An unpleasant mixture of shock and irritation coursed over him. So much for his facility at staying below the radar.
“It’s about time!” he said, turning on the man, suddenly snarky in his embarrassment at being caught unawares. “I wondered when Glinn would be sending a messenger boy.”
Garza frowned, his previous unflappability fading slightly. “That’s how you say thank you?”
“Thank you? Obviously you people at EES knew a lot more about this situation than what you briefed me on. I feel like I’ve been hung out to dry.”
Garza took a sip of coffee, pushed the Danish away, rose, and placed a few dollars on the counter. “You’re doing okay — at least until now. If I were you, instead of complaining I’d be worried as hell that we were able to locate you. If we can find you, so can Nodding Crane.”
The man slipped back out into the night, leaving the paper unfolded on the counter, its headline displayed.
MURDER ON MOTT
Chinatown Resident’s Throat Ripped Out by Assailant
Below was a picture of Roger Marion.
42
The man known as Nodding Crane moved slowly, painfully along the sidewalk outside the diner. Crew was still in there, talking to the fat waitress. The man who had passed him money had come and gone. He wasn’t interested in that man. He was interested in Crew.
Coming to a halt next to the stoop of an abandoned brownstone, he eased himself onto it, placing the beer can wrapped in a greasy paper bag beside him, and lowered his head. A set of garbage cans, stacked in a row for morning pickup, cast a long shadow, further hiding his face. A group of noisy young people crossed the street at the corner of Avenue C and went on into the night, laughing and hooting. All became silent once again.
Right hand in the pocket of his old raincoat, he flexed his fingers, the razor-sharp picks clicking lightly against one another. He had been trained in the use of many exotic weapons — double sai, sweepers, flutes, walking canes, fire wheels, tiger forks, moonteeth — but the fingerpicks had been his own innovation. They were, in fact, genuine Dunlops he had modified, sharpened, and polished. As a boy in the training temple back in China, he had been immersed in American culture—movies, books, video games, music. Especially music, as music was the soul of a people. On his own volition, he had taken up bottleneck guitar and learned the tunes of Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Willie Johnson, and Skip James. “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” Now, that was real American music.
If I ever get off this killin’ floor
I’ll never get down this low no more
As he hummed the music under his breath, his fingers, hidden in his voluminous coat pocket, picked out the imaginary notes, the sharpened picks making a clicking sound not unlike knitting needles.
He saw a movement in the diner out of the corner of his eye and, while continuing to hum, shifted his attention. It was Crew. The man exited the diner, crossed the street — walking with that characteristic loping stride of his — and turned, coming along the sidewalk toward Nodding Crane, moving toward Avenue C. Keeping his head down, the low brim of his old cap hiding his face, Nodding Crane waited for Crew to arrive. His humming continued, the fingers clacked.
Crew passed by and Nodding Crane let him go on, smiling to himself at how easy it would have been. But there were reasons not to kill him now — excellent reasons. As the man reached Avenue C, he held out his hand for a cab, and one almost immediately stopped. Nodding Crane noted the hack number, went back to humming.
Half an hour later, he stood up, stretched, and shuffled down the street, removing his cell phone. He called the Taxi and Limousine Commission hotline, explained he had left a PDA in the cab he had flagged down on Avenue C and 13th, about three thirty AM, the ride ending at Grand Central Terminal. He waited while the cabbie was contacted. The driver had not seen the lost PDA; but there was confusion over which fare was which, since the trip record indicated that the fare in that hack number had not ended at Grand Central, but instead at Park Avenue and 50th — in front of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Nodding Crane thanked the person, apologized for the confusion, and shut the phone.
Discarding the shapeless raincoat in one of the garbage cans, Nodding Crane walked over to Avenue C and caught his own cab.
“The Waldorf,” he said crisply as he settled in.
43
Gideon Crew tossed the thick roll of money onto the bed of his suite. Then he pulled out his cell and called Orchid.
“What the fuck do you want?”
Many derogations, animadversions, and apologies later, she agreed to the elaborate plan he described.
He hung up and went to the window, which faced Park Avenue, and looked carefully up and down the wide boulevard in front of the hotel. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was being followed, but that was probably due to Garza’s making him paranoid. He’d given the taxi driver special directions to make sure no one was following, and he couldn’t imagine that anyone had. So why did he feel like an ant under a magnifying glass?
He called his Pelican case up from the Waldorf baggage storage room, where he had deposited it before going off to Hong Kong. After laying out his kit, he sorted through the disguises and settled for the Death of a Salesmanrole — a quietly desperate middle-class suburban persona — assembled it, then stepped into it. Examining himself in the floor-length mirror on the closet door, he found it most satisfactory.
He checked his watch. A little after four. Still wearing his disguise, he exited the Waldorf through the back door and made his way east down 51st Street, where he spied Orchid loitering outside the vest-pocket Greenacre Park, as per his instructions.
“Excuse me, miss?” he said, approaching her.
She turned on him and said, in a voice as cutting as dry ice, “Get lost. I’m waiting for someone.”
“Yes, but you see that’s just the point, I amlost…”
She practically spat at him. “Beat it. Now. Or I’ll kick you so hard in the balls I’ll sterilize your whole family.”
Gideon laughed, pleased at the effectiveness of his deception. “It’s me. Gideon. Nice disguise, eh?”
She gasped, leaned closer. “God, that’s worse than before.” She dropped her cigarette and angrily ground it into nothing on the sidewalk. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling me up like that after the way you acted.”
“I’m staying at the Waldorf,” he said, hooking her arm and hauling her along the street. “Listen.” He pressed a wad of money into her hand. “I want you to book a room at the Waldorf for Mr. and Mrs. Tell. Go to the room, get into bed, turn off the lights, but leave the door unlocked. I’ll join you in thirty minutes.”
“Listen, you—”
But he released her and peeled off down 51st Street, walked into the Metropolitan Hotel, changed out of his disguise in an upper hallway, exited, then reentered the Waldorf as Gideon Crew. He went to his previous room, changed back into his disguise, showed up at the front desk, introduced himself as a Mr. Tell meeting his wife, moved through the empty corridors to the room Orchid had booked, eased open the door, shut and locked it.
She sat up in bed, the sheet falling partway off her nude body. “I’m not going to take much more of your crap, I can tell you that.”
He sat on the bed, took her face in his hands. “I know I’ve been a jerk, but bear with me just a little longer. Tomorrow we’re going to dress up as Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class and try to enroll our brilliant son in Throckmorton Academy. I guarantee you, it’ll be fun. And there’s some good money in it for you.”
She stared at him. “I don’t like the way you’re treating me. And I’m sure this isn’t more Method acting — that’s bullshit. I want to know what’s really going on.”
“I know you do, but we’ve got to get some sleep now, because we’ve got a big day ahead of us.”