Chapter 19
The Bronx Kill
Using a fake account under the name Jake Van Dorn, Evan rode an Uber Black north along Malcolm X Boulevard.
While he’d been busy playing tetherball with Osman’s head, Joey had pwned the moving truck’s surveillance camera.
While the assailants had not shown up on the recordings, a few frames of footage had captured an injured young woman stumbling off the sidewalk a few paces to the right of the basement stairs.
Flower-patterned dress in tatters, contusions everywhere, gaze hollow with shock.
In Joey’s capable hands, Devine’s powerful facial-identification software had done its job.
Anca Dumitrescu, twenty-five years of age, no criminal record. Her place of employment, a Romanian Orthodox Church called Sfanta Maria, was in the Bronx, as well as her residential address, toward which Evan was currently beelining.
In Joey’s adrenalized voice over the RoamZone, he could hear how shaken she was at the sight of the battered young woman.
“I called the church, said I was a friend worried about her since she’d gone missing.
And they were, like, really sweet and concerned.
She shows up there every day, like, religiously—ha—but she didn’t come this morning, didn’t call in sick, nothing, and they couldn’t reach her on the phone or at her place and they said that wasn’t like her at all, that she’s really professional and responsible and a really caring person.
And, I mean, did you see her, X? She looks so broken.
It’s like some scene from a war or something.
You have to find her. You have to get to her. ”
“I will.”
The Escalade banked onto the Macombs Dam Bridge, its Gothic Revival abutments, latticework gates, and stone-end piers a perfect Early Republic collaboration of old-world beauty and new-world engineering.
“You jailbroke Osman’s phone?” he asked.
Joey had texted a link to the purloined phone that Evan had opened, allowing her remote access. “Yep. Have everything downloaded here in Devine’s creepy Orwell room. I’ll turn that thing inside out.”
Evan rolled down the window and flipped Osman’s phone out onto the roadway.
“Cracking the VenSend database is gonna take some time,” Joey continued.
“We know about Solventry’s encryptions and they’ve kept up with the race even after Allman’s, uh, departure.
But I left a few backdoors in the system so I’m already leapfrogging through their VPNs and proxies with various credentials.
I’ll pin down a physical address for YngTl69 within twenty-four hours at most.”
“I need a vehicle,” Evan said. “For base camp, mobile office—something comfortable. Can you have one meet me at Ms. Dumitrescu’s address?”
“Okay, okay. Hang on.” Muffled phone, then Joey saying: “What? He wants a car.”
A voice replying in the background.
She came back to Evan: “Rawlings is asking if you want diplomatic plates.”
Down below, the slate-green chop of the Harlem River surged south toward the narrow strait of the Bronx Kill.
Evan said, “Why the hell not.”
Wanting to leave no trail even under an assumed name, Evan asked to be dropped off a half mile from Anca’s apartment.
It was hard to draw a full breath in the Bronx.
Few public spaces, heavy concentrations of projects and run-down mid-rises, dark red brick buildings rising block after block, uniform as Legos.
But the night streets burst with vibrancy and anything-goes possibility that made Evan feel at home.
Food stalls flaunted gourmet opulence that could outclass any trendy SoHo brasserie—jerk chicken and Jamaican patties, rice and beans, empanadas and arepas.
Body shops and coin laundries, bucket drumming and three-card monte, the pleasing duet of Puerto Rican Spanish harmonizing with Dominican patois.
A worn but stately walnut front door served as the exhausted gatekeeper for the five stories of crumbling brick that composed Anca Dumitrescu’s building.
The lock guard had been jimmied and remounted so many times that a half-inch gap exposed the dead bolt.
Evan could have gotten through with a flathead screwdriver, but there was no need.
He punched a random button on the call box, announced himself as a Solventry delivery man, and was buzzed through without a query.
The dusty transom leaked streetlight amber across the chipped tile foyer.
Rickety doors guarded a tiny elevator that looked retrofitted to the building, a taped sign reading CIRCUIT brEAKER OUT.
WILL FIX IN A.M. To the right, a blocky wooden staircase rose through L turns and square landings, the banister polished by a century of hands.
Evan made his way up, blading his body at intervals to let residents pass—a babushka with a kerchief framing her wizened face, a storm of boys with baseball gloves, a woman in an electric-blue bodycon latex dress hauling a folded shopping cart.
Reaching the third floor, he moved down the dim hall. A few of the apartments had doormats; others displayed plastic plants. Number 33 had a simple wooden cross mounted above the peephole.
He knocked.
No answer.
Setting his ear to the door, he listened for signs of life within. Not even a vibration.
In his cargo pocket, the RoamZone gave its distinctive chime, caller ID showing Joey.
He answered: “Go.”
“Okay, there’s an incoming request for Devine and you put me and Rawlings in charge, so we’re calling you.”
“What is it?”
“Some plan afoot to short-sell the rial.”
“Why are you bothering me with this?”
“Because supposedly it’s a big deal. Something about undercutting Tehran? Looks like”—a rustle of paper—“the State Department is involved without being, like, involved-involved. And a bunch of Polish oligarchs want Devine to back it.”
“What’s Rawlings say?”
“Doesn’t know. And we don’t want to ask Devine obviously since he needs to, like, chillax and get his brain back online so he doesn’t destroy the known universe.”
“Then no.”
“But it’s supposed to counterbalance terrorism in the—”
“Joey. I’m busy. Let’s not worry about the rial. Let’s worry about Ms. Dumitrescu.”
Movement at the far end of the hall drew his attention. Hanging up, he flattened to the door, an instinct to diminish profile.
Backlighting threw a stooped shadow forward from the landing, a distorted form stretching across the worn carpet of the corridor.
And then she stepped into view.
Anca Dumitrescu stumbled off the top step and leaned against a wall, clutching her lower stomach.
She was missing one shoe, the exposed foot swollen, her shredded dress haphazardly shifted around her torso, barely covering her.
One shoulder was bare, her elbow pinning the fabric to hide her breast. Left eye swollen nearly shut, scrapes and bruises marring her legs and arms, hazel-brown hair a matted tangle.
Had she walked here from Harlem?
Shouldering into the wall for support, she staggered up the corridor toward Evan, not seeming to note his presence. As she drew nearer, he could make out a word penned in Magic Marker across the abraded skin of her cheek.
WHORE.
Stepping away from the door, he faced her, showing his hands out in front of him, the least threatening posture he knew how to assume. Only the moment before she reached him did she register his presence.
Her head tilted back to take him in, cracked lips parting but making no sound.
She collapsed and he caught her as she fell, striking the door with his shoulder, the cross falling off its mount and coming apart on the floor.