Dark Prophecy (29 page)

“Constance, you talk to the priest,” he said. “Get him to tell you everything. Beat him if you have to. The old Dirty Harry shoe-leather-in-the-bullet-wound trick should work just fine.”

“You’re a sick man,” Constance said. “What about you? Where are you going?”

“Going to catch an ambulance,” he said, then trotted off back to their car.

Surprise, surprise—the EMTs took their vehicle not to the closest dispatching station, but to a private garage in suburban Fresno. After parking the vehicle and peeling themselves out of their fake uniforms, they bullshitted with each other for a while, with Riggins watching them from across the street. One of them must have suggested breakfast, since it was Sunday morning, and the other agreed. They piled into a Ford Taurus and drove a half mile to a diner. Climbed into a booth, ordered some eggs, bacon, muffins, coffee.

Riggins entered one minute later, slid in next to them. Put his Sig Sauer on the table. Eased back, like he had all the time in the world, then showed them his Special Circs badge.

“Hi, fellas,” he said.

chapter 74

Dark thought about Hilda’s interpretation of the Tower:

A bolt of divine power, almost a cosmic course correction.

God strikes you down when you are arrogant,
she’d continued,
hoping that you’ll see the truth. And tap back into the heart of innocence. It’s a divine act. A wake-up call for the rest of your life.

The image on the face of the card was horrifying, with shades of 9/11 and the apocalypse and the Tower of Babel rolled up into one black spectacle. A proud gray edifice is struck by lightning from the ebony skies, knocking a gold crown from the roof, setting it ablaze. Two figures fall from the skies, one wearing a crown, the other not. Both stretch out their arms in stark terror. Below is nothing but a terribly eroded foundation, proof that you’ve built your entire life on unstable ground that has been rotting away beneath you. There is no escape. Everything you know is about to be struck down.

The card was about sudden change, a downfall, and a revelation.

Like every tarot card, there were positive and negative interpretations of the image. The Tower, to some, would be welcome, because it would mean a spectacular breakthrough, exposing the hidden truth behind a situation, or receiving an answer—like a bolt of inspiration—after months of denial. The Tower card didn’t spell doom. Like the Fool, it promised a new beginning. The negative interpretation, however, meant a devastating loss of fortune, the crisis of your life, and utter chaos.

So far, every murder (or attempted murder) had been closely tied into the images on the cards.

Who was the Tower? The Maestros believed someone had built up something powerful and mighty on a ruined foundation . . . so who?

The geography of the card layout also had to be a factor. Las Vegas, Fresno, the card progressing in a northwesterly direction to . . .

Wait.

 

 

Graysmith stepped out of the shower to find Dark poring through the documents on her laptop.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Tell you if I find it.”

If the Maestro’s financial records were right, Dark knew exactly where they were going to strike next.

IX

the tower

To watch Steve Dark’s personal tarot card reading,
please log in to
Level26.com
and
enter the code: tower.

S
crawled on the back of the owner’s copy of a receipt from Send It Packing, a mail delivery service located in Nob Hill, San Francisco, California.

chapter 75

San Francisco, California

 

 

Dark looked up at the Niantic Tower in downtown San Francisco.

There were only two structures said to be able to withstand earthquakes: pyramids and redwood trees. The Niantic Tower kept both in mind when it was built in the early 1970s. Named for the massive whaling vessel buried near the foundation, the Niantic was a forty-eight-floor crushed-quartz rebuff to Mother Nature, built on top of notoriously unstable ground. The Niantic had a nine-foot foundation that took a full day to pour, and a base made of eighteen thousand cubic yards of concrete and enough rebar to stretch from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. The Niantic’s base was also incredibly flexible; that, along with its truss system, meant it was able to withstand any seismic jolt imaginable.

The Niantic was also home to Westmire Investments, the umbrella corporation to dozens of lenders, including the particular lender that foreclosed on the Maestros’ home.

The Niantic had to be their target.

But how?

What kind of lightning bolt from the sky could they have prepared—just the two of them, to topple this tower?

 

 

“You’re infamous now,” Graysmith said, looking at the screen on her phone. “Special Circs has a hard-on for you. Big manhunt and everything. The Slab’s got the whole story.”

“Great,” Dark muttered.

They were close to the city now, but caught up in early morning traffic. Dark felt like there was a giant clock ticking in his brain, counting down to something horrible. But the numbers were missing from the face. The end might be any minute from now. Or it may have already happened.

“Strange,” Graysmith muttered. “Does Knack usually invent things out of whole fucking cloth?”

Dark turned in her direction. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, he claims to have spoken to you at length and that you’ve confessed to all of the Tarot Card Murders. That you wouldn’t stop until the last card was dealt, and that many more would die.”

“What?”

“The whole thing’s bizarre. Kind of a diatribe, making you seem like a disgruntled ex-G-man trying to outwit your former employers by committing these crimes. Point is, your face is everywhere. You’re no longer a
person of interest
. You’re pretty much the main interest.”

Dark thought about what had happened in Fresno. Knack had approached him, tried to pin him down for something. Had he lost his mind, figuring that he could turn a fast buck on a quick-and-dirty fabrication? This caused Dark grief, to be sure, but such blatant fabrications were usually revealed. Just ask Clifford Irving, Jayson Blair, or Stephen Glass. Like bank robbers, journalists who cooked up the facts were almost always caught. Knack would be no different.

Graysmith’s attention, meanwhile, had turned back to the Niantic Tower. She had access to a secret database tracking security at all major U.S. landmarks. Not long after 9/11, the fledgling Department of Homeland Security held a summit meeting of Hollywood screen-writers, best-selling novelists, demolitions experts, former terrorists, and career criminals. A list of landmarks was distributed; the request was simple.
How would you breach these?

Apparently, a team of people had set their minds to destroying the Niantic Tower. Graysmith ran through the options.

“Think they’re going to steal another plane?” she asked.

“It’s possible,” Dark said. “Not a commercial airliner, but more likely a private plane, just like the Westmire Investments charter. But they haven’t repeated methods yet. We’ve had a hanging, a push off a ledge, strangling, knife attacks, a plane crash, feigned suicide ...”

“They repeated with guns. Maestro shot at Donnelly. Kobiashi was forced to kill himself.”

“True,” Dark said, faraway look in his eyes.

“You don’t seem convinced,” Graysmith said. “What’s your gut telling you?”

“They’ll try something else. This is their big finale—an entire institution they blame for their family’s downfall.”

“So they’re definitely going after the building.”

“I think so,” Dark said. “Can you have it evacuated? Get emergency response teams here?”

Graysmith looked at him. “How sure are you, Steve?”

“This is the place, Lisa. I know it.”

“Okay. I’ll sound the alarms. I’m not saying it will be easy. You had to deal with bureaucracy at Special Circs. Well, it’s pretty much the same all over the government.”

“Do it.”

Graysmith started to punch in a phone number, then paused. “Wait. If we evacuate, the Maestros will know it. They could abort this plan, come up with something else.”

“No,” Dark said. “This is their big moment. The rest of the murders were just a sideshow; this is going to be their statement. Whatever they have planned, I don’t think they can just pick it up and move it somewhere else.”

“But they still could trigger the event early.”

Dark knew she was right.

chapter 76

Montgomery Street / San Francisco, California

 

 

Sleepy-eyed workers filed into the Niantic Tower. Just another workday, bustling with accountants, lawyers, bankers, CPAs, insurance agents, caterers, janitors, security guards, and deliverymen. It was Monday morning, first of the month. Everybody had reports to file, e-mails to send, phone conferences to set up, deliveries to make.

There was the usual flurry of FedEx and UPS and DHL shipments, backlogged from over the weekend. Free gifts from PR agencies. Catered food, for breakfast meetings. Flowers, too. Surprise romantic gestures, congrats, belated birthdays, well-wishes on new deals. Books, samples, clothes, paperwork.

Just another busy Monday morning in the city by the bay.

 

 

As he waited for Graysmith’s request to make its way through the proper channels, Dark positioned himself in the lobby of the Niantic Tower, mind racing in overdrive, watching the workers come and go. People in professional gear, bike messengers in Spandex, delivery-men in crisp brown shirts and creased shorts, all streaming in and out of the revolving doors in constant flow, especially at this hour.

The stream of people made Dark see the Maestros in a different light. Roger was a former soldier turned blue-collar worker. Abdulia, a professor and card reader. A life of sweat and toil, a life of the mind. Neither one of them would ever work in a building like this—not unless Roger were working construction or repairs. Was that it? Had he managed to get himself hired on this site?

No, the Philly PD had established that he’d been working a construction job in the city for the past few weeks. Unless he’d bribed someone to fake his time sheets and actually spent his time out here in San Francisco. Roger Maestro had the cash. But you can’t check into a hotel with cash, no matter how much you have. Hotels required credit cards. The Maestros’ credit, Dark recalled, was shot.

Dark remembered the police report: Items were stolen from Green’s Chapel Hill home. Could they have nabbed credit cards, as well? Other sources of funding?

He called Graysmith. “Quick favor.”

“I’m in the middle of groveling with a high-ranking member of the U.S. intelligence world. Do you mind if I call you back?”

“This is easy. I need a credit check on Martin Green. Specifically if anyone’s been using the dead man’s credit cards over the past ten days. And if so, for what.”

Families didn’t always sort these things out right away after a murder. And from what he could tell, Green didn’t have much in the way of family. The Maestros would know this. The man might have been their opening statement, but he could also function as a kind of blank check.

While Dark waited for the call, he watched the lobby of the Niantic Towers. He was a wanted man, thanks to the Knack story, which this morning had been picked up by TV and cable news stations around the world. Being out here, in the general public, was a little insane. Anyone could recognize him at any time, despite the baseball cap he’d picked up from a street vendor.