I glared at the boxes. “Let’s get in these things.”
We hauled the boxes out, popped them open, but it soon seemed obvious this was their first trip out in the wilds. They were covered in taped plastic, which we removed. We wrestled with the things, but they were new, all right. Even smelled new.
And there were no floppy disks at all.
“Okay, kid,” I said, as I slid the boxes back in the closet. I stood and closed the door on our great discovery. “We better get out of here before somebody calls the cops.”
“Mike... do you think anybody would mind, if...” He seemed embarrassed, suddenly. “No, I shouldn’t. But...”
“Shouldn’t what?”
He walked over, tentatively, and pointed to the framed photo of Reagan on the wall above the file cabinet.
“Casey said, after he was gone... he wanted me to have that picture. Said his boys are a couple of know-it-all liberals and...” He swallowed thickly. “You think it’s okay if I take it now?”
I was over there quick. “Take it down.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
“Save your thanks. Get that thing down for me.”
He reached up and plucked the framed picture off the wall and, puzzled, handed it to me.
I turned it over. Looked at how the back was sealed up with brown paper. It didn’t look tampered with, and the seal was tight. I was probably on another fool’s errand. But I tore the paper off anyway, getting another confused frown out of Chris. A piece of gray cardboard backing was inside. I pried that out with a thumb nail.
There, behind our president, was a 3½-inch unlabeled floppy disk.
I grinned. “Thank you, modern technology. Here, kid... you take Dutch’s picture, I’ll take the file we been looking for.”
That was when the lights went out.
Blackness swallowed everything and neither of us said a word, barely able to get a gasp out. I heard the door open, but no light was on in the hall, either. I sensed somebody coming at me, and swung at where I thought that was, connecting with nothing.
Night vision started working itself in, thanks to the window by the roll-top onto a New York out there that was not suffering a blackout. The intruder was my size but not as heavy, almost certainly male, and Chris went for him but got straight-armed to the floor, a blow so hard and swift I felt the wind of it pass me.
Then hands were on the sides of my head, forcing it down, and I knew in a split second what was coming next, and remembered what sensei Sakai had taught me. I dropped the disk and grabbed the forearms of the attacker and I threw myself backward, taking the bastard along with me before that knee could rise up like a cannonball and make a caved-in corpse out of me. On the floor, on my back, I rocked back and put my foot on the fucker’s chest and flung him over my head.
He landed hard, furniture jumping as if startled, but the attacker was quick, and he was up before me, but then Chris was coming at him again. A karate kick made more wind, a sweeping move that sent Chris flailing into the darkness. I came up behind the attacker, but he swung around and another straight-leg kick knocked me against the wall or maybe the closet door, I couldn’t be sure.
Then the figure was gone, the slam of the door announcing his absence. I almost ran after him, but first checked Chris, who muttered, “I’m okay, I’m okay,” though I could tell he was hurting.
I went to the door, opened it and — .45 in hand — stepped into a hall where no windows onto the street were there to aid night vision. Footsteps were receding, heading toward the elevator, around the corner, I thought.
I did not take pursuit. Not in the dark. Not with Chris in pain. And anyway, the only way I had to light up the world for a moment was a blind shot from the .45.
I was kneeling over the kid, gun still in hand, when the lights snapped on, mechanical sounds kicking in and starting back up, whirring noises that were climbing up to speed. I’d left the door to the hall open, and lights had come on out there, too. Had somebody hit the switch on the entire damn building — first off, then back on?
We were both breathing hard. I sat on the floor and Chris was doing the same.
That was when we noticed the floppy disk was gone.
“Shit,” I said. “He must have been listening in the hall! Somehow he cued an accomplice to kill the lights. But how?”
“Radio Shack also sells walkie-talkies,” Chris said glumly.
“Well, kid — at least he didn’t take your Reagan picture.”
We started to laugh. It beat crying.
Chapter Ten
The night mist was going to turn into something — the sky’s rumbling stomach said so. Whether it would be rain or snow remained to be seen. Right now it just filled the air, giving soft halos to streetlights and a neon-reflecting slickness to the street, where headlights sent smudgy beams into a darkness that would only get darker.
That dust-up in the dark at Shannon’s pad may have almost killed me, but that had been a matter of avoiding a knee to the chest; otherwise I felt fine and didn’t figure I showed enough damage to attract Velda’s attention when I headed for our regular back booth at the Olde English Tavern on Third Avenue. We’d agreed to meet at ten and I was on time. She was already there.
I slid in opposite her and noticed she was frowning, just a little. She was still wearing the lime silk blouse and forest-green skirt she’d worn to work, and looked just as fresh as when she’d walked in the door this morning.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
Apparently I didn’t look so fresh.
I said, “I didn’t think it showed.”
Her eyes tightened. “You got a little limp going there.”
“Come on, baby. I’m never limp around you.”
All that got was a smirk.
She said, “Spill.”
I spilled. Midway through the story, a waitress who knew me well enough to deliver a Canadian Club and ginger without asking did so. Velda showed nothing in her expression, not even concern. Well, she did wince when I reported that thrusting knee that tried to be my valentine.
She had a Manhattan going, which she sipped as I reported, and when I’d wrapped up, she said, “You can’t be sure Casey’s file was on that disk.”
“Reasonable assumption,” I said with a shrug. “It was a backup, probably, squirreled away for Chris to find when that framed photo came his way. Casey went to some trouble, sealing it up. Looked like it came straight from the framer’s.”
“You didn’t see the guy who jumped you.”
I shook my head, sipped the CC & ginger. “No. Just enough light from the window to make out the shape. Good size guy. My size. He took Chris down with some martial arts moves, which is no surprise, since this is clearly our Knees Up Mother Brown murderer.”
The gag seemed appropriate in a pub.
Her eyes remained tight. “You didn’t get any sense of the attacker, beyond being a male, and your size?”
“I got a whiff of his aftershave, his cologne, whatever. ‘Obsession.’”
Her eyes opened a little. “Unless you were just smelling yourself.”
Velda had got me a little bottle of the stuff for my birthday — she thought the name was funny, considering my personality, plus she’d read in the Times that forest rangers in central India used the fragrance to lure a man-killing tiger out of the jungle, thanks to a certain pheromone used as an ingredient.
“I didn’t know,” she said, amused but her expression thoughtful, “that you’d started using it yet.”
“I haven’t,” I said. “Not after you told me the secret ingredient was scraped from glands near a civet’s anus.”
She chuckled, but got serious again. “And your attacker tonight was wearing the stuff?”