Chapter Fourteen
“Shouldn’t I be with the bicycle gang?” Rose asked Maji, looking past her to the girls on their bikes by the SUNY Stony Brook student union. It was empty of students now, just as the big upper campus parking lot was empty of cars—except for Frank’s town car and the county patrol car, a white sedan with blue and orange stripes down its length and a rack of lights on its roof.
Maji looked at her quizzically.
“Well, when am I going to be behind the wheel of a car here, with you and Frank always chauffeuring me around?”
Maji tilted her head and adjusted the holster under her left arm. “If Frank and I were both down, you might need the kind of driving we’re going to train on today.” She smiled and added, “Or it could be handy any normal day around LA. Even for a California driver like you.”
Rose appreciated Maji’s attempt to divert her from the first, chilling possibility. But she couldn’t bring herself to joke back. “I see.”
Maji turned toward Frank and a tall, walnut-brown woman wearing the police uniform of black shoes and slacks and short-sleeved shirt.
Rose couldn’t see the officer’s eyes through her dark sunglasses, but she seemed at ease, her hands lightly clasped in front of her, away from the bulky utility belt with its gun and radio and God knew what else.
“Frank and Officer Barnwell will be assisting you today,” Maji said. “Frank, tell us about your car, please.”
Frank nodded to her. “Well,” he started, “it’s a standard model Lincoln, with some mods. V8 engine, tweaked for quicker takeoff from zero. Shocks and struts are souped-up, brakes get changed out at fifty percent. Inside’s reinforced for rolling, so’s it don’t crush anybody. And all compartments got airbags, except the driver. I gotta be able to hit something and still keep going.”
Barnwell nodded thoughtfully. “A more comfy equivalent of my Interceptor.”
“What else, Frank?” Maji asked, patting the roof of the sedan.
“Oh, um. It’s up-armored. Anything under fifty caliber’ll just make a dent. You could still blow it up, but bullets aren’t worth much against it.”
Rose noticed Officer Barnwell’s eyebrows lift above the top edge of her shades, and that she made no more comparisons to the patrol car. At least not out loud. She took off her sunglasses to look Rose in the eye. “Ever been in a high-speed chase before?”
Rose shook her head.
“You will not be asked to drive like this,” Maji said. “But it will make what we teach you feel easier.”
Frank opened the front passenger door for Rose and handed Maji his keys.
“How long will this last?” Rose asked, swallowing hard.
“Couple minutes, max,” Maji reassured her. She showed her how to brace against the passenger door and started up the engine. Sliding her window halfway down, Maji put her left hand out and gave Barnwell the ready signal. The patrol car sprinted off as Maji’s window slid back up, and with a lurch the heavy car tore off after it. Maji wove between the cones, swerving without braking, following the lead car closely, fishtailing on the corners. Rose tried to relax and breathe as the car’s g-force pinned her to the door and then let her loose, then pinned her again, the view through the window streaking by. Now and then, a sound escaped her, somewhere between a squeak and a grunt.
“All right?” Maji spoke loudly over the roar of the engine, keeping her eyes on the course.
Rose nodded dumbly, then tried her voice. “Just great.”
Maji’s smile was kind. “Almost done.”
Barnwell’s patrol car pulled smoothly off the course, and Maji decelerated at last, then braked hard and threw the car into a tailspin. She rolled both windows down and turned to Rose. “You okay?”
Rose heard the concern, with not a hint of patronizing. She nodded. “Give me a minute.”
Maji came around and held the door for Rose, offering her a hand. Rose accepted the help and stood with a hand on the hot roof of the town car to steady herself, feeling queasy. Frank came trotting over with a cold bottle of water, twisted the cap off, and handed it to Rose.
* * *
From behind the wheel, Rose found the town car heavy, but eager to leap forward and solid on the hard stops. Maji talked her through the basic drills, clear and direct with the instructions, and quick with a word of encouragement. Rose struggled to overcome the instinct to brake when approaching an obstacle, to instead swerve around it while maintaining control of the vehicle. But, with repetition and Maji’s assurance that she really was getting the hang of it, Rose came to enjoy the maneuver.
After a particularly good run, Maji joked, “Look out, California.” Rose laughed with her, giddily triumphant.
In comparison, hard stops felt easy after that and backing up at preposterous speeds was actually fun. Rose found herself surprised when lunch break was called. “Already?”
Maji grinned. “Just like that. How’s your stomach?”
Rose realized she had stopped feeling queasy as soon as she took the wheel. “Fine. Ooh, and hungry!”
“Excellent. Get plenty to drink, too—you’re going to be on a bike next.”
But instead of putting her into the bicycle group, Hannah walked Rose to a cool spot under a big-leaf maple where Maji’s motorcycle and one almost its twin stood parked in the shade.
“Oh no,” Rose protested. “I don’t even like being a passenger.”
Hannah hmmed. “Still, I would like you to experience what it is like to be the one in control. Will you try?”
How could she say no? “Please tell me there won’t be a high-speed chase.”
Maji laughed behind them, approaching with Frank, each of them with a jacket and helmet in their hands.
Rose put the jacket on, surprised by how light it felt. The hard pads in the elbows and back made her feel like a gladiator, but she didn’t swelter as expected. Hannah showed her how to secure the helmet and made sure the built-in radio was working.
Astride the bike, Rose’s sneakered feet just touched flat on the ground. Learning to power-walk was simple, a matter of controlling the anxious throttle. With all the controls at her hands, following Maji smoothly around the course was easier than she expected, and stopping much like being on a bicycle. As they worked up to slaloms and turns, Rose forgot her anxiety. The quiet machine followed her body as she looked and leaned, as instructed, wherever she wanted to go next.
“Where the head goes, the body follows,” she said to herself in quiet wonder.
A chuckle in her headphone startled her. “Just like in the dojo,” Maji agreed.
“Sorry,” Rose said. “I forgot we were on radio.”
“No worries,” Maji said. “More fun than you expected, huh?”
“I will admit to that only if you promise never to tell my mother.”
“Deal.”
Angelo could hear Frank chatting with Hannah, through the comm. He got up and stretched, asked Sander if he needed more coffee, and went up to the kitchen. Switching the master controls so that only Frank could hear him, he asked, “Frank, you and Hannah alone there?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Ask her, did she get to listen to my message.” Angelo had sent a brief recording with Frank, explaining how the sleeper virus would redistribute the funds sucked out of the targeted bank accounts. Millions of ordinary citizens and hundreds of nonprofits would wake up to find money from an untraceable source in their accounts, like a surprise lottery win. It was simple, and elegant.
“Hold on,” Frank said. Angelo heard murmuring, then Frank’s rendition of Hannah’s words. “She says, can you really write code that complicated, on your own.”
Angelo smiled. She was in. “Tell her I wrote it, tested it, and know it works.”
“She says you have the green light to continue. And she’ll arrange to meet with you in person soon.”
“Great. Thanks, Frank. I’m gonna go back to open channel now. And this little talk never happened, got it?”
“Oh, okay. Wait—she’s got one more thing. Oh, wait. She wants my earpiece.”
Uh-oh. What could Hannah not say through Frank? “Hello, Angelo,” Hannah said.
“Hey. You got a concern?” He’d been so close.
“Maji.”
He breathed again. “I know how to keep her insulated.” Keeping Gino and Khodorov from assigning any blame to her would be fairly simple. And they had already discussed how to keep JSOC from coming down on her.
“That’s not my concern,” Hannah said. “When she realizes the cost of this mission to you, she will want to stop you.” He started to object, but she cut him off. “Don’t underestimate her. Be prepared.”
Of course she was right. Even though he’d let Maji think that he planned to go off grid, at some point she would recognize it for what it really was—a suicide mission. “Understood, ma’am.”
“Very good. I’m giving the comm back to Frank now. It appears that Ricky has decided to spy on class today.”
Angelo opened the channels back up, so that Maji and the guys could hear him, too. “Frank, go see what bug Ricky’s got up his butt. I’ll be online with you.”
Maji glanced to the spot where Frank was in discussion with Ricky, on top of the rise at the edge of the lot. She’d listened to Angelo coach Frank as he approached the asshole. It was probably for the best she was on the helmet headset with Rose as well and needed to stay quiet to keep from distracting her.
Now she pulled off the helmet and stripped off her gloves, listening to the two men almost out of her sight.
“Rickster!” Frank said. “What’s up?”
“The fuck’s this about?” Ricky sounded irritated.
“Driving school, for Rose and Ri. Cool, huh?” Frank paused. “You need me?”
“No. Gino sent me to find out where you been going every day.”
“Here. There. Why?”
“You always take the girls someplace?”
“Just when Ang says to. So?”
Maji wondered how long this dance could go on.
“So where you take them?”
Frank hesitated, while Ang repeated his instructions. Then he answered, “Ang can tell you. Why don’t Gino ask him?”
“He’s asking you. Through me.”
“Whatever. But I’m not playing telephone here.”
“Huh?”
“That game, where one person whispers to the first person, then the next repeats, and when you get to the end of the line, it comes out all funny?” Neither one laughed. “Didn’t you ever play that? At a party?”
“What are you, a hundred?” The sound of Ricky spitting—hopefully on the grass—filled Maji’s earpiece. “Fuck it. You gonna talk to me, or not?”
“Nope. I’m gonna stay out of the middle. That’s how you make it to a hundred around here.”
* * *
When Ricky came to fetch Angelo on Wednesday, all he said was, “Gino wants to see you guys.”
Maybe, Angelo thought, Gino wanted to meet Dev and Tom in person. “The guys are out with Ma,” he answered.
“Not your rent-a-cops. You guys.”
Oh. Maybe Gino wanted to tear him and Frank a new one, at the same time. He was efficient that way. “Frank’s out, too. I can call him, have him skip the groceries,” Angelo offered.
“Jesus, you’re an idiot. He wants you and the…Russian kid.”
Angelo stifled a laugh. That’s Mr. Faggot to you, Little Dick. “His name is Sander. Hold on.” He left Ricky at the doorstep, closing the door in his face.
Down in the basement, Angelo took a few seconds to enjoy just looking at Sander, so engrossed in programming he didn’t even look up. He did everything with that intensity. It was a shame to hurt him, really. “Hey,” he said at last. “We got a summons to the Big G. Like, now.”
Sander stretched up and back, rolling his shoulders to undo the hunch from typing. “Well, I hear daylight is healthy in small doses. I could use a break. What’s he want?”
“Dunno.” Angelo envied Sander’s ability to be curious about Gino without any accompanying apprehension. What would it have been like to grow up feeling insulated from harm by your father’s protection? Carlo had, flaunting the Benedetti name like a badge. But not him. “Let’s go find out. Maybe Nonna will make us lunch.”
Sander looked skeptical. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“She say that to you, direct?”
“No, but—”
“No buts. You’d know.”
They walked silently behind Ricky, who ushered them into Gino’s office. The man cave of polished wood and leather furniture had been Angelo’s grandfather’s until his death, and then his father’s. It still smelled like it did when Grandpa Stephano would let him sit quietly by the corner bookcase, soaking in every word while he conducted business.
Today, Angelo knew, Gino dressed himself in the room to give Khodorov’s kid the right impression—a big man in the center of command. As they entered, he nodded from behind the big desk, inviting them to the leather chairs across from him. They sat, and Ricky stood awkwardly to the side.
Gino had his genial face on. “Boys. How’s it going down there? I hear you got quite the setup.”
“We’re well equipped, thank you,” Sander said. Such a polite kid.
“How you feeling about the schedule?” Gino asked Sander. “This Fourth of July thing gonna work?”
Sander tilted his head briefly in consideration. “Yes. Turns out Angelo’s not full of shit when he calls himself a genius.”
Gino laughed, with an undercurrent of discomfort Angelo picked up from years of reading his uncle’s tells. “Okay, then. We better get the party lined up now. I’ll put my wife on it. If that’s okay with your people?”
“It’s your house,” Sander acknowledged. “Any help you want, of course, just name it.”
Angelo dug in his back pants pocket. “Here, G. Give this to Aunt Paola, okay?” He handed him a business card for Cuba Libre, the FBI’s front. “They’re local, and I hear they do food and music, both.”
“Fine,” Gino said, slipping the card into his jacket pocket without a glance.
Angelo stood to go. “Great.”
Gino motioned for him to sit again. To Sander he said, “Something happened last night—I wanted your take on it.”
“Okay.”
Gino looked to Ricky, who stepped to Gino’s side of the desk in order to face Sander. “Ricky visits certain places on my behalf, stops in to check on things, see people. You understand.”
Sander nodded and looked to Ricky. “Where, when, and who, please. Be as specific as you can.”
“Dusty’s,” Ricky started, looking half chagrined to be dictated to by Sander and half proud to be in the spotlight for once. “Maybe one, two o’clock this morning. I was getting ready to wrap up the bounce, so I hit the john before driving back home.”
Angelo hoped to God they weren’t about to hear a tale of how the Rickster had bashed one of Khodorov’s men by mistake. Any guy so much as looking at Little Dick in the men’s room would regret it. “And?”
Ricky looked annoyed to be interrupted. “And this guy comes in, stands at the pisser next to mine. Just stands there. So I say, You got a problem? And then I see he’s holding a pistol with a silencer, flat against his abs, pointing at me. And I’m in there by myself, no backup.”
“What did he want you to tell him? Did you tell him about this project?” Sander asked.
Ricky shook his head. “No. He told me. He told me who I was, who I work for, where Sienna and my folks were all day, where they live. He said the project at my house was drawing attention, and not everyone interested had been invited to the party.”
Sander leaned back, crossing his arms as he looked up at Ricky. “What words did he use for the project at your house?”
“That. The project at your house.” Ricky looked genuinely concerned. “And not everyone interested has been invited to the party. Those words exactly. ’Course, I didn’t say nothing back to confirm, or give anything away.”
Angelo watched Sander digest that. “So what did you say?”
“I said, You want me to deliver a message or something? And he said, No. You will wait for instructions. And if you tell anyone about this meeting, we will know. Then he just walked out. I didn’t even get to ask, Who’s we, motherfucker?”
“No need,” Sander said. He switched his attention to Gino. “Classic Sirko.”