Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground

The larger one jumped Crisp from behind, hauled him through the door, and landed on his back. He drew the knife out and stuck it in Crisp’s neck, just enough to bring a trickle of blood. The other one put a revolver to Vanessa’s head and pulled the hammer back. She kept her mouth shut.

“Where’s Colin?” the big one asked, edging up the pressure of the blade.

The day had really gone to shit, Crisp thought, it really had. “Dunno.”

“He owes money.”

“I dunno where he is.”

“He owes money.”

“I’ll get some. Let me up.”

“You know where he is.” It wasn’t a question.

“No, I don’t.”

The Chinese kid stuck the point of the stiletto into Crisp’s ear, just short of the eardrum.

Crisp wondered whether the incredible thump of his own heart pounding was the last thing he’d hear.

“You know where Colin is.”

“He’s on a bike chasing some Americans who stole his money!”

The sound of Vanessa shouting this surprised Crisp, who was trying to lie absolutely, perfectly still. He breathed a little, then he felt the blade slip out of his ear.

What might be described as a heavy silence ensued. Finally, the aural surgeon asked, “Colin doesn’t have the money?”

He didn’t sound real pleased.

Colin wasn’t exactly filled with delight to be skulking back to the old neighborhood, either. But he could go under here, get lost and stay lost, at least until he could figure out a way of finding Neal and getting his money. Because, if he didn’t, he was finished in London.

It isn’t easy trail someone who knows you, especially when your mark also knows you’re a detective, and especially when you’re working on the same case. It makes for a long day.

However, Joe Graham didn’t care how long the days were, or the nights. He did care that the last tune he had heard from Neal Carey, the boy was trapped and about to get it but good. And he also cared… cared a whole lot… about what Neal had told him on the phone. That he’d been set up-by their old buddy Ed Levine.

From some angles, it made sense. There were no files in the office on Allie’s previous adventures and there should have been. So maybe Ed had destroyed them. And Ed was working real closely with John Chase, and Ed was ambitious. And Senator Chase had been diddling his stepdaughter, which didn’t make good campaign material So maybe it was possible that Ed had sent Neal to London not to make sure that Allie came home but to make sure she didn’t. And Ed hated Neal. So maybe it was possible that old Ed was cleaning a bunch of troubles off his desk, and settling an old score. Maybe.

But then from other angles, it just didn’t fit. He’d worked with Ed for over ten years, and in ten years you get to know a guy. And Ed had a good career going already; why fuck it up to go with a prick like Chase? And Ed wasn’t the sort of guy who stands for somebody abusing a kid… he had proved that in an alley years ago. Which was another thing-Ed liked to settle his scores in person. If he wanted a piece of Neal, he’d take it himself.

No. Neal was wrong. It wasn’t Ed.

Unless Ed was following orders. From Kitteredge, who got them from Chase. No, that wasn’t possible. The Man wouldn’t do that, not for a crummy Vice-Presidential candidate, not for the Prez himself. It couldn’t be Kitteredge, either.

So who else? Who had access to information? Keyes’s address?

The answer was where it always was: on the street.

And it wasn’t easy staying on the street with a guy who knows who you are, but now they were dealing with me, Joe Graham thought, and I’m the best there is. I taught Neal Carey everything he knows.

“How did you find me?” Neal asked Graham. Neal was nineteen then, and disgusted. Graham had given him the simple assignment to get lost. In a city of some 13 million people, Graham had found him- in two days.

Graham smiled his filthy smile and looked around the small third-floor apartment on Waverly Place. “Easy. I told you to get lost, and you didn’t. So you got found.”

Neal wasn’t in the mood for this bullshit. Spring break was too short and he had a paper on the Romantic poets to write. He had seen this stupid training exercise as an opportunity to get some work done. “Are you going to be cryptic, or are you going to tell me?” he asked.

“What’s ‘cryptic’? Does it mean smart? Smarter than a stupid nineteen-year-old who picks a classmate’s apartment to get lost in? Are you going to get me a coffee or anything?”

“I’ll have to grind some.”

“Oh, yeah, this is the Village, I forgot.” He pointed to his crotch. “Grind this. Just make some coffee. You know, if you were the Fugitive, that series would have been over after the first episode. You’re easier to find than rice on Mott Street.”

Neal took some expensive mocha blend out of the refrigerator. He had bought it specially to help him work on the paper. The coffee shop around the corner was his favorite in the city.

“Are you going to lecture me, or just sit there?” he asked Graham. There were days, many of them, when he hated Graham.

“I’m going to lecture you. I’m just dragging it out because I’m enjoying it so much.

“You see, Neal, when you want to get lost, the first thing you got to lose is yourself. You got to become a different person, otherwise you bring all your habits, and likes and dislikes, and all your connections with you. Anybody who knows you has a good shot at finding you. And I know you, son.”

“Yes, you do, Dad.”

“I know you got this spring vacation. I even know you got a thing to write. I know you want peace and quiet.

“I also know you’re too cheap to rent a hotel room, even though Friends would have picked up the bill, and I know you haven’t got your driver’s license, so you didn’t drive out into the country, where you probably should, have gone.”

Neal carefully poured the ground coffee into the filter and measured out the water in the carafe.

“I hate the country.”

“So where is Neal going to find a place? From a classmate who lives off campus but is going away on a nice little student vacation. So your Dad gives you this assignment and then does some asking around. Now I know Neal isn’t going out to Queens or Brooklyn, because he wants to enjoy himself. And I know he’s not staying on the Upper West Side, because he doesn’t want to bump into his Dad on the street, but he also doesn’t have the discipline to stay inside and really hide like he should. And I know he’s not going to the East Side, because it’s all rich people and he’s prejudiced against them. And I remember how many times Neal has told me that if he ever left the West Side, he would move to the Village. So it became a simple matter of elimination and a little legwork. How many of Neal’s classmates live in the Village and are going to Florida for spring break?”

“One.” Neal was disgusted.

“I only waited the two days so you could get some work done on your paper so you don’t flunk out and embarrass me.”

Neal looked at him with true awe. “That’s amazing. That really is. That’s like Sherlock Holmes!”

“Right. Also you wrote down the address on your phone pad.”

“You broke into my apartment?”

“I have a key.”

Neal was confused. “Yeah, but I took the note with me. I remember ripping it off the pad and putting it in my pocket!”

“Are we going to drink the coffee or admire its delicate aroma?”

“It’s not done yet, and tell me.”

“You tell me.”

Neal thought for a minute, then he knew. He was so goddamned angry at himself, he wanted to scream. “I wrote the note with a ballpoint pen and it left an impression on the next page.”