Blindside (Michael Bennett #12)(28)

After all, I was just looking for a twenty-four-year-old female computer nerd. How rough could it get?





CHAPTER 37





ALICE AND JANOS took a cab uptown. Alice had insisted the driver let them off near City College. She didn’t want anyone to connect them to the coffeehouse Oscar had told them about. They had been so careful up to this point; they’d even eliminated two potential witnesses and destroyed the surveillance videos at Oscar’s apartment. Alice didn’t want to screw things up now by stupidly letting a cabdriver know exactly where they were going.

Once they were on foot and walking south toward La Salle Street, Alice started to plan things more carefully. There was no one around to hear them talk, but still, Alice wished they spoke a common language other than English. Janos had picked up very little Dutch or French, even with all the time they had spent in those countries. Alice couldn’t say much in Janos’s language. She had worked with him for three full years and hadn’t picked up ten words of Romanian. She didn’t tell Janos, but she felt like it was useless to learn a foreign language that so few people spoke.

Now, walking the streets of New York, they spoke the same language as most of the people around them as Alice finished her reasons for why they should just kill Jennifer Chang and move on.

Janos shook his head and matched her quiet tone. “I’m not used to being the rational one. What do you have against this girl? We were told to make her a job offer and not to hurt her. We may not like Henry, but he is our employer. At least for a little while longer.”

Alice said, “It’s a waste of time to look for this girl. We already know she’s not going to accept the job offer. And it’s too hard to try to force her to come back with us. All she’d have to do is let out one loud yelp on a plane and we’d both be facing armed TSA agents. She knows what we know. Henry’s turned into some kind of a monster. I even sent him a text the other day telling him this was our last job for him.”

“What did he say?”

“He’s a condescending prick. He just texted me back and said, ‘We’ll see.’ I don’t even know what that means.”

Janos said, “Why do you want to kill this girl?”

Alice took a moment to answer. “We make the offer and if she accepts, great. If not, she’s just another witness who can identify us. She has to go.”

Janos shrugged. That was his universal sign that he somewhat agreed. Or at least it made some sort of sense to him.

From Broadway they turned east, onto La Salle Street. They could see Brew across the street and up a block.

Just as she always did, Alice checked her purse to make sure she was ready. The homemade garrote in her hand and a knife she’d bought at a hardware store made her feel more secure and confident.

She noticed that Janos reached back to feel the butt of his pistol. He always kept it in his belt line in the small of his back. That way he could wear untucked shirts and the pistol would be hidden, and also available to Alice in an emergency.

Like that time in Tallinn, when a drug gang had been trying to pressure Henry, and Alice and Janos were sent to talk to them. Immediately it had been clear there was going to be more than talk. While the three drug dealers were looking at Janos, Alice was able to draw the gun from Janos’s back.

Five shots later and Henry had no more problems. He’d given them a huge bonus. That was back when he was still sane.

Alice missed that Henry. He had been a good boss then.





CHAPTER 38





I STEPPED IN the front door of the coffeehouse. I don’t know what I had expected would happen. Maybe I thought I was like a sheriff in the Old West, that everything might come to a standstill when I walked through the front door. Then I sprang back to reality. I was in one of thousands of coffeehouses in New York City. No one noted my arrival.

I took a moment to scan the whole room. There was a counter and about twenty small tables. On the opposite end of the counter was a take-out service with its own door to perhaps an alley in back. That was smart.

The counter was nearly full. Most everyone in the place was young. About ten of them looked like my idea of a stereotypical hacker: raggedy clothes, long hair, and expensive computers.

Two men at the counter turned and looked me over. They looked like tourists. Definitely not Americans. Their red Zappos and the Kappa logos on their jackets told me that.

No one else in Brew stuck out to me. Everyone had their nose buried in a tablet or computer. There was almost no conversation. This was unlike the Starbucks I occasionally frequented near the office. (But I still wouldn’t walk into our squad bay with a Starbucks cup.)

Then I saw her. Almost in the middle of the room. Jennifer Chang was difficult to miss, even prettier in person than in the photograph from Columbia. She still had the purple streaks in her hair, but she had the hair tied in a simple ponytail. She had bright eyes that were currently focusing on an iPad in her hands. The diamond stud earrings told me she might have done some of the same lucrative work that paid the high rents Thomas Payne and Natalie both afforded.

I considered different ways to approach her. Sometimes you didn’t have to use shock and awe. She had no record. She probably had never dealt with the police before. She’d have no idea how to act or what to say.

She was only a handful of years older than Juliana. That always seemed to me to be a good approach: treat younger people like you’d want your kids treated. I needed information, not an arrest.