Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover Page 11

  “What I was thinking was . . . I thought I’d circle around for ten minutes, give Gator time to clear out, and go back to the supermarket.”

  “Oh, for—that’s stupid.” I pulled the Beretta out of its box, the cool comforting weight of metal in my hand. With a gun cloth spread on my lap I started to strip it down.

  “What?”

  “She’s Brendt’s girlfriend. She’s been living with him for months. Brendt’s your friend too, for that matter.”

  “Naw. She’s just with him for his car.”

  “What?”

  “You saw her. Hell, a woman like that? And Brendt? There’s no way she’d—I mean, for her to voluntarily, like, it’d be motherfucking end times. The earth cracking open and flaming swords and hordes of angels cleansing the earth.”

  I paused, putting down the brass rod and brush I’d been screwing together, and looked at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Her and Brendt—that’s just wrong.”

  Okay, here’s what I was struggling with. On the one hand, it was clear that the attackers were after me—Dave was just a bystander, standing in the way when the Legion of Doom decided my time was up. So his shop, the police, God knows what other trouble down the road, it was all my fault. My responsibility. I couldn’t just toss him to the wolves.

  On the other hand, Dave’s approach to the world was, well, “oblivious” comes to mind, and what was I supposed to do? Fix every broken-winged bird in the world? Anyway, he’d probably be safer once I was gone, trailing the hounds in some opposite direction.

  The car bumped over a railroad crossing, Dave doing exactly what he was supposed to: stop, look both ways, continue.

  “Okay.” I finished reassembling the pistol and began loading its magazine. “Fine. Go make your play. You probably don’t want me hanging around though, right?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, maybe not.”

  “Because if I’m there, she’s not even going to look at you . . . how about you drop me somewhere?”

  “Where? The Alamo office?”

  I paused. “How’d you know I rented from them?”

  “Saw the key chain when you were driving yesterday. Big old plastic thing, it was hard to miss.”

  “Oh.” He was right, I did have to do something about the destroyed car, but not now. “No. I’ll just call them.”

  “Jake’s Breakfast, over by the tracks—they do a good sit-down lunch.”

  “Actually, how about downtown? Pittsburgh, I mean.”

  Dave frowned. “That’s like half an hour, each direction.”

  “The way you drive?” I set the Beretta aside and took the MP5 from the other sack. It had come off the pegboard and looked clean already. But I started breaking it down. “She’s on shift until four, she said. You have plenty of time.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” He was cheerful again. “Better to show up right when she’s clocking out, got the whole evening ahead.”

  Traffic was heavier now on commuter arteries aimed at the city: rural blacktop replaced by four lanes across a median, more and more businesses, tract developments dropped in here and there. Dave kept his speed reasonable, maybe because we’d left Clabbton.

  Two hours ago his life had been turned upside down—long-lost brother, house and business blown to rubble, armed attackers doing their damnedest to kill him and probably soon to try again. But all Dave could think about was a pretty girl he’d just met, and driving his car fast, and maybe getting a beer later.

  Zen Buddhists can spend their entire lives trying to release the burden of knowing, to achieve a pure and undistracted mindfulness, to live purely in the moment.

  Dave was already there. I kind of envied him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dave dropped me at Market Square in downtown Pittsburgh and I stood on the corner, watching him go. A street performer had set up on a raised, stage-like area in the middle of the brick plaza, stepping onto a slackrope he’d tied between a light pole and an iron fence. As a small crowd assembled, he tossed a machete in the air, then another, then was suddenly juggling three.

  I knew how he felt.

  I was glad to be out of the Charger, which was basically the Elsie of the roadways—every sentient being for ten miles around noticed it. When the juggler was done, I put a few dollars into his bag and walked five blocks to the Intercontinental.

  Nice hotel for a city I’d thought was no better than Detroit-on-the-Allegheny. But like I said, Pittsburgh seemed to be doing okay—clean streets, if a little empty, new buildings, parkland along the rivers.

  In the lobby I sat in an inconspicuous chair, half hidden by a low-glow lamp on an end table. A family with toddlers tossed coins into the atrium fountain. Businessmen strode through, not a single one wearing a tie, tapping at their cellphones. Some sort of convention going on in the mezzanine levels—people with tags hung around their necks flocked and chattered among the couches artfully arranged throughout the lobby.

  Nothing out of the ordinary.

  First things first. I found a floor phone that allowed local calls—800 numbers are almost always included—and rang the toll-free directory. I’d memorized the number as a matter of habit, but going through a 411 service instead and having them connect the call would sever the telco’s record back to this particular phone.

  “Thank you for calling Alamo, my name is Gina, how may I help you today?”

  When I explained that the car had been destroyed by terrorists, she didn’t seem at all surprised, just took down Chief Gator’s information and Dave’s address and about twenty other items, half of which I had to make up. Fortunately, I really had bought every single insurance option—it adds a few hundred dollars to the tally, but paperwork minimization is how I live. It all gets billed to the client anyway.

  Which made me think of Ryan. I’d left my phone on, but no calls, no messages, no texts.

  Not good.

  After the family left, I sat next to the fountain—nice sightlines across both the front entrance and the hallway behind the desk, and a pleasant rushing noise of falling water that would defeat most remote mikes—and called Zeke.

  “Her name’s Harmony.” To the point, as always.

  “What? Who?”

  “No bells?”

  “That name, I’d remember. Why?”

  “West Coast, apparently. Some guys heard of her in LA. Hard reputation.”

  Oh. “The team leader,” I said.

  “Right, coming out of your apartment.”

  “Harmony. That’s quite a name. What is she, the fifteenth Avenger?”

  “An alias?”

  “Sure sounds like it. So what’s her story?”

  “Some kind of military background, but who knows? That’s what everyone says. No bullshit, never fucks up, cold as ice—she sounds perfect.”

  “I’ll try to get you a date.”

  “That’s the thing about women—they have to be twice as good to get half the respect. She sounds . . . serious.”

  High praise, from Zeke. “And she’s what, trying to kill me?”

  “No idea. She matches the description, that’s all. But what they told me, her specialty is extractions.”

  “Well, fuck.” I felt my face grimace. “That’s just great.”

  “Yeah.”

  Because it was one thing if someone wanted me dead—it happens, right? The kind of work I do, solving problems, sometimes they decide I’m the problem. It’s all very unsubtle. But an extraction, shit, that meant they wanted to talk.

  No possible good can come from talking.

  “You need some help.” Zeke didn’t make it a question.

  “Thanks, but nah. She’s looking for me in New York, not here.”

  “So stay there.”

  “Things just got complicated.” I told him about the attack on Dave’s garage.

  “Shit, I’m sorry I missed that.”

  “I have to figure out what’s going on.”

  “What’s t
o figure? The Alpha Team didn’t find you here, the Beta Team tracked you down there.”

  “Maybe.”

  “At the garage—they saw you, right?”

  I thought about the siege. Ten thousand bullets. “I hope so.”

  “Huh?”

  “If it was random, this country’s in worse shape than I thought.”

  “There you go. They report in, Harmony and her professionals will be there on the next flight.”

  “They seemed pro to me, this morning.”

  “Three, you said? And you’re walking around?”

  Ha-ha. “I picked up a plate number. Can you run it down?”

  “Yeah.”

  I peeked in the paper sack that held the plate from the Nissan and read off the number.

  “Where’s the car now?”

  “In the junkyard. Or the police lot. Either way they’re done using it.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  I told Zeke about Dave—the short version. He knew about the letter already because I’d been sitting on it for so long.

  “Your brother.” He grunted. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “He drives very, very fast and very, very dangerously. He doesn’t seem to care that his shop was just blown to shit by armored assault. And at the moment he’s entirely focused on stealing away his best friend’s girl.”

  “Okay, I take it back.”

  “He’s on his own for now. I need to do some detecting, learn why the Anti-Justice League is suddenly all over my ass.”

  “I’ve got something going today,” Zeke said. “Another twenty, twenty-four hours. But as soon as that’s done, I’m coming out.”

  “You don’t have to.” Though it might be nice to have him around. I don’t like being completely on my own outside the wire.

  “I’d be there sooner, but you know.”

  “Yeah.” The kind of jobs Zeke does, he generally can’t drop things in the middle.

  “Where’re you staying?”

  “No idea. I’ll let you know.”

  “Try not to shoot anyone before I get there.”

  We hung up. Foot traffic through the lobby still seemed innocuous—tourists, expense accounts, staff in dark polyester uniforms. I bought a leather shoulder bag from the accessories shop next to the restaurant. In a bathroom stall I transferred the guns into it, wrapping them loosely in the paper bags so they wouldn’t rattle. Now I looked like a business traveler myself. A little tired, wanting to get home. Like they say, the best deceptions are the true ones.

  The Sig I reloaded and left in my belt.

  The concierge desk had a single staffer, and he was overwhelmed by a mob of the conference attendees—they all wore blue T-shirts, for some reason, waving tour brochures and chattering. The front desk had a clerk standing idle, though, so I went over there.

  “My flight got moved up,” I told the woman. “When’s the next airport shuttle?”

  She checked a sheet. “Fifty minutes. Would you like a ticket?”

  “Sure.”

  I sorted through the small amount of cash left in my wallet. Before I could hand it over, a man stalked up next to me, holding his plastic room card out to the desk clerk.

  “I need a new keycard,” he said, annoyance clear in his tone. He wore a pressed, open-collar oxford shirt untucked over blue jeans, with shined square-toe shoes. “This is the third one that’s stopped working.”

  “I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”

  “The third time!”

  “I’m sorry—” She reached for the money I was holding out, but the man actually pushed my arm aside and slapped his card into her hand.

  “You have to take care of this now,” he said.

  I could have snapped his elbow, thrown him to the floor and kicked him in the head. But confrontation would only attract attention, which I certainly didn’t need more of. Let the desk clerk remember the asshole, not me. I politely stepped aside.

  She looked at the card in her hand for a moment, then set it on the counter.

  “We’ve had some trouble with these,” she said. “They seem to be more sensitive to electronics.” Like the guy’s smartphone, I guessed, which he held in his other hand. “I’ll run a new one.” She looked him directly in the eye. “After I finish with the other gentleman.”

  He didn’t even glance my way. “Room four seventeen, and you need to do it right now. I’m late.”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  The woman hesitated, but she was smart enough not to escalate—Mr. 417’s fuse was obviously burning down fast. She smiled apologetically at me, took the card and clacked her keyboard.

  “Ingerson?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let’s see . . . there’s a charge for eighteen dollars and fifteen cents from last night. Three in-room movies?”

  Oh, that was well done. Ingerson glared. “Just give me a new card!”

  “Thank you.” She dropped the bad card in a drawer, swiped a new one through a reader connected to her computer and held it out. “Perhaps you’d like a spare as well?”

  “No.” He grabbed it and walked away.

  “Sorry about that,” she said to me.

  “No problem. Where’s the shuttle?”

  She handed me a card-stock ticket. “Should be here in about forty-five minutes, right out the front door. Have you already checked out?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Have a good day, then.”

  “What movies were they?”

  She laughed. “I think we can guess.”

  I returned to the lobby and looked for a discreet place to wait.

  I wasn’t leaving Pittsburgh, of course. Not now. Had the job gone normally, I would have returned the rental car, walked away and never thought twice.

  This job could no longer be described as normal.

  Staying in town meant that transportation was a problem. Back home, we have the subway and buses. Taxis. On-call limos. Illegal dollar vans. Bicycle rickshaws. Horse-drawn carriages! And most places, if you have to, you can just walk.

  But out in real America, you need a car. I didn’t want to rent a new one downtown, where the offices are small and customers few. Better to go back to the airport and again pretend I was an arriving air passenger.

  Which reminded me. I went back to the bathroom stall and studied the license and credit card I’d used for the Malibu. I admired the pair for a moment. Beautiful work: the holograms just right, nice crisp imprinting, and the photo of my face perfectly photoshopped, recognizable but just distorted enough to fool a facial-recognition scan.

  Walter had done them—he’s retired, but we’re old friends. Retired, I’m sorry to say, in part because of the same series of Wall Street killings that Clara had ridden to glory. When the bodies stopped falling, I was still standing, but not everyone I knew could say the same. Walter didn’t hold a grudge, though.

  And he really seemed to enjoy the bonefishing down in the Keys.

  I sighed, got out my Leatherman—another reason not to fly, because even the ¾-inch-blade micro models are usually confiscated—and cut the cards into plastic strips. After washing my hands, I dropped them into three different trash receptacles around the lobby. What a waste.

  And now I was going to have to blow another false identity to rent another damn car. But what could I do, ride a bicycle? Having Dave chauffer me around was an even worse option. Nope, nothing for it but to—

  Wait.

  I stopped and stood in the middle of the lobby. Brainstorm.

  I found the business center two flights up, next to the fitness room. Like I said, the Intercontinental was downtown Pittsburgh’s nicest hotel, and the center was overseen by a real person, not a series of automated card swipes.

  “My laptop broke,” I told her, trying to look like a harried long-haul salesman. “Can you set me up with some basic internet here?”

  “Certainly, sir. Would you like to charge it to your room?”


  “Please. Four-seventeen.”

  She tapped her computer. “Your name?”

  “Ingerson.”

  “Thank you.” More tapping. “I’ve activated station number two, on the left.” She pointed at a glass-fronted cubicle.

  “Is there a phone in there, by any chance? I hate making important calls on my cellphone—the voice quality’s terrible.”

  “Of course. Remember that long-distance is billed at hotel rates.”

  I smiled. “No problem, the company pays.”

  “Indeed.” She smiled back, and I let myself into my new office.

  I had my own phone, sure. And the hotel’s wifi was free. But for some tasks you just don’t want an electronic trail. The data aggregators keep track of everything nowadays—every keystroke, every site you visit, every interaction is captured and stored and analyzed.

  That sort of record keeping is detrimental to my lifestyle.

  Carpet, real-wood desk and credenza, a computer still smelling of fresh plastic—nice. It might even have been soundproofed, because a total hush descended as I closed the door. The woman was visible through the glass, her back to me, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

  A thirty-second search to see what Pittsburgh’s largest employers were. Alcoa, Heinz, 84 Lumber, USX—geez, it was like a hundred years ago, all these companies that made things—University of Pittsburgh . . . ah, here we go, Morgan Bancorp. Perfect. Lots of employees traveling on business, a nice large internal bureaucracy, and best of all, thanks to all those bank bailouts, lots and lots of money floating around.

  Another couple minutes got me some names of Morgan’s midranked executives. Not board members or C-level officers—too stratospheric. It helped that everyone and their cubicle mate was a vice president—that’s typical in financial services, if you didn’t know. Like an A- at Harvard.

  I dialed Morgan’s main number. “I’m trying to reach Jim Howell?”

  “One moment please.” Muzak while she switched me through.

  A man’s voice. “Jim Howell.”

  I hung up, and went to the next name on the list. Voicemail. I tried another.

  And so on. Finally, about the sixth call, I got a secretary.