The Vaults by Toby Ball

Author:Toby Ball
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Mystery & Detective - General, Mystery & Detective, Mystery, Fiction - Mystery, Archivists, Detective, Hard-Boiled, Crime, Fiction, Political corruption, Municipal archives, Suspense, Thrillers, General
ISBN: 9780312580735
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-09-15T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

What passed for the intersection of Kopernik and Stanislaus streets was in a desolate part of town at the northernmost reaches of the Hollows. It was hard to believe that such a barren, empty place existed in the City. The tracks here had been abandoned nearly two decades ago when the railroad was rerouted south and east at the behest of some member of the City Council who stood to profit from the new route.

As the letter instructed, Frings stood on the tracks. He was exposed out there, with at least a two-hundred-yard sprint to the nearest cover. Kopernik and Stanislaus streets were themselves largely abandoned, unpaved and scarred with ruts and potholes. It was a strange place to meet, the one advantage being that the bombers could easily see if Frings had brought anyone.

Frings stood with his hands in his pockets and his back to the wind, which cut through his jacket as if it weren’t there. He had made a call to the newsroom on the way here, instructing Panos to run the version of his column for tomorrow that contained the phrase golden age, the signal to Bernal that Frings was ready to meet. He wondered if what he had learned from Puskis would be enough to satisfy Bernal. He had a huge piece of the puzzle: that Samuelson was one of a couple dozen murderers who didn’t go to prison after their convictions. He hoped that Bernal could tell him why they were never incarcerated.

The cold was uncomfortable and the wait indeterminate, so Frings pulled a reefer from his coat pocket. The sweet, green smoke felt good in his lungs, and his sensation of the cold went from its being consuming to an odd, vaguely irritating feeling on his skin. The purple light above the City was interesting. And those searchlights beaming from the top of City Hall . . .

Frings’s muscles were stiff from the cold by the time a lone figure approached down the tracks. He was fifty feet away when he called out, “Frings?” The voice was high and tense.

Frings waved. The figure beckoned Frings with an arm motion and Frings followed, maintaining a constant fifty-foot distance, intuiting that this was his contact’s safety zone. They walked the tracks, past abandoned warehouses with the smoke of squatters’ fires filtering out through broken windows. Occasionally Frings saw a person lying at the bottom of the track-bed berm, either asleep or dead—it was impossible to tell in that light.

They arrived at a warehouse emitting smoke and even some light from its windows. Frings’s escort came to a stop by the front door and waited for Frings to catch up. Up close, Frings was surprised by how small his companion was—maybe just five feet. His escort knocked an intricate beat, and with a scrape of metal on concrete the door opened from within.

Inside, seven fires burned at various spots throughout the vast warehouse, illuminating oases in what was otherwise an indigo void. A fire near the door backlit a group of five standing figures.

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