Crisscross. Part 57

Jack gave the guard a friendly wave as he made a show of fis.h.i.+ng the card from a pocket. The TP gave a wary, noncommittal nod, watching him.

Jack kept the EC in his left hand, leaving the right free to go for the pistol nestled in the small of his back. After positioning it at the end of the slot, he trained his eyes on the guard and swiped the card through.

He waited as the TP checked the computer. Hopefully a photo of Johnny Roselli was popping onto the screen with the message that he was a lapser-thus explaining his scruffy attire. If the guard's expression changed or he reached for the phone, Jack was out of here. He did not want to be placed in a situation where he'd have to use his weapon.

But the TP's expression didn't change. He looked up from the screen and gave Jack a perfunctory smile and a wave. The turnstile's mechanism clicked, allowing Jack to push through.

Jack released the breath he'd been holding as he waved back and headed straight for the elevators. He kept his head down as he stepped into the open car. Before pressing 21 with a knuckle, he glanced back at the guard and saw him reading from a tabloid newspaper. Probably not The Light The Light.

Okay, he thought as the doors pincered closed, I'm in.

Now came the tough part.

He looked at the unlit 22 b.u.t.ton and wished he could make the elevator take him there without leaving a record of the trip in the computers. That was something he needed to avoid at all cost.

Still... it would be so much easier than what he had planned.

Jack figured he was pretty much in control from here on in. Success or failure depended on him, not chance or circ.u.mstance. Even so, he knew he had a hairy hour or so ahead of him.

2.

Jensen sat in his third-floor office gazing over Tony Margiotta's shoulder. The only light in the room came from the computer screen. These things were a pain in the a.s.s but in the right hands, they were amazing. Margiotta had been doing an online search for anything-anything-about John Robertson. Even though the guy had been dead two years and retired for years before that, this Google thing had come up with almost a thousand hits. But the hits, a thousand or not, weren't proving very useful.

"This is all s.h.i.+t," Margiotta said.

"Maybe, but keep at it. I want every one of them looked into.

"But what am I looking for?"

Margiotta hadn't been told any more than he needed to know. He already knew that Jason Amurri had been an impostor, and Jensen had told him that an outside investigation had linked him to Robertson. Any connection or reference to the missing Jamie Grant had been left out of the story.

"Find me something, anything that connects Robertson to New York City-and I don't mean just Manhattan-or to our Church or to any other church or organization that might have it in for us."

Margiotta looked up at him with an anguished expression. "This could take me all night."

Poor baby, Jensen wanted to say, but resisted. "It's already taken half the night. Consider yourself on the homestretch. Besides, you're getting time and a half."

"Yeah, but I've got a wife and a kid-"

"Who'll be glad for the bigger paycheck. Now keep at it."

Margiotta grumbled something unintelligible as he returned to the keyboard.

Jensen gave him a comradely clap on the shoulder as he rose.

"Good man. I'm going to take a stroll around to stretch my legs, maybe get a coffee. You want one?"

Margiotta looked surprised at the offer. And well he should be. Jensen didn't play gopher for anyone. But he wanted Margiotta to stay alert as he followed those hits.

He stepped out into the hallway and began making the rounds.

3.

The elevator stopped on the twenty-first floor. As the doors slid open, Jack pressed the lobby b.u.t.ton and stepped out of the car-just barely. He stopped as close to the doors as he could without trapping the back of his s.h.i.+rt when they closed.

On his previous tour of the temple he'd noticed stationary visual surveillance cameras in the elevator area of every floor, high in the corners above the doors, facing out. The TPs-if they were of a mind to do so-could watch you in the elevator car and then catch you again when you stepped out onto the floor. The meditation floor was no different.

But Jack had noticed that the fixed angle needed to capture the longest view of the hallway inevitably left a blind spot just outside the elevator doors.

Right where Jack was standing.

He looked longingly at the EXIT sign over the door to the stairwell on his right. That way would be so much simpler but the security cameras covered the approach and he was sure opening the door would be flagged in the security computer.

He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then fished out the big screwdriver and heavy-duty coat hanger hook he'd brought along. He'd freed the hook from its wooden hanger, then tied and glued a length of st.u.r.dy twine to its straight end. He hoped he'd done it right. He hadn't had time to call on Milkdud Swigart for a refresher course on how to hack a building.

Back in December he and Milkdud had hacked a Midtown building through the elevator shaft so that Jack could eavesdrop on a conversation in one of the offices. Jack hadn't attempted anything like that since. This would be his first solo hack.

He worked the hook through the s.p.a.ce between the top of the elevator door and the lintel. Keeping a grip on the string, he let the hook drop on the far side of the door.

Now the hard part: catching the lever that would open the door.

He fished the hook around, twisting the twine this way and that, then pulling up. If he found no resistance, he went through the process again.

He began to sweat with frustration and maybe a little anxiety. Jack remembered Milkdud saying that old buildings with old elevators had the easiest doors to open. Well, this former hotel was an old building, so why-?

The twine resisted his pull-the hook had caught something.

He sent up a prayer to the G.o.ddess of building hackers: Please, let this be the lever.

He tugged and saw the doors move-just a fraction of an inch, but enough to tell him he was in the right place. Pulled a little harder and the doors spread farther, allowing enough s.p.a.ce for Jack to slip the screwdriver through. He let go of the string and used the screwdriver to lever the doors open until he had room for his fingers in the gap. He slipped them through, then forced the doors apart. Once past a certain point, they opened the rest of the way on their own.

The open elevator shaft yawned before him. Thick cables ran up and down the center of the shaft, their coating of grease reflecting the glow from the caged incandescent bulb set above the doors.

Jack poked his head into the shaft and looked down. Bulbs lit the way into the dimness below. He couldn't see his elevator car, but the other, marked with a "2" on its roof, waited midshaft about ten floors down.

He looked to his right and found what he wanted. Between the two sets of doors a row of rusty metal rungs had been set into the wall. They ran the length of the shaft.

He pocketed the screwdriver, the hook, and the twine. He grabbed a rung, placed the ridged rubber sole of his work boot on another, lower rung, and swung out into the shaft. He brushed against a spring switch along the way and was startled by the ding ding! of the elevator bell.

So that's what makes it ring.

He would have expected a more sophisticated system, but then again, these elevators were antiques.

He grabbed the lever and pushed down to close the doors, then began the short climb to the top floor.

Brady's floor.

No problem opening the elevator doors from this side: A simple push on the lever admitted him to floor twenty-two.

The only question was whether or not he was alone up here. The lights were on, but that didn't mean much. He listened. Not a sound.

Jack closed the doors but left the screwdriver between them. He stepped through the deserted receptionist area and crossed the office, pa.s.sing Brady's huge desk as he made his way toward the living quarters.

He tried the door-locked. He knocked, a series of triplets, waited, then repeated. No response. He pulled out his cell and dialed the "personal" number Brady had given him last week. A phone began to ring on the far side of the door. On the fifth ring a voice-not Brady's-told him to leave a message. Jack was reasonably sure Brady would have answered a call at this hour.

So... n.o.body home. But that could change any minute.

Jack turned and hurried to Brady's desk.

4.

"All quiet on the Western Front?"

The TP in the lobby kiosk jumped as if he'd heard a shot. He dropped his newspaper and blanched when he saw who was speaking.

"Sir!" He shot to his feet. "You startled me, sir!"

"At ease," Jensen said, holding back a laugh.

He rarely used the elevator when he traveled from his office to the lobby. He'd found it much faster to take the stairs from the third floor. He'd eased through the stairway door at the south side of the lobby and silently made his way toward the security kiosk. He'd wanted to see how close he could get before the TP on duty realized he wasn't alone.

It had been easy. Too easy. The TP, whose name was Gary Cruz, had been so engrossed in the Sunday paper's sports section that Jensen had had to announce himself.

Jensen should have been angry, but he was too pleased with his own stealth to take Cruz's head off.

"Everything under control?"

The TP nodded. "Only one mouse in the house."

That wasn't unusual, even at this hour. A certain number of FAs would stay late or come in early to study, or catch up on a.s.signed duties, or simply spend time on the Communing Level. The busiest after-hours periods tended to be Friday into Sat.u.r.day, and Sat.u.r.day into Sunday. The early hours of Monday usually found the Temple deserted. Except, of course, for the security detail.

"Thought he was a homeless guy at first," Cruz added.

"You're sure sure he wasn't?" This TP had better be d.a.m.n sure. he wasn't?" This TP had better be d.a.m.n sure.

"His card read him out as LFA, so that explained his looks."

"A lapser?" A sour note chimed in Jensen's head. "What's his name?"

Cruz sat and tapped at his keyboard. "John Roselli, sir. Came in about twenty minutes ago."

Roselli... he knew that name. He knew all the lapsers. He kept an eye on them to make sure they were complying with their punishment. But that wasn't the only reason. He'd kept a special watch ever since Clark Schaub. He'd been depressed because he thought his LFA designation was unjust-they all all thought that-and killed himself. thought that-and killed himself.

A Dormentalist suicide was news under any circ.u.mstances, but when it happened in the Temple itself, and when the member did it in such dramatic fas.h.i.+on, it created a field day for the press. And not just rags like The Light The Light-all the papers.

Schaub had seated himself in the center of the Great Room on the twenty-first floor, removed a straight razor from his pocket, and slit his own throat.

Covering it up had appeared impossible at first, but Jensen found a way. The only witnesses had been devout Dormentalists and they took a vow of silence to protect their Church. Jensen and Lewis and Hutch moved the body to a grove in Central Park. A police investigation listed Schaub as murdered by an unknown suspect. The case remained unsolved.

"Where'd Roselli go?"

Cruz checked his screen again. "Straight to twenty-one."

s.h.i.+t. Like any other LFA, Roselli thought he'd gotten the shaft. He'd always struck Jensen as pretty stable, but you never knew. And the last thing Jensen needed now was a replay of the Schaub mess.

"Access the cameras up there. Let's see what our lapser is up to."

Cruz complied with practiced efficiency, alternating between mouse and keyboard. But as he worked, his brow began to furrow; a puzzled expression wormed onto his face.

Jensen didn't like that look. "What's wrong?"

"I can't find him."

"Well, then he must have left the floor."

Cruz pressed a b.u.t.ton under one of his screens. "Not by the elevators. They haven't moved."

"Check the stairwell doors."

Jensen's mind raced. Each floor had access to the north and south stairways, but the doors were monitored. Access to the twenty-second floor from the stairways was blocked by pa.s.sword-protected steel doors that would have been at home in a bank vault.

"No record of either being opened."

"Then rerun the tapes, d.a.m.n it. Let's see where he went when he left the elevator. No, wait. Do the elevator first."