The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [75]
“What’s that?”
“You get it into your head to do something wild, make sure you talk to me about it first. Because you’re right that I wouldn’t want to send you to jail, but you might be wrong about what I’d do. I’ve had to make a lot of tough calls in my line of work. I’d rather not confront that kind of decision with you.”
“Agreed,” I lied. If push came to shove, I was going to do what I had to do, with or without his approval.
“Then let’s go get a drink. It’s been a long night.”
25
I was at the bar at Pagliacci with Alex and it was raining on us. Alex lifted his empty glass and rattled the ice cubes, water dripping from his sleeve. I turned to suggest that we leave and saw a third man on the stool beyond him, his face concealed by Alex’s profile. There was something familiar about the man. I leaned forward and back, trying to get a better look, but Alex was always interposed between us. I was reaching over to tap the stranger on the shoulder when I felt someone tugging at my arm.
“What?” I demanded, coming awake abruptly.
I was lying on the couch in my study, where I’d bedded down again after a heavy drinking session with Reggie. Kate was standing over me, dressed in jeans and a brown V-neck sweater. She had my bathrobe under one arm.
“What time is it?” I asked, fumbling for my watch on the coffee table.
“Eight.”
“Shouldn’t you be on your way to school?”
“I don’t have any classes this morning.”
I opened my mouth to ask why not, and she touched a finger to her lips, shaking her head from side to side. Wondering what was up and whether it had anything to do with her odd behavior the previous night, I tossed off the throw blanket I’d been sleeping under and reached for my pants. She intercepted my hand and offered me the robe instead. I was too hungover to play games. I was about to snap at her when I registered her expression. She looked scared. I stood up and slipped the robe on over my T-shirt and boxers, tying the belt tight.
Kate led the way into the kitchen. The apartment was dark and quiet, and I noticed Claire’s coffee cup in the sink. She’d told me she had an early charity breakfast when I’d called the previous night to post her on my trip to Staten Island with Reggie. I hadn’t mentioned hitting Vinny. Claire’s absence begged the question of who Kate thought might overhear us. I felt an increased twitch of anxiety. It wasn’t like Kate to be melodramatic.
She opened the steel service door to the fire stairs and motioned me to pass through first. The small landing was crowded by two gray plastic trash cans and a blue recycling bin, and the cement floor was gritty underfoot. Closing the door behind us, she squeezed past me and took a seat on the stairs. I sat down next to her, wrapping the robe beneath my legs. The stairs were just wide enough for us to sit at a right angle to each other, our inside knees touching.
“I know this is weird,” she whispered, inclining toward me, “and I’m sorry, but there’s something really strange going on. It’s kind of complicated, so let me explain first and then you can ask questions, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, trying to conceal my discomfort.
“Yesterday afternoon, I got home from school early and started downloading some music videos. Our Internet connection was all messed up, normal one minute and dead slow the next. I did a soft reboot of the modem and the router, but that didn’t fix the problem, so I decided to restart everything manually.”
I nodded, grasping the big picture if not the details.
“The equipment is up on the top shelf of the linen closet, and I was feeling around the back of the modem for the power cord when I touched something unfamiliar. There was a little metal box plugged into the port where the Ethernet cable from the router usually attaches, between the modem and the cable. It looked like an oversized coupling, or one of the little signal amplifiers the cable TV guys use. I’d never seen anything like it in a network setup before. I unplugged the box and hooked the cable directly to the modem again and