The woman grimaced and her eyes flicked to the long and impatient line behind Connie.
Connie saw her chance. Jazz called it “social hacking,” like breaking into a computer, only with people. Channeling a vapid cheerleader, willing herself to look young, harmless, and cutely stupid, she moaned, “I’m soooo sorry. My dad will just kill me, y’know?” She yearned for some bubble gum to pop.
“What’s the name?” The woman sighed.
“Conscience Hall.” Gambling that Auto-Tune had left whatever it was under her own name.
The woman typed on her keyboard, grunted once, then said, “One bag?”
“Yes.”
“Left here when?”
Another gamble. Connie put on her most focused, concentrated, “I’m not that bright” face. “Gosh… I guess it would have been… gee… like, earlier today, you know?” Hoping Auto-Tune had brought it here after talking to her on the phone. “A couple of hours?” She whooshed out a breath, as if all the thinking made her tired. “I’ve just been wandering around the city and I totally lost track of time.” She smiled. “And my ticket.” Throw in a tee-hee? No, too much.
“So you told me.” The woman gritted her teeth. From behind, Connie heard people grumbling, and the woman’s coworker—a tall, older man, also East Asian—looked over. “What’s the holdup?”
Before the woman could explain, Connie jumped in, pumping up the cute lost girl crap to the max for the benefit of the older man.
“She knows when it was dropped off? She has the right name?” The man’s expression clearly said, How many people named “Conscience” could there be? “No ticket, but do you have ID?”
Connie dutifully hauled out her driver’s license.
“Give it to her,” the guy said.
The woman sighed with relief. “Four dollars.”
Connie gave her a five, took her change, and waited as the woman brought out a smallish black laptop bag. It was smaller and evidently lighter than the duffel Connie carried over her shoulder, and the woman regarded her with suspicion for a moment. Connie cranked up the wattage of her smile and made herself as guileless and as empty as possible, hoping that she looked dumb enough to have checked her lighter bag instead of the heavier one.
“Here you go.” Handing over the bag.
Inside, Connie experienced a heart-thrumming trill, which she suppressed outwardly. She took the bag into the ladies’ room. Catching a glimpse of her mottled face in the mirror, she took a moment to wash off the white lady’s makeup, then ducked into a stall, waiting until the room was empty before opening the laptop bag. If it was a bomb or anthrax or a plague toxin in there, she didn’t want to hurt anyone else if she could avoid it.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long until she was alone. She examined the outside of the bag—nothing exceptional about it. Just a generic laptop bag. There was a mesh outer pocket for a water bottle, but otherwise just the one top zipper, which she unzipped with her breath caught in her throat and her bottom lip between her teeth.
Nothing happened.
She pried open the bag. It was a single pocket within, padded, of course.
The first thing she saw was the gun.
Her heart jumped a beat into the future, even as her hand—as though remote-controlled—reached in to pull out the gun. It was a pistol—a revolver, to be precise—and as soon as she touched it, her entire body relaxed. It was plastic. An old, scuffed toy pistol, she saw, withdrawing it.
Ha, ha. Very funny. What am I supposed to make of this?
There was something else in the bag—an envelope. More family photos?
She opened the envelope and withdrew and unfolded a piece of paper. A second piece of paper fell out and into the bag, but she was focused on the one she held, which was typed with a generic font:
Connie:
Congratulations on making it this far. Well done.
I wrote this letter when you first agreed to play my little game. In truth, it’s not much of a game, and I apologize for that. You’re a late player, and I haven’t had time to prepare something adequate to your stature. I hope you’ll forgive this oversight on my part.
As a way of making it up to you, I have included not one but two clues to my identity in this bag, as well as a pointer to the next clue. If you are smart and talented enough to have snared young Jasper, then I believe you will possess perspicacity enough to deduce both.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
It was, of course, unsigned.
It doesn’t sound like something Billy Dent would write. And come to think of it, Mr. Auto-Tune didn’t really sound like him, either. Not the words he used. Not the way he talked. Is this Hat-Dog? Could that really be it?
Two clues, the letter said. There was the gun, of course. Add that to the bell and it meant absolutely nothing.
The second piece of paper in the bag was a clipping from a magazine of some sort—a picture of the actor Kevin Costner.
What. The. Hell.
She had a bell, a gun… and Kevin Costner? This was supposed to help her somehow? These were clues to Mr. Auto-Tune’s identity?
Is Kevin Costner a serial killer? Yeah, right.
She inspected the bag, even turned it inside out, but found nothing else. Nothing but the note and the gun and the clipping. Remembering how the bell clue had actually been a part of the lockbox, she scrutinized the bag for markings of any sort, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
What about the note itself, though? She thought of the note that the Impressionist had carried in his pocket, how there had been a simple acrostic UGLY J encoded into it. She studied the note, but found nothing of the sort. The opening letters of each paragraph, of each word, of each sentence, spelled nothing sensical. Which wasn’t to say that there wasn’t some sort of clue embedded in the note itself, only that she couldn’t figure it out. But didn’t the FBI have, like, a whole division of people who did stuff like this? Codebreaking? Deciphering experts? Cryptographers?
Maybe she could get Jazz to give the note to the FBI agent he knew. Maybe…
She sighed and stuffed the gun and the note and the clipping back into the bag, then left JFK, following signs that directed her to a taxi stand. The driver, a Sikh with a Bluetooth earpiece, nodded and smiled at her, shrugging with one shoulder when she said, “Brooklyn,” and the address of Jazz’s hotel.
“How you want me to go?” he asked.
Connie had no idea. She didn’t think he would appreciate if she said, “Maybe with a car? On the road?”
“Whatever’s fastest,” she said.
“BQE?” he asked.
“Sure.”
The cab took off. Connie laid her head back, letting lamppost light wash over her in staccato waves as they pulled away from JFK and onto a highway.
It started to rain, a cold, ugly rain that made Connie shiver just from the sound of it on the roof of the cab, the silver slash of it in the headlights.
Connie thought that she couldn’t have summoned by most ancient witchcraft a more perfect and more hideous night for what she had to do.
CHAPTER 53
Before they went any deeper into the storage facility, Morales popped the trunk of her car and hauled out a bulletproof vest. She strapped it on and then pulled her blazer on over it. She looked almost comically top heavy and squarish.
“I have another one,” she said, indicating the trunk. “It’s a little small, but it’ll probably fit you.”
“These guys don’t shoot people,” Jazz said.
Morales shrugged. “Protocol.”
I like how it’s so important to you to follow protocol while breaking the law with me, Jazz thought, but did not say.