The Wrong Man (26 page)

Cornell Mandrake leaned forward on his chair in the Palisades Medical Center waiting room and watched the figures of Deputy
Marshal Delaney and Agent Wagner until they turned right for the elevators and disappeared from view.

Wherever Bishop was, Mandrake didn’t envy him.

Delaney seemed to know everything about
the guy from his birth on up, and it had only taken a couple of minutes in her presence
for Mandrake to realize failure wasn’t part of her vocabulary. Her younger male colleague, Wagner, clearly idolized her and
not just because of her looks. Mandrake had found himself answering every question with an attention to detail he hoped would
cause her to think well of him.
And that wasn’t like him at all.

Except he hadn’t quite told her everything.

A movement of white in his peripheral vision brought his head around. The slim, bearded Dr Akhtar was approaching the waiting
area with his hands in his coat pockets. Mandrake stood up and walked over, meeting him halfway.

‘Is your sister still here, Mr
Mandrake?’ the doctor asked, looking around as he adjusted his glasses.

‘Lisa’s had to take the kids to her ex-husband’s for the night. She’ll be back soon.’

‘All right. Well, there’s been no change as yet, I’m afraid. Your father’s out of ER and stable, but it’s still too early
to tell how seriously the blow’s affected him, although the coma is not a deep
one, so it’s possible he could wake tomorrow,
or it could be weeks from now. We’ll conduct more tests through the night and probably know more in the morning.’ He looked
up at the clock on the wall. The shorter hand was just edging past the twelve. ‘Later
this
morning, I mean.’ He gave a weak smile.

‘But he
will
wake up?’

‘Guarantees
are worthless currency in a hospital, I’m afraid, but he’s strong and otherwise healthy for a man of his age and
it was called in quickly. I feel positive; more than that, I cannot say. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .’

Mandrake nodded. ‘Thanks, doctor. I’ll be here all night, so if you can keep me updated . . .’

‘Of course. And if I don’t, one of my colleagues
will.’

The doctor turned and walked back the way he’d come. Mandrake went back to his row of empty chairs, sat down in the same warm
seat and thought about tomorrow. Or today. The police had assured him they’d clear the crime scene before daylight, but had
asked him to shut the place down for the next couple of days until they were sure they had everything they
needed. That was
fine by him. He didn’t feel much like flying at the moment. He’d just lost three people he’d known for years, and his father
was currently in a place where nobody could reach him. Christ. All this within a few hours. It was almost too much to take
in. He closed his eyes, rubbed his hands over his face and considered getting a cup of coffee from the machine
down the hall.

‘How’s he doing?’

He jerked upright. Bishop was looking back at him from the next chair.
Damn
, Mandrake thought,
how did he do that?
The guy was as silent as a ghost. He was wearing chinos, a jacket and a baseball cap. He looked like a regular Joe rather
than America’s Most Wanted.

‘He’s still unconscious,’ Mandrake
said. Glancing around, he added, ‘Look, no offence, but why do you care?’

‘I care about finding the man who put him there,’ Bishop said. ‘Good enough?’

Mandrake shrugged and leaned forward again, an elbow on each knee. ‘I guess so. What’s it matter what I think, anyway? Look,
I was going to get a cup—’

‘Her name’s Jenna Falstaff.’

Mandrake turned to look at him. He knew exactly to whom Bishop was referring. He said, ‘I’m sorry about your friend, but I’ve
seen three of my own—’

‘They’re dead,’ Bishop said. ‘You can’t do anything for them now and your old man’s under the care of professionals.’

‘Yeah, thanks for the update. Look, as far as I’m aware they don’t know anything
about this Jenna and they believed me when
I told them
the Honda was my girlfriend’s, but I’ve got enough . . . How’d you find me, anyway?’

‘Wasn’t difficult. I called every hospital until I found one that held a Mandrake. I figured you’d be here, too, and just
waited until Delaney and her sidekick left.’ Bishop leaned forward so they were level. ‘I came
here for your help, Cornell.’

‘Nobody calls me Cornell except Art when he’s in a patronizing mood. And wasn’t getting you across the river help enough?’

‘Only you can answer that. Were they rough on you?’

‘The Marshals? Why would they be? I was an innocent victim held at gunpoint by an escaped murderer.’ The brief grin he gave
Bishop stopped
before it reached his eyes. ‘She’s got a major hard-on for you, you know. Doesn’t seem to care that you were
the one called 911 for Art, either.’

Bishop shrugged.

Mandrake took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he sat back in his seat and looked at the ceiling, listening to the sounds
of the hospital around him. It was mostly quiet now
except for the occasional message over the speaker system, requesting
a doctor’s presence in another part of the building. A nurse walked briskly past the open area with her arms full of pillows
and sheets. Mandrake watched her until she was out of sight.

Then he motioned his head towards the couple sitting three rows in front. ‘See those two? I’ve been here
for hours and they
were probably here long before me. Haven’t said one word to each other the whole time.’

Bishop followed his gaze and said, ‘Somebody they both care about is sick. Maybe dying. Could be that’s the only thing they
got left in common.’

Mandrake nodded and looked down at the floor again. After another minute, he sat upright
and said, ‘So which law you want
me to break this time?’

‘Look, let’s get one thing clear,’ Wilson said, stopping on the path and turning to Bishop. ‘I don’t know what you think’s
gonna happen here, but if you’re expecting me to take part you got the wrong guy. I’m paying off my debt to Falstaff just
by talking to you. And don’t expect me to have second thoughts at the last minute and decide
to go for that one last job to
prove I still got it. Ain’t gonna happen. A good friend of mine once told me my luck was gonna run out sometime and he was
right. That last job was four years ago. I don’t miss it and my wife loves me for it.’

‘I wasn’t expecting you to come along.’ Bishop said. ‘I know your rep.’

Wilson just looked at him for
a few beats. Then began walking again. ‘Okay, just so you know.’

On Bishop’s return from the hospital early this morning, Aleron had informed him he’d set up a ten o’clock meet with Wilson
in Central Park, near the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. Bishop got to the statue fifteen minutes early to scout the area
and saw only dog-walkers and joggers. At 10.03, a heavy-set
man in his late forties wearing a thin raincoat approached from
the east. Without slowing, he nodded once at Bishop and kept walking along the path.

Bishop joined him and they strolled in silence for a while. The sun was already out, but there was a morning chill in the
air. Good weather for walking. Seeing Wilson close up, Bishop added five years to his
first guess. The man looked in his early
fifties. His forehead was ridged with lines and the close-cropped hair a lot greyer than Bishop had noticed at first glance.
But the grey eyes were clear and missed nothing.

‘I can’t even hook you up with someone in the game,’ Wilson said. ‘People in my line don’t work with amateurs. Especially
when there’s
no chance of a payoff at the end of it. No time for prep, either. Oh, yeah, and you don’t even know the make
of the vault for sure.’ He
shook his head. ‘Christ, it sounds even worse when you hear it out loud.’

Bishop agreed, but didn’t bother saying anything.

‘Okay,’ Wilson said. ‘So your guy has his own private vault built somewhere on the top floor
of his building, that right?’

‘Right. Probably a Ulysses, since they built the one in the basement. No way to know for sure.’

‘’Course not. I mean, why make it any easier for yourselves? So you wanna get inside, you got one of two ways to go. Wanna
guess what they are?’

‘Drilling through or breaking the combination.’

‘Man
knows his movies. That’s the one thing they got right. Manipulation of the lock also falls under the second category,
but you can forget about that. You ain’t got the touch, but don’t slit your wrists over it; not many people do.’ Wilson nodded
towards an empty bench coming up on their left. ‘Here, step into my office.’

Bishop sat down at one end, Wilson
a few feet away. With enough space between them to look as though they weren’t together.
Wilson took a clear plastic baggie out of his raincoat pocket and started to unwrap it. On cue, a pigeon landed directly in
front of them. Then another.

‘Friends of yours?’ Bishop asked.

Wilson looked at him askance. ‘Let them get their own food. This stuffs
too good to waste on dumb birds. Here, try one.’

Bishop took a cookie from the bag and took a bite. Chocolate chip. It tasted wonderful.

‘Great, ain’t they? Just another reason why I love my wife.’ Wilson took a bite of one and said, ‘And you can forget about
drilling through. That was my game and it took me years before I got it right. Plus, the kind of plasma
cutters you’d need
you couldn’t find in a week, let alone the next twelve hours.’

Bishop leaned back. ‘So it’s finding the right combination or nothing.’

Wilson grinned. ‘Simplifies things, don’t it? For high-paying customers, manufacturers will personalize your vault to your
specifications, but what you’ll probably be faced with is an electronic
lock where you gotta key in a code on a keypad. Usually
just numbers. You’ll get three attempts and then it’ll kick you out for a few minutes before you can try again. They’re standard
on most private vaults these days. I know Ulysses uses them on nearly all their models.’

Bishop took another bite of his cookie as two young men passed by in front of
them.

Once they were alone again, Wilson said, ‘Now we got three ways to get that combination. One: every manufactured safe or vault
comes with a factory-set code, usually six to eight digits, to allow the customer to get in so he can then set his own personal
code. Thing is, a lot of customers use that pre-set one a few times until it becomes habit. “You know,”
thinks Ted J. Poindexter,
“this one’s got enough numbers in it to mean nobody’s gonna guess it, so why set a new code when I’ve already memorized this
one?” Believe me, it happens more times than it don’t.’

‘I don’t have access to the factory codes.’

‘But I do,’ Wilson said. ‘Or I can get them. I’ll give you my cell number and when you’re in,
you look until you see the model
number or serial number and call it in. It’ll be somewhere in plain sight. Give me five minutes and I’ll tell you what the
factory code is. That much I can do for you. Does your guy sound the type who’d be that dumb?’

Bishop watched as the pigeons decided they had better things to do and took to the air. ‘To be honest, no.’

‘Well, you never know, it’s worth a shot. Okay, let’s move on to method number two. How good a guesser are you?’

Wilson offered the bag again. Bishop grabbed a second cookie and said, ‘Are you serious?’

‘Not so much since I retired, but I am about this. Look, if it ain’t the pre-set code, nine times out of ten it’ll be a number
that’s important
to the client. People often forget human nature where memory’s concerned. Don’t automatically assume the
owner’s gonna come up with a series of random numbers just to fool you. Life ain’t Hollywood. He’s got enough on his plate
with his Social Security number, bank account number, PIN numbers, passwords to his Big Booty porn sites and everything else
in between. One more
random six- or eight-digit number to remember he can do without, believe me.

‘You want to study up in the next few hours. The more you know about your guy, the better equipped you’ll be. We’re talking
loved one’s birthdays, important anniversary dates – both personal and business related – and like that.’

‘So what’s the third?’

Wilson gave his half-grin again. ‘The third is what you use if the
first two don’t work: a good hacker. You’re now gonna tell me you haven’t got access to one of those, right?’

‘I got one. I just don’t know how good he is yet. He talks the talk, and if actions were words . . .’ Bishop shrugged.

‘I gotcha. He give you any indication he can tell the difference between
his rear end and a decent sequencer program?’

Bishop threw the last piece of cookie into his mouth. ‘Yeah. We’re relying on it to get past Go.’

‘That’s something. And it might get you past more than that. Depends how good the program is. And the programmer, of course.
None of them are infallible, but your man’ll know more about that than I do.’ Wilson returned
the bag to his pocket and stood.
‘So there’s your three options. Was anything I just said worth the half-hour it took out of your life?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bishop said. ‘But I’ve always believed any edge is better than no edge at all.’ He stood as well, and they
both began to walk back towards Alice. ‘So what happened to your friend with the career advice?’

Wilson made a harsh sound through his nose. ‘Serving eighteen to twenty at Sing Sing for his third strike; a goddamn two-bit
robbery at a gas station. Can you believe that? Full of wonderful counsel for his pals, but ain’t got the sense of a gnat
when it comes to his own circumstances.’

‘Sounds like he just made the wrong choice for that
particular moment.’

‘Yeah,’ Wilson said. ‘All it takes is one.’

Aleron hadn’t figured on RoyseCorp’s lobby being so open. Once he pushed through the revolving doors there was little between
him and the bank of elevators half a football field away. And if the ceiling two or three storeys above him wasn’t imposing
enough, they’d constructed the interior floor out of marble to accentuate every footstep.
Behind him, a wall of heavily tinted
glass faced out onto First Avenue and transformed a sunny morning into a shadow of itself.

He stepped out of the way as more worker bees pushed past him and glanced to his left. There was a chest-high, crescent-shaped
counter about two hundred feet away, with a wall of monitors behind it. One lobby guard stood and watched
everybody entering
and exiting. Two more sat at their stations behind the counter, where he guessed the more sensitive screens were located.
Either that or they were playing computer games under there.

Aleron walked towards the station while the upright guard watched his every step. This clearly wasn’t a business that encouraged
the casual visitor.
As he came nearer he saw, lying atop the counter at one end, three evenly spaced piles of glossy brochures.
He angled his approach towards them.

The guard was dressed in a navy-blue uniform and looked to be in his late twenties. As Aleron got closer, he could see the
RoyseCorp logo on the man’s right chest pocket. Aleron’s improvised courier uniform felt
tawdry in comparison. He wore a black
windbreaker over a white shirt and grey chinos, while an ID wallet hung from a chain off his belt.

He said, ‘How you doin’?’

‘Help you with something?’ the guard said.

Aleron smiled and placed a large manila envelope on the counter beside the brochures. ‘Delivery here for a Martin Thorpe that
needs your autograph.’ He placed a clipboard next to the envelope and turned
it round. He was momentarily distracted by something he’d apparently spotted in the space between two of the piles of brochures
in front of him, but quickly put the disarming smile back on his face when the guard came over and picked up the envelope.

As the guard turned to pass it to one
of his seated colleagues, Aleron brought his right hand up, laid his palm over the space
he’d been looking at and slid it back, putting his hand and whatever it now contained in his pants pocket.

The guard spotted the movement and said, ‘What you got there, guy?’

Both seated guards looked up at the man’s tone. The nearest one looked to be the senior
guard here.

Aleron’s expression was as guileless as a child’s. ‘Come again?’

The older guard said to the first, ‘Something up, Deke?’

The one called Deke smiled and said, ‘Let’s see.’ He turned back to Aleron. ‘The item you just took from the desk here and
put in your pocket. What was it?’

‘Just my pen.’ Aleron frowned. ‘What’s
the matter with you?’

Deke’s smile became a grin as he came round the side of the counter. He stood directly in front of Aleron, reached down to
the wallet hanging off his belt and snapped it open. ‘Well, Samuel Arthur Willis of Eastside Logistics,’ he said, ‘either
you show me what’s in your pockets or we’re gonna have to make a scene here.’

Aleron didn’t have to look to know the senior guard was slowly making his way round the other side of the counter. The loud
footsteps finally stopped about two feet behind him and Deke said, ‘What’s it gonna be, guy?’

After a short pause, Aleron slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out an inch-long flash memory stick with
2GB
written along the side. He handed
it over.

Deke frowned at it and then offered it to his other colleague, who was watching the proceedings from behind the counter. The
seated guard did something out of view and nobody said anything for a minute. Then he looked up and gave a barely noticeable
shake of his head. Deke turned back to Aleron. ‘You got a record, Mr Samuel Arthur Willis?’

‘Hey man, I’m just a working Joe, like you guys. No harm done, right? Let me go before I get towed, huh?’

Deke looked over Aleron’s shoulder. ‘Wanna get him checked out, Ham? You still got friends over at the 31st.’

The man behind Aleron said, ‘I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe Samuel Arthur Willis here now understands how idle hands do
the
devil’s work. And to keep them to himself from now on.’

Deke tilted his head. ‘That right, Samuel Arthur Willis? You a quick learner?’

‘The quickest,’ Aleron said.

The guard picked up the clipboard from the counter. He scribbled a signature halfway down the sheet and slammed it against
Aleron’s chest. ‘That’s the stuff. Now get your ass
out of here while I’m still in a good mood.’

‘Thanks, man.’ Aleron took the clipboard and walked towards the revolving doors without looking back. Once outside, he kept
pace with his fellow pedestrians until he was out of sight of the building. Then he pulled out his cell phone and pressed
some buttons before bringing it to his ear. It took two rings before
it was picked up.

‘You’re in,’ he said and hung up.