David Duffy - In for a Ruble

That’s where I spent the night.

Dawn would’ve just been lighting the sky, had there been any sky to light, when they came out. Snow had fallen hard all night, starting about the time I moved the car. Six inches or more now on the ground. I’d been dozing on and off, but you learn to keep one eye half awake. Foos had called a little after 2:00 A.M.

“Weird shit. BEC’s back online.”

“You sure?”

“I’m calling at two a.m.”

“What’s going on?”

“Could be anything. Technical difficulties. Somebody—maybe Andras, like you suggest—screwing around inside, but they fixed the problem.”

“Could Andras do this?”

“Technically feasible. There’s still the question of why.”

“I’ll tell you this. I’m sitting outside some kind of crash pad he’s got in the next town to his school. I’m pretty sure he’s inside. I know the Russian girl is. Guess who else is watching the place?”

“He suck blood?”

“Not mine, I hope.”

“You got a plan?”

“Not beyond figuring out what’s going on. And keeping Nosferatu away from the kids, if I have to.”

“I’ll hang here. Let me know if you need anything.”

When the door opened, Irina and Andras stopped under the naked bulb just long enough for me to get a look, before they hustled through the snow to her car. Neither looked around nor looked worried. Neither appeared sleepy either. Irina took the driver’s seat, and the BMW backed out and pulled away. I waited for the Escalade to follow, but it didn’t. The BMW pulled into Main Street and disappeared. I couldn’t follow. I couldn’t move without being spotted.

Wait… and wait some more. Five minutes before the Escalade’s doors opened, and the tall man’s head rose above the car. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and the same overcoat I remembered from Second Avenue. He removed something from the back of the SUV and walked toward the building. A short man got out of the passenger side and followed. He wore an overcoat, no hat, and had a large messenger bag strung over his shoulder. With a quick glance around, Nosferatu used a crowbar to pull down the fire escape ladder. He and Shorty climbed to the second floor, and Nosferatu spent a quick minute fiddling at the window. Then he pushed it up, and they climbed inside.

I flipped another mental coin. On the assumption Nosferatu’s attention was now focused inside the building, I put the Valdez in gear and drove as fast as I dared toward Gibbet. The road was a mess. The plows hadn’t reached it yet, and the Valdez made its own free-form progress. No other cars, the only reason I didn’t hit any, but we came close to the ditch three times. When not pumping the breaks and spinning the wheel, I told myself Andras and Irina couldn’t be going much faster, but they had a big head start. The single set of tire tracks ahead of me made generally straight progress, an indication they were taking it easy or the Bimmer had all-wheel drive. The tire tracks turned into Martin Lane. They stopped at the door of the barn.

I left the Valdez by the main road and followed footprints. At the back of the barn, I was just able to reach the sill of a high window. I pulled myself up. The glass was dirty, the interior dark, but parked inside was a 3 Series BMW.

I dropped to the ground and ran along a well-traveled path through earlier snows across the corner of a field toward the woods. The footing got more treacherous in the trees but I kept up a good pace until I emerged, a quarter mile later, at one end of a Gibbet School soccer field. The footprints led around the goal toward the school’s buildings. A hundred yards in the distance, through the screen of falling snow, I could make out Andras and Irina walking quickly, heads down. Just a couple of prep school kids returning to campus at the crack of dawn.

I retreated to the woods and ran for the Valdez.

The Escalade was still in the parking lot. I parked in the same spot and slid down in the seat.

I’d been gone a half hour and sat another forty-seven minutes before Nosferatu and the short man came out the front door. They walked straight to the SUV without looking around. Nosferatu carried a backpack by one strap. Shorty still had his messenger bag. They climbed in and drove off. When he got to Main Street, Nosferatu turned right, away from the road to Gibbet, but that didn’t mean anything.

Daylight was still trying to gain traction, the snow fell thickly. A good time not to be seen. I got a screwdriver, flashlight, and crowbar from the trunk—the same tools Nosferatu had used. I hooked the fire escape ladder with the crowbar, as he had done. The ungreased iron creaked, but the snow muffled the noise. I didn’t wait or look around but climbed the rungs to the platform and took the stairs above two at a time. An old-fashioned wood-framed, double-hung window with a half-moon lock and plenty of give. I slipped the screwdriver through the crease and pushed the lock around. The lower window opened easily. A blanket inside hung from ceiling to floor. I stepped in, closed the window, and listened.

Silence. I waited a minute to be sure. The place felt empty. I pulled the hanging blanket aside.

Pitch black. My flashlight fought darkness down a long hall that ran the length of the building. Eight or ten doors on either side. I stayed where I was for another minute before I tried the door on my left. It opened with the squeak of old hinges. A small, empty room. Cobwebs and dust illuminated by the flashlight beam. Another blanket hung from the ceiling against the far wall, a window behind it. I closed the door and tried the next one. Empty room, the same size, blanket over the window. Same story in the two rooms across and the two on each side after that. Sixteen rooms in all. Two bathrooms faced each other mid-hall. One had two grimy toilets, two dirty sinks and a shower that hadn’t been used in years. The fixtures in the other were new and relatively clean.

The place had been a flophouse, cheap rooms for rent by the night, week, or month. At some point, business had dried up or the town fathers decided this wasn’t the kind of operation they wanted on Main Street. Probably vacant for years before the kids took it over.

The room near the new bathroom had been converted into an outsized closet. A half-dozen hanging racks on wheels, holding vintage costumes for men and women with an emphasis on undergarments and nightclothes. Across the hall was a dressing room. Three tables with mirrors, two full-length mirrors on the wall, lots of makeup and wigs. The drawers of two bureaus held a selection of sex toys as well as handcuffs, riding crops, chains, boots, chaps, ropes, masks, and nylons. The room next to that was furnished to look like a bedroom, but it was more a bedroom set, with a video camera on a tripod in the corner. The Sheetrock walls were scratched and marked, roughly used. A double bed against one wall, unmade. A beat up wing chair against another. A desk in front of the third, next to a blanketed window. Laptop on the desk, cable running to the camera in the corner. The camera was positioned to take in both the chair and the bed.

Three more rooms were set up in similar fashion—bed, chair, desk, computer, camera. Two of the beds were four-posters. A studio for multiple productions, all going on at the same time. At the end of the hall was an open area with a counter and three doors. One door was closet-size. A hanging blanket covered the second with stairs behind, descending to the outside. A rack of hooks by the third, labeled 1 to 16, confirmed this was indeed an old flophouse. Inside, an office with a desk, sofa, table and chairs, a computer on the desk next to a rack of servers. One more blanket over the window. I pulled it back to check the parking lot. Empty except for falling snow.