Ark Storm (8 page)

“C’mon! You are rusty! Take one, give me your best shot, go on.”

His eyes twinkled, mocking her, his usual mix of charm and provocation. He always read her so well, always knew how to get the best out of her.

Goaded, Gwen kicked out, but Dwayne Jonson merely spun out of range, muttering profanities of contempt. They sparred on, Tae Kwon Do, which Gwen had practiced for fifteen years now, overlaid with strategic dirty fighting, something she’d done, courtesy of Dwayne, for four years.

She got in two good kicks to Dwayne’s thigh, one of which dead-legged him. He was delighted. The more she hurt him, the bigger the smile. But he dished it right back at her. He got in a few blows to her shoulder and hip; she would sport the bruises for a least a week. She loved this, a good, clean, open fight, a vent for her aggression, her competitiveness. And more. It made her feel armed.

“You are useless, girl!” opined Dwayne when he’d landed another blow on Gwen. “Drop. Gimme ten. No, gimme twenty. I go away for three weeks and you let yourself go, like this?”

“Been busy, Dwayne,” retorted Gwen, deciding not to tell him about her new job. There’d be an inquisition. Instead, she dropped into the press-up position, pumping out twenty, her fifth set of the session. She straightened up. “So, how were the seniors?”

“They were cool, Boudy. Now there’s a buncha gray old ladies in Florida with bricks in their handbags you don’t wanna mess with.”

Gwen laughed. “I’ll bet.”

“Told ’em the best form of defense was don’t get in the situation, but if you got your back against the wall and the shit’s coming down—”

“Hit someone with a cliché.…” drawled Gwen.

“Yeah, funny,” boomed Dwayne, suppressing a grin.

“I just love the image, you and your ex-Navy-SEAL buddies and the blue rinse brigade.”

“Last time we were on a boat we were sailing for Iraq. Lemme tell you, the
Caribbean Queen
gave us a cabin each, fresh food, not rehydrated rations, and no incoming. What’s not to like?”

“Just don’t go soft on me, Dwayne. Who else is gonna keep me in the game.”

“Well, I guess that would be me. Wanna do some dirty fighting yourself?”

“Always,” replied Gwen.

“C’mon then, take me down. Surprise me.”

“Sure, just let me get some water,” said Gwen. She turned as if to grab her bottle, then ducked, rammed her shoulder into his lower stomach and chopped at the back of his knees.

Dwayne went down laughing and cursing.

“That was low, you cheating little…”

“Now, now Dwayne, watch that potty mouth,” laughed Gwen. “You did say dirty.”

“Yeah, but there are
rules
.”

“Yeah, the only one that matters is
Stay Alive
I remember some big, scary guy telling me.”

“Well, he don’t know shit,” declared Dwayne.

They sparred for another half hour, then, dripping with sweat, Gwen pulled on a hoodie, stretched out for five minutes, and waved a cheery good-bye as Dwayne’s next client arrived, a reedy-looking schoolboy of about fifteen.

Dwayne would give him moves to sort out the bullies, thought Gwen, giving the boy a broad smile and a wink that brought on a ferocious and achingly sweet blush.

“Next week,” called out Gwen.

“Stay alive,” called back Dwayne.

Planning to, thought Gwen, peering through the darkness of the lot, walking to her Mustang, sliding in, wishing that her car’s roof was up. Quickly she turned the key in the ignition and pulled out. She always reversed into parking spaces, another of Dwayne’s lessons. Always be ready for a quick getaway.

She suppressed a shudder. Falcon had made her think of the past more than she wanted to, had brought back the fear, made her look over her shoulder again, made her imagine eyes in the darkness, watching her, cars pulling out onto Highway 1, staying on her trail. Paranoia, she told herself as she drove down the track to Hurricane Point to her cottage, where no lights burned. She should put the deck light on a timer, she thought. A job for the weekend.

She stepped out into the night, inhaled the clean air, the damp oregano wafting in the sea breeze. Home. Her refuge. Quickly, she let herself in, locked the door, and fell to her knees to hug Leo. She breathed him in, doggy breath and warm fur. She held him and he nuzzled her. Her pulse slowed and she got to her feet.

She pulled the curtains, fed Leo then fed herself. She sat on the bleached canvas sofa, listening to Jack Johnson crooning away her tension, tray on her lap, eating pizza, a Jack Reacher novel clasped in one hand ratcheting up the tension. But that was OK. It was someone else’s fight. Someone else’s terror.

She finished off dinner with hot chocolate and macadamia-chip brownies made by her neighbor, Marilyn. Everything was fine, she told herself as she snuggled down in her bed, duvet and her parents’ alpaca throw keeping her warm against the chill wind blowing in from the French windows she had defiantly opened. A pane of glass wouldn’t have stopped them anyway.…

18

LIBERTY STREET, JUST OFF WALL STREET, NYC, WEDNESDAY MORNING

Ronald Glass had two near-misses that day. Ignorant of both, he would have what he considered to be a fulfilling day, an eighty-five percent day. It started routinely. His town car dropped him off at eight fifty. At his desk in his corner office, twentieth floor of the Newman Brothers building, view of the Fed just down the street, he scrolled down his iPad, checking his diary as his PA, Romula, brought him a skinny latte.

Gallery Klesh had an opening that night. The catalog was in his desk drawer. He reached into the pocket of his custom suit, pulled out his key, opened the drawer, flicked through the glossy pages, seeking first the photo of the artist. He smiled; he might just do himself some acquiring. The art was a touch gloomy, but good enough. The bio of the artist made it collectible. She’d gone to the right schools, made all the right declarations, her love of chiaroscuro, of darkness and light, of the seen and the unseen. The catalog was entitled W
HAT
L
IES
B
ENEATH.
The artist, beneath him,
thought Ronnie with a smirk.

As a bet, she and her art were good enough, and a hell of a lot more fun than the markets, arguably more predictable too. And he had wall space, thanks to the new condo; he had the funds, thanks to his last, and highly secret trade, and he had the itch, that acquisitive urge that was half caveman, half sophisticate.
Fill the cave, fill the cave
. Grinning, he gave his groin a speculative jiggle.

He glanced up. Romula was occupied at her machine, eyes down; the associates were laboring away in their cubicles; no one was loitering, waiting their moment with their co-department head. Him, Ronald Glass. His much hated co-department head, Greg Kriedwolf, was fishing for business in Houston.
May he not find it,
wished Glass.

His fingers slid deeper into his desk drawer, probing. He found the envelope, taped to the bottom of the drawer above. He pulled it down, snuck a quick look. Almost empty. He pocketed it, rose to his feet, turned down Romula’s offer of assistance—some things you just had to do yourself, no matter how elevated you were.

“Back in ten,” he announced. He headed for the john, snorted the thin remains of his stash, binned the baggie, then headed for the elevator. It was walled with mirrored glass, giving him a full view, front and back. Alone, he straightened up, eyed his reflection. Not bad for thirty-five. Still trim, thanks to three workouts a week and an appetite depleted by coke. A tad short, but, as his father-in-law was fond of saying, he was plenty tall when he stood on his wallet. The two-thousand-dollar Armani suit made him look enough like a sophisticate to impress the city’s maître d’s, but the luxuriant black hair, rolling down over his collar, and the rapacious brown eyes, which flickered constantly as if looking for his next mark, made him look more like a used-car salesman or a bookie.

Glass fingered his hair, pulled out his cell phone.

“You around? Need a coffee. There in five.” He spoke in staccato bites to his subordinates, but he could waste his words when he needed to, with new women, with the CEO.

He strode across the marble foyer and out into the heat. Ninety-five and seventy percent humidity. He pulled on his shades. They fogged in a second. He toyed with calling his driver, Alfonso; rejected it. No witnesses. No honor, some of these drivers never knew when to keep their mouths shut. He walked down Liberty, took a right on Broadway, building up a sweat, wondering if it had all been such a good idea. Aiming for casual, he sauntered into Zuccotti Park. Eyes raking the park for his dealer, he didn’t see the athletic blonde striding out behind him, didn’t see her clock the dealer, veer away into Starbucks on Broadway, where she stood in line, looking through the window, watching.

Glass’s dealer handed him the Styrofoam cup. He made as if to take a sip, talked a while, reached into his pocket for the tightly bound wad, shook hands and palmed it to his man.

“See ya,”

“Next week?”

“Most likely.”

The two men peeled away from each other, slowly, all casual, two Wall Street types, one dressed down, but still Brooks Brothers’ smart.

The blonde, now with a coffee of her own, a real coffee, followed again at a distance, wondering at Glass, at his sheer imperviousness, wondering at her own luck. She had staked out the bank every day for a week and no sign of the man, now here he was, up to no good. She smiled, lucky for her, unlucky for Dirty Ronnie.

A van with blacked-out windows was parked outside the entrance to Newman Brothers. Glass paused. No one and nothing was allowed to park outside. Then he saw the dogs emerge from the building, the two German Shepherds with their handlers. The antiterrorist bomb-sniffing dogs.
Well, they would be allowed,
figured Glass. He watched the dogs disappear into their van, helpfully emblazoned with a B
EWARE,
D
OGS
! strip, then he crossed Liberty and strolled on into his building. One more call, then he could get on with his work.

“Glass here. Need a suite. Tomorrow night.”

He got it. He rang his wife.

“Kimberly, honey? Got to fly to Houston tomorrow. Kreidwolf’s digging up a deal and they need me there. Yeah, I know we were, and I’m
reeeal
sorry, honey. Take you to dinner there next week. Promise.”

He hung up. Done. His wife had been an art cutie, worked for one of the top galleries until he collected her, gave her a penthouse and a kid. She was old England, one of the founders with an illustrious name and a devoted father who had enough edge and connections to make life uncomfortable if he upset his baby girl, so Glass, a liar of the highest order, made sure to keep her sweet.

“Just missed the dogs,” said Romula.

“No bombs today?” asked Glass, with a wry smile.

“They did sniff around in your office a bit, must have taken a leak they spent so long in the John, but no, Ronnie, no bombs.”

He wished she wouldn’t call him
Ronnie
. One bang and he was forever
Ronnie.

*   *   *

Agent Ange Wilkie walked back toward the SEC building at the World Financial Center, just off Fulton Street and West. Too impatient to wait for a face-to-face, she pulled out her cell phone and called her boss.

“Why do dogs go into investment banks?” she asked Troy Bergers.

“This some kind of a joke? I hate to imagine the punch line.”

“No,” laughed Ange. “I’m serious. Is it a petting thing, a stress relief thing?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I just saw two German Shepherds come out of Newman Brothers.”

“You stalking our boy again?”

“Er, yeah.”

“Excellent! Banks’ll say it’s to sniff out explosive materials.”

“And?”

“Drugs.”

“Really? Well, hot damn. Our boy is a lucky sonofabitch.”

“Now, now, agent. Mouth. Why?”

Ange told him, concluding: “Think about it. We could bust him. I’m sure he has coke.”

“I could care less what he shoves up his nose. We want him on the insider trading. Cool it, Ange.”

“I know. I’d just like to see the look on his smug pug face if he was cuffed and roughed.”

“Take a rain check. That day will come.”

Zealot to zealot, they smiled down the line to each other.

“He doesn’t have any idea, does he, how close he came. He’d lose his job for sure.”

“None of us know how close we come,” reflected Bergers. “The tile blowing off a roof in a storm; the psycho walking down the street just as you duck into a doorway; the cab losing control and mounting the sidewalk, you delayed round the corner ’cause you stopped to stroke a stray cat.…”

“The people who missed their train, were late for the office on nine-eleven…” Ange added, nearing her office, glancing at the ghosts of the Twin Towers opposite.

“Exactly.”

“But you’re talking about blind fate. This is fate with a vision. Right here, right now, we are molding Ronald Glass’s fate. He just doesn’t know it.”

“You’re molding it, Angie, from where I sit. You’re on a crusade.”

“Just call me Nemesis!”

19

THE
SAN FRANCISCO REPORTER
OFFICES, BRANNAN STREET, WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Dan Jacobsen walked past the oval stretch of scrappy grass known in San Francisco as South Park, obeying the summons that had been issued earlier that morning. It was lunchtime, the sun was shining, and scores of trendily dressed men and women, many seemingly teenagers, sprawled on the grass with takeout lunches. More drifted past him, exiting the renovated lofts surrounding the park, blinking like moles. Jacobsen had no desire to eat or drink, but he detoured via a coffee shop, bought a takeout and a Danish.

The condensed ten-square-block had once housed immigrant families, printing plants, and a flophouse. Now it was home to high-end restaurants, coffee shops, and a flourishing interactive media industry of Web site developers, interactive game makers, and CD-ROM publishers. Known as Multimedia Gulch it was also home to the
San Francisco Reporter,
one of the few original tenants who still remained.