Clawback (3 page)

If the falcons moved uptown, maybe they could eat the sparrows. I’d have to write a letter to the editor.

First thing, like every morning, the news. Still lying on the futon I pulled my laptop open:

“MILLIONAIRE BANKER KILLED IN DAWN ATTACK!”

Good job, Rupert. At least two errors were obvious in the single headline: Marlett was a fund manager, not a banker, and the attack had occurred hours before dawn.

But he really was dead. The news aggregators all said the same thing: Marlett had died on his doorstep, shot between two and five times by an unknown assailant.

Nothing to do with me, thankfully.

I hadn’t been able to get Marlett’s cash out of the Caymans bank, six hours earlier, because it was gone by the time I logged in. Sadly, that kind of cash will always find a new home as fast as it needs one. But the day wasn’t lost. Once I got out of bed I found a new-business call on my voicemail.

“Silas Cade? Are you there? Don’t you ever answer the phone? I’ve tried three times now. Call me back.”

Well, in fact, no, I never
do
answer that phone. It’s a voicemail–only number at Verizon, which I signed up for years ago, back before customer-verification rules became stricter. They don’t know who I am, and I pay with a money order sent through the mail every six months, so they never will. I call in to collect my messages now and then—once every few days unless the wolf is at the door.

Presumably, my new lead had gotten the number from a previous client or the grapevine or who knows? Like Walter, I have to rely on word of mouth, which means I need a permanent contact number. But I use it strictly for first impressions. After that I buy a prepaid cellphone, one for each job, and throw it in the East River afterward.

You can’t be too careful.

I still had the mobile I’d used with Marlett, but I couldn’t use it anymore—the job was over, he was dead, the phone had to go. I’d leave it in a dumpster somewhere later. Fortunately, I’d stocked up on throwaways from the 96th Street bodega recently, and found one in the kitchen drawer. I powered it up, verified the balance and called my possible new client. In as few words as necessary I set up an appointment that afternoon: “No, don’t tell me where you got my
name. Yes, I’m glad for the reference, but…no, forget it. Let’s not talk about…yes, I’m happy to meet.”

They always need to see me in person. Evaluate my trustworthiness, see if they can spot the handgun, who knows? Privacy can be hard to come by, since they’re usually C-level executives or millionaire business owners. But this guy—he called himself Ganderson—suggested the Willow Haven Country Club.

“What?”

“It’s in Bolingbroke, do you know it?”

“Sure, but isn’t that kind of, I dunno…public?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you on the range. Ask the girl at the front desk.”

I started to say something about not having golf clubs, but he’d already hung up. Well, I could stand around while he practiced his drives. Maybe onlookers would think I was the caddy.

There were coffee beans somewhere in the cramped kitchen of my apartment, but a warm breeze was coming through the window, and it looked like a cloudless sky over the next building’s roofline. A takeout bagel from Amir’s seemed like a better plan, and I could walk down to Carl Schurz Park, find a bench and read the market blogs on my mobile.

Self-employment does have its advantages.

Going down the stairs I passed my neighbor Gabriel, shirtless, tattoos dark on his shaved head, hauling up a laundry basket. He nodded in a friendly way.

“Hey, Silas. Nice day, huh?”

“Global warming.”

“Whatever.”

In the tiny vestibule I checked the mailbox—nothing, which was good—and sighed. I’d had the place for less than a year, but it was getting time to move again. I don’t like people knowing who I am, even a little. Not where I live.

And I’d gotten to like Yorkville. Students and people in their twenties, mostly, north of 80th and east of First. The closest subway was blocks away, which kept the rents down, and residents tended to come and go but without the seedy transience and heavy police presence of, say, Alphabet City. Most buildings were only three or four stories, so there were no doormen or concierges to keep a gossipy eye on the streets. I blended in—told people I was a freelance content management specialist or graphic designer or day trader, and they nodded and didn’t care.

I’d even found an off-street space for my car for only five hundred a month, cash.

As I pushed through the vestibule entrance, I decided I wasn’t done checking the mail. Rarely, but not never, someone I actually need to hear from writes me a letter. They don’t send it to a real address, of course—I use a double-blind, with forwarding out of Nevada provided by an edge-city guy who thinks I’m Russian
mafiya
but who’s paid well enough to be reliable. He sends it along to a box at the post office on 109th, up in East Harlem. I hadn’t been there to clean out the junk mail for a couple of weeks, and this seemed like a good opportunity. It was only three stops on the Lex. Amir’s could wait.

The building’s heavy glass-mahogany-and-steel-bars front door swung shut behind me as I went down the worn terrazzo steps of the
stoop. It really was a beautiful day. Sunshine, clean air, those damn birds, red and gold leaves in the gutters from trees down the street. Who
wouldn’t
want to live in the world’s greatest city?

“No change,” snarled the helpful MTA employee from behind her scratched lexan, and went back to her cellphone conversation without drawing breath.

“But I only need two rides.” I held up a twenty. She just looked annoyed and pointed at the ticket machines again.

I don’t like the MetroCards, naturally. Trip history is stored centrally, and the MTA is happy to share data with police. Sure, they’re anonymous—unless you’re stupid enough to top them off with a credit card—but they can still match you to every trip on a single magstripe. So I try to buy only a ride or two at a time, which is hard when of the three machines, one is credit only, one is broken and one is flashing
U
SE
E
XACT
C
HANGE.
I sighed and gave up the twenty.

The post office was busy, like most weekday mornings. A long line, two clerks working the counter, the floor already littered with scraps of paper and torn labels. I found my box and had just turned the key when my mobile rang.

I stopped dead, pulled it out and stared at the screen, which was only giving me “Number Blocked.”

See, the way I live, other people don’t call me. I call
them
. I’m constantly switching phones, as I mentioned, and it all gets too confusing. Clients get a number until their job ends, and friends might get another, but never for long.

But worse, this was the phone I’d used with Marlett. He was the only person in the world I’d given the number—and I didn’t think he’d need to be calling now.

I should have gotten rid of the damn thing immediately.

“Hello?” I took my mail, the usual stack of mass-distribution flyers and a couple of envelopes, and stepped outside.

“Hi,” said a woman’s voice. “Silas Cade?”

Okay, my first reaction might not have been the best.

I didn’t know the caller. She said her name was Claire Something—no bells. She didn’t mention another name, like, say, a mutual acquaintance, to validate the contact. And she wasn’t asking whether I wanted a job.

So I immediately clicked off, and while walking directly back to the subway, I pulled the battery. Waiting at a red light on Third Avenue, I set the phone at the edge of the curb and smashed it with one boot, then swept up the pieces and dropped them, one by one, into garbage bins as I passed. The last one went into the MTA’s massive, metal-bound, bombproof trash can on the downtown platform.

Dumb.

I should have held on to the phone to try backtracking the call. For a moment I looked back at the trash barrel—but no, that was too far beneath even my dignity, not to mention the possibility of drawing attention. Even in East Harlem, transit cops occasionally got out of their cruisers long enough to walk a platform.

My only activity lately had been running Hayden down for Marlett. It didn’t have to mean a connection, but that old guy, Occam? He had a point.

I suddenly needed to know more about Marlett. A lot more.

A train squealed in, people got off, people got on. Not too crowded this time of day. I stood at one end of the car, swaying as it started up, eyeing the other passengers. At 103rd I stepped out, then slipped back in again, right before the doors closed. Old habits, easy to revive. It’s no way to live, not all the time, but paranoia holds its own deep comforts.

Back aboveground at 86th I circled some blocks, zipped through an office building’s atrium, then stopped abruptly at a sidewalk vendor’s pretzel cart.

“What’d you like, chief?”

“No butter, extra salt.” I stood a few paces away and ate it standing, squinting up and down the sun-washed street.

You know, being careful.

On the other hand, the NYPD had recently begun to deploy miniature camera-carrying dirigibles, operated by remote control, far enough above the city streets to be invisible to pedestrians and low enough to be out of traveled airspace. UAV surveillance technology, developed for the sandy battlelands between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and more recently Mexico and Texas, is now in service above the metropolis. Or so the bloggers say. You can’t really be off the grid anymore, anywhere.

When the pretzel was gone, I continued another block to the Shale Building and walked down into the parking garage. Not so grand as it sounds—the building was a poorly maintained hulk from the 1940s, housing skeevy small-business offices and the sort of residential tenant who was required to pay weekly, in cash, direct to the super. The garage’s striped exit arm was up, the attendant’s booth locked and empty. I could see a Styrofoam cup of coffee on the
tiny desk next to the credit card reader, though. Goldfinger was around somewhere, in the bathroom maybe.

I waited five minutes before I decided that loitering might become suspicious. Goldfinger must have gone off on one of his pointlessly mysterious errands. I found a scrap of paper, scrawled a note and pushed it through the cash window, to land next to his coffee.

“Where the fuck are you? Got an inquiry. Back later.”

It was the nature of my job, sometimes, to depend on such stellar colleagues. I found my car, did the usual thirty-second check for bombs and bugs, and drove out.

Perhaps my new client would be a little more classy.

A
faint haze had dimmed the sun slightly, but it was still warm and bright. I took the inland route again, back up the Merritt eight hours after coming down it the other way. Now the four lanes were choked with traffic. Every car seemed to have open windows, stereos rattling the frames. Nothing like summer weather in October to put the city in a good mood.

Even my twenty-year-old Tercel seemed to perk up. It was the most reliable vehicle ever built, unprepossessing, perfect for the rough streets of urban America, but only on days like this could you say it was a pleasure to drive.

At the Willow Haven gates a guy in a red jacket waved me into the parking lot. The flawlessly paved blacktop was filled with open-top German two-seaters. Men with golf bags and women carrying tennis gear walked along the shaded veranda of the clubhouse. I felt as out of place as the sullen-looking teenager sitting on a wicker rocker, arms crossed, glaring at nothing. No doubt his parents had brought him along—quality time—but he clearly wasn’t with the program.

Somewhere in the distance
I heard a familiar
pop-pop
sound. For a moment I hesitated, then shook my head.

It had to be something else. This wasn’t Kandahar.

“Ganderson,” I told the woman seated at a gleaming table inside the doors. “I’m meeting him on the driving range.”

She clacked the keyboard of a surprisingly discreet laptop. “I don’t believe Mr. Ganderson has reserved any—oh, here he is.” She looked up and blinked. “I’m sorry, were you expecting to play golf today? Because Mr. Ganderson has signed up the two of you for the
shooting
range.”

“Shooting?”

“Skeet and target practice.” She studied the screen. “No, not skeet. He’s only marked down for the handgun lanes today.”

I hadn’t realized the NRA was running blue-blazer outreach. “I see. Can I check out a Glock?”

“I’m sorry. We don’t provide the armament.”

“No problem. Maybe Ganderson has some chrome I can borrow.”

“Are you range qualified, sir?”

“Oh yes.” I couldn’t tell if there was a current of irony in everything she said or not. “Ganderson and I plink tin cans all the time.”

“You’ll fit right in, then.” She gave directions, and I wandered back outside.

So that explained the gunshots. The jaded rich always seem to need new hobbies—why not small arms? Or maybe they’d begun to take “class warfare” more literally. Either way, once I found the range, with its measured lines and pop-up silhouettes and steep backstop, I felt right at home.