Floating City (27 page)

“On this line? Impossible. I was on duty then. I didn’t speak to you.”

“But I called—”

“Hold on. All calls are electronically logged in by the central net. Let me access... Here we go. What time was your call?”

“There were two of them.” Croaker gave him the times.

“I don’t know where you called, but it wasn’t here. I have no record of your ID logging in at all this year until right now.”

Croaker closed his eyes, his mind continuing to race. Who was Domino and how had she known he was going to call? Just as importantly, how had she interrupted the federal net so he wouldn’t be logged in? Maybe she was a cyber hacker. Or maybe...

Croaker gave a description of Domino to the OD operator, and the man laughed. “I don’t know. Except for the hair and the color of her eyes, I’d almost say you were describing Vesper Arkham.”

Croaker gave a little choking sound, and the voice said, “She was Waxman’s assistant, right?”

“Well, yeah, but now she works directly for Senator Dedalus.”

“Doing what?”

“Whatever he asks. Rumor is she’s trying to keep together the remnants of the active agents from Looking-Glass so they can all be thoroughly vetted. The news of Waxman being Johnny Leonforte literally devastated the agency. A clean sweep and all that.”

“But wasn’t Vesper just an administrative assistant?” Croaker asked.

“Yes, but again rumor is now she was much more. Maybe Dedalus’s mole, who knows?”

Croaker considered this for a moment. It was looking more and more as if he and Nicholas were right about her. She was a mole and Dedalus’s woman. If she was also part of Okami’s Nishiki network, was she working both sides of the street? According to the agency rumor mill, she was used to a double role. Clearly, he needed to find out more about her. If she was putting Nishiki at risk, then Margarite was in danger.

“Does she have a sister?” Croaker asked.

“Vesper? Not as far as her personnel file is concerned, and that’s as thorough as they come.”

“Okay, then.” Croaker pulled himself together. “I need two things: Vesper’s home address and a complete telephone record for the last three months for a strip club called Moniker’s. Also I want a trace on all the numbers.” He gave the voice the address. Domino had lied to him, so it was logical to assume the documents she had given him were falsified. Even if by some miracle they weren’t, it was only prudent to double-check whatever she had provided.

“I’m sorry,” the male voice said, “the addresses of agency personnel have been reclassified strictly Director Only. However, the phone records will be no problem. A courier will deliver the hard copy to you within two hours at the location of your choice.”

“My hotel will be fine. You wouldn’t be bringing them yourself, would you?”

“Are you kidding? That’s strictly against agency policy.”

But it hadn’t been against Domino’s policy. Croaker said, “By the way, who
would
have the proper authorization to requisition home addresses?”

“Mr. Lillehammer would have, for example. But, of course, he’s dead.”

“Who else?”

“Well, Senator Dedalus, naturally.”

“How so?”

“It hasn’t been made public knowledge, but he is head of the Senate committee investigating Leon Waxman, who ran this federal agency until his death late last year.”

“Did the senator request his involvement be kept out of the press?”

“I’m not sure, but I’d guess so. He’s so busy overseeing DARPA I doubt he’d want it known he was dividing his time.”

“What is DARPA?”

“The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.” The voice chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of sci-fi crap these boys are funding. Walking robots, weird weapons, all kinds of shit. Where they get their money is beyond me; probably black budget—you know, off the public record, like the NSA.”

That was interesting, Croaker thought. The woman who identified herself as Domino had told him of Dedalus’s involvement with interstate trucking and municipal-bidding reregulation but not this.

“Who’s your boss now?” he asked.

“I suppose Senator Dedalus is making policy decisions until a new director can be found.”

“And who will appoint the new director? The president?”

“I doubt it, presidents never have before. This agency has always been Senator Dedalus’s baby.”

Croaker cradled the phone, looked at his watch. It was almost four in the morning. He slept for just under two hours, too exhausted to take off the rest of his clothes. The alarm he had set woke him at six from a dream in which he was sitting on a stool, dressed in a jester’s baggy clothes, being interrogated by officials of the U.S. government who sounded suspiciously like Bad Clams Leonforte. He tried not to think of Bad Clams’s threat against Margarite, but that was like trying to tell a surgeon operating on his wife not to think about his patient. He put a call in to Nick, leaving his electronic marker.

In a moment, the phone rang and he jumped, then snatched up the receiver.

“Nick?”

“’Lo, Lew.”

Croaker was stalking back and forth across the carpet, unable to sit still. Despite his exhaustion his adrenaline was at full throttle. “Senator Dedalus is seemingly now in control of Looking-Glass. I’ve got to find out whose side he’s on—the Goldonis or the Leonfortes. He was supposedly Dominic Goldoni’s friend, but a Leonforte ran his agency. And, as we know, Johnny Leonforte was a leading member of the Godaishu.”

“Interesting,” Nicholas said. “The Godaishu is a Yakuza-spawned organization.” He filled Croaker in on the possible linkup between the Yakuza, Avalon Ltd., Torch, and Delacroix.

“Still,” Croaker said, “I’d like to know who is manufacturing Torch.”

“I think I may have an idea,” Nicholas said, and told him what little he had gleaned about Floating City.

Croaker said, “Could be whoever’s taking possession of Torch is the same person or persons responsible for putting the death sentence on Okami. I’d put my money on the Godaishu.”

There was a pause while the two men hit upon the same conclusion at once.

“What if Okami is Torch’s target?” Nicholas said.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? And Okami’s smart enough to suspect it, but because he’s deposed and in hiding, he lacks the power to prevent it.”

“That’s just it, he doesn’t lack the power. That’s why he’s been feeding us clues, Lew. He’s got us.”

The darkness of night was reluctantly lifting by the time Croaker cradled the receiver. Twenty minutes later, clean, deodorized, and shaved, he went out of his room. On the way downstairs he began to see a possible pattern forming. While in the bathroom he had deliberately blanked his mind, doing deep-breathing exercises to keep his forebrain occupied, giving his unconscious time to work. Now he reengaged.

What had happened to him from the moment he had connected by phone to Domino had the smell of a classic vetting set piece. While he was busy trying to pump her about information, she had been doing the same with him.

He hit the lobby running and grabbed a taxi outside. He gave the cabby Senator Dedalus’s address.

It was looking more and more as if Domino, the imaginary sister of Vesper Arkham, was Vesper herself. It all made sense once he added one fact to the scenario: Vesper was Dedalus’s mole inside Nishiki. Spinning the scenario out further, it appeared as if Dedalus was the power behind Johnny Leonforte, which neatly answered the question of how Leonforte as Waxman passed the agency vetting.

He also needed to ask Vesper who owned Morgana, Inc. The books at Morgana and Avalon Ltd. both made mention of the weapon Torch 315. If these competing arms companies were after Torch, it must be hot indeed.

Those two hours he had slept were the first in the last forty-eight. His face was red and sore from the hurried scrape of the razor, and despite his fresh clothes he felt unkempt. Not the best way to meet the senator for the first time; he’d just have to rely on his charming personality.

A light drizzle was falling. Every so often the chill winter wind metamorphosed it into sleet, which pattered against the roof and windshield of the cab like the scratching of a homeless mongrel. Within the complex web he and Nicholas were enmeshed in, he was desperately trying not to think of Margarite, but he couldn’t help himself. If she was involved with Vesper, who ran Morgana, Inc.’s, illicit arms dealings, it threw a whole new spin on the situation. His sense of Dominic Goldoni was that the man had been far more than chief racketeer of the East Coast. Goldoni had been a visionary. He had thrown his lot in with Mikio Okami, breaking with the highly lucrative Godaishu, in order to run an exceedingly dangerous counterplot that had led to his death and to Okami’s near-assassination. Why? What had been so urgent to the two men?

Against tradition and logic, Goldoni had trained his sister in secret to take over his end of the operation. And yet Dominic’s archrival, Caesare Leonforte, had begun to smell a rat. Maybe he knew Tony D. too well, or maybe he was more clever than Dominic had anticipated. In any case, he now had Croaker just where he wanted him: as a hunting dog who had already caught the scent of his quarry.

Croaker shuddered in the back of the jouncing cab, unpleasantly reminded that the closer he got to Margarite and the Nishiki network, the closer Bad Clams came to destroying her.

Increasingly, he felt like a rat in a maze, one that had been diabolically devised just for him. He was unused to being powerless, manipulated by unseen forces beyond his comprehension, and this worried him for a number of reasons. He had to be careful not to let his anger make him careless. He had seen enough street cops blown away by lapses in vigilance caused by their emotions running rampant to know he didn’t want to die that way. Also, he was beginning to glimpse a picture so large in scope that he already felt the intimations of fear. This emotion, too, he had to fight, because just as anger could make you reckless, fear could paralyze you.

Assumption number one: Dominic and Okami owned Morgana, Inc. Assumption number two: Vesper, with her ties to Looking-Glass, the supersecret federal agency run by Johnny Leonforte and now Senator Dedalus, was a major player in this game. Croaker and Nicholas had been pointed in the directions they were now headed by clues delivered obliquely by Mikio Okami. Information they had gleaned had sent them after Avalon, after Torch, had made them aware of the Nishiki network and its purpose to keep power in the hands of Dominic Goldoni and now Margarite. For an instant, Croaker had an image of Okami hidden in shadow, pulling strings on the immense stage of the world.

Sen. Richard Dedalus seemed to be the key, and Croaker was looking forward with dread fascination to his meeting with the man who had effectively created Waxman’s agency, and who now apparently ran it as he saw fit.

Dedalus lived on a twelve-acre estate in McLean, Virginia. The manor house was an imposing stone and slate affair that somehow managed to conjure up the atmosphere of an old English castle without being in the least pretentious. The curving granite-set driveway was a quarter mile long. It was lined on either side with majestic Aristocrat Bradford pear trees, which, with their very upright habit, gave the impression of the sentries on guard at Windsor Castle.

On his way to the house, Croaker passed an immaculately tended fruit orchard and a cleverly concealed tennis court. A figure in cap and overalls he took to be the gardener moved slowly through the periphery of the orchard in a golf cart, its back loaded with pruning equipment. Despite the early hour, the gardener paid the taxi no notice. No doubt he was used to the odd hours his employer must keep.

Croaker paid the cabby and got out in a porte cochere large enough to accommodate the president’s bulletproof limousine and a pair of staff cars side by side. The carved front door was high enough for a basketball player to enter without stooping.

Croaker’s insistent ring on the bell was answered by a young woman in her twenties. She was dressed in a neat Donna Karan suit. A string of pearls around her neck set off the color of her skin, which was the hue of hot chocolate. Her large black eyes regarded Croaker with a mixture of curiosity and good humor. Her thick hair was woven into a series of sinuous braids that wrapped around her head.

“May I help you?”

He showed her his federal badge. “I’d like to see the senator.”

The young woman looked from the badge to Croaker’s face. She had taken the time to read the thing, which impressed him. Most people didn’t; they were too intimidated by the trappings of authority.

“Won’t you come in?” She took a step backward. “I’ll see if the senator is out of bed yet.”

She led him through a vast oval entryway, floored in white marble blocks. It was dominated by a crystal chandelier and a wide, curving teak staircase that was obviously new and custom-made. A small ebony table, its shape echoing the larger oval, stood beneath the chandelier. On it, an evocative Bennett Bean sculpture in granite, stainless steel, and fired clay rose to just beneath the lowest crystal.

“Would you care for some coffee or tea?” the woman asked him as they went down a short hallway.

“Coffee would be my choice.”

She smiled at him over her shoulder. “I think I’ll join you.”

She was well built, with a narrow waist and good legs. The contours of her shoulders and upper torso, visible beneath the suit as she moved, were square, the muscles well developed. Croaker found himself wondering whether he was being escorted by one of the senator’s security contingent.

She led him into an enormous kitchen, painted in a pale yellow enamel that reflected the myriad copper pots hanging from French-style metal ovals chained to the ceiling. A professional Garland stove was complemented by a stainless-steel refrigerator with glass doors for which many a restaurateur would sell his soul.

The young woman poured two cups of steaming coffee from a complex maker on one of the many counters. She brought it over to him in a glass set into a metal holder. Very European. She had a wide, flat face with inquisitive eyes and a ready smile. She was as alert as if it were three in the afternoon instead of a quarter to seven in the morning.