Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(4)

An open doorway blared a few lines of an old Stones song, then cut off, dead.

Melody Duchess said, “He got in touch with me.”

“OK.”

“He said he’d heard about me through a mutual friend, though I don’t see how. My friends are dead. But that’s what he said. ‘A mutual friend’.”

“He—what? He wrote to you? Phoned you?”

“Oh, the telephone. There’s no letter. There’s no . . . evidence, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Tell me the rest.”

“We met. Not at my apartment—I wouldn’t have him there. I’m not stupid, asking someone I don’t know into my home. We met at the bagel shop on the corner. He told me he could get me . . . something that would help.”

“Help.”

“He was very . . . personable. Good salesman. Not pushy. Oh no, no. That would have put me right off. He simply outlined what he had. Then he let me think about it.”

“Does he have a name, this man?”

“Mike—Mark—something like that.”

“Can you describe him for me? Tell me what he looked like?”

“Oh, I was only with him a few minutes. I gave him the money, he gave me the goods. That’s all that happened.”

I dodged around a woman with a pram.

She said, “There is one thing. That silly affectation. He wore sunglasses. And really—well, it was like today. No sun at all.”

“You mind me asking what you paid?”

“What I had access to. He wanted more, but I talked him down. I never let a man beat me in a deal. Not ever. Three thousand, if you want to know.” She said this with a certain pride. “He asked for five.”

“Three grand? To somebody you didn’t even know? Just like that?”

“I told you. If I don’t spend it, it’ll just go to Mount Sinai.” She put her head up, and the skin of her throat stretched in webs. “I got the cancer, Mr. Copeland. Kind of puts a new perspective on things, don’t you think?”



It rained that afternoon, and we wound up at the Degas exhibition after all. And then I pushed her to her building on the far side of the Park on 86th. The doorman took her from me and whisked her to the elevator and I never got the chance to visit her apartment, or see the goods, or do a reading on them, which is what I’d wanted. She wasn’t stupid, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask a man she didn’t know into her home.





Chapter 5

Wish You Were Here




“Still hate her?”

Angel’s voice was soft and smoky; I pressed the phone a little tighter to my ear.

“Yes. No. Christ . . . I’m too tired to have opinions.”

“Tough job?”

“Shouldn’t be, but—yeah. Yeah.”

I poured myself another drink, watching the lights of Jersey glittering across the river.

“It’s people,” she said. “A people job. And you know what you’re like with those.”

“She thinks I call you ‘Dr. Farthing’.”

“Maybe you should. Remind you who’s in charge.”

“Yeah. Dead romantic.”

She said, “This was meant to be our time together. Don’t tell me about romance. You know?”

“Life with the Registry . . .”

“It’s not the Registry.”

“What then . . . ?”

“Decisions don’t get made by companies. They get made by people. Committees, individuals, whatever—but someone makes them. Someone did this to us, and I plan to find out who. And then I plan to hunt them down and kill them. Personally.”

“Ha. I’ll ask around, then.”

“You do that.”

The Registry keeps an apartment in a tall building on Greenwich Street. The décor is as bland and tasteful as in any upmarket hotel, the wall paintings are French impressionists, the carpets beautiful, the view spectacular. And it was mine, however long I cared to stay.

I hated it.

I was tired, bored, and, something I had never thought I’d be, sick of New York. I wanted to move on. But it was Melody’s New York that I’d been seeing: lost landmarks, vanished dreams, the ghosts of memories. She’d dug her way into my life and now I couldn’t get her out again.

“You asked if I still hate her. Well, I don’t. But it’d probably be easier if I did, quite honestly.”

“You’re getting obsessed. I’m jealous.”

“Don’t be.”

I was quiet for a time. Angel said, “You can tell me about it, if you want. You know that.” Then she was quiet, too.

I put my glass down. Looked across the river.

There was a plane there, high up, heading out of Newark, going—I’d no idea where.

“We had a talk today,” I said. “A proper talk. And it was—well. Sort of heartbreaking. I don’t know. Like, on the one hand she’s this nasty, mean old woman, moans about everyone, thinks it was all better years ago, and on the other . . .”

“Go on.”

“She’s scared. She’s really scared. Of everything. She told me she’s got cancer. I don’t know what her prospects are, but at that age, they can’t be good. And she’s just—sad. She misses people. Misses her husband. Knows her life’s about to end and—I can’t explain it. But I hope to God I’m not like that at her age. And the Registry—what they want me doing—”