I walked back to Riordan’s condo, left the file on the dining room table, and went to sleep on the couch to clear my head.
I got a good five hours of sleep, nightmare-free this time, and awoke a little before nine in the morning. To clear my head, I went to Riordan’s gym to get a good workout. Riordan had austere tastes in general, but he hadn’t skimped on his gym, and it had a full collection of free weights and exercise machines. I started with a five-mile run on the treadmill to warm up, and then did weight exercises, focusing on my legs and shoulders. After, I took a nice hot bath and got dressed in black jeans and a gray sweater.
Then I took an enormous mug of coffee and my laptop to the dining room table, opened the file Tyth had given me, and got to work.
The High Queen hadn’t been kidding when she said that working for her meant access to better information sources. There was a lot of information about Joseph Sulzer in the file. I could have found it on my own, but it would have taken days of work to gather it all.
Sulzer was 59 years old, and he was the eldest son of the late Anthony Sulzer, who (surprise, surprise) had been a wealthy businessman and New York state senator with connections to the New York crime syndicate. Joseph Sulzer had served his mandatory six years as a man-at-arms in the forces of Baron Kaldmask of Brooklyn and Duke Mythrender of Manhattan. He had completed his term of service without any disciplinary actions, though he hadn’t reenlisted, and had gone to work for his father’s business empire. And it was a fairly large empire – the Sulzer family owned big chunks of Brooklyn and had controlling shares in several of the national chains that the Elven nobles allowed to operate.
He had gotten elected to Congress for the first time at the age of 40, and he had kept his seat in all nine elections since. Shortly after his third reelection, old Anthony Sulzer died, and Joseph had taken over the family empire. Homeland Security had investigated him for bribery a half a dozen times, and the list of investigations against his holdings and companies filled most of the file, but thanks to his lawyers and his own native cunning, none of the charges had ever stuck. Sulzer was a terrible landlord, with his apartment buildings just barely adhering to code, and he was notorious for the grim sanitary standards at his restaurants and the sloppy bookkeeping at his retail establishments. The sloppy bookkeeping, one Homeland Security investigator believed, was a cover for embezzlement.
It was that potential embezzlement that had drawn the eye of the Inquisition. Several very large sums had been moved out of the accounts of Sulzer’s companies and transferred to a shipping company called Expedited Wheels. Expedited Wheels, as it happened, had been one of the companies that Nicholas had used both for laundering money and moving armaments for the Rebels.
It occurred to me that there was more than enough here for Homeland Security to act on, but with the aftermath of the Rebel defeat and the Day of Return, Homeland Security had too much on its plate.
Which was why the High Queen had given me this job.
After about two hours of reading, I got up, stretched, visited the bathroom to empty my bladder of all the coffee I had drunk, and paced the condo, thinking.
I need irrefutable proof to bring down Sulzer. But that wasn’t the sort of thing he would just leave lying around. He hadn’t survived this long by doing stupid things. Sulzer would keep anything really incriminating close at hand. On his person, in his private office, or secured in a place no one else could access.
That meant I was going to have to follow him for a while.
My phone rang. I had left it next to my laptop, and I glanced down at the screen, wondering if Exeter was going to call me with new instructions.
But it was Riordan’s number.
I grinned, snatched up the phone, and dropped onto the couch. “Hello?”
“Hello, Nadia,” said Riordan, his voice deep and quiet. I felt myself smiling. “How’s the condo?”
“It’s way too damned big,” I said. “Honestly, it’s a good thing you married me because this is too much space for one person. How’s London?”
“Rainy,” said Riordan. “The same way it always is. The food’s bad, but the tea is good. Our business trip is going well. I think we should be back in a week.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said. We couldn’t discuss the Shadow Hunters or the High Queen over the phone. There were too many ways to listen in to a phone call. “I’ve got a job from my boss.”
“Do you?” said Riordan, a note of caution entering his voice. “Not a bad one, I hope.”
“Nah,” I said. “Just a lot of research, and then some legwork. I’ve done way worse things.”
“Nadia,” said Riordan, “considering some of the worse things you’ve had to do, that’s not reassuring.”
I laughed. “I suppose not. But by my standards, this is tame. Hell, by the standards of anyone with my skill set, this is tame. You don’t have to come rushing back from the UK to rescue me.”
“I could,” said Riordan, “if you needed me to.”
I felt both touched and a little guilty. Riordan would come if I asked him. I knew how far he would go to help me because I had seen how far he had already gone. And that did make me feel guilty. I mean, we were married, and I knew he took that as seriously as I did, but I wondered if he could have done better than me. I’m a complicated and abrasive and sometimes unstable woman, and maybe he could have married someone better-natured and taller…
I shoved that thought out of my head.
“I know,” I said. “But it will be okay. I don’t think this is going to be a complicated job. Besides, I wish I had come with you to London. You could probably have used my help.”
“We could have,” said Riordan. “Not many people have that skill set of yours, Nadia.”
“Well, thank God for that.”
We chatted for another ten minutes. I mentioned that I would have to buy some more coffee, and Riordan told me about this enormous pantry cupboard in the kitchen that I hadn’t realized existed. Then he told me that he loved me, and I told him that I loved him, and we ended the call.
I let out a long breath and stared at the ceiling for a minute. I really missed him – but the call had made me feel better.
Back to work, then.
If I wanted damning evidence on Sulzer, I needed to get it from him. And to get the evidence from him, I would need to follow him, get to know his patterns.
I sat back at my laptop and started checking some things. Congress wasn’t convened after the extraordinary sessions following the Day of Return, which meant that Sulzer was probably back in New York. I found his official website, which featured his smiling face beaming from the banner graphic on the top of the page and located an official schedule. Congressman Sulzer was indeed in Brooklyn today. Right now, he was touring a new plastics factory. Then he had meetings with various important locals, and at 8 PM tonight, he was going to have an informal fundraiser and party at a dining club and bar charmingly called the Cattleman’s Pride, located in a refurbished warehouse in the old meat-packing district of Brooklyn. It wasn’t one of the restaurants that Sulzer or one of his companies owned, so I assumed it belonged to one of his chief supporters. Or maybe the local syndicate.
On my laptop, I looked up the club’s address, and then its official website.
Hoo boy.
I was greeted by a picture of a waitress wearing a skintight pair of shorts and a belly-bearing T-shirt with a very low neckline, winking at the camera as she held a tray of beers and cardboard cartons of onion rings. A quick perusal of the club’s website revealed that it was a “dining club” that offered a variety of “entertainment and relaxation” experiences for the “discerning gentleman,” which was a polite way of saying that it was a strip club. And if the place had links to the local crime syndicate, that also meant some off-the-books prostitution and drug dealing took place there.
A classy guy, Congressman Sulzer.
Still, if he was going to a strip club for a fundraiser, he was probably going to drink a lot, and that meant his guard would be down. That would make for an excellent opportunity to go through his briefcase or to copy the memory card of his cell phone.
First, I needed to do some reconnaissance.
I had driven Riordan to the airport, so the vehicle he used in New York was still in the building’s subterranean garage. He preferred a pickup truck, but that was an unsuitable vehicle for Manhattan’s cramped streets, so instead, he kept an SUV here. (The pickup truck was still in Milwaukee, where we had left it before flying to Arizona for our honeymoon.) The SUV was older and unpretentious, which I preferred. It wasn’t the sort of vehicle to draw attention.
It was about noon by then, so I forced my way through the lunchtime traffic (a quarter of the surface streets were still damaged and closed after the Rebel attack) and made my way across the East River to Brooklyn’s meat-packing district. Or the “historic meat-packing district” as the tourist commercials liked to say. These days it’s mostly fancy retail stores and restaurants, though I think some actual meatpacking plants still operated along the river. Guess it’s easier to move cows up the river in a boat than to drive a trailer through the streets.
The Cattleman’s Pride was at the southern edge of the district, and it didn’t quite fit in.
It occupied an old three-story warehouse of weathered red brick. Unlike most of the businesses and the restaurants in the area, there were absolutely no windows on the ground floor, and the windows on the top two floors were concealed beneath heavy black blinds. Whatever went on in the Cattleman’s Pride, the owners didn’t want anyone to be able to see it from the street. The door was a massive slab of steel, a security camera mounted over it, and a discreet sign posted next to the door said that business hours were from 7 PM to 3 AM. Though I expected that the workers would arrive several hours before that to start preparing food and setting up for the evening. Should I try to sneak in and Mask myself as a worker?
No, that might not be possible, depending on the level of security. If the club was a syndicate operation, security would know all the employees on sight. Better to attend as a guest. I could Mask myself as part of the standard crowd, and with my Cloak spell, it would be easy to get close to Sulzer. There was a parking ramp a few blocks from the Cattleman’s Pride, and I could stash Riordan’s SUV there and make my way to the club on foot.
Having settled on a plan, I spent the rest of the day driving to Sulzer’s various properties in Brooklyn, taking a quick look at them. His official Congressional office was a grandiose thing that looked like a courthouse, and I wondered how much taxpayer money had gone into building the damned eyesore. Dozens of people worked there, no doubt cronies he had repaid with cushy jobs. There was a lot of private security, so I bypassed the place for now. I drove past the various other restaurants and retail establishments Sulzer owned. The restaurants were all fast-food places with a distinctly greasy air to them, and the retail stores all looked a bit shabby. Sulzer seemed like a typical corrupt politician and local magnate.
But those transfers to Expedited Wheels…
At 7:30 PM, I drove to the parking garage, paid too much to store the SUV there, and headed for the club. In the stairwell, out of sight of any security cameras, I cast the Masking spell. I disguised myself as an overweight middle-aged man in a business suit with thinning hair and a wedding ring. The sort of guy who might stop by the Cattleman’s Pride after a long day to watch the dancers before heading home to his wife and kids. Everyone would ignore a guy like him, which was exactly what I wanted.
I walked to the club and found a line waiting at the front door. Two scowling bouncers stood guard by the door, dressed in expensive suits. They made no effort to hide the bulge of shoulder holsters beneath their coats, and I suspected they also did work as enforcers for the local criminal bosses. It was a mixture of people in the line – some middle-aged men, but quite a few younger men, and a few younger women who hung on the arms of their dates.
After a wait of about twenty minutes, I made it to the head of the line. The bouncers gave my Masked appearance a blank look.
“Cover charge is twenty dollars,” said one of the men.
Twenty? Jeez.
I handed over the money, and the bouncers nodded and let me through the steel door.
At once the music hammered my ears. The main floor of the Cattleman’s Pride was a big room packed with standing-only tables, a long bar lining the right-hand wall. The lights were dim and the air smoky with nicotine, which some people no doubt thought was ambiance, but I just found annoying. Waitresses in tight shorts and tank tops circulated through the room, carrying trays of food and drink. At the far wall was a raised stage, and a half-dozen dancers gyrated around poles.
Their costumes...well, let’s just say that technically the Cattleman’s Pride wasn’t a strip club, but it only achieved that through the dancers’ strategic use of thongs and tassels. I had to admit it was something of an athletic feat for anyone to dance that energetically in platform heels that high.
On the left side of the room was an elevated stage with more tables. A velvet rope closed off the stairs, and two more bouncers stood guard there. The tables on the raised stage already had a good crowd, and I saw men in suits laughing and drinking, with women wearing not much clothing circulating among them.
I spotted Joseph Sulzer sitting against the wall, smoking a cigar, a half-dozen men nodding as he talked. He was overweight, verging on obese, but despite that, he looked dangerous. Unlike the others, he wasn’t drinking, and he ignored both the dancers and the “escorts” nearby, his eyes never stopping their scan of the crowd. I made sure to look away before he saw me. He looked like a dangerous, alert man, and I understood how he had managed to stay ahead of Homeland Security all those years.
I made my way to an unoccupied table and leaned against it. It was a bit sticky. Ew.
A trick of the Mask spell let me arrange my disguise so it looked like I was watching the dancers, but my full attention was on Sulzer’s little party. I spotted a briefcase on the table next to him, some documents spread out around it. That would be my target, I thought, along with the phone I saw sitting on top of the papers. As soon as I saw a good opening, I would Cloak and make my way onto the stage, grab the papers, and get out of there.
Sulzer laughed and gestured with his cigar, and suddenly his eyes fell on me. I had the distinct feeling he was looking right at me, maybe that even he recognized me. But that was impossible. I had made my Mask spell random. I hadn’t based it on anyone...
“Hi! How are you doing tonight?” said a woman’s voice with a distinct Brooklyn accent.
I turned my head.
Of course. Sulzer hadn’t been looking at me. He had been ogling the waitress.
One of the waitresses came up to my table, smiling a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. She wore very short, very tight denim shorts that displayed toned, smooth pale legs, and her black tank top with its red beer company logo looked like it had been painted on. Her long blond hair hung around her shoulders, and she had big brown eyes in a sharp-featured face adorned with a good deal of eyeshadow and makeup. The name tag pinned to the left strap of her tank top read MARIANNA, and even without her high-heeled sandals, she would have been three or four inches taller than me.
Which, irrationally, annoyed me. I know, I know. I’m not insecure about my height, I’m just really annoyed how everyone is taller than I am.
“Thanks, but I don’t want anything,” I said. “I’m just here to watch the show.”
Her smile turned apologetic. “Manager says you have to buy something. Otherwise, I have to talk to security, and talking to security always ruins my night.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll have a diet soda and some onion rings.” I thrust a ten-dollar bill in her direction. “Keep the change.”
Her thin-lipped smile thinned just a little. Given how much this place overcharged, there wouldn’t be much money left over. But Marianna the waitress smiled and swayed off through the crowd. I watched Sulzer’s party. It looked like a table had been set for dinner. When he and his guests sat down to eat, I decided, I would Cloak and grab both the papers and his phone. Either I would find something incriminating, or they would lead me to something incriminating, and that would be that.
“Here you go,” said Marianna about five minutes later, returning with a glass of ice, a can of diet soda, and a little cardboard tray of onion rings that smelled like grease. “You just yell if you need anything else, got it?”
“Got it,” I said, and Marianna disappeared again.
Ordering the onion rings had been a mistake. The smell of the grease threatened to set off my nausea, and I was grateful that the smell of cigarette smoke helped suppress it. Given the general standards of cleanliness in the club, there was no way I was eating anything here, or drinking out of any of the glasses, so I opened the diet soda and sipped from the can as I pretended to watch the gyrating dancers. Or, at least, my Masking spell did. I kept my eyes on the stage with Sulzer’s private fundraiser. Several waitresses and busboys set up plates and silverware, and a moment later five waitresses carrying massive round trays loaded with food headed up to the stage, Marianna among them. I watched as the waitresses set up the plates, and Sulzer and his cronies got up and headed to the table.
And as they did, Marianna ducked for a moment next to the end table holding Sulzer’s briefcase and phone.
It happened so quickly, and she did it so smoothly that if I hadn’t been looking right at her, I wouldn’t have seen it. Neither Sulzer or any of his guests saw it, else they would have reacted with alarm. Had Marianna taken anything from the table?
No. Marianna had put a second phone down next to Sulzer’s, one slightly bulkier and thicker…
Wait. It was a regular phone, but it was in a bulky case.
Specifically, a mirroring case.
It was a highly specific hacking tool, and one massively illegal for anyone but Homeland Security and the Inquisition to use. When placed within a meter of another phone, a mirroring case hacked the targeted phone, installed a hidden surveillance app in secret, and then mirrored the contents of the phone. So long as the connection remained active, you could see everything that was happening on the phone, though you couldn’t control it remotely. I had used them a few times on jobs for Morvilind, and civilian use of a mirroring case carried a massive fine.
What was Marianna doing with one?
I was pretty sure she wasn’t actually a waitress.
I wondered who she was working for. An Elven noble? Another crime lord? Maybe she was an Inquisition agent.
But a new plan formed in my mind. If I got that mirroring case away from Marianna, it would do half my work for me. I could monitor Sulzer’s activity for a few days, and if he used that phone for any illegal business, that could lead me to the evidence I needed.
Of course, that assumed Marianna managed to get that mirroring case away from the stage without Sulzer or his goons noticing. A guy like Sulzer would recognize a mirroring case at once, and I’m sure his goons and most of his guests would. I had to admire Marianna’s cool as she put out plates of food and glasses of beer with a big smile on her face. She had to know that if anyone realized that she was spying on Sulzer, they might kill her.
But Sulzer and his friends must have been hungry because they started eating and drinking at once. Marianna stepped back, still smiling, holding one of the huge round trays before her.
It made for the perfect shield as her left hand darted back, plucked up the phone in its mirroring case, and slipped it into the back pocket of her shorts. No one noticed. The bulky phone was obvious in her tight shorts, but most of the waitresses had phones in their back pockets anyway.
And all I had to do was relieve Marianna of her phone, and then I could spy on Sulzer at my leisure.
I took one last swig of diet soda, pushed away from the table, and headed across the floor to the men’s room. I definitely didn’t want to use any of the toilets in this building, but that was all right.
I stepped through the door, dropped my Masking spell, cast the Cloak spell, and slipped back onto the floor before the door swung all the way closed. To anyone who had been watching me, it would have looked like I (or my Masked disguise) had just gone into the men’s room. I could stay Cloaked while walking around for about eleven minutes, but that would be long enough to pick Marianna’s pocket.
I spotted Marianna heading across the floor, the tray tucked under her arm, the phone still visible in her back pocket. She disappeared through the kitchen doors, and I followed as fast as I could. Which wasn’t fast. Ever try moving across a crowded room while invisible? It’s harder than you might think because people can’t see you and you have to make sure you don’t walk into anyone. But I managed it, and I followed another waitress through the kitchen door. The kitchen was big, hot, and none too clean, and a small army of cooks labored over a row of deep fryers and grills.
Yeah. The Cattleman’s Pride wasn’t big on health food.
I spotted Marianna near the alley door.
“Hey!” she called to one of the other waitresses. “I’m taking my break. Be back in fifteen.” The other woman nodded.
Marianna opened the alley door and slipped out.
I jogged across the kitchen and darted through the alley door before it slammed shut.
The alley behind the Cattleman’s Pride was even more disgusting than the club itself. An overflowing dumpster sat against one wall, and I saw a pair of rats dart underneath it. The only light came from a halogen bulb mounted in a steel cage over the door.
Marianna walked down the alley at a brisk pace. I realized she wasn’t coming back. She had been there to mirror Sulzer’s phone, and now that the mission was accomplished, she was getting the hell out of there.
Smart. That was the way to do it.
I felt almost bad that I had to steal the phone from her.
Wrapped in the Cloak spell, I followed her unseen.
***