Sellitto, paying attention to that first sentence. 'But?'
'When he was leaving he got a call on his mobile. After I'd rung him up I stepped into the back room. When he was walking out the door he said, "Yeah, the Belvedere." And then I think he said "address". Anyway, that's what I thought. But it might've been "bella dear" or something else.'
Sellitto wrote this down. Asked the standard: 'Anything else you can think of?'
'No, I'm afraid not.'
It was usually afraid not or no or don't think so. But at least Thomson had thought about the question and was being honest.
He thanked her and, with a last glance at Quetzawhatever on her chest, headed back into the sleet, speed-dialing Rhyme to tell him don't get your fucking hopes up but he might have a lead.
CHAPTER 35
A good workout.
As he walked from his health club back to his apartment on East 52nd Street to collect his car, Braden Alexander was counting the crunches he'd done. He'd given up after a hundred.
Counting them, that is. The crunches themselves? Plenty. He'd forgotten how many.
Alexander had a sedentary job - writing code for one of the big investment firms (one that actually had not been the subject of an investigation) - and the thirty-seven-year-old was determined to stay in good shape, despite the eight-hour days at his workstation - and the one-hour reverse commute to Jersey, where his company's IT headquarters building was located.
And the curls? With the thirty-pound bells? Maybe two hundred. Damn, he sure felt it. He decided he'd take it a bit easier tomorrow. No need to push too far. It was more important to be consistent, Alexander knew. Every day he made the trek from his apartment west to the health club on Sixth Avenue. Every day, the stati
onary bike and curls and squats and, yeah, crunches, crunches, crunches ... What do we think, 150?
Probably.
He glanced at himself in a window and thought: The weight's okay. His skin seemed a little pale. Not so good, that. He and his family would get to an island soon. Maybe after Thanksgiving. Anyway, who wouldn't look sickly on a day like this? The sleet had let up but the light was gray and anemic. He was actually looking forward to getting into his cubicle. He found it cozy, a word he wouldn't use with anybody but his wife.
Today there was something else to look forward to. He'd be picking up a bicycle at his brother's house in Paramus. Joey'd gotten a new mountain bike and was giving his old one to Alexander's son. The boy was ecstatic and had texted twice from school, just to see how 'everything was going?'
The impatience of youth.
He looked south and caught sight of the new Trade Tower, or whatever it was going to be called. He'd been working at his first job, crunching code for a bank, when the attack had happened, 2001. The new structure was impressive, architecturally more interesting than the simple rectangles of its predecessors. Still, nothing could ever match their grandeur, their style.
What a time that was. His first son had been born the day after the attack. Alexander and his wife had abandoned plans to name him after her father and had picked instead Emery, after the architectural firm Emery Roth & Sons, which along with Minoru Yamasaki had designed the original Trade Towers.
Alexander continued east back toward his apartment, where he'd collect his car and head to work. As he paused for a red light he happened to look back and caught a glimpse of someone behind him, head down. Some guy, young, in dark clothes and stocking cap. A bag or backpack on his shoulder. Was he the same one who'd been sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the health club?
He following me?
Alexander had lived in the city for fifteen years. He considered New York the safest urban area on earth. But he wasn't a fool, either. He made his living because of bad guys. When he'd started as a programmer some years ago most of his work had been to hack together code that made the servers run more smoothly, expanded web traffic and allowed the various operating systems to talk to each other without stuttering. Over the years, though, he'd developed the specialty of security. Commercial hackers, terrorists and punks with too much time on their hands and too many cells in their brains now preyed on banking institutions like his employer with increasingly bold and brilliant attacks.
That had become Alexander's specialty, throwing nails in the path of some pretty smart and pretty nasty hackers.
He'd heard of some computer security pros who'd been physically attacked. He sometimes wondered if he was at personal risk. He had no specific knowledge that any hackers knew his name but he also was aware that it was impossible to keep all information about yourself hidden from someone with enough drive to track you down.
Near his apartment building Alexander paused and, on the pretext of making a phone call, glanced back once more. The man in the cap and coat continued following, head down. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to Alexander. Then without a pause the supposed hit hacker walked into a building across the street, an old one, now a commercial space, with a For Rent sign pasted across a dirty window. Maybe he was a Realtor or new tenant. Or a janitor examining a temperamental boiler - it was supposed to be another bone-chilling evening.
Amused at his own wasted concern, Alexander continued on to his building and to the entrance to the parking garage, where they kept the Subaru. The parking space was a luxury - it alone cost more than his first apartment. But a guaranteed slot in the city that brought the world alternate-side-of-the-street parking? Didn't get any better than that - except it did: The space was enclosed, so he never had to shovel snow or scrape ice. Extremely enclosed, in fact. The space was in the third sub-basement.
He now waved to the cashier, who called, 'Hey, Mr Alexander. When's it gonna let up? You know what I mean?' The skinny, gray-complexioned man gazed up at the sky.
He'd said virtually the same thing every day for the past week.
Alexander grinned and shrugged. He descended the spiral ramp of the dim place.
On the bottom floor, the Subie's floor, as his wife had dubbed the vehicle, Alexander walked under the low ceiling toward where the front of his green car peeked out. The garage - this floor at least - seemed completely deserted. But he wasn't feeling uneasy anymore, now that the imaginary killer shadowing him had disappeared into the building across the street. Besides, no mugger - or hacker intent on breaking Alexander's typing fingers - would dare risk an attack here. The only way in was past the watchful attendant.