"No can do. Those identities hold up with a bank looking to get my money in its vault and hoping I'll start charging everything I buy on its credit card. And they hold up with a bored DMV clerk who's transferring the license of a dead man in Toledo to a nonexistent address in Park Slope. But they won't hold up under a real background check. Especially if they check with the IRS."
"You don't file?"
"Never. And please… you can't ever mention me to this detective friend of yours."
"Are you wanted for anything?"
"No, and I'd like to keep it that way."
Alicia leaned back, deflated. "Damn. For a minute there I really thought…"
"Sorry," Jack said.
"My God, don't apologize for pulling me out of that van."
"But maybe I shouldn't have," he said.
"That's not funny."
"I'm serious. It just occurred to me that I should have done everything the same except cut you free. If maybe I clobbered your brother like the other two and left the truck's door open with you still bound to that seat, and you started shouting for help, someone would have come along and seen you and called the cops. I'd have faded away to another part of the city, and those three would be locked up in Midtown South right now."
It annoyed the hell out of him that he hadn't thought of any of this at the time.
Alicia was nodding slowly. "That would have been perfect. But it didn't occur to me either. All I wanted right then was to be free of that tape and out of that truck."
"And I was trying to figure out how many more guys I was going to have to deal with."
"Yes," she said, leaning forward now. A small, tight smile played about her lips. The Scotch was getting to her. "Tell me about that. Both those men were bigger than you. And I know you didn't use your eyeball trick. So how did you beat them? Karate? Kung fu?"
"Surprise," Jack said, "The best weapon there is. The outcome could have been very different if they'd been ready for me. But they saw a guy who was scared, frightened, helpless. Easy meat. The second guy even smiled when he saw how helpless I looked. But I had my moves planned—went for their knees and noses. Doesn't matter how big a guy is, he's not much trouble after you pop one of his knee ligaments, or ram his nasal bones back into his head. Those two got caught napping. That only works once, though. Have to think of something else if I run into them again."
"I have to ask you this," she said. Jack noticed her looking at her hands. "Those thumbnails. You keep them so much longer than the others. Can I ask you why?"
"You'd probably rather not know."
"I do. Really I do."
Jack took a breath. "Sometimes you get into spots where things don't clean up as neatly as they did tonight. Sometimes you wind up rolling in the dirt or on the floor and you're dodging head butts and bites and you've got to use every trick you know and every part of your body just to survive. And that's when it's good to have a sort of built-in weapon." He held up his long-nailed thumbs and wiggled them. "Nothing like a gouged eye to end a fight."
Alicia blanched and straightened in her chair. "Oh."
Warned you, Jack thought.
He tried to stare down the guy on the Sam Adams sign. That didn't work, so he made to move the conversation away from himself and into a more interesting area.
"This is the second time I've asked you this today," he said, "but things have changed since this morning: What's your next move?"
"I'm not sure."
"Snatching you off the street was a risky and dangerous move. It tells me they're getting desperate. And desperate people do crazy and stupid things. You might get hurt."
"I don't know if tonight had anything to do with desperation," she said slowly. "Thomas told me that they were going to win, that it's just a matter of time. I don't think he was bluffing."
"Maybe there's a clock running somewhere."
"Maybe. But I get the feeling that tonight had nothing to do with the legal battle. I heard something in Thomas's voice… when he said, 'If you ever, ever try to do harm to that house again'… he sounded as afraid as he was angry."
"So you think this is a direct response to your hiring Benny the Torch. Seems a little over the top."
"It does, doesn't it. But I think it really frightened him. The thought of that house going up in flames seems to have just about unhinged Thomas."
"And unhinged people are dangerous." Jack pounded his fist lightly on the table. "But what is it about that house that would unhinge him?"
Something inside him was screaming for answers.
"I didn't really care before," Alicia said, "but after tonight, I want to know. Help me find out."
Thought you'd never ask.
But he didn't want to appear too anxious. There was still the matter of his fee.
"Well…"
"Look." She leaned over the table, her expression intent, her voice low. "Thomas tried to frighten me off. I can't let him do that. Whatever's in that house has got to be valuable. Very valuable. I can't pay you cash, but you can have whatever we find."
"A contingency fee," he said, nodding slowly, as if he'd never considered it. "I usually operate on a cash basis, but since I'm already involved in this, I'll make an exception."
"Great!" She gave up one of her rare smiles.
"But I can't take it all. It's yours by right."
"I don't want it."
"I'll take twenty percent."
"Take it all."
How could he take it all? He wouldn't feel right. "You can toss your percentage in the river if you want, but we split or I'm out."
He finally backed her into limiting his take to a third, and they shook on it.
"When can you start?" she said.
"I've already started." He rose and threw a twenty on the table. "Let's take a ride."
10.
Jack didn't have to tell the cabbie to take it slow past the house. Thirty-eighth Street was barely crawling.
"Thar she blows," he said.
The security car with the two guards was still parked out front.
He noticed that Alicia didn't even glance out the window. She sat with her arms laced tightly across her chest.
"When do you figure you'll make your first search?" she whispered.
The cabdriver's English had seemed pretty shaky, and Jack doubted he could hear much on the other side of his Plexiglas partition, but whispering wasn't a bad idea.
"For what?"
"For whatever they think is so valuable."
"Which is…?"
"That's the zillion-dollar question."
"Exactly. I'm sure your brother has tossed the place but good behind those boarded-up windows. Obviously he didn't find it. So how am I supposed to find what he couldn't find when I don't even know what I'm looking for?"
She mulled that a moment. "Maybe it isn't something in the house—maybe it's the house itself."
"Very possible. But when it's time to search, it won't be just me, it'll be we."
"Oh, no. I'm not setting foot in that house ever again."
"Yes, you are. You grew up there. You know every nook and cranny of the place. Be crazy for me to stumble around in there alone when you could be my guide."
Alicia seemed to shrink inside her coat as she tightened her crisscrossed arms.
What happened to you? he wondered. What went on in that house that you won't even look at it?
He decided not to push her any further now.