Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t,” she says.

“In the meantime, we’re back where we started,” says Harry.

“Not entirely,” says Joselyn.

“What do you mean?” I look at her.

“While you two were jousting with motorcycles and buses down on the street, I was busy doing a little research.”

“On what?” I ask.

“I figured that if the drawer was empty, I may as well take the label.”

“You mean WOD?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?” says Harry.

“Because I didn’t have anything to write with,” she tells him. “And my memory is not that good.”

Harry looks a little baffled.

“The label had more than just the three letters printed on it,” I tell him. “There was the name of a company, TSCC Limited.”

“We assume the company rented the office space and in turn rented out the boxes to their clients,” says Joselyn. “There were also some telephone numbers, contact information for TSCC printed on the labels.”

“Ahh,” says Harry.

“So I suppose we can start there in the morning,” I tell her. “See if we can get a lead on Liquida by going through the company.”

“But that’s not all,” says Joselyn. “That’s what was on the front of the label. On the back were some numbers.” She stands up and reaches into her pocket. “By the way, I’ve got your keys and your flashlight.” She hands them to me and then unfolds a small piece of paper. It’s the label that was on the drawer. She shows it to me.

Sure enough, on the back are the numbers “00088” printed in the same font as the three letters on the face of the label, only smaller.

“And that’s not all.”

“What else?” says Harry.

“I checked some of the other labels on the other drawers. Every one of the labels I checked had numbers printed on the reverse side, all of them with five digits, and all starting with zeros.”

“What do you make of it?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I thought the two of you might have some ideas.”

“You know what it sounds like to me,” says Harry. “The place is nothing but an old-fashioned drop.”

“What do you mean?” says Joselyn.

“I thought it was something that went out with high button shoes,” he says. “The numbers rackets used them back in the 1920s to collect cash and receipts from their street runners. Drop it all in the box, and a bagman would go around and clean out the boxes and take it all to the central counting house. That way only one guy knew where the counting house was. Concept is simple. It’s just a way of keeping the world at a distance,” says Harry. “The OSS put a twist on it during the war. They realized you didn’t need a box. Anything could be a drop-the underside of a table in a public restaurant would do if you had some tape. You stick a message there, and as long as the people you’re working with know which table is being used, they can collect it and nobody ever has to meet. They drop some colored chalk on the sidewalk out in front of the restaurant and crush it underfoot, white to let people know that the drop was loaded and pink to let the world know the message was received; you didn’t even have to know who the people were you were working with.”

“What happens if the other side finds out about the drop?” says Joselyn.

Harry arches an eyebrow. “In the case of the OSS, you got trapped, tortured, and when they couldn’t get anything more out of you, you probably got hung with a piece of piano wire.”

“So what you’re saying is that Liquida is a throwback to another age,” says Joselyn.

“In a word,” says Harry. “He’s using a war surplus filing cabinet to collect his mail. The problem is he has it, and we don’t.”

“But you notice he didn’t come and get it himself,” I say.

“That would defeat the whole purpose of the drop box,” says Harry.

“And you can bet that the people sending mail to him, the ones hiring him, they’ve never been near that box either. Let me see the label again,” says Joselyn.

I hand it to her.

“TSCC. What do you think it stands for?” she says.

“We could Google it. But if Liquida is typical of their clientele, I doubt they’re advertising on the Internet. More likely to be word of mouth,” says Harry.

“Let me see,” I look over Joselyn’s shoulder. “We could call the number. It’s after hours. Maybe they’ve got a tape.”

A quick consensus that we have nothing to lose finds me with the receiver to the room phone in my hand. I dial for an outside line, a local number, and punch in the eight digits.

I take up the pen and pad by the nightstand and listen for a few seconds as I make a note. “Trident Storage, Courier and Communications,” I tell them.

“That sorta covers the field,” says Harry.

“Sounds like they will forward your mail if you want it,” says Joselyn.

“Except that woman didn’t look like any kind of courier I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.

“This is a different kind of courier service,” says Harry.

“Did they mention any office hours on the tape?” she asks.

“No. Just push number one if you’re calling to have your mail forwarded. Number two if you want to make arrangements to rent a box and three if you want to cancel service.”

“Which makes you wonder if they actually have an office,” says Harry.

“I think we’ve seen the office,” I tell him.

“So where does that leave us?” Joselyn looks at the two of us.

Liquida parked the motorbike in a sea of other bikes at the curb along Beach Road, at the intersection of the narrow alleylike soi that ran along the side of his hotel. He put the bike helmet under the seat and dropped the keys in with it, then locked the seat down. He wouldn’t need the bike again.

He walked up the narrow side street. It connected with Second Road, but Liquida didn’t go that far. Instead he entered the hotel through the garage and went in the back way. He wanted to avoid any possibility of running into the taxi bike kid at the stand or the girl from the beer bar on the corner across from it. By morning when the car and driver came to pick him up and Liquida checked out, both the girl and the kid would be long gone, catching up on z ’s for the next night’s work.

Liquida climbed the back stairs, slipped into his room, and dropped the beach bag on the bed. He sighed and stretched out on the mattress, relishing the day’s work. He realized just how well things had gone. Liquida had not had this much good fortune in months; in fact, not since helping himself to the stash of gold coins from the house in Del Mar near San Diego more than a year before. In the end, that whole episode was soured by the lawyer and his partner, who put the feds onto Liquida’s safe-deposit box where the gold was stored.

He noticed that the maid had already been to his room. She had turned down the bed, pulled the blinds, and closed the curtains. He was snug as a bug in a rug with the money, his bags almost packed. But he was tired. He had a few more things to do before he could sleep.

He used the room phone and called Air India. He booked a one-way ticket, business class, on an early morning flight from Bangkok to Paris with a connection in Delhi. He used a credit card under the Spanish passport name to hold the ticket and told the ticket agent that he would pay for it with cash at the airport counter.

Next he called the car service and arranged for a vehicle and driver to pick him up at the front of the hotel at 5:15 the following morning. It would give him plenty of time to get to the airport ahead of the 8:55 flight. He called the front desk and asked them to bring up his bill so that he could settle it before he went to bed. Liquida didn’t want to go down to the desk. The lobby of the hotel was too close to the taxi stand where the bikers hung out. He didn’t want to take the chance that one of them might walk by and see him.