Kage (29 page)

said, “is the map room. Crackpot philosophy is on the first

floor.”

“OK, so we’re safe,” I replied. She tilted her head and

looked at me. I could see the wheels turning as she wondered

whether to call security. I waved a sheet of paper at her. “I’m

an adjunct in the history department and I’m doing some free-

lance research,” I explained. I put on my most pathetic face.

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John Donohue

“I’m looking to see what these coordinates can tell me. Got a

globe?”

She rolled her eyes, sat down on a wheeled chair, and

bumped me away from the keyboard. “Just numbers?” she said,

“no indications of direction?”

“Is that a problem?”

She shrugged. “Nah. Just a process of elimination. You’ve

got some idea of the general location, right? Please?”

“Surprise me,” I told her and showed her the numbers.

“Ah,” she said, “a test.” She closed her eyes and pulled data

directly from the cartographic fissures of her librarian’s brain.

“East latitude, north longitude puts you… in south-central

China. South longitude somewhere in the Pacific Ocean east

of Australia.”

“You can do this from memory?” I asked.

Her eyes opened. “This,” she repeated with some emphasis,

“is the map room.”

“Of course. And it’s impressive, but not what I’m looking

for.”“Flip the latitude and you’re south of the Tropic of Capri-

corn, again in the ocean.” She eyed me for a reaction.

“Nope.”

“OK. Last variant is west latitude and north longitude.

Somewhere in the American southwest?”

“Bingo,” I said.

She fired up a software program and began plugging in the

string of numbers that I had copied from Westmann’s journal.

She typed and thought and frowned. “You copied these

down sequentially, right?”

“Uh, yeah, they’re samples from a document I’m working

on.” She looked at me as if wondering who in their right mind

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would let me work on something like this unaided.

“OK,” she said and blew a slow, steady stream of air out as

she backtracked and adjusted her entries.

“What?”

“They didn’t make sense at first, but I can see now… these

are multiple readings in more than one series and you just ran

them all together…”

“Almost as if I didn’t know what I was doing.” She looked at

me. “Hard to believe, but true,” I suggested.

Again the testy exhale, but I thought I saw a suppressed

smile. Her pale fingers clacked across the keyboard. She moved

a mouse with the smooth precision of long practice. The nails

of her fingers were cut short, but carefully colored to match

her maroon lipstick. Finally, she was done. She rolled the chair

back and stood up. “I’m running a printout from the office

laser,” she told me. “It’s got better resolution and you won’t get

charged for the printout.”

She came back with a fistful of papers: a record of the data

entered and maps of various scales showing the plotted courses

suggested by the coordinates. I shuffled through them.

“Interesting stuff,” she said.

“Why so?”

She spread the sheets out on a table and started pointing

things out. “Notice the routes being suggested. I overlaid them

on maps with both terrain and manmade features.”

“Lots of terrain,” I said. “Not many roads.”

“Not much of anything,” she said. “Except this little fea-

ture.” All the routes were, at one point or another, bisected by a

dashed line. “You know what this is?” She asked.

“The border between Arizona and the Mexican state of

Sonora,” I said, proud of at least that much knowledge.

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John Donohue

“Yes. All of these routes cross the border. At locations far

from anything, including, I assume, anything remotely resem-

bling a Customs inspection.”

“I wonder,” I said innocently, “what that’s all about?”

She looked then as if she suspected new and unpleas-

ant things about me. Life in the library was probably pretty

tidy. I was not. Then the momentary suspicion faded, routine

reasserted itself and she shrugged. “We supply directions, not

motivations.”

“Of course,” I agreed, “this is, after all, the map room.”

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17

Flight

The mean streets of the old Red Hook have changed. Gen-

trification has arrived in the form of smal bistros, coffee bars,

and microbreweries. The stolid nineteenth century warehouses

are being rehabbed into apartments with big windows and open

floor plans. It’s al very civilized, but not always pleasant.

“Don’t even open your mouth, you asshole,” the voice said

with a venom that was potent. We sat in the dim recesses of a

microbrewery, the brick wal s arching over our heads. It should

have felt safe and comforting; vaguely old world. Instead, I felt

like I was sitting in a vault where they store gunpowder.

My brother Micky was about as angry as I had ever seen

him, and that was saying a great deal. His partner Art sat next

to him, facing me across the dark wooden plank table. He’s usu-

al y the affable one, a man natural y disposed to play the Good

Cop in the same way that my brother emerged from the womb

ful y formed as the consummate Bad Cop. Today, Art’s face was

a tight mask; he watched me with eyes that were remote and

uncaring. It wasn’t like him, but I seemed to be getting this reac-

tion from him a lot in the last few days

I opened and closed my mouth, and then opted for the smart

move and just sat there.

“You are so deep into this wormhole, Connor… I can’t even

begin to…” Micky’s anger seemed to briefly choke off his ability

to speak.

“Bad enough you run afoul of TM-7,” Art said. “And, by the

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John Donohue

way, we’re stil waiting for you to come clean about that.”

“I can explain…” I began, but Art held up a stern hand.

“Little late in the game for confidences. Let me finish.” He

looked like he would rather finish me. “We go from bad to

worse. You manage to get
Los Gemenos
on your case. And we

warned you about Osorio…”

My brother found his voice. “What the
fuck
were you

thinking?”

The waitress came over with our beers. I didn’t answer

Micky’s question, just watched mutely as she set the pint glasses

down in front of us. When she left, I shrugged. “We needed

some sort of ‘in’ to the Hispanic underworld.”

Art made a deep harrumphing noise. “Hispanic underworld.

You been watching too many movies.”

Micky picked up the thought. “Osorio’s a jackal, Connor.

He may like to pretend he’s Ricardo Montalban, but in the end

he’s just another thug.”

I couldn’t object to the characterization. Osorio was the one

who’d told me that Martín was gone. Maybe he was mistaken.

But maybe he’d decided to do someone a favor and set me up.

Time would tel . It was yet another complication that I decided

not to think about right now. I hefted the glass of beer, taking

smal comfort in the familiar smooth curve of the glass in my

hand. I lifted it to my lips and let the aroma of the hops wash

over my face.

Neither of the two men sitting opposite me touched their

glasses. They watched me with an unblinking patience, waiting

for me to crack.

“Look,” I final y said, “I don’t have al the pieces put together

yet. And I was trying not to get you guys involved.”

My brother snorted. “A little late for that.”

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Kage

“Connor,” Art said with real pain, “you are in way over your

fucking head.”

Micky sat back and glared at me. “This has nothing to do

with you wanting to protect us, Connor. I know you. When are

you gonna realize that this is not about you and some fucking

test of skil ? It’s not about measuring up to Yamashita or some

assholic warrior code. This is the real deal.”

“I know that,” I protested. “But I’m pretty sure that this isn’t

the kind of thing that you can afford to be involved with. I may

have to do some things…”

“Things?” Art said.

I nodded. “They might arrest me before it’s al over.”

“Arrest you,” my brother demanded. “Arrest you?” He started

to rise from his seat, but Art held him down. “I’m gonna fucking

kil you if you don’t level with me and tel us what’s going on!”

So I did. The odd job for Lori Westmann and the manu-

script copy I made. The suspicious fire at the Westmann estate

that destroyed the original. The notes and coordinates in the

manuscript copy that detailed a host of clandestine trails for bor-

der crossings.

After my story we al sat for a moment, saying nothing.

Micky ordered a Jameson. Art and I joined him.

“When did you final y fit the pieces together?’ Micky said.

“After the attack?”

I shook my head. “No. I wasn’t real y focused on the manu-

script then. But once you got the information about TM-7, I

started thinking about that guy Xochi in Tucson and the expres-

sion on his face when he saw me with a copy of the manuscript.

Then, when I ran the GPS coordinates, it began to dawn on

me.”“You coulda brought us in, Connor,” Art chided.

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John Donohue

I sipped at the gold and smoke of the Irish whiskey. “Art. You

guys aren’t cops anymore. But you stil have to play by the rules.”

Micky started to say something, but I held up a hand. “Yeah, I

know, not al the rules al the time. But the big ones? Please. It’s

what you do…”

The two cops sat in grudging agreement, looking into the

whiskey for answers it couldn’t provide.

Micky grimaced. “Here’s your problem. TM-7 is like some

beast with multiple heads. Someone in the organization wants

you taken out. You blew away a few of them and Martín has dis-

appeared for the time being. It gives you some breathing room,

but they’re just gonna send someone else.“

I swal owed and asked the big question. “Now what?”

The eyed each other, sending silent signals back and forth,

an ocular cop semaphore. My brother seemed uncomfortable.

Art leaned forward, his big hands resting on the table.

“The rumble over the networks is that something big is

going down on the border. The various cartels are jockeying for

control over smuggling routes. TM-7 is just one of the players.

They want what you have and are not gonna stop ‘til they get it.”

“So what do I do?”

Micky shrugged. “The good news is that these guys are busy

and that if you can find whoever is real y pissed at you and pla-

cate him, the organization itself wil move on.”

“Bigger fish to fry,” Art observed.

“So?” I prompted.

“So you give it to them.”

“Huh?”

“Hear me out,” my brother said. “Someone wants what you

have. They also want you in case you know what you have.

For them it’s a two-part problem. They want the info on the

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Kage

smuggling routes, and they don’t want anyone else to have it.

“Why not just ask that guy Xochi?”

Art waved a hand. “They may already have him.”

“They could ask him, of course,” Micky mused. “And it’s our

experience that people like this are terrible liars.”

“There are, of course, more vigorous ways to question some-

one,” Art added. “But there are issues…”

“Such as?”

Art smiled smugly. “Contrary to whatever wet dream some

politicians have had, torture doesn’t yield such great informa-

tion. Besides, even if they got the info, they tend to—get rid of

the source. Makes things much tidier. Although not a great deal

for your pal Xochi. That stil leaves the problem of you having a

copy of the coordinates.”

“So the manuscript is important to them,” Micky said.

“They want it back.”

“Of course, you have also read it,” Art added. “Bad news

for them, since now there’s another loose wheel in their little

scheme.”

“Even worse news for you personal y,” my brother added

with a perverse tone of satisfaction. “’Cause now they have to

eliminate you.”

Art leaned back and smiled broadly. “Of course, we have

made a career out of seeing the silver lining in black clouds. This

problem is no exception”

“I’m overjoyed,” I told them.

They looked at each other and leaned in over the table

simultaneously, the wheels in their heads spinning. I waited,

openmouthed.

“Simple, real y,” Micky said. “We provide the bait—in this

case you and the manuscript. It would be real y surprising if

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John Donohue

whoever is in charge down there, the guy funding the hit on

you, doesn’t surface.”

“And then?”

“The details need a little fleshing out,” Art admitted.

“But the big picture is simple,” Micky said. “You find who-

ever is behind this…”

“And have him arrested?” I asked hopeful y.

Art looked guilty. “Wel , no…”