4. Delilah
DELILAH
The doctor comes late on the second night.
I'm dozing when the bar lifts, and the sound jolts me awake hard enough that my ribs protest. I've been coughing on and off all day, and every time I do it feels like someone's grinding glass into my chest from the inside.
The man who steps through isn't Shithead. This one's older, maybe sixty, with gray stubble and tired eyes. He's carrying a canvas bag that looks like it predates the Soviet Union, and he doesn't say a word as he crosses to where I'm sitting.
Behind him, Shithead leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed, watching.
The doctor sets the bag down and pulls out a stethoscope. He gestures at my apron. "This needs to come off."
I look at Shithead. "Little help?"
He comes over and unties the bow at my back, then pulls the apron over my head. The doctor doesn't wait. He presses the cold disc against my ribs through my shirt and listens, moving it around every few seconds.
"Breathe in," he says.
I do. The whistle is louder now than it was this morning.
"Out."
I exhale. He moves the stethoscope lower, then around to my back.
"Again."
This time when I breathe in, I cough halfway through and can't stop. He waits until I'm finished.
"Your right lower lung is wet," he says. He pulls a penlight from his bag and shines it in my eyes, checks my pulse, presses two fingers against my throat. "No fever yet, but it's coming. You need antibiotics."
"Great. When?"
"Now." He digs through the bag and comes up with a bottle of pills. He shakes two into his palm and holds them out. "Amoxicillin. Take two now, then two more every twelve hours. Mr. Shithead will bring them."
I blink. "Did you just call him Shithead?"
The doctor doesn't smile, but Shithead makes a noise that might be a laugh if it had any humor in it.
"He told me that's what you call him," the doctor says. "I have no reason to use another name."
I take the pills and dry-swallow them. They stick halfway down and I have to work spit around them until they finally go.
The doctor caps the bottle and hands it to Shithead. "Twice a day. Don't miss a dose or the infection gets worse."
"Got it," Shithead says.
The doctor looks at me again, then at the tape around my ankles. "This also needs to come off."
Shithead straightens. "Boss said—"
"I don't care what your boss said. If she doesn't move, the fluid in her lung will settle and she'll develop pneumonia." He pulls a folding knife from his pocket and flicks it open. "Cut the tape."
Shithead frowns at him, then crouches and saws through the duct tape around my right ankle, then my left. The relief is immediate. I can feel blood rushing back into my feet, pins and needles all the way to my toes.
"She walks ten minutes, twice a day," the doctor says. "Morning and night. She can stay roped to the chair the rest of the time, but she has to move or the antibiotics won't be enough."
"Fine," Shithead says. "But if she tries anything—"
"Then you hit her and tie her back up. I'm not her friend. I'm telling you how to keep her alive."
He snaps the bag shut, stands, and walks out without another word.
Shithead lingers, looking at me with my feet free and the rope still over my shoulder. I wiggle my toes experimentally. It hurts, but in a good way, like stretching after you've been on a plane too long.
"Don't make me regret this," he says.
"I'll try not to jump up and down with joy."
He ignores me and leaves. The bar drops.
I sit there for a minute, just feeling my feet on the concrete, and then I test the rope. It's tight enough that I can't stand all the way up, but I can get into a crouch if I bend forward.
My knees crack.
My calves scream.
I shuffle forward two steps, dragging the chair with me, and nearly fall over.
Okay. Walking is going to take some work.
I spend the next ten minutes doing laps around the basement perimeter, bent double, hands still zip-tied in front of me, the chair scraping along behind. By the time Shithead comes back to retape my ankles, I've made it around three times and I'm sweating through my shirt.
He doesn't say anything. Just tapes me back up and leaves.
That night, I sleep better than I have since I got here.
The walking starts for real the next morning.
Shithead cuts me loose, stands by the door, and watches while I do my laps. I go slow at first, testing how far I can get before my chest starts rattling, but after a few minutes I find a rhythm. The basement isn't big, but it's enough.
On my fourth lap, I make it to the far wall, the one with the stairs going up.
That's when I hear it.
A voice, muffled but distinct, coming from the floor above.
I stop and tilt my head, trying to place it.
There.
A furnace pipe running up through the ceiling, disappearing into the floor joists.
I edge closer, pretending to stretch my legs, and press my ear near the base of the pipe.
"—don't care what he said, the date doesn't work. Push it to the fifteenth or I'm not signing."
It's a man's voice, sharp and impatient. Not Vetrov. Someone younger.
Another voice answers, quieter, and I can't make out the words. Then the first man again: "Then tell him to call me himself. I'm not dealing with Lyudmila anymore."
Footsteps cross the floor above me. A chair scrapes.
I glance at Shithead. He's scrolling through his phone, bored.
I stay by the pipe for another thirty seconds, listening, but the voices move away and I can't hear anything else.
When my ten minutes are up, Shithead tapes me back into the chair.
I don't say a word.
I just sit there and think about that pipe.
Over the next three days, I build a routine.
Morning walk: ten minutes, ending at the wall by the stairs, ear tilted toward the furnace pipe.
Evening walk: same thing.
I don't write anything down. I have nothing to write on, and even if I did, I wouldn't risk it. If they search me and find notes, they'll figure out what I'm doing. So I memorize everything instead, the way I used to memorize recipes before I could afford to print them out on laminated cards.
On day three, I hear the sharp-voiced man again. Marat, someone calls him. Marat Kolchin. He's arguing about dates again, something about Halyard Group and a zoning meeting that got moved.
I repeat the name to myself until it sticks. Marat Kolchin. Halyard Group.
On day four, I hear a woman. Lyudmila, I think, based on what Marat said before. She's on the phone, talking about payments that need to be coded as consulting fees. She lists three names I don't make out and one I do: Berger.
Lyudmila. Consulting fees. Berger.
On day five, I catch part of a conversation between Vetrov and someone I can't identify. They're talking about a record, something stored at Thirty-Ninth Street, and Vetrov says it needs to stay off-site until after the transfer clears.
Thirty-Ninth Street file. Off-site.
I'm not sure what any of it means yet, but I'm collecting it all the same.
On the sixth morning, I'm halfway through my walk when I hear Vetrov's voice, clearer than usual.
He must be standing right over the pipe.
"Fletcher, listen to me. I'm telling you the corridor is yours. Thirty-Ninth to the water. Every parcel. No gaps."
He pauses, listening to whoever must be on the other end.
"The bakery at Forty-Fourth?" he resumes.
"That's the one that burned. Uninsured, from what I understand, at least against business interruption.
Property coverage might take care of a rebuild, but it would still take months, and I have it on good authority that the owner doesn't have the funds to keep the lights on.
Once the smoke clears, she'll sell. People always do when they're desperate. "
My breath catches.
He's talking about my building.
"No, no," Vetrov continues. "You won't have to wait long. A week, maybe two, and she'll take the first offer she gets. Women like her don't have the stamina for a fight."
I press my ear harder against the pipe, my hands curling into fists.
"Of course I'm sure. I've met her. She's already broken."
The voice on the other end says something I can't make out.
Vetrov laughs. It's a dry, papery sound. "Then we'll have a complete assembly, and you'll have your development. Congratulations, Fletcher. You've just bought yourself a piece of Brooklyn."
Footsteps. A door closes.
I stay by the pipe, breathing hard, struggling with more than smoke inhalation.
Broken. He thinks I'm broken.
I shuffle back to the middle of the room and lower myself into the chair just as Shithead opens the door.
He tapes my ankles without a word.
I sit there, staring at the drain in the floor, and I add one more line to the list I'm keeping in my head.
My bakery: not for sale.
That night, the coughing gets worse.
Shithead brings the pills and a cup of water. I take them and don't say anything.
He stands there for a minute, looking at the gauze pad still taped to his face. It's smaller now, the wound underneath starting to heal, but I can still see the edge of the scar I gave him.
"You doing okay?" he asks.
I look up at him. "Define okay."
"You know what I mean."
"I'm taped to a chair in a basement and I'm on day six of a seven-day hostage situation. How do you think I'm doing?"
He almost smiles. Then he picks up the cup and leaves.
I lean my head back and close my eyes.
Tomorrow is day seven.
Tomorrow, if Vetrov keeps his word, I go home.
And when I do, the first thing I'm going to do is make sure he never gets his hands on my building.
The second thing I'm going to do is find Kane and tell him every single name I memorized from that pipe.
Because Vetrov is wrong about one thing.
I'm not broken.
I'm the one who does the breaking.