Finding Fabi by Geoffrey Robert

Author:Geoffrey Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Geoffrey Robert
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

23. The fitting room

Mike had a gut feeling he was being followed. He’d finished his shift at the blog and was walking along Wooster Street, thinking about food.

He crossed Spring, checking his dashboard. Stories on the treatment priority list and ventilator profiteering had helped push his Twitter following to 2.5 million, but with no matching dramas for forty-eight hours, he’d been displaced at the top of the leaderboard by a story about an EV in self-driving mode causing a wreckfest on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Mike stopped outside a jewelry store, switched the camera on his phone to selfie mode. Over his shoulder he saw a blonde woman in leopard-skin top with a black garment over her arm stop twenty paces behind him. At least it wasn’t the rabid wife of the anti-vaccination fanatic from Arizona.

He crossed West Broadway, quickened his pace, slipping past a forklift before it blocked off the sidewalk. Round the corner into Thompson Street, into a doorway beside a pizzeria.

The woman walked past. Mike stepped out behind her.

‘Looking for me?’

She turned. Nervously.

‘I’m a friend of Lucja Stawski. She wants to meet you.’

‘Could have just sent me a text.’

‘Lucja suspects her phone’s being monitored.’

Sounded plausible.

‘OK, where do we meet?’

‘Put this on. I will take you to her.’

She handed him a black hoodie.

‘Seriously?’

‘You want to talk to Lucja or not?’

The answer, of course, was a resounding yes. Mike put on the hoodie and was led back along Spring to the Burberry clothing store.

‘Lucja is over the road in Longchamp’s.’

He found her searching through a rack of clothes.

She held up two tops – a blouse with butterfly prints and a more conservative one with zipper motifs and a knotted bow at the neck.

‘Which do you prefer Michael?’

‘You know me, babe, I’d have to see them on.’

The sales assistant grinned, showed them to the fitting rooms.

Mike followed Lucja in.

She put the tops on a hook, closed the door, leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

‘Were you followed?’

‘Only by your friend.’

‘It’s here. In New York.’

‘What is?’

‘The Cabo virus.’

‘Fucking h...’

She put her hand over his mouth.

‘Quiet. You’re supposed to be helping me choose a top.’

‘But... where? How? Shouldn’t we be wearing masks or PPE or...?’

‘Relax. I wouldn’t be standing here unprotected if there was any danger. It’s contained for the moment in a medical center on Long Island. But there have been serious screw-ups. More people have died than should have.’

Images from the dark days of Covid flashed through Mike’s mind: Refrigerated trucks outside hospitals, mass graves on Hart Island, bulldozers burying rows of coffins.

He reached for his notepad.

Lucja put her hand on his arm.

‘Listen carefully. You’re going to have to work for this one, because everyone will deny it.’

She told him how a gentleman presented at a health center in East Hampton on Sunday.

‘He had his own plane which he’d flown into East Hampton Airport from La Paz in Mexico. He sold some kind of widgets. Anyway, he complained of early symptoms which could have been a cold. They didn’t think it was the virus but decided to keep him overnight as a precaution.

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