The Granite Moth (21 page)

The Belascos had been invited to attend their own memorial service at none other than St. Mark's Church in the Village, formal attire optional. Both the cruelty and tackiness were beyond belief. The card was sent to forensics, and the grieving parents were sent home with a police escort. Detective Cowder instructed them to call if they received any more threats. They barely acknowledged her advice, nodding at all the empty “sorry for your loss” pleasantries they received from others in the office. I couldn't say that I blamed them. While Detective Cowder's cadence was at least solicitous, most of the NYPD employees were numb to violence themselves, hardly registering loss unless it affected them directly. The mental walls were necessary, I knew, but they still looked ugly in the fluorescents.

Marco Medina managed to make the lighting seem movie-star worthy when he walked into view, but his bloodshot eyes and loose uniform made him look more like a spirit than a man. Maybe that would explain why I was so startled. Even when he waved at me, I thought for a moment that he was in my imagination, the flutters in my stomach caused from memory. Then he was crushing me into his chest, careful to avoid my bandaged arm, and saying that it was good to see me. I snapped back into reality, not sure I wasn't better off in the fantasy. I returned the embrace, feeling the ribs through the back of his shirt. The word
shell
popped into my mind, but I pushed it away. I said it was great to see him, and in a way, it was.

When I returned to the department following my undercover stint, Marco had been my trainee, ready to be embedded with the deadly Los Guardias gang. He was a distraction that soon grew into something more substantial, someone I could love
under different circumstances. Maybe if I were a different person. Then again, it's not that hard to become someone else with a little practice.

“First day back?” I asked, embarrassed when the words came out garbled, like someone talking in a nearby room. I cleared my throat and glanced down. I rarely gave much thought to my shoes but now seemed as good a time as any, and I noted that the toes were scuffed and badly in need of a polish. Without knowing why, I tugged my sling down until it was covering more of my wrist.

“Not much on my desk, yet. Everyone's afraid to push me. You know how it goes.”

I looked back up at him, recognizing the strain around his eyes. His self-imposed hiatus on a faraway beach had been a smart idea even if it didn't seem to have helped him. There's only so much palm trees can do. Getting out of an embedded assignment was a relief, of course, but it was accompanied with fear and guilt and a whole swamp of big, unwieldy emotions that the counselor would try to talk out of my former lover. Marco had always been reticent, so I didn't see those sessions going very well. Of course, I may or may not have threatened my own psychologist. He may or may not have reported me.

When Marco asked me what I was doing at the precinct, I explained that my two cases appeared to be linked by a hate group. Later that afternoon, I was going to be visiting their evil lair, a.k.a. a warehouse in Brooklyn. Waiting for the diagnostic report on the invitation was likely to take days, and I didn't have that kind of time. Unless I handcuffed Dolly to me, I couldn't protect him round the clock. Even then, I can't sniff out a bomb. No, I wanted whoever was responsible for these crimes behind bars as soon as possible. Preferably today.

Marco touched the wrist I had tried to hide and asked me if I needed any help. I shook my head, glancing behind me to make sure Ellis wasn't watching us. I had told him that I was going home to rest, but the lie had sounded worse than usual. We both knew that I favored a more boots-on-the-ground approach. Or penny loafers, whatever. “Be careful,” Marco said.

“Of course.” I was smart enough to know a trap when I saw one, right?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
ndigo Ivan, our “I was pushed” juggler, had 11,000 Twitter followers and a website that featured his “family-friendly” rates. There was even a row of five-star reviews from happy customers: “Animal balloons, too?! Indigo can do it all. Our girls loved him!” His bio mentioned that he had performed with such illustrious groups as the Candy Apple Circus and Cincinnati's Spectacular Showstoppers. Meeza agreed with my assessment that he seemed legit, although her answers were terse. I'd been in the office for half an hour, and she had looked at me a grand total of once to make sure my arm was okay and to see if I needed anything. The cold shoulder wasn't her forte, but bless her, she was trying.

“He's on the parade registration list,” she said, handing me a single photocopy with Indigo Ivan's name and email address highlighted.

“What's the world coming to when even the snakes aren't evil?”

Meeza continued to flip through the registration papers, looking for any anomalies. There were thousands of names, so I doubted that she would notice anything. She was in need
of an excuse to ignore me and would have nosed through the phonebook if I bothered to keep one of those relics around. I knew that she wanted to be left alone, but I felt obligated to talk to her about Ellis's suspicions.

“Listen,” I said, and she bristled. One word, and I had already gotten the tone wrong. “I'm sorry. I was worried about you. Am worried.”

Meeza flipped to another page, using her finger to scroll down the list. The gesture reminded me of a child learning to read. She was smart, but had somehow managed to grow up in Queens with a certain amount of innocence still intact. I'd seen her marvel at being able to see a single star from our window if you craned your neck in the right uncomfortable angle.

“Maybe V.P.'s right, and this line of work is too dangerous for you. Is there something else you'd rather be doing?”

Meeza didn't say anything, probably not considering undergraduate classes dangerous. I could imagine her in a profusion of other careers, all better paid and more glamorous. She'd be a first-class travel agent. A museum docent? Maybe she really could enroll at NYU. I was working my way up to the main event and eased into it. “I don't know how often V.P. gets new merchandise, but he has a new car. It's Lars Dekker's.”

My assistant finally looked at me, her wide eyes growing wider as she took in the implications of this fact. Her boyfriend had something to do with my client's disappearance. Of that much, I was sure, and I knew she was bright enough to share the same conclusion. She was also bright enough to ask the one question without a satisfying answer: “The license plates match?”

“The plate's new, probably fake, but listen—“

“No, I see. It's perfectly clear. In a city of, what is it now, eight million people, there can only be one of Lars Dekker's car. Does he drive a diamond-encrusted BMW? Or, I know, a stretch Hummer with his name spray-painted on the side.”

She was stuffing files into her bag now, and I tried to explain that Teslas are pretty rare—coincidences rarer—but she didn't want to hear me.

“No, it makes sense, you don't need to explain it to me. Of course, there's one silver whatchamacallit in all of the land.” She stopped suddenly, her eyes filling with tears, and for a moment, I thought she believed me. “Thank you for everything, Katya.
Kathleen
, I mean. After my client's satisfied that her son is attending his classes, I quit. You're right. There are other things I could be doing.”

She finished her speech with a clear voice, but tears were rolling down her cheeks as she waved good-bye from the doorway. “You're welcome back any time,” I called to her retreating frame. For the first time that I can remember, the new floor secretary actually noticed I was alive. She popped her gum in my direction and shook her head. We must have interrupted her concentration on Words with Friends. She glared at me then glared at the elevator as the doors dinged open.

Back in the office, I opened my closet and stared without really seeing the contents. My eyes were swimming, and it took me a moment to remember why I'd stopped by my office in the first place. I reached out to touch the Kate wig and thrift store dress that I had used to create newest Zeus Society member Kate Manning. Did hate or love create the most havoc in the world? The answer should be simple, a glance at history books showing us any number of genocides. And, yet, Medea didn't kill her children because she hated them, but because she loved her husband. “Medea wasn't real,” I said aloud, yanking the ugly gray monstrosity off the rack and kicking off my shoes.

By the time I had reached the train station, sadness had given way to anger, and I wanted to hit the turnstile for not reading my MetroCard on the first try. If I could prove V.P.'s involvement, Meeza would be safe. Whether she would still be my friend was another story, but that could wait. Bashing in her boyfriend's head would have to wait, too, but I didn't plan on delaying that to-do list item for long.

Before approaching the warehouse, I straightened my scarf and formulated my cover story if I ran into anyone. There wasn't a Zeus Society meeting scheduled that day, but for all I knew, converts slept amongst the reels of pornography while visions of sugarplums and lynchings danced in their heads. My story was that my nephew's ex had reached out to me for comfort, and I didn't know how to respond. Were there scholarships for the Mount Olympus treatment camp? Marco's warning to be safe echoed in my head, sounding more meaningful than he probably meant, and I pushed that thought away for a later time, too. When next updating my resume, I should put “procrastinator on personal issues” under special skills. I can also drive a five-speed.

The warehouse looked about as inviting as I remembered, “Fuck This $hit” painted on the side in an array of colors and scripts. Perhaps it was the wrong time for nostalgia, but the graffiti evoked my earliest memories, the tagged subway cars pulling into our station at 103rd Street. There were so many names competing for attention that they blurred together into one monster ego. And I thought of the city that way, as well, a sort of dragon that let me pass unharmed past the neighborhood brownstones, skyscrapers in the distance. From our building's roof, we could see all the way to the Twin Towers, and I believed them to be the animal's nest. When I had asked my mom why there were two, she told me the dragon was waiting for a friend. I wasn't sure I wanted to meet another monster, but I grew up. I was ready now.

I tried knocking this time, banging my good hand against the sheet metal. It rattled, but summoned no beast. The padlock had been replaced, but I'd come prepared and pulled the bolt cutters from my bag. They were hard to maneuver one-armed, but getting creative with my knees, I managed to snip the small security chain. Inside, the film canisters greeted me, alien in their uniformity, such nondescript vessels for fantasies. Hallooing to make sure that I was as alone as I seemed to be, I crept toward the meeting room. It was deserted, folding chairs strewn and chalkboard wiped. Still bright enough to hurt my eyes. My heart thrilled at the sight of the proper open door in the back, and I scurried toward it.

“Leader Cronos,” I called out one last time, smug when no sounds greeted me. I was already well inside the makeshift office that rivaled my own in lack of personality. Aside from a desk and a filing cabinet, there was no other furniture, not even a chair for sheep ready to be let into the flock. I went straight for the laptop, wanting to get a glimpse at the Excel sheet of targets that Agent Thornfield had mentioned.

In my undergraduate course on cybersecurity, I'd learned that most breaches are caused by carelessness. That is, passwords are less likely to be hacked by geniuses in Prague than they are to be left lying around. The leader had done one better. His computer wasn't locked at all, and the desktop image of himself on a mountaintop could be ignored. The spreadsheet was as horrible as I had anticipated, rows of men and women with mysterious letters next to their names. “E” for eliminated, I speculated, shuddering. But no, there were too many. I took photos of each page with my phone, hoping that the resolution would be good enough to read later.

The smarter half of me knew that I should skedaddle, be satisfied with this information. The other half said “in for a dollar,” and that chirpier voice was too hard to resist. The top
drawer of the filing cabinet creaked as I pulled it open, and I paused, listening for any visitors. The warehouse was tomb quiet minus the occasional flapping of pigeons that had gotten trapped inside. The Zeus Society member files were thin, filled with basic contact information and hastily marked attendance records. “Kate Manning” didn't even warrant one, yet, nor did John Thornfield. The second drawer was more interesting, its files labeled with city names, a range from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine, with plenty of stops along the way. I yanked New York City from where it was nestled between Philadelphia and Boston, flipping it open to see photos of nearly every LGBT club in all five boroughs. Sure enough, among some other storefronts, there were Tongue and The Pink Parrot. Earl the security guard was standing in front of Big Mamma's famous venue, glaring at whoever was taking the photo. There was no date on the back, but it looked recent. I tucked it into my bag, not really caring if it were missed. Did I mention that I was angry now?