Start-Up by Olen Steinhauer

Author:Olen Steinhauer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I hung around Humboldt Park until three before deciding that the Chinese probably weren’t going to bring him back there. It occurred to me—and for some reason I felt pleased by this—that my presence had spooked them. So, rather than have their conversation out in the open, they had taken Jerry to some safe house to talk in private. Though Jerry might have explained that I was a friend, they weren’t the kind of people to just believe him. Or maybe Jerry hadn’t said a thing about who I was, because that would be showing his hand—it was the kind of thing Jerry would think about.

I took the bus back down to Archer Heights and let myself in. Jerry’s uncle had found his way off the couch, and was frying eggs in the kitchen, though he still hadn’t put on a shirt. He had an enormous stomach hidden behind a mat of black hair, and he smoked as he cooked. He offered me some eggs, which I declined, then he told me that Jerry had called.

“When?”

“Hour ago? He says call him on his cell.”

“Where is he?”

A shrug.

I went down to the basement and used the Mickey Mouse phone. It rang five times before he picked up, and there was a lag of about two seconds as I waited for Jerry to say hello. When he finally did, he sounded out of breath; only the “lo” audible.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Tom.” Another pause. “Listen, Tom. I need you to do something.”

He wasn’t just out of breath; there was something else going on. The pauses made it sound as if he were with someone else, getting instructions on what to say. I said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just listen, okay?” He was speeding up now. “Under the TV. The cabinet with all the DVDs. Open it up.”

Mickey Mouse had a long, tangled cord, and I was able to walk with him over to the television. I pulled open the drawer. “Yeah?”

“Find The IPCRESS File.”

“The what file?”

“IPCRESS,” he repeated, then spelled it. “1965, Michael Caine.”

“Did we watch that one?”

“Just find it.”

There were about a couple of hundred DVD cases and boxes with their spines staring up at me, and they were in no particular order. “This is going to take a minute.”

“It’s on the right side.”

I found it pretty quickly. A dark spine. I took it out and saw Michael Caine in glasses, looking a hell of a lot younger than I knew him. Very old school. Then I opened the box and, instead of a DVD case, found a stack of cash, all in denominations of five hundred.

“You got it?”

“Still looking.”

“Hurry up.”

This was a lot more than the fifteen grand I’d figured he’d collected. A hell of a lot more. As casually as possible, I said, “Where are you, Jerry?”

“I don’t even know, man.”

His change of tone was unnerving. From pauses to anger to an almost soothing regretfulness. That’s when it occurred to me that he was manipulating me. Not in any evil way, but only to make sure I did as he asked.

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