It’s come to this: Carson’s letting me drive.
We’ve been on the road for six hours, cris-crossing western Milan, hunting for fronts owned by Belknap’s landlord. Milanese traffic is just as bad as L.A.’s, but here the street system’s mostly paved cow paths and looks like linguine. We spend as much time not moving as we do moving.
“Turn right!” Carson barks.
“There isn’t a right!” I bark back. “You see a right here?”
It’d be okay if we were finding good stuff. We’re not. The ten places we’ve seen at least look legitimate and aren’t big enough to hold any collection of art we’d be interested in. By strikeout number seven, Carson’s face was turning a delicate shade of scarlet from screaming at the other drivers. I pried the keys out of her hand (I thought she’d hit me) and refused to start the car until she got in the passenger’s seat.
“Back off, asshole!”
“Me?”
“Him! Back off! Get in line!”
Even worse: we’re in Italy, and she got us a Golf. It’s the right size for this mess, but a German car in Italy? Seriously?
We’re avoiding residential properties. Despite Cornelius Gurlitt and his Munich apartment full of looted art, I doubt Belknap would try to store any significant number of pieces someplace people live. Somebody would notice and get fancy ideas. So we’re tracking down all the commercial and retail space, starting in the city center and working our way westward.
“Get over! Now!”
“Where? There’s no room.”
“Deke in before that asshole pulls up!” Horns scream. “Fuck you! We’re driving here!”
Now I know what “I’m a bad passenger” means.
We’re on Via Sempione, a raised freeway with the huge Fiera Milano conference center to our left and the Expo 2015 grounds on our right. Colorful Expo banners hang from the streetlights. There’s a goofy-looking ear of blue corn in an Indian headdress on the one ahead of us. “Who thought vegetables make good mascots?” I ask the sky.
“There’s the exit! Go!”
We finally break free of the Expo traffic and dive into an industrial area. The parking lots are mostly empty now at seven-thirty. It’s not too nasty, but I’d rather not spend a lot of time here at night. “Where am I going?”
“First left.”
We pass tilt-ups, iron fences, and cement-panel walls smeared with political posters. Nobody’s on the street. A string of small, attached cinder-block warehouses comes up on our right, screened by a line of trees. I let the car creep past the second one down. No lights in the clerestories; the barred window next to the office door is painted out. “This looks promising.”
Carson points down the road. “Park down there.”
We park in front of a tilt-up belonging to Anca (cabling products, judging from the sign) and walk back a block. Carson’s packing that oversized black satchel purse again. I pace off fifty-five feet for the warehouse frontage. There’s no company name anywhere. The roll-up freight door wears a new coat of forest-green paint. Carson uses her x-ray vision on the place as we stroll by. “No cameras outside.”
“Alarms?”
She shrugs and turns around. “Let’s find out.”
She spots the alarm leads on the office window. We cruise to the end of the block, turn right, and reach the alley between our row of warehouses and the next one. A shed’s attached to the back of Belknap’s landlord’s place. Carson picks the lock on the door—of course she has lockpicks—revealing a pile of water-stained banker’s boxes and the warehouse’s back door. She pulls a small-but-deadly-looking black flashlight from her purse and runs its way-too-bright beam along the door seam.
“See anything?”
“No. Doesn’t mean it’s not alarmed. Hold this.” She hands me her light, then rummages through her bag. Out comes a dentist’s mirror on a telescoping handle. She works the mirror under the door, then slides it from jamb to jamb. “Got it. Contact plates up there.” She points toward the top of the door, about a quarter of the way over from the latch side.
“Cameras?”
“Can’t tell.” She drops the mirror into her purse. “Outside.”
The clerestories are mostly barred, fixed-pane windows, but there’s a set of jalousies on either end. The shed’s directly under one of them. I borrow a blue steel barrel from next door and roll it to Carson. In a minute, we’re both on the shed roof (she manages it more gracefully than I do). At least we’re both in jeans. I reach her as she’s sliding louvers out of their frames. “Wait!” I say. “Those might be alarmed.”
“They’re not.”
That’s weird. “See anything?”
“No cameras, if that’s what you mean.” She grabs the front of my polo and pulls me closer to the meter-square hole she’s made in the jalousie. “Look.”
The inside looks like a lot of warehouses I’ve seen: maybe seventy feet deep, steel trusses, concrete slab, a boxed-in office cube against the front wall, stacks of crates here and there. The more interesting part is the rust-red, twenty-foot shipping container in front of us, about fifteen feet from the roll-up door.
I point toward the strip of light under the office door. “Somebody’s home.”
“So be quiet. If this’ it, we’re done ten days early.” Nice thought. Carson points at the conex. “Put art in that?”
“Um… wouldn’t be my first choice, but yeah, you can for a while.” I look it over. “Those vents in the top could let bugs in. Do these usually have vents?”
She peers at the container. Her eyes go slitty and her lips disappear. “No.” She drags on a black ski mask—where did that come from?—then shoulders me out of the way and sticks her legs through the hole.
“Didn’t you hear? Somebody’s inside. We’ll—”
“I’m opening that thing.” She stabs a finger at the conex. “Come along or stay.”
“Wait! Where’s my mask?”
“Here.” She shoves her purse into my chest. It weighs a ton. “That’s why women carry purses, to hold all the man shit.” With that, she drops twelve feet from the hole to the slab, bends her knees and rolls onto her side.
This is such a bad idea. I fumble another ski mask out of the bag and drag it on. She motions for me to drop the purse in, which I do, then jump after it myself. I hit hard and the concrete swats me good, but I can get up with only a little pain and joint-cracking.
We’re in the southwest corner. Stacks of crates clutter the warehouse’s north half. The conex is a good thirty clear feet to the east of me. The office cube takes up the north half of the east wall, with an exterior fire door between it and the roll-up door.
I check the office again—no sign yet of a reaction to us thumping in—then scramble after Carson to the front of the conex.
She’s got her flashlight in her mouth, aimed at the padlock she’s picking. The two full-height doors each have two latches, but only two of the door handles are locked.
Getting in here seems way too easy. I glance up at the trusses. Carson said there aren’t any cameras, but they’re so small now… is she sure? Can she tell if we triggered an alarm? Did we just walk into a bear trap?
What am I doing here? I’ve done my share of bad things, but B&E isn’t one of them. I press my back against the steel door to sop up the sweat trickling down my spine. Think positive. I try to imagine this box full of stolen canvases, like something the Monuments Men found in World War Two. It’s a nice thing to think about as long as I ignore that light under the office door.
Carson pulls the padlock, then opens both latches on the left-hand door. Of course, their squeaks and clunks seem as loud as a metal concert. She swings it open. “You. Bastards.”
Not the reaction I expected. I slide next to her and follow the flashlight beam.
Oh my God.
A dozen faces stare back at us. All young women—most of them really young, like teens—all dirty, all terrified, huddled against the far end of the box. Then the smell hits me: sweat, piss, and whatever’s in the two five-gallon buckets at this end. I gag at both the stench and the thought of what these girls have gone through.
Carson’s breathing like a bull gearing up for a matador. I’m glad I can’t see her face. She growls out a string of the most violent curses I’ve heard from her, which is saying something.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“Trafficked.” She spits out the word. “Future street whores. Take ‘em somewhere, beat ‘em, rape ‘em, hook ‘em on drugs, make ‘em earn their fix on their backs.” Carson shakes her head. “Someone’s gonna pay for this.”
I’m about to say this isn’t our fight when I glance at the women again. Hope’s replaced fear on some of those pale, dirty faces. Can we just leave them like this? Knowing what’s going to happen to them if we do? “Call the cops. Let’s get out of here.”
A hinge creaks behind me. The corner of my right eye catches a spill of light from the office door. Before I can turn, Carson shoves me into the conex. There’s a gunshot. The steel door rings like a hammer hit it. Carson’s disappeared.
Footsteps come closer. I push myself off my knees and flatten against the still-closed conex door. It’s the first place he’ll look, but what else can I do? All I can see of the women is a faint glow where I know their faces are. A couple whimper as the footsteps come closer.
The feet trot by, skid to a stop, then scrape and stop again. Right outside the open door.
A flashlight beam pins the women against the back wall. I throw all my telepathic powers at them. Don’t rat me out, ladies. Look straight ahead or down. Don’t look at me. I’m not one of the bad guys. Um, not one of these bad guys…
Then there’s a watermelon-on-concrete noise. The light tumbles away. The sound of somebody flogging a rolled-up carpet almost covers the women’s gasps.
Carson’s using what looks like a thin, two-foot-long black pipe to beat on a guy in jeans and a black-and-blue Inter Milan tee shirt. There’s already more blood on the floor than I need to see. I bolt from the container, wrap my arms around her waist and haul her away from him, which is like dragging a steel barrel full of mountain lions. I yell “All right! All right! That’s enough!” while she calls me things I’ve never heard of and screams at what’s left of the guard.
After a lot of wrestling and an elbow in my ribs, she calms down enough for me to let her go. She pants loud and hard as she stalks a tight circle a few feet from me. I kick the guard’s gun the other direction. Carson does not need firepower right now.
“I’m calling the cops,” I say once Carson stops swearing. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Not leaving them here.” Her voice is a pit-bull growl.
“What’re we gonna do, put ‘em in the trunk? Let the cops do their thing. This isn’t—”
The front door rattles.
We both freeze. Night watchman? A gust of wind? No, I don’t believe it either.
Carson grabs the guard’s ankles and drags him behind the container. I’m concentrating so hard on the door that I almost miss the clunk of corrugated iron bending behind me. The shed roof. I peek around the container and see the silhouette of somebody crawling toward the open jalousie. Shit shit shit…
“Carson!” I stage-whisper. “The roof!” It’s the only thing my brain can put together for my mouth to say. A Carson-shaped shadow sprints across the warehouse toward some stacked crates. I can take a hint.
She shoves a short pry bar into my hands the moment I flop down next to her. Then she pulls a black cylinder as thick as her thumb out of her purse. It snicks open when she flicks her wrist, and suddenly it’s that steel stick she had a few moments ago.
“What’s that?”
“Baton. Shut up.”
I peek around a crate, see a head sticking through the jalousie, then duck back under cover. By now my hands are shaking—I clamp down on the pry bar to keep them still—and sweat’s dripping into my eyes. I don’t want to die in a warehouse.
The front door clangs open. Two or three pairs of feet shuffle across the slab. Flashlight beams flit across the cinder-block wall. Carson’s biceps flex against my side. Is she preparing to die or getting ready to go medieval on the guards again? I can’t decide which is scarier.
Now she does the peek-and-hide thing, then flashes me some complicated hand signals. “What’s that mean?” I whisper.
“Three down here, one on overwatch.”
“Overwatch” must be the guy on the shed roof. He can see the whole floor.
We’re pinned like butterflies on felt.
The new guys mutter snippets of Italian to each other. Something crackles under a boot. There’s a whispered conference near the container. Hushed footsteps and clinking metal tell when they’re on the move, which is almost constantly.
Carson glances into the twilight. She shoves her purse with her feet across the couple yards of open floor to the next stack of crates, then rolls silently after it. Don’t go! I want to scream. I may not trust her much, but I’d rather have her here than way over there.
A blue-white flash catches the corner of my right eye. I risk moving my head a fraction and see a dark shape—it’s almost night in here—swing a rifle-mounted spotlight behind the clot of boxes nearest the front door. The light doesn’t stop. It dances around the first stack, then behind the second. In moments the gunman and his light are next door, just a few feet away on the other side of my crates. I wipe my palms on my jeans, choke up on the pry bar, and try to stop gasping for breath.
Something pings on the other side of the warehouse, like a coin hitting concrete.
The gunman swivels his rifle to aim at the noise. The other guys’ shouting fills the room.
Pure stupidity or pure panic grabs me by the throat and yanks. I clutch the pry bar against the hammering in my chest and roll to the crates the gunman just checked. An instant later, he pivots and inspects the place I’d left. Way too close.
The light sideslips to the next stack, where Carson’s hiding.
If they catch her, they’ll find me. That coin-drop sound must’ve been her. She’s gotta still be here and there aren’t many places left to hide.
Off in the distance, a two-tone siren’s getting louder.
I scramble to the next bunch of crates, set my work phone to ring, then slide it toward the conex. It scrapes along the concrete, but there’s enough of that going on that nobody seems to notice. Then I take a deep breath and call my work phone from the burner.
An old-fashioned telephone ringer screams in the middle of the floor.
Yelling, running, a shot, loud as hell in this echo chamber. A flicker of movement off to my left: one human shape turning into two turning into one again. I cut the call before it rolls to voicemail, then turn off my ringer in case the bad guys are bright enough to try to call back.
Back where the gunman was, a figure and the light sweep the rest of the crates. Carson, or a bad guy? What exactly did I see when everyone was chasing my phone?
The siren’s a lot louder.
One of the other gunmen barks out an order. I risk a look and see two shapes rush toward the front door. The jalousie’s empty. A third figure heads for the back, then disappears in the murk. The only sounds left are my heart pounding and the siren growing closer.
Where’s Carson?
I race to the last place I saw her. There’s only empty floor. I walk a circle until my foot plows into a body. I jump back, swearing like Carson. Man up, dude. Using my personal phone as a flashlight, I creep up to the body, hoping it’s not Carson with a cut throat.
It’s a guy. His head’s all bloody and his hands are in plastic handcuffs. His rifle’s gone and his pistol holster’s empty. He’s not available for comment.
“Carson?” It sounds like yelling even though it’s not much more than a loud whisper. Nothing. “Carson!” More nothing.
Two possibilities: she’s dead on the floor, or she’s left me here. I do a quick sweep of the north half of the warehouse and don’t find her corpse. I’m not sure whether I should be relieved or furious, so I try for both. I check the container: no Carson, just a dozen freaked-out-crying-moaning girls a long way from home. What do I do with them?
Flashing blue lights bounce off the front clerestories, giving the room a nightclub vibe. Another siren closes in from the other direction. The cops’ll come in soon, and I don’t need that kind of company, not standing in a warehouse full of kidnapped women and two half-dead guys. “Sorry, ladies,” I tell them, not that I expect them to understand. “Police. Home. Good luck.”
As I reach the back door, I remember: my phone. Did they take it? I call it from my burner but don’t hear the ringtone. I’ve lost both my partner and my work phone. Outstanding.
The back alley’s deserted. I slither to the street, wait for a cop car to go by, then pull off my mask and stroll to Anca, using the trees to shield me. The blue lights cast weird shadows and make everything look undead, even the walls.
The car’s gone.
Carson’s gone.
God damn it.