Agents of the Glass (24 page)

Jensen continued to ignore Andy's attempts to communicate in person or by electronic means for the next two days. He logged on to her website to read her latest anti-NTRP rant but only made it halfway through before he was bumped off. When he tried to log in again, a message flashed on his screen:
ACCESS DENIED. GO AWAY. THERE'S NOTHING ABOUT CELEBRITIES HERE.

“Let me see what I can do,” Silas said when Andy told him what was going on. “I'll send someone to keep an eye on her. If she's making progress on that Halestrom story, I want to know about it. I can't imagine that this woman—Ilene Porter—is going to talk to a conspiracy nut with a blog that she won't let anyone read, but you never know. Stranger things have happened. In the meantime, I'll get you access to her website, and she won't be able to tell that it's you. In fact, she won't even know that anyone is looking.”

At the Brink with Jensen Huntley

It's a school night and I should be studying for a big chemistry exam, but I'm still riding a wave of adrenaline, and won't be able to concentrate until I get something down in writing.

Yesterday, I met with someone who attended a meeting of some of the country's richest and most generous philanthropists at the Halestrom Hotel a few months back. She gave me a very strange account of what happened during a presentation by one of the sponsoring companies. But that's only half of the story. What you probably don't know (because it's been COVERED UP!) is that in the short time since that conference, every attendee (except my source) has STOPPED writing checks for charities. I don't know what really happened that day, but I'm going to find out. And if my hunch is right, this will be the biggest story since Watergate.

The end isn't near. It's here.

Silas's go-to computer guy, Ricky O'Day, had no trouble finding a way into Jensen's website, so Silas saw that blog entry only a few minutes after she posted it, and he immediately had a bad feeling about it. Mostly, he was afraid for Ilene Porter and Jensen, and with good reason. When Ricky was snooping around the site, he was able to get a look at a list of its regular visitors. There weren't that many, so Silas had him track them down to see who they were, what other sites they visited, that sort of thing. Everybody checked out okay except the visitor who logged in as THESAINT.

“He's good, whoever he is,” said Ricky, a note of admiration in his voice. “He didn't wanna be tracked. He left behind a winding, twisted trail that bounces from computer to computer, on and on.”

Ricky, however, is as tenacious as a bloodhound on the trail of a fugitive from a chain gang. After guzzling the last third of a huge bottle of cola spiked with extra caffeine, he leaned back in his chair and pointed at the map on his enormous monitor.

“That's as close as I can get,” he said. “THESAINT logged in from a computer in the building at the corner of Park and Forty-Fifth.”

The muscles in Silas's face tightened, and he forgot to breathe for a long time as he stared at the screen, where a green arrow blinked, pointing accusingly at the NTRP Broadcast Center.

“Ricky, listen carefully. I want you to clear your search history right now so there's absolutely no trace of any of this information on your computer. It's for your own safety. You've never heard of Jensen Huntley, and you've never seen her website. And I was never here. Do you understand?”

Ricky cocked his head, not sure if Silas was serious until he saw the look on his face. “Like, you're serious. Okay. You're the boss.” He seemed a bit frazzled after that, but he wiped the last half hour of activity from his hard drive. “All done.”

“One more thing,” Silas added on his way out the door. “Your parents have a place down on the beach in South Carolina, right? This might be a good time for a visit.”

“Are you serious?”

“Just for a few days, until this blows over.”

Or blows up,
he thought.

Silas really wanted to talk to Jensen Huntley, but he knew that she would never tell a total stranger whatever it was that Ilene Porter had told her. Not that he could blame her. She worked hard to get the story—why shouldn't she be suspicious of someone appearing from nowhere and asking questions. So, after leaving Ricky's apartment on the Upper East Side, he hurried downtown to the Newgate Hotel, where, according to Billy Newcomb (who had followed her on Silas's orders), Jensen had, in fact, met with Ms. Porter.

The uniformed doorman greeted him as he strolled into the slice of old-time New York that is the Newgate Hotel lobby. Crystal chandeliers shimmered, polished black-and-white marble floors shone, and the grand piano glistened, its keys tickled by an ancient, frowning man whose toupee appeared to be sliding off the back of his head. Silas took a seat at the bar and ordered a club soda, casually mentioning to the bartender that he was a few minutes early for a meeting with a guest at the hotel. From where he sat, he could see the lone desk clerk, and when she turned away to answer the phone, he slipped off his barstool and into the elevator. He got off on the twenty-eighth floor and stood for a second outside room 2801, listening. When he raised his hand to knock, though, he saw that the door wasn't closed all the way. Something on the floor—a plaid wool scarf—had prevented the door from latching.

He knocked quietly once, then again. No answer.

“Ms. Porter? Hello?” Still nothing, so he took a breath and stuck his head through the door. “Ms. Porter?” The room was completely dark, so he reached in and hit the light switch on the wall, expecting to hear her cry out any second. But there was no cry, or any other sound.

Ilene Porter was dead.

Ironically, Silas had gone to the Newgate to tell Ilene Porter that there was a
small
possibility that her life might be in danger and that she might want to take the same advice he'd offered Ricky: to lie low for a while, until whatever was about to happen happened. Obviously, he had underestimated the danger—not that it mattered to her now.

As he evaluated the situation, Silas considered the possibility—for about half a second—that it was all a coincidence, that Ilene Porter had died of natural causes. “Right,” he muttered. “And I'll be heading back uptown in a chariot pulled by a team of subway rats.”

He was not surprised when his quick inspection revealed no signs of foul play. There wasn't a mark on her body, and he was willing to bet that nothing unusual would show up on blood tests in a coroner's report, either. None of that meant she hadn't been murdered, only that she'd been done in by professionals—the kind of people who worked for St. John de Spere.

She was on the floor, between the bed and the desk, on her side. Silas's first guess was that she had been crawling toward the telephone, but he quickly changed his mind about that when he saw the corner of a cell phone sticking out from beneath her body, inches from her left hand. It was reckless, he knew, to stay in that room a second longer, but he just had to check that phone. He slipped on a pair of thin cotton gloves and used Ilene Porter's index finger to press the on button and to do the swipe across the phone to unlock it, breathing a sigh of relief when it didn't ask for a password. The screen revealed a text message exchange she'd had with Jensen earlier in the day. Nothing caught his attention until Jensen's last text:

Send me a postcard from Africa. My address is
.

“Oh, Jensen. You foolish, foolish girl.”

Silas was already out of the Newgate and on his phone to Andy when he remembered that he had forgotten to wipe his own fingerprint from the light switch. He swore silently. A small mistake, but a mistake just the same, and he knew that in his business anything less than perfect could spell disaster. However, he also knew how foolish it would be to risk a return to Ilene Porter's room, so he put it out of his mind for the moment.

“Andy. Listen, I need you to do something right now….I know it's late, I know it's a school night, but this is really, really important. Can you get out of your apartment?”

“I don't know—”

“It's Jensen. She's in danger. Serious danger.”

“What? Why?”

“I don't have time to explain it now. She needs to get out of her apartment—fast. I would do it, but I'm all the way downtown. And besides, she doesn't know me.”

“Okay, okay, I'll do it. I'll tell my dad I'm taking Penny for a walk. What do you want me to do when I get there? What if she won't come down? She's still mad at me. She won't answer her phone. And what if her parents are there?”

“Just get her out of the apartment, whatever it takes. Tell her you're in trouble at school and you really need to talk to someone. You'll think of something. Take her up to Eighty-Sixth Street and wait outside Burgers&Burritos—you know the place, right? Try to blend into the crowd, and wait there until you hear from me.”

“I'm on my way.”

Andy and Penny ran the seven blocks to Jensen's, stopping in front of a beautiful prewar building. “Okay, Penny. This is it.” After catching his breath, he stepped into the lobby and announced to the doorman, with all the confidence he could muster, “I'm here to see Jensen Huntley.”

“You and everybody else,” said the doorman. “She's a popular kid tonight. Had a feeling somebody'd figure it out sooner or later.”

“Wh-what do you mean? Figure what out? Who?”

“The cops.” He pointed at a security monitor behind his desk. “Here they come now.”

Andy and Penny backed up as two burly uniformed policemen, one on each side of Jensen, half led and half pulled her into the lobby.

Her eyes met his in silent but clear warning not to say anything as she twisted away from the cops. She kneeled, throwing her arms around Penny's neck, and looked up at Andy. “Omigosh, I love this dog. It's so strange—you live in the building, but I haven't seen you for so long.”

“Hey, let's go,” said the bigger of the two cops, roughly pulling Jensen away from Penny, whose posture and attitude changed immediately. She snarled at him, baring her teeth to show that she meant business.

“Easy, Pen,” said Andy, caught by surprise. He'd never seen her behave like that before, toward anyone, and didn't want to add to Jensen's problems, whatever they were, by having Penny attack the police, so he whispered the magic word in her ear: “Lapsang.”

“Step aside, kid,” said the second cop, jabbing a meaty finger right in Andy's chest. “Now. And keep that mutt under control, or I'll have the dogcatcher down here.”

Penny twitched under Andy's hand but kept her cool, to Andy's relief.
Good girl.

With all the attention on Jensen, Andy dared to take a quick peek through his glass medallion. Two cops, two
lumens
. They're
everywhere.

The doorman followed the two cops and Jensen out the door to their waiting car. “Miss Huntley, do you want me to call…anyone?”

Jensen turned around to answer him but looked directly at Andy. “There's no one to call.”

Then four hands pushed her into the backseat of a black sedan—not a regular police car—which disappeared into the night.

“What did she mean, there's no one to call?” Andy asked the doorman. “Where are her parents?”

“This is just between you and me, right? Her parents ain't been here for five, six months. They're in Shanghai or Singapore, 'bout a million miles from here, on some kind of big business deal. Jen's on her own. A few of us keep an eye on her, help her out if she needs a hand. I guess they send her money, 'cause she ain't starving.”

“Well, that answers a lot of questions about Jensen,” Silas said when Andy and Penny showed up outside Burgers&Burritos without her.