James Patterson - Blindside

Janos said, “Give me your hand.” He waited while the man stuck his hand between the doorjamb and the open door. Then he took a firm grip of the man’s index finger and put the barrel of the pistol against his hand. He said, “You can close the door as far as your fingers. That should be enough for you to undo the locks.”

A few seconds later, Alice casually followed Janos through the open door.

The man was wearing blue tiger-striped silk boxer shorts and a T-shirt that said i’m a hacker, but i didn’t screw up democracy. He trembled like a frightened Chihuahua.

Alice said, “Are you Oscar?”

He nodded nervously. His long curls swayed in the air. Sweat beaded on his gaunt face.

“Where’s Jennifer?”

He paused for a moment and said, “I don’t know any Jennifer.”

Janos whacked him on the side of the head with his gun. He stood over the fallen computer nerd and looked down at him. “The next time I use the gun, it won’t be to hit you.”

Alice kept a very calm tone. “Tell us where Jennifer is right now and you can go about your business. I promise we’re not going to hurt her.”

Oscar rubbed the side of his head, then looked at the blood on his fingers. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of days. We’re just roommates. She lives her life and I live mine.”

Janos said, “It’s going to be a lot tougher to live your life if we don’t find out where Jennifer Chang is right now.” He carefully placed the barrel of the gun on Oscar’s forehead. He let that sink in for a moment.

Oscar’s eyes looked up at the gun and Janos standing behind it.

Alice truly didn’t know what Janos was going to do. From a professional cost-benefit analysis, it didn’t matter. If Oscar wouldn’t tell them where Jennifer was, his death meant little to her.

Oscar still didn’t say a word.

Janos pulled the hammer of the pistol back.

Oscar swallowed hard and his whole body started to shake.

CHAPTER 30

ALICE WATCHED SILENTLYas Janos kept the gun to the computer geek’s head. Frankly, she’d seen her partner do something similar so many times it barely rated her interest. Once, while collecting a debt for a Marseille loan shark, she had watched Janos torture a man until he revealed the target’s location. If she could sit through fingers being severed, watching this thin man beg for his life wasn’t a big deal.

Janos very calmly said, “Tell us where we can find Jennifer. Then we’ll be out of your hair. She won’t even be upset you told us. We have a job offer for her.”

Oscar continued to tremble. But Alice saw something else. He was making a calculation. He was justifying telling them where the girl was.

Alice gestured to catch Janos’s attention. She motioned for him to wait.

He just stood there with the pistol in his hand.

After more than thirty seconds, Oscar blubbered, “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to you. Just please, please take the gun away.”

Janos looked at Alice. She nodded and he lowered the gun. They both had to help the terrified man off the floor. They hefted him from under his arms, and she was surprised a skinny computer nerd could feel so heavy.

They tossed him into his rolling chair in front of a gigantic computer monitor. The screen was broken up into eight squares. Each square corresponded to a camera. She recognized the one at the front door and a second one in the hallway.

One of them showed a shower. She caught a glimpse of someone walking past the camera.

Alice said to Oscar, “Where are all your cameras located?”

He gave her a sly smile. The kind only computer-literate people give to people with less experience.

She cut her eyes to Janos. He immediately placed the barrel of the gun to Oscar’s temple. That straightened out his attitude.

He spoke quickly. “They cover all sorts of places. Security here in the building. I have one in the warehouse and at the front door just so I know what’s going on. The one in the shower is for my boyfriend, Hector.”

Alice said, “Why does Hector get special attention?”

“I make sure he showers alone. And I like to watch him shower.”

“Does he know about the camera?”

“No one knows about any of my cameras. As long as I let the landlord leave the door to the warehouse unlocked so the workers can eat on the roof occasionally, he doesn’t care what I do.”

Now Janos said, “Let’s get back to Jennifer Chang. Where can we find her?”

“There’s a coffeehouse. It’s up closer to Columbia. I think it’s on La Salle, a block east of Broadway. It’s called Brew. It’s a place a lot of programmers meet. Good Wi-Fi, good coffee. No one asks any questions.”

Alice asked, “How often does she go there?”

“Almost every day. Probably more often than she comes here. She’s got a guy she likes to see up that way. It’s nothing serious.” Oscar swiveled in the chair so he was only looking at Alice. It was like he was trying to blot out the reality that a Romanian holding a gun stood next to him.

Oscar regained a little of his confidence and said, “Is the job offer you have for Jennifer from a guy in Estonia named Henry?”

Alice hesitated. Finally she said, “What if it is?”

“She won’t be interested. At all. She told me all about the operation. She said Henry was starting to go crazy. He kept using them for bigger and bigger jobs. She didn’t want to be around when things went bad.”

Alice shrugged and said, “We still have to make the offer.”

That’s when she caught sight of someone on the security camera. He was tall and wearing a blue sport coat. He looked like a cop. She glared at Oscar and said, “Who’s that?”

Oscar turned and looked at the monitor. He hit a couple of buttons on his keyboard and other cameras picked up the feed. Now Alice and Janos could see the man from several different angles.

Oscar said, “I don’t know him, but this is the only place he could be coming.”

Alice put a finger to her lips to make sure he stayed quiet.

Janos placed the barrel of the gun to his head to be doubly sure.

CHAPTER 31

I FOUND THEbuilding listed as Jennifer Chang’s residence on her Columbia University registration form. It was about where I thought it would be, south of Midtown. I was still skeptical about the address until I saw a residential door next to the administration offices for the warehouse. The offices were closed for the evening, but the residential door was open. I stepped into the dark entryway, then headed up the wood stairs. This was no-frills. There were wide glass windows that looked into the warehouse from the second floor. Years ago, the apartments here must’ve been some kind of offices. The housing shortage in Manhattan made crazy spaces into apartments.

It was the kind of building I used to show the kids when they were younger. The most interesting field trip we went on was at Ricky’s request, after we saw a documentary about how bean sprouts used in Chinese food are mostly grown in New York City. The bean sprouts’ seeds were just dumped in a big metal container that looked like a dumpster. Then watered. And a week or two later, you had full-grown bean sprouts. The other kids couldn’t believe I wanted them to spend their afternoon inside a dark, damp warehouse. You know what they say: you can’t please all the people all the time.

This building was just as interesting in its own way. I stopped to stare through one of the windows and saw that the warehouse was some sort of distribution point for caskets. I saw different manufacturers, Thacker and Astral. They all were stacked along a path to a loading dock, where a semi was already backed in. The door was open and the trailer was mostly loaded.