Edward #2
There’s a slight shuffling in the seat behind him, and he wonders for a second if Sam is getting up.
On the screen, the driver wanders the street, still searching for the woman.
As he surveys the scene, the barrel of a pistol come into view from a window behind him.
There is a pop, the man careens forward, blood sprays against the window.
The woman comes out from a doorway and continues to head down the sidewalk.
At last, Sam answers Edward. “I know those names,” she says. “Ashley Hanover. Henry Maclan too, and Kane Zhukov.”
He nods in the darkness, trying to stay calm. “Do you know who killed them?”
There is the sound of something sliding open behind him, and he tenses, thinks for a second that she might be drawing a weapon on him. But when he looks to his side, he sees her slender hand holding something out for him, a pocket folder held closed with a rubber band.
He takes it and looks into the pocket, his heart thudding in his chest. There are several packets of papers, along with a miniature video recorder.
He sucks his breath in sharply.
There are ledgers of Grand Central’s balance sheets, showing shipments of sand—thousands of kilos—being moved through the port without permits.
Of profits from the sale of that sand being left off the books.
There are tax documents and contracts showing payments being made illegally to Mayor Grayson.
There are letters between Diamond Taylor and the mayor, private requests for permit requirements to be waived.
There are paper trails for massive contributions made from Diamond to the mayor’s reelection campaign, all routed through shell donors.
Edward finally takes out the video recorder, holds it out, and pushes PLAY.
A clip comes on, showing a man shivering on the floor with a woman crouching next to him. And even though Edward hasn’t seen the woman often, he recognizes her immediately. Diamond Taylor, the head of Grand Central.
You’ve done a bad thing, Zhukov, she says.
He listens to the sobbing man on the tape, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. He sees Will Taylor distinctly on the clip too, hears him address his mother.
And beside Will stands Sam.
Sam too was there when Zhukov died. Edward watches quietly as Diamond dismisses her.
She was responsible for Maclan’s death.
He is sitting right in front of a killer.
The recording finishes playing and the device goes dark. Edward continues staring down at it in stunned silence. There is a blurring at the corners of his vision, like this theater isn’t real and this meeting isn’t real and something very strange is happening.
Up on the theater’s screen, the dead man’s cohort has discovered his body splayed on the sidewalk. The camera cuts to the woman’s silhouette in the floors above, her gun still drawn. She lifts it. Instead of pointing it down at them, she turns it on herself.
Edward finally manages to clear his throat. “Why,” he says hoarsely, “are you incriminating yourself to me?”
“Because you’re not going to arrest me,” she says. “Not if you want your evidence. Not if you want to know the full story of what’s going on under this city. And certainly not if you want someone on the inside to help you, moving forward.”
She’s making a deal with him. She is offering herself to him as a plant.
And Edward suddenly realizes how much more she must know than what she’s letting on—and that, even with the folder in his hands, he is not going to leave this theater alive unless he meets Sam’s requests. He swallows, stays calm and still.
“What are your terms, then?” he asks.
“First,” Sam says, “Diamond Taylor has a friend of mine in her custody. In two days, there will be a prisoner exchange between Grand Central and Lumines at Diamond’s estate, during which time she’s going to kill my friend.
If I’m going to have a chance to save him, I need you to make your move against Diamond and Will at that exchange. ”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Ari Rathod.”
Ari Rathod. He knows the name, has been paying attention to this Lumines associate for a while now, has accumulated a folder of photos showing him at various high-profile events in the city.
A date for the chief’s daughter. A close friend of Senator Doherty.
A frequent guest at exclusive dinners. Edward has often caught himself lingering on the young man’s face, unable to look away, wanting to know more.
“What do you need?” he now asks.
“Backup. Diamond will be dangerous when betrayed.”
“I’ll have a team with me.”
She laughs a little, the sound bitter and almost pitying. “I don’t mean two extra squad cars. Think of the cases you’ve been following. Think of how impossible they seem. Come prepared for the impossible.”
He feels cold now. What does she mean? “I can’t promise the chief will agree to any of this,” he starts to say. “I don’t even know who I can trust inside the department.”
“Trust me. Your chief will go after her.”
He frowns. “How can you be so sure?”
“You want my help?” she snaps, impatient with him. “Then you need to believe me. You are about to head into the darkness, and you have absolutely no idea how to face it. So make sure you have enough support with you when you’re ready to make your move against her. As much as you can get.”
His hands grip the armrests of his seat until he can see the white of his knuckles in the darkness. “And what about you?” he says.
“Small steps, Mr. Sinclair. Both of us are playing a dangerous game now. We’re going to need to trust each other.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
He waits for her to answer. But this time, she doesn’t. After a while, he realizes that he hadn’t even heard the sigh of her seat folding up. And when he dares to look behind him, he sees that her seat is empty. How did she leave so quietly?
His eyes fall on the seat she must have been in, and the chair’s cushion has long adjusted back to its regular shape. If he lets himself believe it, he could think that no one had been here, that her voice had just been a figment of his imagination.
He lets out a shaky breath and stares down at the folder of evidence in his lap.
Enough to secure an arrest warrant on Diamond Taylor and her son, enough to engulf the mayor in scandal.
And yet he can’t shake the feeling that there is so much more to this, that something unnatural and wrong is happening here, can’t help but imagine how much deeper everything goes, can’t guess how much more he doesn’t know.
He senses that things are about to get much, much stranger for him, that he isn’t ready for where he’s about to venture.
You are about to head into the darkness.
What is it? What is he missing? What secret festers in the murky depths of this world?
He puts the folder into his satchel and straightens. When the credits begin for the movie, he rises and heads out of the theater.
Once he gets into his car, he calls the department.
“Eddie?” says the receptionist.
“Les, can you get the chief for me?”
She sounds startled. “The chief? When?”
“Right now.”