Page 12 of Wicked Things
“Michael has taken care of everything,” Sandra tells me. “This here ends our time together, I suppose you could say. I wish you the very best of luck with your business here in New York, Zeth. If you need anything in the future…” She reaches up onto her tiptoes, places a hand on my shoulder, then does something very confusing: she leans in and plants a kiss on my cheek.
What the fuck is this woman’s deal?
Outside, the sky is overcast and looks leaden. Heavy. Weighted down, lower than it should be. There’s electricity in the air. A storm. Shakespeare coined a term back in the seventeenth century. Charlie used to talk about it all the time. Pathetic Fallacy. Macbeth is the perfect example. When the three witches are gathered around their cauldron, something wicked that way a-coming, the sky was roiling with storm clouds. Thunder shattered the night air, and lighting split the darkness in two. That’s what this feels like right now. Dread hangs on the horizon. I don’t know if that dread belongs to the Barbieri family, or to me. If I have anything to do with it, it’ll be visited upon the heads of the largest, most violent mob boss in the city. I guess time will tell.
I rent a car.
That’s a lie.
I steal a car.
I’m like a kid in a candy store; the long-stay parking lot at JFK is packed end-to-end with Lincoln town cars and other five-door monstrosities. I pick something a little sleeker: a BMW 740i. Michael’s pre-packed some of my favorite toys in my duffel, but he’s also provided me with some brand new toys, too: a tiny black box, with a yellow wire protruding from its base. On the other end of the wire: a generic car key. I slide the key into the BMW’s lock, and I hit the button on the device. A series of numbers appear on a dim analogue screen, flashing red, cycling through alpha-numerical sequences until the first number turns green. Then the second. Then the third. It takes seconds for the computer to crack the car’s security system.
I climb inside like I own the damn thing, throwing the duffel bag onto the passenger seat. My cell phone buzzes in my pocket.
Michael: All three of them are at the restaurant. Some sort of wedding party. Tonight’s no good.
Fuck.
Well, that changes things. A wedding party means guests.Lotsof guests. Especially if it’s an Italian wedding. I’ve seen The Godfather. I know how these things go down. There won’t be a single member of that party who isn’t armed and dangerous. A more subtle approach is required. I need to wait until later, after everyone’s left. I need to get into the Barbieri household somehow. Killing Roberto in his sleep isn’t going to be very gratifying, but I’m on a schedule. I have a return flight tomorrow at noon and I aim to be on it. I leave an inch of rubber on the blacktop as I burn out of the parking lot.
The Hilton hotel Michael booked for me isn’t really a hotel, nor is it a part of the Hilton chain. It’s a more of a safe house, if you will. A place where the more suspect members of society might stay if they were planning on attending La Cucina Del Diavolo for an evening of debauchery and sin. I have a suite on the top floor—ought to give me a good vantage point of the building opposite. The Barbieri family restaurant is hidden behind the façade of an industrial warehouse, much like my warehouse those bastards burned down in Seattle. Same setting. Same idea. A place close to the water where goods can be shuttled to and from storage—guns, drugs, women in their case, I’m sure. The police have no jurisdiction inside the Hilton, the same way they have no jurisdiction inside La Cucina Del Diavolo. The second I check in at the front desk, the receptionist is going to notify Robert Barbieri of my presence. Sure, there are a thousand other places I could stay in New York, but none share the same proximity to my quarry. And besides. I like the idea of those fuckers knowing my exact location. It shows the lack of fear on my part. It shows them I mean business.
I know New York well enough to navigate the city and reach my destination relatively quickly. It’s after nine by the time I reach the Hilton.
I collect the duffel bag, leaving the engine running as I climb out of the BMW, and I hand the inconspicuous valet a fifty-dollar bill. “Make it disappear,” I tell him. “Do whatever you want with it. Just make sure my fingerprints are gone by the time you leave it.”
He gives me a curt, sharp nod, jumps in the car and burns off. In less than an hour, the vehicle will either be in pieces, welded to parts of another cut-and-shut, or it’ll be at the bottom of the Hudson and I will never see it again. Car thieves are masters of their trade in this town.
My plans of a grand entrance are thwarted by an empty reception desk. The place is literally deserted. What the fuck does that mean? This is the kind of place that is watched over twenty-four seven. I’m surprised there weren’t heavily armed, thick-skulled guards standing on either side of the door when I came in. The lobby, if you can call it that, is eerily quiet and cold, with rough cast concrete walls and recessed lighting that make the place feel like a morgue. Hanging around here is a bad idea. I can feel it in the air, thick and stifling: violence.
I’m just about to get the fuck out of here, when a tall, crane-like woman appears through a door behind the reception, polishing the lenses of a pair of glasses on the bottom of her sweater. She stops moving when she sees me, mouth open, glasses half raised to her face. “Oh no. No, you can’t be here,” she says. Her accent is English. Not a BBC accent. Not from London, like Charlie was. She’s from the north, I think. I don’t have a fucking clue where, though.
“I have a reservation,” I say bluntly.
“Not here, you don’t. You’re meant to be staying on the other side of town.”
“You haven’t even taken my name yet.”
She smiles primly as she slides her glasses onto the end of her nose. Her blonde hair is pulled back so tightly into a bun, it looks like it has to be giving her a headache. “You are Mr. Mayfair, and you’re meant to be staying at The Waldorf tonight. Mr. Barbieri organized the penthouse suite for you some hours ago.He did it himself.” She stresses her last statement, presumably to convey how abnormal this is.
I blink at her, taking this in. Barbieri booked me into a fancy hotel in Manhattan? He arranged it himself? And more importantly, he knew I was coming? None of this is good news.
“I won’t be staying at The Waldorf. I’m staying here, in the room I booked, with my own money.” If Roberto’s been paying attention, he already knows I don’t give a shit about high-end living. If I did, I’d have accepted his job offer and I’d be running Seattle in his stead for him right now. Instead, I spend ninety percent of my free time in a dimly lit, sweaty boxing gym, teaching kids how to fight.
“Mr. Barbieri won’t be happy with me if I don’t send you over to your other rooms, Mr. Mayfair. He won’t be happy with me at all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I lean across the reception desk, trying not to seem threatening. Threatening is my resting state, though. It’s impossible to switch it off. No matter how hard I try, I always end up saying things like, “Now please give me my motherfucking room key, before I lose my temper.” Which is, of course, exactly what I say.
The woman doesn’t exactly pale. She tilts her chin up, looking down the length of her very straight, narrow nose at me. She isn’t impressed in the slightest, but I don’t give a fuck. “You’re an impolite man, Mr. Mayfair. I thought you’d be a little more respectful.”
“And why on earth would you have come to that conclusion?”
She lifts one angular shoulder in half a shrug. “The story of Zeth protecting his beloved Sloane is quite famous these days, even in New York. I suppose I considered a man willing to sacrifice everything for the woman he loves to be a feminist. Or at least a romantic. I get the feeling you’re neither.”
Feminist? Romantic? Someone’s been reading too many books. “I just want my room key, and then I’ll be out of your hair. Can you make that happen, or do I need to come back there and find one for myself.”
The woman regards me coolly. “I don’t think I like you,” she says. Her tone is frosty, her gaze steady and even, filled with ice. She pivots and opens a drawer below the computer monitor she’s now standing in front of and withdraws an envelope. “Here. Mr. Barbieri said you might be difficult. The key to your room is inside. Along with your room key for your rooms at The Waldorf. If I were you, I’d take him up on his generous offer and move to the other hotel. A lot of our current guests are familiar with you. Let’s just say most of them haven’t been all happy to hear your name spoken recently. Mr. Barbieri’s just trying to keep the peace.”
