Bloodline (22 page)

They wound up on the Lower East Side, some side street off Allen, just uptown from Delancey and Chinatown. An old, old part of the city. That writer Winslow lived down here. Coincidence? Yeah, well, a lot of people lived down here—mostly Asian.

Thompson's cab stopped before an old stone building stuck amid brick-fronted tenements. A bedsheet had been strung between two second-floor windows. Someone had spray-painted the now too familiar figure of the Kicker Man on it.

This had to be one of the clubs Thompson had mentioned.

Jack had his driver cruise past and drop him around the corner.

Now what?

Was Thompson just visiting, or was this where he was crashing while in the city? He certainly could afford a hotel room, but maybe he wanted to maintain proletarian cred. Was this where he kept the
Compendium
?

Jack was staring at the building when a breeze caught the Kicker Man banner and flapped it up. He stiffened when he saw the carving beneath it: the Escherish seal of the Septimus Lodge.

The Lodge… that's what they'd called the one in his hometown… a secret society that supposedly predated the Masons and made them seem like an open book. Jack had sneaked into the local outpost as a kid and had a vague recollection of being unsettled by what he'd seen. Nothing like the fanciful tales whispered in the kids' underground, but definitely strange.

He hadn't known of a chapter here in New York, but why not? Should have expected one in this old part of the city. But what was their connection to Thompson? Was he a member? Or had some Lodge high-ups become Kickers? Jack doubted the latter. But for the Lodge to open its doors to outsiders… that spoke of an intimate connection.

Curiouser and curiouser.

He looked around for a vantage point with a view of the entrance. He figured a surveillance of Thompson was warranted by the Bolton connection. Probably best to set up on the same side of the street, where he wouldn't attract the attention of anyone looking out a window.

One building west he found a spot near the mouth of a narrow alley—a dead-end passage populated by half a dozen battered, empty garbage cans and most likely a colony or two of rats. But it offered a good view, and even a little sunlight. He'd worn his bomber jacket to ward off the chill of the early morning, but the day was beginning to warm.

As he waited his bladder started sending him the full-tank signal. All the coffee that had gone in wanted out, so he risked a quick trip to an Indo-Pak coffee shop down the street. Since the restroom was for customers only, he ordered some curried naan and a Pepsi.

Seated by the window, he had a narrow-angle view of the Lodge. He could have stayed but he needed to be out on the street if and when Thompson reappeared. So he made a quick trip to the head, then scooped up his food and headed back outside, hoping he hadn't missed Thompson's departure.

He was just polishing off the Pepsi when someone appeared on the steps of the club. He was disappointed to see it wasn't Thompson, but the guy did look familiar. It took him a few seconds before his face clicked. He had bed head and a few days' worth of facial stubble, but yeah: the missing janitor from the museum.

And he was coming this way.

Jack ducked back in the alley and rearranged a couple of the garbage cans, disturbing a trio of rats in the process. They squealed and fled toward the far end. Then he yanked a small wad of bills from his pocket. He dropped a couple of singles near the mouth of the alley, a fin a few feet in, and another even farther in.

Then he pulled out his Spyderco, flicked open the four-inch combination blade, and crouched behind the garbage cans to wait. If the mark was preoccupied or looking somewhere else, he'd miss the bait. Jack was betting a recently out-of-work janitor wouldn't.

He didn't. Jack heard footsteps stop at the mouth of the alley, then move closer. He hid the knife and let his head fall forward on his knees.

The footsteps stopped in front of him. He felt a poke and heard a voice say, "Hey, buddy. You all right?" Another poke. "Hey."

Jack remained immobile until he felt a hand worm its way into his jacket pocket. Then he moved, grabbing a handful of the guy's lanky hair and yanking him down. The janitor landed on his knees, face inches from Jack's, eyes bulging as the knife point pressed against his throat.

"Hey, I was just checking if you was all right!"

"Shut up!" Jack kept his voice menacingly low. "You have something of mine."

"No, I ain't! I never seen you before in my life!"

Jack pressed the point deeper. "Shut up! You speak when I tell you to, otherwise you'll never speak again. Got that?"

The guy nodded as best he could. He'd bought the threat and looked scared. Jack thought about this creep snatching the book—most likely from right under the unconscious professor—and taking off without letting anyone know the old guy was in trouble. He could almost see himself following through with the threat, slicing through his larynx and—

He shook it off.

"What's your name? Speak."

"M-Marty."

"All right, M-Marty, listen up. There's a book missing from the museum where you used to work. That book wasn't the museum's, it was mine, and I

want it back. And since you stole it, I've come to you to get it." Jack had been watching his pupils. They suddenly constricted. Yep. He was the one. "Now, I don't want to hear any denials, like you telling me you don't know what I'm talking about, because I know you do. The cops are looking for you and you probably thought it would be a bad thing if they found you. But something far worse has happened. I found you first. The cops don't care about getting the book back. I do. Very much."

Had he laid it on thick enough? Yeah, probably.

"So, when I give you permission to speak, you'll tell me where it is and then we'll decide how you're going to get it back to me. Got that?"

Another nod.

"Good. Now speak."

"Look, I swear I didn't—ow!"

Jack gave him a little jab, just enough to break the skin.

"Remember what I said about denials."

"I know, I know. I was just saying that I didn't know it belonged to anyone. I thought it was just the museum's."

Jack refrained from getting into the basic distinction between mine and not-mine, but it might prove too esoteric for Marty.

"I saw it and I don't know what came over me. I only boosted small stuff before. I knew there was gonna be trouble, but…"

"But you saw the Kicker Man and just had to have it, right?"

The eyes widened along with the pupils this time. "How'd you know?"

"Where've you got it stashed?"

He flinched. "I… I gave it away."

"I know—to Hank Thompson."

The eyes widened further. "How do you
know
this shit?"

"Be surprised what I know."

Easy to figure, what with Marty and Thompson in the same building.

"Now—"

His phone started ringing. Who—?

Probably Levy again.

"You gonna get that?" Marty said.

Jack shook his head. "Later. Now, as I was saying, the question is, are you or are you not going to return my book to me? Think carefully before you answer."

"I'd love to, mister, I really would, but Hank ain't gonna part with it. He
loves
that book."

"You know where he keeps it?"

"Yeah. In his room, on the top floor."

Thank you for that tidbit.

"Well, steal it back. You stole from me, now steal from Thompson." He hardened his voice. "You're not going to tell me you won't do that, are you?"

"No-no-no! I'll do it! I'll do it!"

"Great."

Jack rose, pulling him to his feet. He put the knife away, straightened Marty's clothes, then pushed him toward the sidewalk.

"Get to it. I'll be waiting."

Marty looked as if he couldn't believe his luck. He rubbed the back of his hand against his throat, glanced at the smear of blood on his skin, then back at Jack.

"You're letting me go?"

"Yeah. How else are you going to get me my book?" He shooed him away. "Move-move-move. I'll be waiting."

Marty moved.

Jack peeked out the mouth of the alley and watched him dash back to the Lodge and up the steps. As soon as he disappeared inside, Jack stepped out onto the sidewalk and hurried the other way.

Yeah, he'd be waiting, but he hadn't said where.

Back at the Indo-Pak shop he grabbed a window seat and watched the street while listening to a pair of forever-virgin college kids at a nearby table argue whether Spider-Man could beat Wolverine in a fight. He checked his phone, recognized Levy's number, and called him back.

"Where are you?"

"On Centre Street. Where are you?"

"I moved." He glanced at the menu and gave Levy the address. "Meet me outside."

He watched the Lodge. In less than a minute Thompson appeared leading half a dozen men—Marty among them—wielding two-by-fours and other improvised clubs. They charged down the sidewalk and into the alley. A few seconds later they reemerged and stood in a group, talking and looking up and down the street.

Finally they all trooped back into their building. Thompson was the last to go in. He stood on the steps and scanned the street one more time.

Upset, Mr. Thompson? Rattled?

Hope so.

Levy's Infiniti showed up shortly after, pulling in by the fire hydrant in front of the coffee shop. Jack hurried out and jumped into the passenger seat.

Levy looked at him. "Where do we go from here?"

"We stay put."

"But the hydrant—"

"If there's a fire, we'll move. A meter maid comes by, we'll move. Otherwise we stick. I'm watching for someone."

"Who?"

Jack wondered if he should tell him. Hell, why not.

"Hank Thompson."

Levy's eyebrows shot up above the frame of his glasses. "Isn't that interesting. Just the man I want to talk to you about."

Damn right it was interesting, but Jack wanted to talk about someone else.

"First tell me how Bolton slipped past the NYPD? Didn't they print him?"

Levy nodded. "Of course they did. But when they ran those prints they came up empty."

"How is that possi—?"

"The agency had Bolton's record removed from ViCAP and the Atlanta PD and anywhere else it might be."

Jack whistled through his teeth. "You said they were connected, but… man."

"Yeah. That's why you don't want to get on their wrong side."

Amen to that, brudda.

He swallowed his disappointment—his perfect fix had flopped—and moved on.

"What've you got on Hank Thompson?"

"I looked up his file last night. He'd been strongly positive for oDNA in our earlier tests. So I had the lab dig out his old blood samples we've kept frozen all these years and run them through our latest quantifying protocols."

"And?"

Levy smiled. "Through the roof."

"As high as Bolton?"

The smile broadened. He was starting to look like the Cheshire cat. Jack wondered whv.

"His equal. They're neck and neck. Plus Thompson has the trigger gene as well."

"So we've got two live grenades out there—and they've been talking to each other. How's that? Can they sniff each other out?"

"I couldn't say. But I want you to look at something."

He opened the laptop lying on the seat between them. Jack noticed it was plugged into the lighter socket. Levy hit a few keys and a picture popped up on the screen.

"This is Hank Thompson when we discharged him from Creighton. Take a good look."

Jack saw a guy in his twenties. His face was fuller, the hair shorter, but he still had that Jim Morrison look. Yeah, a young Hank Thompson.

"Okay. What about it?"

He tapped a few more keys and another photo popped up beside the second.

"Guess who this is?"

The similarities, especially the eyes, were obvious.

"His brother?"

"That's Jeremy Bolton at age twenty."

"No way."

But as Jack stared at the photos, he realized that changing the hair, adding a beard and fifteen-odd years to the new guy would make him look very much like the Jeremy Bolton Jack had spoken to yesterday.

"They're
brothers
?"

Levy, still with that grin, shrugged. "Well, you're half right. They've got the same father."

A jolt of shock thumped Jack's chest. "That Jonah Stevens you told me about?"

Jack tore his gaze from the computer screen and checked out the Lodge. No activity.

"The same. Born in different states eleven months apart."

"Seems Jonah Stevens got around."

Definite family resemblance. But they reminded him of someone else. Who?

Levy said, "He stayed in contact with Bolton. Maybe he was in contact with Hank too, but I have no way of knowing."

"Sounds like he was a traveling salesman or something."

"Or something. We don't know what he did, but he had no arrest record. According to Bolton his father would visit and bring him a present every birthday when he was young."

"Did he tell him about his brother Hank?"

"Bolton never mentioned a brother. But he'd talk about his father's—his 'daddy's'—special gift. It seems Jonah was blind in one eye and told Jeremy that his bad eye could see things the good eye couldn't, things no one else could see. 'He could see what's coming.'"

"Didn't you tell me he was crushed by an elevator?"

"Something like that."

"That's one thing he didn't see coming."

Levy frowned. "No, I guess he didn't. But anyway, he told Jeremy he saw great things ahead for him, things that would come about because of the plan he had."

"What kind of plan?"

"Bolton was always cagey about that. I've interviewed him many, many times over the years, and I've approached this plan—always with a capital P when Bolton has mentioned it in writing—from every possible angle but I've never been able to make him slip. It's something he and his daddy cooked up. He didn't know his father was dead; he thought he'd just stopped visiting. When I told him, he was more upset about the Plan than his father's passing. 'Who's gonna finish the Plan?' he kept saying."

Jack remembered Bolton's remark about changing the world and the "Key to the future." Had he been talking about the Plan then?

"Maybe that's what he and his half brother have been discussing."

"I'm sure of it."

"Oh?"

"We had mics all around them whenever they'd meet, but they'd speak very low or whisper, and whatever we managed to pick up was cryptic. We did hear the Plan mentioned a number of times, however, and now in hindsight it seems a good guess that Jonah Stevens had discussed his Plan with his number-one son as well."

Number-one son
… Jack shook off an audio flash of Warner Oland's bad Chinese accent and said, "Which makes it pretty obvious that they know they're related."

"No question."

"And I guess that clears up any questions about the source of Bolton's mystery money. The new question is: How do we use all this to put him back behind bars?"

Levy looked at him. "That's your department, I believe."

"Yeah, I guess it is. Thought I'd got that done last night but…"

Jack stared at the photos of the two men, wondering how he could turn their blood ties to his advantage. And as he stared, their features seemed to shift and blur and merge until, with a cold shock of recognition, he realized who they reminded him of.

Christy Pickering.

"Holeeee shit!"

He hadn't seen it in the adults, but those blue eyes plus the soft, hairless cheeks in the photos…

"What?" Levy said.

"The woman who hired me and Gerhard… she could be their sister."

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm not sure. But there's a definite resemblance."

Levy paled. "But if Jonah Stevens fathered this woman as well, then Bolton is dating his…"

"Yeah. His niece. Was that why he wanted to go to Rego Park? To be near his niece? That's pretty damn—"

Levy held up a hand. "Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves here? We don't know that she's really a blood relation—it's an assumption based simply on a superficial resemblance from a couple of old photos. That's hardly definitive."

Jack had almost forgotten he was speaking with a scientist.

"Point taken, but—"

"We need proof."

Jack watched him. "Such as?"

"Some of her DNA. Do you know her well enough to get hold of a dozen or so strands of her hair?"

Jack had to smile. "You mean, well enough to snag some from her pillow or run my fingers through her lustrous locks? Hardly."

"We need something. There must be a way."

"Oh, there's a way." Jack already had a few ideas developing. "But why do you care? What's this do for your agenda?"

"Nothing. But it has everything to do with genetics. This super oDNA carrier Jonah Stevens could have been spreading his seed across the south for decades before he died. Who knows how many children he fathered, and how many of those are time bombs waiting to explode into killing sprees?"

"And you're worried about their potential victims, of course."

Right.

"I'm concerned, naturally, but I'm fascinated with the research possibilities. If I can identify his offspring, quantify their oDNA, and then assess their criminality or lack thereof—think about what that will do for my research, for our knowledge about the genetic basis of behavior."

"Is that the only reason?"

Levy looked at him. "There might be another. You probably wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"Have you ever wanted to know something… know it simply for the sake of knowing… because it's hidden out there somewhere and you feel compelled to uncover it simply because it's hidden?"

"Too many times. Usually gets me in trouble."

"Throughout history it's caused many people big trouble."

"And that doesn't worry you?"

"Of course it worries me. But I need to know."

Jack was beginning to like Aaron Levy. Not a lot, but for a man who did a lot of lying, he had a core of truth.

"Okay, I'll get you your samples."

"Thank you. I—"

Jack raised a hand as he glanced again at the front of the Kicker club and saw the door open. "Wait."

"What?"

Hank Thompson stepped out and trotted down the steps. He had a backpack slung over his left shoulder.

What's in there, Hanky boy? A big old book, maybe? Taking it to someplace safer than the Lower East Side?

"Get ready to roll."

"Roll where?"

"Wherever I tell you."

Thompson turned away from them, quick walking up to Allen Street where he began waving for a cab.

"Recognize him?" Jack said.

Levy squinted. "Hank Thompson?"

"Yep. And we're going to follow him."

Levy shook his head. "I don't know…"

"This is one of those just-gotta-know things. And besides, he may be key to getting Bolton off the streets. Pull out and start rolling toward him. When he catches a cab, follow."

After a few seconds' hesitation, Levy complied, easing the car forward and heading for the corner. By time they reached it, Thompson still hadn't caught a cab. Levy slowed to a crawl. The light was green and a car behind them honked.

"What now?"

Jack hunched low in the seat. "Make the turn and pull over upstream. Soon as he's moving, we follow."