Douglas Preston - Cold Vengeance

“I’ll take that as a yes. Shall we retire to your office? There’s rather a nasty wind coming off the Hudson.”

THE BUILDING ON EAST END AVENUE could not be dignified by the name brownstone . It was brick, not stone; it was narrow; and it rose only three stories. A more dismal and down-at-the-heels structure could not be found on the Upper East Side, Corrie decided as she lounged against a ginkgo tree on the opposite side of the street, drinking coffee and pretending once again to read a book.

The windows had firmly drawn shades that looked like they had been yellowing for decades. The windows themselves were filthy, covered with bars, and sporting lead alarm tape. The stoop was cracked, and trash had collected in the basement entrance. Despite the shabby appearance, however, the building seemed buttoned up pretty tight, with gleaming new locks on the front door. And the bars on the windows didn’t look old, either.

She finished her coffee, put away her book, and strolled down the street. The neighborhood, once German, had become facetiously known as the “girl ghetto,” the preferred neighborhood for recent college graduates, mostly women, newly arrived in Manhattan and looking for a safe place to live. The neighborhood was quiet, orderly, and undeniably safe. The streets thronged with attractive, preppy young women, most of whom looked like they worked on Wall Street or in one of the Park Avenue law firms.

Corrie wrinkled her nose and continued to the end of the block. Betterton had said he’d seen someone leave the building, but it didn’t look like anyone had been there in ages.

She turned around and strolled back down the block, feeling dissatisfied. The building was part of a long row of real brownstones, and no doubt each one had a small garden or patio in the rear. If she could get a look at the back of the building, she’d be able to check things out a little better. Of course, it might just be part of the overheated imagination of Betterton. Then again, there was something almost believable about his story of Pendergast blowing up a bar, burning down a drug lab, and sinking a bunch of boats. And although Betterton had been wrong, she had to admit he looked both smart and tough. He didn’t strike her as being someone who would be easy to kill. But kill him they had.

As she neared the center of the block, she eyed the two brownstones adjoining number 428. They were both typical, bustling Upper East Side buildings, with several apartments per floor. Even as she watched, a young woman exited one of the buildings, dressed in a spiffy suit and carrying a briefcase. The woman passed by her with nary a sideways glance, leaving a trail of expensive perfume. Other young women of the neighborhood were coming and going, and they all seemed to be of the same type: young professionals in business suits or jogging outfits. Corrie realized that her own Goth look — the streaked spiky hair, dangling metal, multiple earrings, and tattoos — made her stick out like a sore thumb.

What to do? She went into a bagel shop, ordered a bialy with lox spread, and sat by the window where she had a view down the street. If she could manage to make friends with someone on a ground-floor apartment on either side of the building, she might just talk her way into seeing the backyard. But you just didn’t walk up and say hello to people in New York City. She wasn’t in Kansas anymore…

… And then, coming out of the brownstone to the right of 428, she saw a girl with long black hair, wearing a leather miniskirt and tall leather boots.

Dropping a few dollar bills on the table, she bolted from the bagel shop and went walking down the street, swinging her bag and looking up at the sky, on a collision course with the fellow Goth coming the other way.

It had been so easy. Now the sun was setting and Corrie was relaxing in the tiny kitchen of the ground-floor apartment, drinking green tea and listening to her newfound friend complaining about all the yuppies in the neighborhood. Her name was Maggie and she worked as a waitress at a jazz club while trying to break into theater. She was bright, funny, and clearly starved for company.

“I’d love to move out to Long Island City or Brooklyn,” she said, cupping her tea, “but my dad thinks any place in New York outside of the Upper East Side is populated by rapists and murderers.”

Corrie laughed. “Maybe he’s right. That building next door looks pretty creepy.” She felt horribly guilty manipulating a girl she would actually like to have as a friend.

“I think it’s abandoned. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go in or out. Weird — it’s probably worth five million bucks. Prime real estate just going to waste.”

Corrie nursed her tea and wondered, now that she was here, how she was going to get outside into the patio behind the brownstone, get over the eight-foot wall into the backyard of the creepy house next door — and then break in.

Break in . Was that really what she was going to do? For the first time, she stopped to think about why, exactly, she was here and what she was planning. She had told herself she was just going to check things out. Casually. Was it really the most intelligent thing to do: contemplate a B&E even as she was studying at John Jay for a career in law enforcement?

And that was only the half of it. Sure, she’d broken into more than her share of places before, back in Medicine Creek — just for the hell of it — but if Betterton was right, these people were dangerous drug dealers. And Betterton was dead . Then, of course, there was her promise to Pendergast…

Of course she wouldn’t break in. But she’d check it out. She’d play it safe, peer through the windows, keep her distance. At the first sign of trouble, or danger, or anything, she’d back off.

She turned to Maggie and sighed. “I like it here. I wish I had a place like this. I’m getting kicked out of my apartment the day after tomorrow and my new lease doesn’t start until the first. Guess I’ll go stay at a hostel or something.”

Maggie brightened. “You need a place to crash for a few days?”

“Do I!” Corrie smiled.

“Hey, it will be great having somebody here. Living alone can kind of creep you out sometimes. Do you know, when I got home yesterday evening I had the strangest feeling that somebody had been in the apartment while I was gone…”

BY TEN PM, THE WIND HAD PICKED UP, raising faint whitecaps on the dark surface of the Hudson River, and the temperature hovered a few degrees above freezing. The tide was ebbing, and the river flowed smoothly southward toward New York Harbor. The lights of New Jersey glowed coldly across the dark mass of moving water.

Ten blocks north of the Seventy-Ninth Street marina, on the riprapped shore below the West Side Highway, a dark figure moved down by the water. It was dragging a broken piece of flotsam over the rocks — a battered remnant of a floating dock, some planks of wood adhering to an abraded chunk of marine Styrofoam. The figure eased the piece into the water and got aboard, covering himself with a rotten section of a discarded tarp. As the raft hung next to shore, the figure produced a stick, whittled flat at one end, which when dipped in the water became almost invisible and which subtly controlled the progress of what looked like a mass of floating detritus.

With a small push of the stick, the man shoved the improvised barque away from shore, where it drifted into the current, joining other random pieces of flotsam and jetsam.

It moved out until it was a few hundred feet offshore. There it floated, turning slowly, as it drifted sluggishly toward a group of silent yachts in a mooring field, their anchor lights piercing the darkness. Slowly, the flotsam floated past the boats, bumping against one hull, then another, on its seemingly random journey. Gradually, it approached the largest yacht in the anchorage, knocking lightly against its hull and drifting past. As it neared the stern there was the very slightest of movements, a rustle and a faint splash, and then silence as the now-tenantless piece of garbage continued past the yacht and vanished in the darkness.