The Vaults (33 page)

Puskis wondered about the other files. Were the files that were not already faked being changed in any way during the typing? It wasn’t possible to read what was being typed. Only one line of words was visible at a time, the rest hidden within the typing machine. The question was of vital importance to Puskis. He spent the morning planning a way to find out.

Before lunch, he paused out of view of his minders and read the file on a White gangster named Lezner. He then took the file, along with the others he had collected, and gave them to the typists.

At noon, he told his minders that he was not interested in eating lunch and that he just wanted to rest, as the day had already been more physically taxing than an entire normal day. The minders didn’t seem to care, and they sent a guard from the lobby to fetch them lunch to eat in the Vaults. Puskis collapsed in a chair at the desk in the Stable—where the reference tomes were kept—with a blank white piece of paper and a pencil. On the sheet he drew a diagram of a typewriter keyboard. Then, with his fingers
on the paper, he determined what movement was made by which finger in order to type a particular letter. Right index finger up is a
u.
Right index finger up and left is a
y.
Right index finger down is an
m.
And so on.

Puskis sat back in his chair with his eyes closed in complete concentration. From afar he must have looked asleep. In his mind he spelled out words in finger movements. Left index finger right; right index finger up; right index finger down and to the left. That spelled
gun
. Right pinkie up; right ring finger up; right ring finger; right middle finger up; left middle finger down; left middle finger up.
Police.
He made the words more complicated and began to formulate sentences. When he felt comfortable with this, he sped it up, his goal to process fifty words in a minute. It took him twenty minutes of intense mental effort before he could do this consistently.

The challenge, he knew, would be in trying to interpret what someone else was typing.

He used the fatigue excuse again to take a break for a cup of tea. It was not much of a stretch. He was both mentally and physically exhausted, and the prospect of the brief but intense mental challenge ahead seemed to sap him even more. He leaned against the wall behind the two typists and watched as the Lezner file rose to the top of the pile.

The typist on the left took it and opened it on a stand. For the first few seconds Puskis merely watched her type, getting used to the cadence of her fingers. The key, he determined, was to watch the space bar. That indicated a change of words. When it came time to actually “read” her fingers, he found that she moved too fast for him to identify both the letters and the order in which they were typed. Instead, he was getting anagrams. He would remember these and decipher them later.

He wanted to memorize three paragraphs in the first section of the report, potentially the most damaging section to someone in City government. The case involved a construction company that had been giving favorable rates to some of Red Henry’s cronies, then receiving no-bid contracts with the City.

He watched and memorized the three paragraphs’ worth of anagrams. One sentence was committed to memory like this:
The ssucpet was bsorvde meetngi with two kownn rbitslo ssaocaties and xehcaginng tsaclehs in a amnner sgguesitgn secrecy
. Finished, he left his cup at the front desk and retreated into the aisles to where he had left himself paper and a pen. He wrote
quickly. When he had all the acronyms down, he found that he could read the paragraphs without spending time to decipher the words on paper.

It was as he had feared. These new files were being altered. This one had subtly shifted the language so that the construction company was involved with the White Gang instead of the City government.

Sirens in the distance stirred Poole from his moment of thought. He didn’t like his options. Knowing that police reinforcements would shortly arrive, he had to get off this block. But making a run for the far end was suicidal.

Behind him, concrete steps led down to the door of a basement apartment. He tried the knob. Locked. He pulled off his jacket and pressed it against the pane of the door window. He made a quick movement with his elbow, shattering the glass. The noise was not as loud as he had feared. Certainly not loud enough to be heard down the street over the sound of the wind. He reached through and opened the door from inside.

This accomplished, he walked back up to see what was happening on the street. The eight ASU officers marched tentatively up the street in a fan formation with their guns drawn. He descended the stairs again, slipped through the door, then quietly closed it behind him.

Inside it was pitch-dark and smelled of animal feces and decomposing garbage. He gagged. Spitting, he crept through the apartment, keeping his hands out to avoid walking into a wall and lifting his feet high as he stepped, so as not to trip. The sounds of rats scuttling away preceded him as he walked. He met a wall and moved along it to his left, hit another wall, and crept sideways to his right until he found a doorway.

He heard the scrape of feet outside. Not in the well by the basement entrance, but up on the street level. He froze and listened. The steps moved on.

If he were conducting the search, he would walk the street first. If that came up empty, he’d search the houses one by one until there was success. He wasn’t surprised that they weren’t checking the houses now, but he knew they would be back. His hope lay in there being a second exit opening onto a parallel street. He walked through the doorway and into another room, mostly pitch-black. But light filtered in from a doorway to the right, and Poole hurried to it. Through this door was a small foyer leading to a door with a barred window.

He unlatched the security chain. This door opened onto street level. He
cracked it and looked out onto an empty street. He couldn’t hear sirens anymore and wasn’t sure if that was because the cars had already arrived or because they had been heading elsewhere.

Poole took off his shoes, opened the door, and sprinted across the street and then to his left, away from the warehouses. He ran silently and shoeless for five blocks, his feet aching, becoming soaked and frozen, as they pounded on the concrete. Finally, he determined that he was at a safe distance and stepped into an alley to catch his breath. He was wet, his hand throbbed from the burn, and the bottoms of his feet were bruised. He leaned back against the brick wall and closed his eyes, making his mind blank for a few seconds. Then he pulled his shoes back on and struggled to his feet for the journey home.

Two cabs ignored him before a jitney picked him up, despite Poole’s drenched clothes and the way he held his injured hand. The cabbie was ancient, wearing a golf hat. He used to be tough, Poole thought. Something about his voice and the way he held his now frail shoulders. He was certainly entertained by Poole’s story.

“You running from those cops?”

Poole nodded to the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“What you do?”

“Nothing.”

The cabbie gave an unattractive laugh. “Yeah, nobody does nothing.”

Poole sighed. “I was looking for somebody and they were looking for the same person. I think they figured that they had issues with me because of that.”

“So you ran even though you didn’t do nothing.” Skeptical.

“What’d you have done in your day if a dozen cops came running at you?”

“I would have given them a good one-two.” Even from behind, Poole could tell the cabbie was smiling.

“Of course you would have.”

“You know what?” the hack said after a while. “I been looking at you in my mirror here, and I’m thinking I must know you, but you know what? You’re Ethan Poole from the U.”

Poole nodded.

“It’s a pleasure to have you in my humble flivver.”

Poole nodded again. “It’s right up here.”

They were on Poole’s block, but something didn’t seem right. Two men stood in front of Poole’s building, looking casual, doing nothing. Something
was wrong with the street’s rhythm. Too few people. Too many of them doing nothing. Waiting.

“Here?” the hack asked.

“Keep driving.”

“What’s that?”

“Keep driving,” Poole said louder, and slid back in his seat.

The cabbie eased past Poole’s building and continued on to the next block.

“Something wrong?”

“Yeah, something.”

“Where we going now?”

“Keep driving. I’ve got to think.”

The cabbie shrugged and continued on into Capitol Heights. People were out on the street, hurrying to get to this place or that. The contrast with the abandoned Hollows was striking.

“You know Little Lisbon, uptown?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Head up there.”

“You got an address?”

“Just get me up there.”

Enrique Dotel would be known in Little Lisbon. Poole prayed that Carla was with Enrique. If not, he feared she was in custody, and that brought with it a whole different set of problems that would be difficult to negotiate.

The Palace did not open until five, so Frings and Floyd sat at the mahogany bar while the early shift set tables and swept and prepped for the evening. It seemed like a different place with the houselights turned up and the air free of smoke. With the essential elements of atmosphere missing, the club lost its glamour and instead looked merely like a big room.

Floyd drank whiskey on the rocks while Frings choked down a cup of muddy black coffee.

“Cuban,” Floyd said.

“It’s pretty goddamn strong.”

“You need it, bo.”

Frings wasn’t going to argue that point. “You know how you said you were lousy with reefer these days?”

“You’re out already?”

“No. That’s not it. When you say ‘these days,’ you mean that it used to be harder?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I could usually get what I needed, because of the club and all. But there was less to go around. Wasn’t just there for the asking. You had to plan a little and there were times when most people couldn’t get anything at all. Dry times.”

“But not anymore.”

“Not for a while, Frankie. It’s just not an issue. You get what you want when you want it. No problems.”

“When did this embarrassment of riches begin?”

Floyd squinted his eyes a little in concentration and took a long sip of the whiskey. “You know, maybe five years ago. Something like that.”

“Five years ago. You sure?”

“Yeah,” Floyd said, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I think that’s about right.”

“So about a year or so after Henry became mayor.”

“Sounds good. What are you trying to get at here, Frank?”

“Floyd, who do you buy from? I need to talk to him.”

Floyd winced. “Where are you going with this?”

“Look, trust me. I’m not trying to take anybody down here.” Frings corrected himself. “That’s not true. I am trying to take someone down, but you know it’s not you and it’s not the guy who sells you your dope.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that.”

“Okay. You heard of a guy named Otto Samuelson?”

“Bad gee, right? Sent up the river a while back?”

“Yeah, well, that’s the thing. It’s not the river you’re probably thinking of.”

“Don’t get all inscrutable with me, Frank.”

“I’m saying I just got back from visiting him out in a place called Freeman’s Gap.”

“He’s already out?”

“Never went in.”

“Shit,” Floyd said. “Why the hell not?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure.”

“You think talking to my guy is going to help you out?”

“That’s right.”

“Connect the dots for me, Frank. I don’t follow.”

“When I was out there with Otto Samuelson, we went for a little walk in the woods, and you’ll never believe what’s growing back there.”

“No,” Floyd said, eyes widening.

“More than you can imagine.”

“So instead of going to jail, he moves out to the sticks and grows reefer?”

“That’s exactly right. And he’s not the only one. You know that story you told me about Whiskers?”

Floyd nodded slowly. “I see what you’re saying.”

“So I want to find out from your guy who he gets his reefer from. I’ll bet it’s from a guy named Smith who has it brought into the City by some other ginks from a decade back or so. Maybe even Whiskers.”

“Jesus, Frank, you sure you want to go here?”

Frings nodded and sipped his coffee.

Floyd sighed. “I’ll be back.” He walked off, shaking his head a little.

“Where you going?”

“I can’t just bring you to my guy. You can imagine that he’d be a little nervous talking to the famous Frankie Frings. I’ve got to get him used to the idea and hopefully drag him back here to talk to you.”

“I hate to say this, with you doing me a favor and all, but I don’t have a lot of time.”