The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(93)

Palms pressed to the table, she leaned in, taking a long, slow look across the room. Meeting every gaze with eyes of steel.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jennifer said, “let’s get organized.”





Epilogue




The towers of Dubai blazed against the night, a sea of white-hot diamonds on the edge of the Persian Gulf. One of those towers had acquired a parasite.

The man in the black leather bodysuit clung to the skyscraper like a barnacle, scaling his way up one careful inch at a time with suction cups the size of dinner plates strapped to his forearms and calves. The bustling nightlife and tangled traffic were distant blurry lights, over seventy stories below.

Cold wind ruffled his wavy chestnut hair. His eyes, safe behind tempered goggles, narrowed in concentration. His muscles burned like wildfire now, three hours after he’d begun his ascent, but his goal wasn’t far away. Clamped onto a smoky window, he gripped a carbide-wheel glass cutter and got to work.

The restful sound of the wind shattered. A Beach Boys song blared in his left ear, Carl Wilson crooning “Good Vibrations.” With an annoyed grunt, he tapped the earpiece and took the call.

“Little busy right now,” he said, his voice tinged with a French accent.

“Marcel, my friend,” the Smile said. “Where are you?”

“Seventy-two floors up the side of Princess Tower. Where did you think I’d be?”

“Hm. Don’t look down.”

“I never look down, and I never look back,” Marcel replied. A circle of glass the size of a manhole cover separated cleanly from the window. Gripping it with another suction-cup handle, he carefully pushed it inward and laid it down on the floor inside.

He pulled himself through the hole, bending like a contortionist, lowering himself onto a polished Italian marble floor.

“Is that your catchphrase?” the Smile asked. “It’s cute. I’m calling with good news: we’ve just gotten the official confirmation. Daniel Faust is dead.”

The room beyond the window was a private art gallery. Rows of glass cases stretched into the darkness, divided by runners of red velvet carpet. Marcel’s gaze went to the corner of the room, where a scarlet light blinked on the gray plastic shell of a motion detector. Keeping his back pressed to the window, just out of its range, he drew a tiny prong-shaped pistol.

A dart streaked out when he pulled the trigger, fired on a puff of air from a pneumatic cylinder. The dart hit the motion detector’s case, cracked it, and let out an electric hiss. The flashing light flickered from red to green.

“Should that name mean something to me?” He threw himself into a roll, dodging beneath an infrared eye, and came up in a crouch.

“Your sacrificial lamb, who nobly gave his life to die in your stead. Congratulations, Marcel. The cycle is broken. You aren’t the Thief anymore.”

Marcel tapped the side of his goggles. They flipped into night-vision mode and turned his world into a wash of green light. Artifacts from around the world filled the glass cases, golden conquistador crosses sitting side by side with jade from the Ming dynasty.

“So this Faust,” Marcel said. “He’s the Thief now?”

“Was. For all of five minutes before he was killed in a prison riot. Just don’t die again. Your soul will be pulled right back into the cycle and you’ll ruin all my hard work. Fortunately, seeing as you’re not doomed anymore, that shouldn’t be a problem for you. Do you have eyes on the target?”

Marcel crouched in front of a case, his eyes wide behind his goggles. On the other side of the glass, his prize nestled on a bed of black velvet: a bowl of turquoise, its sides inlaid with swirling Aztec symbols. The basin of the bowl still held a dark stain, the memory of heart’s blood shed centuries ago.

“You held up your end of the bargain,” Marcel replied, “and I’ll hold up mine.”

*

Half a world away, dingy gray clouds roiled from smokestacks and painted the sky over Gary, Indiana, with oily smears. Angelo Mancuso wrinkled his nose as he stepped out of his sleek white limousine. A long cashmere overcoat draped his athletic frame.

“Does it always stink like this?” He glanced at Sal, his bodyguard. The big man shrugged.

“It’s from the steel mill.”

Angelo looked around, taking in the run-down street, the broken windows shrouded by tacked-up bedsheets. He knocked on the driver’s window. His chauffeur rolled it down and poked his head out.

“Yeah, boss?”

“We’ll be out in ten minutes,” Angelo said. “Do me a favor. If anybody comes near the car who ain’t us? Just shoot ’em. I don’t think the locals are gonna mind.”

Sal put his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “I don’t think the locals are gonna notice.”

The tenement awaited, the stagnant halls reeking of rotting trash and sweat. Angelo’s wing tips crunched on broken glass, disturbing the uncanny silence.

Sal glanced over his shoulder, one hand buried inside his jacket pocket. “You sure we got the right place?”

A sigil adorned the door at the end of the hall, painted in rust red. It resembled the Egyptian Eye of Horus, with a ragged X daubed over the pupil.

“Yeah,” Angelo said, sounding as wary as Sal looked. “This is definitely him.”