just tell me more about the
office.”

I already told
you.

“Tell me everything you
can.”

I don’t know, it’s nice
enough, I guess. Only thing I don’t like about it, there’s no
bathroom for the patients. It’s like primitive. You got to go out,
in the hall.

“I know.”

I had to give a urine
sample one time? I’m walking across the hall, careful not to spill
my cup, this asshole comes tearing out the door…

>>>>>>>>>>>>

TUESDAY JUNE 19, 11:45
p.m.

THE JUMP

Casual stroll past the
front of the Executive Center. All glass, lit from within—no
problem seeing the two people in the lobby. A woman in a baby blue
uniform was mopping the floor near the front door. A security guard
was sitting at the information desk, reading the paper and
earnestly picking his nose. He was doing some major excavation on
his nostrils. Stay busy, my friend.

The side street led into
the alley that ran along the building’s back. Dark, narrow, lined
with dumpsters. Did Jen troll here? I made my midnight creep—or my
15-minutes-before creep—to the rear door. Even with no light I
could see the slight tremble in my hands. I was really going
through with this, right? I took five slow breaths and looked up.
My estimation: There were 9,000 stars in the sky and at the moment
they all seemed to be revolving around this building.

Fuck the sky.

I dipped into the backpack
and took out my pick gun. The back door lock was a dead bolt,
usually a pain in the ass to open, but I already knew the make and
model from my afternoon trip. I’d already stuck the right pick in
the gun.

The thin metal rod slipped
nicely into the lock. I triggered the gun and wrapped my hand
around it as it vibrated, trying to muffle the noise. Few seconds
of this, turning the gun as it vibed, I could feel the pins inside
the lock push up past the shear line.

I tried the door, felt the
bolt slide, then stepped inside and softly closed the door. For the
count of two seconds I stood and listened. Nothing. I wasn’t in the
sight lines of the security guard or the cleaning woman, which was
good because I had exactly 13 seconds to work. There’s usually a
15-second gap between the time a security current is broken and the
time the alarm goes off. This gives you a few moments to reset the
system, assuming you belong here, or in the case of this building
it gives the guards a few moments to make a quick check of the
alley.

I pulled out a fine little
thing called an electric jump. It looks like a cell phone with a
pair of electrodes. Once you attach the electrodes to the wiring of
a security system, like I was doing right now, the thing creates an
electromagnetic field that keeps the current flowing. It
jumps
over the break
you’ve made in the system. Emergency response teams use it a
lot.

The only downside: It
doesn’t last long. It can only fool the system for about 20
minutes. I say
about
because the amount of jump time varies from system to system,
and I had no idea what this system could hold. I checked my watch.
All I knew was, I had to be out of here by 12:05 the
latest.

I started moving into the
lobby. First impression: It was warm. They’d turned the a.c. way
down for the night. Sticking close to the walls, I edged into a
full view of the lobby. The cleaning woman was wringing her mop out
in her rolling pail. The guard was dozing at the desk, knocked out,
evidently, by all his finger work. I headed for the stairs, walking
in a slow semi-crouch and making no noise whatsoever

The stairwell was
stifling. There was zero a.c. pumping through here. Cheap bastards.
I took the steps with care, conscious of each time my feet patted
the cement.

No problem until the third
landing. I heard a noise below—a door opening, somebody talking,
metal wheels. The cleaning woman was parking her pail in the
stairwell. She must’ve been saying something to the guard, telling
him
yeah, yeah
.
Her words echoed up the cement walls.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was
like the fucking Beatles.

The door closed. Silence.
As I kept climbing, I realized I was already wet with
sweat.

Half minute later I was on
the fifth floor. I headed down the hall, feeling some small drafts
of air, remembering that this was where I’d walked with Monte
Slater, watched him slapping himself and saying
there are ALWAYS obligations that have to be
paid
.

I went past his door and
the doctors’ offices. I needed to check the street outside, make
sure I hadn’t fucked up and set off a silent alarm. I walked to the
glass wall at the end of the hall and looked down. Nothing. No cop
cars pulling up, no security vehicles rushing to the
curb.

Just a guy standing across
the street.

Five stories up in the
night I couldn’t get a clear look at him. His clothes were dark,
that I could see, but I couldn’t make his face out. Was he wearing
a ski mask? He was standing in a spill of light, glancing over at
the building and pacing, then standing still, then pacing again
like he was waiting for something or like he couldn’t make up his
mind. Now he was pulling a cell out of his pocket and staring at
the building while he made a call.

My hands went cold, and
the shaking ran from a spot deep in my brain to the bottom of my
feet.

The fuck was going on? Had
somebody followed me here? What
Third
Man
shit was this?

I checked my watch. No
time to find answers now. I’d already lost a minute I’d never get
back.

I bent down at the
doctors’ door. The lock, shit, it was a tubular lock—the pins
inside were positioned all the way around the circumference of the
cylinder plug. Not a piece of cake. My heart was beating so hard I
was sure the sound was echoing in the stairwell and tumbling down
to the lobby.

I tried different picks,
turning the gun, turning the gun, doing my best to stifle the
electric vibration. Two minutes into it I saw something move down
the other end of the hall. I saw something skitter along the
ground. My hand was already on the Glock when I realized it was a
dust bunny, blown along the floor by the minimal a.c.
drafts.

Two more picks and a whole
minute later, I felt a tiny click in the lock. When I stood up, the
sweat was rolling down my face like I’d been walking in
rain.

The door opened. Inside, I
fumbled for the keypad I’d seen that morning and I clipped it with
the electrodes from another jump. The waiting room was all dark
lumps, shapes edged in silver by the streetlights.

I made my way to the
windows. What was the guy doing now? Hard to say—he was gone. I
scanned the street. Nothing to see. Was this good news or bad? Had
he left or was he coming in after me?

Fuck. I felt out a path
through the waiting room and into the dark offices, following
Wooly’s directions, fighting the panic urges while ticking off the
seconds in my head.

It took a total of 73 of
them to get to the file cabinets. Flashlight, on low. I kept the
light in front of my body, blocking it from the window while I
studied the cabinet lock. A pin-tumbler—an easy one, thank you
Jesus. I gunned it carefully, staying alert for any noise, any
silvery click in the front door lock. I was ready to jump at any
sound out in the hall, out in the street, out in the
world.