Icarus w-2, page 25
part #2 of Westwood Series
The kitchen was perhaps the strangest room in the apartment because it was outfitted for a gourmet cook. There was a six-burner Viking stove, along with a convection oven and chrome vent above it. All the equipment was stainless steel, black or chrome: a Cuisinart; a blender, also Cuisinart; a Kitchen Aid mixer with all the accoutrements; a regular electric drip coffeemaker as well as a restaurant-quality espresso/cappuccino maker. There was a circular chrome device that hung from the ceiling and dominated one corner – its hooks held expensive pots and pans, cast-iron skillets, and heavy stew pots. To the left of the stove was a small, fifty-bottle wine cooler. Jack couldn't help himself, he checked the labels to find it full of '93 Barolos and Amarones and several superb '85 Burgundies. There were also two bottles of '83 Yquem, which Jack figured at an easy $800 per bottle or more. Next he opened the Sub-Zero refrigerator and by now was not shocked to find one shelf filled with Dom Perignon and bottles of white wine, all Chassagne-Montrachet. The rest of the shelves were largely empty, although there were a dozen brown eggs, several tins of beluga caviar, a large container of plain, non-fat yogurt, a covered dish – which Jack lifted to find several partially eaten soft cheeses – and several jars of Dijon mustard. There were also six bottles of mineral water, three sparkling, three non, and two cans of Bud Light. In the freezer was a bottle of Polish vodka, the kind with strands of buffalo grass flavoring it, and a bottle of an Italian liqueur called Lemoncello. When he went through the cupboards, he found similar fare. He thought of a line from one of his favorite movies, Pat and Mike, with Tracy and Hepburn. He and Caroline owned a tape and used to watch it together. At some point in the movie, Tracy says about Kate, in his Brooklyn accent, "Not much meat on her – but what's there is mighty cherce."
That's what Jack was thinking about this apartment. Not much there, but what there was was expensive and fine. Mighty cherce.
And very un-Kidlike.
Jack went back into the living room now. He still had about twenty minutes – and, if need be, he was sure he could bribe good old Alex for a bit more time. But he wanted to get out of this place; it was starting to give him the chills. The sun was fading now, disappearing behind some of the tall buildings farther downtown, and the swaying shadows made the entire apartment feel as if it were somehow alive.
He sat down on the floor, back to the front door, and began going through the packed boxes.
He began with the ones that were still unsealed.
The first box was fairly uninteresting. More T-shirts, a few pair of jeans and sweats. Some socks. A light jacket that Jack recognized. There were a few other bulky items: a leather football, a baseball glove, a Sony Discman, and about thirty CD's.
The second box was more interesting. It was filled with personal papers, a calendar, and an address book. The first thing Jack pulled out were bank records from Citibank. With a little sifting, Jack found the most recent statement. It was valid as of two weeks earlier. On the first page of the four-page statement, it said that George Demeter had a savings account worth $9,468.72. In his checking account he had $680.
Not the kind of numbers that gets you this apartment, Jack thought. That's not even two months' rent, never mind buying the place. This could go for a million and a half bucks, maybe more!
He began going through more papers, not sure what he was looking for, surprised at how compelling it was to search through another man's life.
He pulled out a black day-at-a-glance calendar and began leafing through it, starting in January. Early in the year, Kid had several notations per day. Some of them were names Jack hadn't heard of – Lydia, Becky, Michele. One notation said "Paul: movie." Nothing much of any interest. In mid-January, he saw a line that just read: "Entertainer." And as he began moving forward in time, there were more listings for Entertainer and regular notations for Samsonite and Mortician. In February, there were several bookings for Rookie. Those seemed to stop in March. Also in early March, the notation "Murderess" started appearing regularly. And at the end of April one date was marked, at seven in the evening, with "Destination." The word "Destination" was followed by several question marks.
Jack realized there were quite a few notations that just said "Butcher." They were almost all early in the morning and it took Jack a few moments before he understood that this was his own nickname. Kid had dubbed him the Butcher.
Son of a bitch, he thought, a vague smile crossing his lips. The nicknames were carefully chosen – that's what Kid had said. Is that what Kid had thought of him? After all was said and done, underneath it all, he was still a butcher, back at Dom's, back in his youth? Back with Kid's father?
In a sudden inspiration, Jack turned quickly to the month of June and checked the page for the date of Kid's death, but it wasn't there.
The entire page had been torn out of the book.
Jack frowned, set the calendar aside, found similar date-books from the two years previous. For the prior year, the notations were fairly similar. A lot of appointments with the Butcher and with Mortician, Samsonite, and Entertainer. There were a few other nicknames that Jack hadn't heard of – Catwoman, Cayenne, and Ginger – and he realized these women had been part of the Team before Kid had shown up in his apartment or else he'd stopped seeing them before he'd begun discussing the situation with Jack.
He went back one more year and there were a few nicknames that showed up, but more real names, almost all women. It made sense – Kid was not doing as much personal training then so there was no need to assign nicknames. The name Charlotte appeared quite a few times. And the nickname that came up most often was Destination.
Jack didn't know what to make of all this. It seemed interesting but there was no discernible pattern and nothing that led him anywhere concrete. The fact that the last page in Kid's book had been torn out certainly seemed ominous. But what the hell did any of it mean?
In another box – he had to rip the tape off the top of this one – he found Kid's frequent-flyer statement. At first he tossed it off to the side but then, for some reason, went back and picked it up. He knew that Kid hadn't traveled much, but he was curious nonetheless. When he glanced at the statement, his curiosity changed to amazement. Over the past year – the period when he was working with Kid on an almost daily basis, when he was sure he'd learned almost everything there was to know about Kid – Jack saw that Kid had accumulated thirty thousand miles. In the last two months alone he'd been to Bermuda, Palm Beach, and St. Bart's.
This is impossible, Jack decided. Something's way off here. Way, way off.
Kid wouldn't have gone away for two days and not told me. He told me everything he did. He'd have to have mentioned taking off for fucking St. Bart's, for God's sake!
He glanced at his watch and began rummaging more quickly through this last box. In there he saw a travel agent's itinerary for two tickets to Bermuda. The date of the tickets was mid-April, six weeks earlier. There was a credit card receipt attached to the itinerary and the credit card seemed to belong to something called Grave Enterprises. There was no signature; it had been charged and accepted over the phone. Jack stuck the receipt in his pants pocket and looked at the final, unopened box.
He was trying to decide if he had time to open it or if he should go down and check with the super. That's when he heard another noise behind him. Similar to the one he thought he'd heard before. The apartment was darker now, the shadows had sunk deeper into the woodwork, and he couldn't help himself, he felt his mouth go dry.
He was being ridiculous, he knew. It was nothing. Once again it was nothing. Or it was the super. The guy had said he'd come back up and get him if Jack didn't go down in time.
So, feeling silly, still on his knees, he half turned toward the front door, knowing he'd see nothing. And as he turned he decided that he'd open the final box, let the super come and get him if he wanted to.
But the super didn't have to come get him. And Jack didn't get a chance to open the last cardboard box. Because as he turned, he saw two men standing not three feet away from him. They were standing very still. They wore business suits and ties. Drab outfits. Were they police? Had the super called the police? He was going to ask them who they were but he didn't get a chance. Before Jack could say or do anything, one of them moved.
It was a fast movement, sudden, mostly his arm, although there was some body in it, too. Jack didn't know what the guy was holding in his fist, a pipe, maybe. Or a blackjack. But it had to be more than just a fist because the pain was startling the way it exploded behind Jack's eyes.
Jack didn't have far to fall, he was already in a crouch. But the man was very fast because he had time to hit Jack again before he toppled onto the pickled white floor. He didn't need to hit him a third time because Jack was not moving now. His breathing was heavy and labored and very slow and he was not moving at all.
He didn't move for quite some time. Not until long after the two men were gone, having taken the boxes and calendars and papers and all other traces that Kid Demeter had ever been inside the building on 487 Duane Street.
THIRTY-FIVE
When Jack's eyes opened, he had absolutely no idea where he was. At first he thought he was in bed, that he'd awakened in the middle of the night because it was so dark. He thought he must have fallen asleep on top of the covers since he felt an unpleasant shiver of cold. Then he realized he wasn't in bed. He was lying on something hard. He was on the floor. A light-colored floor…
He forced himself to sit up and heard himself groan. The pain in his head rocked him but he wasn't dizzy and he didn't feel nauseous. No concussion, he decided. But a hell of a headache. He put his right hand up to gingerly touch the sore spot and he could tell he'd been bleeding. He must have been out for quite a while because the blood was just damp and sticky now.
Jack stood up and, strangely enough, that made him feel better.
It didn't take him long to realize that the apartment had been cleaned out. All of Kid's boxes were gone and, when he went into the bedroom to check the closets, he saw that there were no traces of Kid's clothes.
He checked the gym; that seemed untouched. And in the kitchen all the food and drink had been left as it was. It was only Kid's things that were gone.
Jack walked into the bathroom, forced himself to look at the side of his head. Not nearly as bad as he thought – or felt. There was a small laceration, some blood, and a swelling that he knew would keep rising and hurting over the next few days. He splashed some cold water on his face, cleaned off his wound with a damp washcloth, stood there in the small white-tiled room wondering what the hell his next move was going to be and realized he had no other choice but to leave. And leave quietly. He thought about calling the police but realized what he'd have to say: I bribed my way into the apartment under false pretenses. I broke into and was looking through private property and I got mugged. He also realized that whoever mugged him could easily say they thought he was a burglar and that they were simply protecting themselves. For all he knew, whoever hit him might already have called the police.
But he seriously doubted it.
Jack went to the front door of the apartment, peered through the peephole, but no one was outside in the hallway. He opened the door cautiously, stepped out of the apartment, closed the door behind him. The elevator took a minute or so to come up to the top floor and Jack then rode it down to the lobby. He did not expect the super to be waiting for him and he was right. The lobby was empty.
Jack found his car exactly where he'd left it, parked on Reade Street, two blocks from Kid's apartment building. Jack reached into his left pants pocket for his car key, felt a piece of paper that, for just a second, he didn't recognize. And then it came to him. He pulled the paper out, unfolded it.
Kid's travel receipt.
With a name: Grave Enterprises.
And a credit card number.
Jack felt the excitement well up inside him as he got behind the wheel of the car. He had some information. He had some evidence. Okay, he thought. Okay!
And as he reached the West Side Highway and headed uptown, here was his next thought, not nearly as exciting:
Now what?
– "-"-"MMMMM," THE VOICE on the other end of the phone mumbled. The next word sounded vaguely like "yeah." It might have been a question.
"Randy?"
"Yo." The voice sounded sleepy, as if he'd just been awakened. Jack looked at his watch and saw it was 8:30 p.m.
"This is Jack Keller."
"Mr. K! Whassup?"
"Did I wake you?"
"Well…" The voice hesitated. That kind of hesitation when someone's been awakened but doesn't want to admit it. "Kind of," he said. "What time is it?"
"Eight-thirty."
"Morning or night?"
"Night," Jack said. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah." The voice was waking up now, coming to life. "I've been working on a complicated job. A security system. Kind of working day and night, so I catch up on the z's wherever I can get 'em. You know me, all work and no play."
"You should try to get out more, Randy."
"Out? What's that?"
"You want me to call you back? When you're more awake?"
"No, no. I'm fine. Gotta get up anyway and get back to work. What can I do for you?"
Randy Pelkington was a twenty-nine-year-old Australian who'd moved to New York when he was eleven years old but he'd never managed to lose his accent. Randy's parents were good, upstanding middle-class people – his mother was a book publisher who'd been hired by an American firm and relocated to New York and his father was an architect who, when he had trouble landing work in his new country, became a professor of architectural history at NYU. They were both extremely surprised when their son, at age fifteen, got into quite a bit of trouble with the local police. Randy, it seemed, had a skill. He was one of the earliest and best computer hackers and, just as a lark, he'd hacked into the NYPD system and did some, as he called it, rearranging. When he was caught, Randy had been prepared. He'd saved all the original information on disk and was easily able to re-rearrange things back to normal. Since Randy's actions seemed not to be malicious and purposeful but rather done out of curiosity, some clever person on the force decided that there was a better alternative than tossing the young genius into juvenile detention. His punishment was that he had to spend a year on probation helping the department with their computer programming. At the end of the year, Randy was promptly hired by the city as a consultant to continue his work. He also, at the same time he attended NYU, started his own business. Most of his computer work was fairly benign. He described it as "helping rich people get over their terror of the unknown electronic universe." What he mostly did was go to those people who tended to work out of their homes – writers, architects, artists, what have you – and set up computer systems for them. He taught them how to use Windows as well as non-Windows applications and came over to rescue them whenever they thought they'd lost something of value in the bowels of their computers or just generally got confused and screwed up. He also did several small office systems installations, which is how Jack happened to meet him. Caroline had hired Randy to set up the computer systems for Jack's restaurants nationwide.
"I need some help," Jack now told Randy.
"No problem. At the restaurant?"
"No, no. This is personal."
"Sounds intriguing. What is it you need?"
Jack told him and Randy said he'd call him back in fifteen minutes.
– "-"-"NO PROBLEM," RANDY said when he called back. "I don't even have to come there. We can do this over the phone."
"Are you sure?"
"Piece o' cake. You still on the ThinkPad?"
Jack said that he was.
"This is gonna be easy," Randy told him. "Go to 'Search the Internet' and when you come to the search line, type in 'CylockHolmes.com.' and click on 'Search.'"
Jack did as he was told, waited, and suddenly a line appeared that said: 1 of 1 Web Site Matches.
"Okay," Randy told him, "click on the Web site line. You want me to hang on while you start it up and download, Mr. K?"
"If you don't mind."
"My pleasure," the computer whiz said.
To Jack's amazement, cartoonish drawings of a Sherlock Holmes-like detective popped up on his computer screen, followed by hype for the site. According to that hype, he could use this program to find long-lost friends, license plate numbers, Social Security numbers, and unlisted phone numbers. He could also verify educational records, get dirt on his neighbors – in essence, according to the on-screen promises, discover anything about anyone. Once he typed in his credit card number and registered as a user, the following grid appeared:
CYLOCKHOLMES DETECTION KIT
[Background [Information [Internet
Information
Reference] Source] Source]
[Information
[ADDRESS RESULTS WILL DISPLAY
HERE] Sources]
[Current Search
[PHONE NUMBERS WILL DISPLAY HERE] Category]
[Business Records]
[Driver Records]
[Vehicle [ADDITIONAL INFORMATION WILL
Ownership] DISPLAY HERE]
[Vital Records]
[Voter
State: [Alabama] [Retrieve] Registration]
[County
[Return Address] [Print Envelopes] Courthouse]
[CD Interface Help] [Check for Update] [About] [EXIT] [Cylock Holmes [Report]
Notebook]
"Jesus," Jack breathed. "Anyone can just do this?"
"As long as you got a credit card," Randy said. "Feeling paranoid?"
"A little."
"Wise man. No such thing as privacy anymore. You want me to lead you through this at the beginning?"
"Yes," Jack said.
"Okay, tell me what you're looking for."
"Something called Grave Enterprises."
"What about it?"
Jack exhaled. "Not sure," he said. "How about exactly what it is and who runs it."
