Cries of the Lost (33 page)

“You’re full of shit,” she said.

“I am,” I said, “and so are you.”

She liked that and tried to get me to take a slurp from the 7UP bottle, but I held my ground.

“So you’re like a saint,” she said. “Like them Jesuits.”

“Yes, I am. What’s the thing?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said, standing up. “But you’ll find out.”

Even in the daylight, I could see the lights were off on the fifth floor of United Aquitania’s building. Through a process of elimination while examining the bank of buzzers, I determined this was the organization’s space.

Lying there, staring at the façade across the street, I developed a sympathy for real street people based not on their sad economic or psychiatric situations, but on the sheer boredom of being inert within a world of such compulsive energy. I felt I couldn’t look at my smartphone when I was on the sidewalk, for fear I’d either wreck my persona or attract a mugger. Knowing that it was in my pocket, right there eager to be perused, was intensely exquisite torture. All I could do was call Natsumi using an earpiece covered by my scraggly wig and sneak a look at the touch screen. A homeless guy seemingly talking to himself was beneath notice.

“Anything?” she asked.

“No. Any word from Rodrigo?”

I had her monitoring my various email accounts.

“Yup, just about an hour ago,” she said, then read,

Sr. Gorrotxategi:

“Estaré en Nueva York pronto y le avisaré en cuanto llegue.”

Mariñelarena

“I think I know what that means,” she said.

“He’s coming to New York soon and will contact Joselito when he gets here,” I said. “Write back to acknowledge receipt of the message. You look forward to meeting him. ”

“Okay. How are you feeling?”

“I’d be fine if it weren’t for the iPhone withdrawal. I only check email when I’m in the john, which is a hard thing to come by in and of itself. Not a lot of shopkeepers want you around, and what do you do with the cart? Can’t lose the cart.”

“The logistics of homelessness.”

“Much more complicated than you’d think. I won’t last till next week.”

I was just back from one such trip, soon after nightfall, and saw lights on the fifth floor. Timing is everything, I thought, with a curse. I settled back into my spot with a promise that I’d be back in bed with Natsumi before the night was through.

In a mood most foul, I glowered at the building across the street and cursed some more, out loud. Another privilege of the homeless. It felt good, though I noted that for me, a homeless man of a different sort, it was a choice, not often for them.

I was thus engaged when a cab pulled up to the curb in front of me and Rodrigo Mariñelarena stepped out.

C
HAPTER
20

B
ehind Rodrigo were two other men, one of whom I recognized from Madrid. They were all somewhat oversized and seemingly unaffected by the ten-hour transatlantic plane ride. They took stuffed duffel bags out of the trunk, paid the cabbie, crossed the street and were buzzed into the building; and judging by the way the fifth floor lit up, welcomed into United Aquitania headquarters.

I packed up my mobile homestead and pushed it over to an empty lot full of rubble one block from Broadway where I’d located a small tribe of homeless people. I gave them my cart with its full load of redeemable bottles and all the money I’d collected during my stint on Spring Street.

“Where you going, brother?” one of them asked me.

“Got a girl on the Upper West Side. She wants to take me in,” I said.

They all nodded and looked at each other, as if similar stories frequently circulated.

“Take a shower first,” another said. “Use exfoliate soap. Burn the clothes.”

“Don’t get fucked up on her stuff the first night,” said a woman. “It’s a temptation, but you can stretch things out with just a little bit of discipline.” She looked at the others staring at her. “Really, no shit.”

“Yeah, but bring your kit and plenty of supply. Those girls up there can’t source for shit.”

“When boosting, think cash and jewelry. Don’t get bogged down with shiny knives and forks. Too heavy, no return.”

“Husbands. They can show up any time. Fly in from Düsseldorf or some shit.”

“They can shoot you, legal.”

“Fuck, yeah. What’re you? Street trash. Supremely shootable.”

“This is really good advice,” I said, “thank you.”

They liked this.

“Fuckin’ right it is.”

For the hell of it, I walked by the United Aquitania building before returning to the hotel. The woman Natsumi christened as Nose Stud was coming out the door. I went to stop her, but she dropped her shoulder and swiveled around, executing as neat an escape as any professional running back.

“Wait, you know me,” I said.

She stopped and pointed her finger at me.

“I thought that was you with the cart,” she said. “You’re not smellin’ too good.”

“United Aquitania has some visitors,” I said.

“You still owe me a thousand bucks. I called your lady friend right before I left my apartment.”

“Fair enough. Three of them got out of a cab. But there was a light on already.”

“Don’t know about any three. I’m talking about the woman across the hall from me. I don’t know her personally, but tonight, I saw her come out of their offices and then lock the door behind her.”

“Anybody else there?”

“I don’t know. I kept my head down as I walked by. Way too creepy. ”

“What does the woman look like?”

“Probably early fifties, tall, broad in the butt, long straight hair, too black to be real, narrow face with a long nose, imperfect skin, likes high-heel boots. Affiliates with the creative class, still hip, but slipping behind. And she knows it.”

“Thought you didn’t know her,” I said.

She handed me a business card: Ella Eveningstar, PhD, Anthropology.

“I teach at Columbia. You can send the check to my office. I hate the cops, by the way. I’m an anarchist. But if they ask about this, are you good or evil?”

“We’re good. Not sure yet about the other guys.”

She gave me a noncommittal look, and left me at the curb. I walked up to Houston and caught the subway back to the hotel.

T
HAT
NIGHT
, I dove into my clandestine version of Joselito’s email and wrote to Rodrigo.

Sr. Mariñelarena:

I have given this much thought and believe I have a safe way for us to meet.

Assuming you are here next Saturday, you and only one of your men go to Rockefeller Center and take the elevator to the Top of the Rock, planning to be on the observation deck at twelve noon. I will do the same. We will need to pass through metal detectors, so no guns allowed. If either one of us tries to harm the other, the police stationed on the ground will immediately quarantine the building. There will be no way to escape.

I know you come with honorable intentions, but we both understand the need for precautions.

Gorrotxategi

That evening, I had my reply.

Sr. Gorrotxategi:

I will be there, wearing a red beret. My associate will wear one in white.

Mariñelarena

I wrote back.

Sr. Mariñelarena:

We will be wearing Boston Red Sox baseball caps, a dangerous thing to do in New York, but so rare you will not miss us.

Gorrotxategi

All set, I went to bed, nervous and excited by the escalation of risk. I was awake most of the night running through next steps, but it did little to slack my energy, as my obsessive brain hurtled toward the inevitable.

T
HE
NEXT
morning I wrote a note and printed it out. I took it to a FedEx office and sent it with a disposable phone to Shelly’s home in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

The note said, “Find a place where they can’t listen in.”

The morning after that, I got the call.

“So you found a place,” I said.

“I did, and no, I won’t tell you how.”

“How bad is it?”

“It’s bad,” he said. “They’ve assigned a dedicated team. Five agents. That’s a big commitment given budget pressures.”

“How well do you know them?”

“Not very. One or two.”

“One of them’s a mole. He’s in steady contact with Joselito Gorrotxategi, with whom he trades, or maybe only sells, intelligence about United Aquitania. Given the quality of the intel, he’s got to be part of that team.”

“How do you know this?” he asked.

“I told you. I’m living inside Joselito’s computer. Do you know people further up the food chain?”

“I know people who know people. At least I did. They’re retired, like me.”

“You might want to open up those channels. For all I know, the mole doesn’t know he’s a mole. Joselito is former Interpol and Guardia Civil. Could easily be seen as a trustworthy source. Though I know for a fact he’s dirtier than stink.”

“I’ll do what I can. You don’t know how Byzantine these bureaucracies can be.”

“Can I call you?” I asked.

“No. I’ll call you.”

“Okay, make sure it’s good news.”

N
ATSUMI
AND
I went out that night. We dressed up and ate at a tiny, expensive and quietly refined restaurant with food that could challenge Provence. After dinner, we strolled the streets of the Upper West Side and Natsumi instructed me on living in the moment.

“Your past is gone and your future has yet to come,” she said. “So all you have is the present. I don’t think this is very hard to understand.”

“It is for people like me. We do the opposite. We obsess over what we’ve done and grind our guts over what we need to do next.”

“So knock it off,” she said.

“Okay, as soon as I figure out what Florencia got herself—and us—into, and then what to do about it.”

“You’d make a terrible Buddhist.”

“I know. My mind is never quiet and I never live here, now. I live here, there and everywhere,” I said. “However, I never kill other creatures, even the tiniest annoying bug, unless I absolutely have to, and I believe in the eternal continuum of being.”

“You do?”

“Before I was shot in the head, I could run the equations for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. I remember how it felt when all those numbers fell into place. A breathless sort of dizzying joy, making sense of the universe by embracing that which to our common experience makes no sense at all. If that isn’t Buddhist, I don’t know what is.”

“Now I know why I like you.”