Before the Dawn (24 page)

Bryant said, “No,” but he was looking at the ivories under his fingers.

Grabbing onto the man's ponytail for leverage, Lydecker shoved Bryant's face into the piano keys, making dissonant nonmusic, accompanied by a surprised, pained scream.

The woman came running, and she had a big gun in her little hand. But Davis plucked the weapon like a flower and walked her out of the room, disappearing with her.

Lydecker stepped back to allow the dealer to sit up, and compose himself; the man was touching his face—really, there were just a few cuts and welts, his forehead crying tears of blood onto his yellow sweater. Awkwardly, the dealer started to get up.

But Rush put a hand on Bryant's shoulder, holding him down. “Interview's not over.”

Bryant glared back at Rush, who shook his head. Lydecker took this to mean the dealer and these cops had an arrangement . . . but this matter was not covered by it.

The dealer sat down again, his hands going automatically to the keyboard—but no more noodling.

Lydecker gave the man a handkerchief and Bryant dabbed blood from his forehead, saying to the man who'd caused the wounds, “Thanks.”

“Would you mind taking another look?” Lydecker asked.

The dealer swallowed and looked at the photo Lydecker was holding up. “Yeah, now that I take a closer gander . . . turns out I have seen him before.”

“Do you remember where?”

“Yeah . . . yeah, I can help you in that area. Glad to cooperate.”

Lydecker twitched a sort of smile, patted the dealer's shoulder, gently. “Always a pleasure to meet a civic-minded citizen.”

Bryant said, “If . . . if I tell you where he lives, will that be the end of it?”

“For you, yes,” Lydecker said.

And with any luck,
he thought,
for that rebel X5, too.

LOGAN CALE'S APARTMENT
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019

Seth was still snoring on the guest room bed when Logan came in with the news.

Logan turned on the bedside lamp and carefully shook the boy to wakefulness, trying not to startle him—he would not like to be the alarm clock this sleeper took a swipe at.

“Com . . . computers come through?” Seth asked groggily, sitting up, yawning again.

“Patience has its rewards.” He gave Seth a sideways grin. “So does bitchin' software.”

Seth was alert, wide-awake now. “What did you find out?”

Within seconds, they were sitting in the living room, on the leather couch, Logan holding up a sheaf of papers. “When you copied that disc, my friend, you got us
everything.
”

“Everything? What everything is that?”

“Smoking-gun everything.” Logan tossed the papers on the coffee table. “The kind that includes dates, times, paintings, amounts . . . every damn criminal thing Sterling and Kafelnikov have been doing together.”

“No shit?”

“It's all here, Seth—every sleazy transaction . . . including the next one.”

Seth's eyes widened. “You know what they're going to do next?”

“
We
know, Seth.”

“Where and when?”

“That's right. It's just a matter of calling the FBI now.”

Seth's eyes tightened to slits. “Say
what?
”

Logan shrugged. “American Masterpieces Act violation—we'll call in the feds, have them arrested.”

“Logan, you can't be serious.”

“Why not?”

“Eyes Only cooperate with the feds? They're fuckin' corrupt—you always say so yourself.”

“There's corruption,” Logan allowed. “Widespread. But I have contacts with honest individuals in federal law enforcement.”

“Yeah, and I'll introduce you to the virgins down at the strip club.” Seth shook his head. “Listen, Logan, we got the chance to do two things here. We can stop these creeps Sterling and Kafelnikov,
and
we can come away with the nest egg I need.”

“The last time you ‘stopped' a ‘creep,' Seth . . . you killed him.”

“So that's what this is about. . . . Logan, I wouldn't whack either of these guys, not right now, anyway—they're our
Manticore
connection. And anyway, Jesus! Manticore
is
the federal government—
Lydecker
is a goddamn fed!”

Logan knew Seth was right; but the blood on the cyberjournalist's hands, from their last episode together, was still clinging and damp.

“Look,” Seth was saying, “we intervene when their next deal goes down, save some great slice of Americana for your conscience, Eyes Only exposes the racket with a big bad bulletin, and we help ourselves to a major contribution to the Seth Survival Telethon.”

Logan, shaking his head, rose and plopped into one of the side chairs. “You lose your head again, I'll be responsible for another death . . . maybe
more
than one.”

Seth leapt to his feet, gestured to himself. “You don't get it, do you? You're not responsible if I kill someone—
I
am!”

“We're ‘partners,' remember?”

Seth snorted. “Well, let's dissolve that as of now. From here on out, I work for myself. When we have shared interests, you might throw me a friggin' bone.”

“A bone like the details from the disc?”

“The disc
I
stole for you. . . . Logan, you can stop these guys or not—you decide.”

With the biggest sigh he had ever heaved, Logan said, “All right. . . . Do what you have to do . . . short of homicide. Then you bring me the painting, and keep the cash.”

“How much is that thing worth?” Seth asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the question casual.

Logan read the sheet aloud. “
Cow's Skull Red, White, and Blue
by Georgia O'Keeffe. The buyers are Korean and the price is supposed to be a million-one.”

Seth fell back onto the sofa and grinned like a kid contemplating a double-dip cone. “That'll do the trick, man. That'll do the trick.”

“You've decided to disappear, then? What about Manticore?”

“Let me count my money first, and get back to you. Where and when does the deal go down?”

Logan's eyes returned to the printout. “Top of the Space Needle . . .” he looked at his watch. “. . . in about four hours.”

“About time I took in the tourist sights,” Seth said.

“Needle hasn't been a tourist site in some time.”

“Whatever . . . meantime, I gotta get back to my crib, get prepped.”

Rising, Logan faced the X5, who stood and the two men exchanged smiles that had embarrassment and maybe, just maybe, some affection in them.

“Good luck,” Logan said. “Partner.”

“Thanks, bro.”

Seth arrived at his tiny apartment forty minutes later. Little more than a cell with a cheap blackout curtain over the single window, the apartment had a mattress, dresser, minifridge, hot plate, microwave, two chairs, card table, minuscule closet, and a small bathroom with a tub you could shower in but not bathe. A dozen or so books lay in a couple of haphazard piles near the head of the bed, mostly a mix of pre-Pulse horror fiction and weapons/martial-arts manuals.

This was, Seth knew, not quite as nice as Logan's pad.

After changing into his work clothes—black fatigues and black boots—he also laid out a black jacket, gloves, and stocking cap. The weather had turned nasty on his way home, a driving rain rolling in like it planned to stay a while.

It hadn't rained in over a week—which was a drought in Seattle—and it seemed that just when Seth needed a dark, starless night, he was going to get one. What he didn't need, though, were these relentless sheets of torrential rain. He hoped it would let up before he had to go out.

With some time left, he picked one of the books out of the pile. An old travel guide of the city, it helped him to quickly learn about the Space Needle.

Built in 1962 for the World's Fair, the Needle rose 605 feet, was protected by twenty-five lightning rods, and, at the time of its construction, was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Three elevators led up to the observation deck and the revolving restaurant below. One hundred feet up, the Needle had a banquet facility, and on the ground floor a gift shop. It wasn't a lot of information—the guide had been written in the heyday of the now dead tourist attraction—but it was more than he'd had.

That was when he heard the car on the street.

In this neighborhood the sound of an automobile motor was rarer than laughter—few around here could afford to own a car (Seth kept his own wheels, an old beater Toyota, off the street, hidden in a warehouse blocks away). Car motors meant cops, nine times out of ten, so the sound of one always set off Seth's mental alarms.

And when he heard the second car, he
really
knew something wasn't right. He moved to one side of the window and edged back the curtains enough to see down on the street.

Two police cars were parked diagonally, blocking the way. Just behind one of them, a third vehicle—this one a SWAT van, pulling in now—meant not only was something wrong, that something was probably him. . . .

He invested another second of watching, to get a better sense of what was coming down . . .

. . .
and saw Lydecker getting out of one of the cars.

Seth lost another second, frozen by the sight.
How the hell had his old Manticore keeper tracked him down here?

He grabbed his jacket, gloves, and cap, jerked open the door, and went flying up the stairs. Lydecker would have the building surrounded, but they could only work their way up from the bottom. By the time they got to Seth's place, he'd be vapor.

Slipping on the jacket, cramming his hands into the gloves, and tugging on the stocking cap, he kept running up flights of stairs. When he reached the door to the roof, he tried it and found it locked. On the other side, he could hear the rain noisily pounding on the door, anxious to get in. A howling wind cried out in protest of its own existence.

He took a step back, and threw a shoulder into it and the door gave, splintering at the jamb, lurching open while Seth jumped through, the rain slashing at him like a killer with a knife.

Turning back, he slammed the door, then picked up a stick from the roof's blacktop and jammed it under the knob.

Drenched already, he struggled to see through the downpour. He could make out the edge of the building, and sprinted there, to look across a fifteen-foot gap between his building and the
next . . . a matching tenement, also six stories. Gazing down, the unyielding rain pointing the way, he saw cops and SWAT running around the building, some heading up the fire escape on that side.

Seth backed up, took a running leap, jumped the gap, landed on the other building, turning his sliding arrival into a roll, and came up running, to head for the far side of this neighboring building. Two jumps later, he was at the corner building and calmly walked, feet splashing on tar, to a rooftop door that took him down the stairs to the street.

On the sidewalk now, looking back toward his building, he saw Lydecker pounding a fist on the roof of the police car, his clenched teeth flashing in the night like tiny lightning.

It delighted Seth that he could still get the smugly self-controlled Lydecker that pissed off.

Turning, Seth started off at a slow trot. No point drawing attention to himself. Now, he just needed to put distance between himself and Lydecker's team.

On thing was certain, though: tonight would mark the last act of his new fledgling partnership with Logan Cale. Seattle was used up for the X5.

If his old commander had found him once, he'd do it again. Seth knew the man would never give up. Lydecker didn't know how to quit—it wasn't in the bastard's makeup. The cash that would be exchanged, when Sterling and Kafelnikov's art deal went down a few hours from now, was more important than ever . . . it was a future for Seth, maybe the only one he had. . . .

Everything was riding on what happened tonight, and that was fine by Seth. The Manticore X5s had been designed for difficult missions—the greater the pressure, the better they performed.

With the possible exception of Zack, Seth felt he was the best of the X5s.

Tonight, he would get his chance to prove it . . .

. . . though he doubted his former teacher would take much pleasure out of Seth's graduation ceremonies.

Chapter Twelve

NO SALE

SUBLIME LAUNDRY
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019

In a dark T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes, Max sat perched on the edge of the chair across the desk from Vogelsang. The office of the goateed, overweight detective had its own unique bouquet—a distilling of egg rolls, detergent, cigarette smoke, and something that was either cleaning fluid or really rank barbecue sauce.

The funds Max was contributing to this small business were obviously not going into cleaning the place, nor for that matter was there any sign Vogelsang had upgraded his wardrobe: the private eye still dressed as though he picked his clothes at random in a very dark room . . . unless actual thought had gone into the choice of a slept-in sky-blue shirt and a pair of alarmingly bright green pants, which together turned his waistline into a bizarre, convex horizon where the sky and grass met.

“What have you found?” Max asked, not wanting to spend any more time here than she had to; she wasn't sure the peculiar aroma of this room would come off her clothes, particularly not if she used this laundromat. And she still had plenty to do yet today. The sky was threatening rain and she knew it wouldn't hold off much longer.

“I've got nothing on the woman or the Tahoe,” the detective said, riffling through some papers on his desk, avoiding his client's direct gaze.

“Nothing.”

He looked up and twitched a nervous smile; shrugged. “It was ten years ago. I told ya—this is gonna take some time.”

“What about our badass kid?”

Vogelsang shook his head, said, “Nothing on him, either—and a contact at the PD ran the computer looking for that barcode tattoo, too. Got squat.”

Max sat way forward, her eyes tight, intense. “This kid is tied to Eyes Only—and Eyes Only is somebody the cops are interested in . . . so there oughta be
something
. . . .”

“Saying he's tied to Eyes Only is like sayin' he hangs with Zorro.”

“Who?”

“Pre-Pulse reference. Sorry. Damn, you
are
young. . . . Anyway, if he is working with or for Eyes Only, we'll have a damn hard time turning anything. Eyes Only is more than just a voice and eyes on some cable hack . . . it's more like a network. People who help Eyes Only, they're all loyal, and they don't talk to anybody about anything, if you're not one of them.”

Max felt her hopes slipping away, like water through her fingers. She'd come into this knowing Seattle was a big city, but Vogelsang knew the town inside out; and while her brother was a trained professional soldier, so was she. Why, between the two of them, couldn't they find him?

“So you don't know anything more than when we started? What am I paying you for, again? Remind me.”

With a shrug, Vogelsang sipped from a lidded cup—there was no way to tell what was inside, which was probably the idea. But something about his eyes—the way they seemed to flicker with thought, first tight, then loose, then tight. . . .

“Mr. Vogelsang!”

He almost jumped, and the cup would have spilled, but for the lid.

“You
paged
me,”
she reminded him sternly. “Why? To tell me you have jack shit?”

The private eye righted the cup, then smiled in a nervous, fleeting, wholly inappropriate manner. “I guess I did find out one thing.”

The hope welled within her, though she tried to keep such emotions in check. “What do you ‘guess' you found out?”

“. . . I'm not the only one looking for this guy.”

Her eyes widened as she settled back into the chair, stunned as a clubbed baby seal.
Who else could be looking for her brother?
Two names popped into her mind: Lydecker; and Sterling . . . and then another: Kafelnikov. “How do you know?”

“It's all over the street.”

Max sat forward again. “Explain.”

“Pawnshop owner, name of Jacobs, he's . . . not what you would call a real upright citizen. More what you'd call . . . well . . .”

“A scumbag,” she said curtly. “Hard to imagine you associating with that type. What did he tell you?”

The detective didn't argue with the characterization. “Anyway, Jacobs told me I wasn't the first guy that had come 'round lately askin' about a kid with these particular talents.”

“Who
else
is looking?”

“This is where it gets . . . scary. It's somebody with a lot of grease, maybe even federal. Two bent cops . . . forgive the redundancy . . . were accompanying this character around.”

“What character?”

“I didn't get a name—just a blond guy, not big or anything . . . but there was somethin' about him, Jacobs said, scared him shitless. Jacobs, y'understand, is a guy who's dealin' with the dregs every hour of every day . . . nothin' I know of ever scared Jacobs before, that's why he's able to thrive, livin' like he does, sort of on the fringes.”

Vogelsang was on a nervous roll and might never shut up, and Max was listening, but her mind was working out whether the blond man was Lydecker, Sterling, or even Kafelnikov. The latter two would be bad enough, but if Manticore was on Seth's heels, Max
really
needed to get to her brother, first.

“Anyway, Jacobs said he asked around, and the two cops and the blond guy were rousting every crook on the street, from the connected ones to the crum bums . . . slappin' 'em around, when necessary, even guys that paid for protection.” His concern seemed genuine; even a little of it may have been for her. “Listen, Max, we're playin' with fire—if this is
federal,
I—”

“Okay,” Max said, patting the air. “Back to earth—settle.”

The detective nodded and tried to regulate his breathing. He asked, “You got any idea who this blond guy might be?”

“No . . . maybe you should hire a detective to find out.”

That seemed to hurt him a little. “Very funny.”

“Did your friend Jacobs know anything about the kid with the barcode?”

Vogelsang shook his head. “No—but his ears are perked. I got feelers all around town on this thing.”

“Good,” she said, letting out a long breath. “Keep on it.”

He nodded, then gave her a sheepish look. “Money's goin' fast though, kiddo.”

She glared at him.

He held his hands up, as if surrendering. “What can I do? I got overhead . . . getting street info means greasing palms, and if you don't mind terribly, I gotta make a living myself.”

She moved out to the edge of the chair again and gave him a cold, hard, unblinking stare. “If you want money, Mr. Vogelsang . . . you're gonna have to help me get it.”

Now he pushed the air with his palms, like a bad mime fighting imaginary wind. “Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . I'm an officer of the court, y'know . . . comes with the license. I don't do crime.”

She gave him an arched-brow look.

He shrugged, smirked humorlessly. “Nothing you can do time for, anyway. Guy in my line does work the gray area sometimes.”

“Do tell. . . . All I need is a name.”

He squinted, as if Max had gone out of focus momentarily. “Whose name?”

“Let's just say . . . speaking hypothetically, since I wouldn't want to offend an officer of the court . . . if you had a valuable piece of art, who would you go to, if you wanted to sell?”

He considered that. “I suppose this sale would have to be of a confidential nature.”

She nodded.

“An off-the-books transaction.”

“Don't ever let anyone tell you you're not quick.”

The detective squinted again. “Large scale?”

“Oh yeah. Could keep you in egg rolls for a long time.”

Sparked by this incentive, Vogelsang thought for several long, hard seconds. “Forget the guy I mentioned earlier . . . Jacobs? Large scale is beyond him. But there is one guy, and he's not far from here. His name is Sherwood.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Been down on his luck, but he's good. Right now he does business in this old building off Broad Street.”

This time it was Max who squinted. “Will I need an intro with Mr. Sherwood?”

“Yeah, you will.”

“And who's going to do that for me?” Max asked as she rose.

Vogelsang smiled at her and rubbed his fingers back and forth against his thumb. “I maybe could be persuaded.”

She leaned on the desk with both hands. “You want to keep getting paid?”

The detective switched gears. “I could call him for you, sure—sort of a favor to a good client. Referral kinda thing. Happy to do it.”

“Make the call.”

He did.

She listened attentively as he made arrangements with Sherwood, calling him “Woody.” Vogelsang's manner was friendly enough to convince Max she wasn't the first client the detective had referred to the fence. Vogelsang assured the man these were “quality goods,” that the seller was reliable, and so on.

Vogelsang covered the receiver and turned to Max. “How's an hour from now?”

“Swell,” she said.

He relayed the information and nodded to her as he listened. Then he said, “I'll tell her,” hung up, and gave his client detailed directions, ending with, “Third door on the right.”

Max thanked him.

“So,” Vogelsang said cheerfully, hands flat on his desk, “the next time I see you, you should have some cash.”

“Sure,” she said, exiting, throwing a blatantly insincere smile over her shoulder at him. “And the next time I see you, you should have some information.”

Back at her apartment, Max changed into a black hooded sweatshirt, leather jacket and pants, to better protect her against the bad weather on its way. She collected the Grant Wood and the Heart of the Ocean (still in their zippered pouch); and then she rode the Ninja hard into the night, heading to the address Vogelsang had provided.

The rain was closing in now, as if the city was a suspect the weather was after, Max knew that the storm could erupt at any moment and, despite the zippered bag, she feared subjecting the painting to a downpour, so she pushed the bike, enjoying the engine's harsh song as she revved it up.

The first drops hit her just as she drove through the doorless entry of the building, a dilapidated three-story brick structure with most of the windows punched out and the walls starting to crumble. Only the roof seemed to be sound.

Max parked the bike, climbed off, and looked around. She stood in a wide hallway that had once had offices on either side—but now, doors were either absent or hung open, with their glass knocked out; and the Sheetrock interior walls had holes kicked in them. She could hear rats scuttling. Not surprisingly, the apparently abandoned building was dark, and if it hadn't been for her special genetics, she would have needed a flashlight to get around.

Had Vogelsang sold her out?
she wondered.
Was she walking into a trap? Were Lydecker and/or Sterling and/or Kafelnikov among the rats scurrying in the darkness?

Carrying the zippered bag like a pizza she was delivering, she crept down the hall to the third door on the right—the only closed door in the corridor. To her relief, Max saw light filtering out from underneath.

Of course, this
still
could be a trap. . . .

But caution just wasn't on her agenda, tonight. She turned the knob and walked right in.

Unlike what she'd seen of the rest of the building, this room was still in perfect shape—except for a head-sized hole on the right wall, providing an impromptu window into the next office. But the other walls were fine, the door had a lock, and an overhead fluorescent illuminated the room.

In the middle crouched a bunged-up metal desk with a TV on a crate next to it; two metal folding chairs were on the client's side of the desk. On a card table against the back wall sat a hot plate, with an open door nearby leading to a tiny bathroom. A sleeping bag, rolled up, was snugged in a corner; and the tiniest of refrigerators purred. These were spartan quarters, to say the least, but the place was spotlessly clean.

Behind the desk, his hands folded on the desktop, seated in an ancient swivel chair, was a gray-haired man of perhaps seventy with wire-frame glasses aiding lively dark eyes of indeterminate color, a neatly trimmed but thick salt-and-pepper mustache, and a long but well-tended beard every bit as gray as his hair. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt buttoned all the way up, with no tie—the suit was out of style but not threadbare. Despite the surroundings, he struck Max as both dignified and businesslike.

“Mr. Sherwood?” Max asked.

He rose, gestured to one of the metal folding chairs opposite him. “I would be pleased if you called me Woody. . . . And you're Max?”

“I'm Max,” she said, and couldn't help but smile. “Interesting place of business. Do you, uh, live here as well?”

As she sat, so did he. “At the moment I do, yes. . . . Sometimes being an art speculator causes us to reevaluate our lifestyle and make certain subtractions.”

“Like a bed, for example?”

He sighed, but his response seemed chipper. “I won't deny that I've had a few setbacks of late . . . but I'm just one deal away from Easy Street.”

“Is that in a nice part of Seattle?”

“It's an expression, dear. Pre-Pulse.”

Max thought:
I need to hang with a younger crowd.

Sherwood was saying, “You know, dear, you're very young and quite pretty. You look healthy.”

She cocked her head, narrowed her eyes. “Thanks . . . I guess. What does that have to do with any transaction we might have?”

He patted the air with one hand. “I meant nothing by it—just an observation. But the people who bring me merchandise are, by definition, thieves. The young ones are drug addicts and don't have your . . . robust glow. The older ones have a . . . hardness about them, that I hope you will never achieve.”

She didn't know what to say to that; no matter: Sherwood was plowing on.

“Now I'm not saying a woman . . . a young woman . . . can't be a thief, and a good one. I've known a number, over the years. . . . The female thieves I've known have either been . . . unpleasantly hard, or, frankly, gay . . . or both.”

Not knowing whether to be amused or irritated, Max said, “And you're wondering if I'm gay?”