PRESS → 21-11-19-4
I did that. The car started to rise. A digital indicator showed each floor as we passed. When it reached 29, it kept on going. Like my old place, I thought. Crawl space. . . off the charts.
The elevator door opened into an archway. I knew what it was right away. Security gauntlet. The most sophisticated detector made, as sensitive as an MRI. I’d seen one like it before. On the private penthouse floor of a terrified billionaire with enough cash to indulge his paranoia.
I didn’t waste time worrying about the zipper in my jacket or my belt buckle or. . . anything. He’d trust his machines. I just said, “Come on” to Nadine and started to walk through it.
The place was operating-room cold. I felt Nadine behind me, her hand fluttering against my shoulder. At the exit end of the archway was a small table, standing just off to the right. The only thing on it was a box about the size of an eight-by-ten photograph. I looked down at it. Greenish glow. I placed my right hand flat, making sure my fingerprints would register. I looked around. A tiny red light was standing above a door a few feet away. Even in the murky light, I could tell that the door was built hard and heavy. I could feel Nadine’s breath against my neck. It was ragged but not frightened. More like. . . excited.
The red light blinked off. I walked to the door. Couldn’t see a knob. I pushed gently. It opened, swinging free. I stepped inside, Nadine so close now she almost shoved past me.
The floor was carpeted. I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it. A single strand of blue neon tubing ran all around the walls. That was the only light. I could make out two metal chairs, a coffee table between them, standing lengthwise so the chairs were close together. On the table, a long narrow tray full of sand, like one of those miniature Buddhist gardens.
I took the chair to the right, furthest from the door, showing him I knew I couldn’t get out if he didn’t want me to. Nadine sat down next to me. The blue neon amped up just enough for me to see what was in front of us. A wall of thick plastic, like they use in liquor stores, only this one had no money slot. Lexan, probably. I could make out a shape behind it. Seated. Impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.
“The instructions I taped to the inside of the elevator car—did you bring them with you?” a voice asked. A man’s voice, coming from speakers somewhere on my side of the glass. No way to tell if it was his own or an electronically altered version.
“No. I left them there,” I said.
“Good. If your. . . friends overheard the coordinates to enter the building and try the elevator, I presume they will push the same sequence. It has been reprogrammed.”
“They won’t—”
“If they do that,” the voice continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “the doors will seal. And unless they came equipped with gas masks, they are already dead. The stairway is secured against anything other than low-yield explosive, and I have it on both visual and audio right in front of me. That option is closed as well.”
“I played this square,” I told him. “I’m alone. And unarmed. You must have your own way out of here.”
“Of course.”
“So. You want to do business or I wouldn’t be here, right?”
“Yes. Questions first.”
“Mine or yours?”
“Mine. Why is the woman with you?”
“Not now,” I told him.
“You have no options,” the voice said.
“Yeah, I do. If I gave a damn about dying, I wouldn’t have looked for you in the first place.”
“I would have found you.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t when I started. I know what you want. You can’t get it snuffing me. I’m sure you got gas jets in the ceiling. Probably got electricity in these chairs too. I got the message, pal. I’m surrounded. It’s no new experience for me. Your questions have nothing to do with her. She’s here because she wants to be. Ask her whatever you want. . . when you and me are done.”
“You are in no position to bargain.”
“No? You think you know me. You don’t. You think you know Wesley. You don’t know him either, for all your fucked-up ‘research.’ Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. What’s your problem? We can’t leave. And we can’t hurt you. Do what you want—I don’t give a good goddamn.”
The voice was quiet after that. Nadine twitched in her chair. I probably shouldn’t have said anything about electricity. I breathed through my nose, shallow.
Time passed.
“I thought you would have wanted one of your cigarettes by now,” the voice said, like he had all the time in the world. “By the way, purely as a matter of interest, what brand did Wesley smoke?”
“Dukes,” I told him. “Same as me.”
“Dukes? I am not familiar with—”
“New York has a humongous tax on smokes,” I said. “Lots of states do. Contraband creates opportunity. There’s major traffic in bringing them up from North Carolina. Tobacco country. ‘Dukes,’ get it? You buy them from a wholesale jobber down there, truck them up here, sell them for fifty percent retail, and everybody scores. Doesn’t matter what the brand name is—Dukes is what they call smuggled smokes. Me, I smoke whatever’s on the truck that month, understand?”
“Certainly. Nothing in your profile indicates a connoisseur’s taste, even in something so mundane.”
His voice wasn’t anything like Wesley’s. The voice coming through the speakers was machine-altered. Wesley was a machine.
I waited.
“I am in no particular hurry,” the voice said, picking up on my thoughts. “Even if your. . . friends have this building under surveillance. . . even if you have notified the authorities. . . I am able to leave undetected.”
“And then blow the building?”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged, like it was no big thing. “I may choose to do so, but only if—”
“I understand,” I told him. I could feel shock waves of surprise from behind the glass partition, but he didn’t say anything.
Neither did I. Nadine had stopped twitching. A heavy, thick smell came off her. Not fear, something I couldn’t put a name to.
I concentrated on my breathing.
Time passed.
“Why did you search for me originally?” he finally asked.
“A group of gay people wanted to protect you. They were afraid you’d be captured. They wanted me to find you, get you out of the country to someplace safe.”
“Ah. You understand that—”
“You can leave whenever you want?” I cut in deliberately, trying to shift his balance, even if only a little bit. “And that this was never about fag-bashing?”
“Correct. On both counts.”
“You had a long rest,” I told him.
“A. . . rest? No. Not a rest. I went. . . quiescent. Once I had mastered my art, there was no. . . challenge.”
“You were always above us, huh?”
“I am above you, Mr. Burke. In all ways.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of his velociraptor icon. And the killing claw. “So far above you couldn’t get your ear to the ground, much less down into the whisper-stream. But it wasn’t until you did that you learned the truth.”
“Your. . . idiolect is unfamiliar to me.”
“You were the greatest kidnapper ever,” I said quietly. “Perfect.”
“I was,” he acknowledged, accepting his due.
“You mastered that art,” I told him, shifting my gears, trying to jam his. “And you switched to another. I never did get that last piece.”
“Piece?”