After the Golden Age

EIGHTEEN

AS she entered the lobby of West Plaza, she called up to the penthouse. No one answered. The Olympiad was already gone.

Damon Parks smiled a greeting and held up a plastic card to her. “Your father left this for you.”

Damn. She’d half-expected him to back out of his part of the agreement.

“You coming to work for him now?” he said.

“Who knows? He might be the only person in town who’ll hire me.”

“I doubt that. This mess of a trial will blow over soon enough. Especially if this sort of thing keeps up.” He held up the front page of the Eye, the issue that screamed that the Destructor was controlling the crime spree from prison. Parks clicked his tongue. “Good old Destructor, at it again.”

She frowned. “I don’t think it’s the Destructor. He’s in prison, out of commission. Someone else is behind this.”

“If the Destructor isn’t the mastermind, who is?” He watched her closely, like he was asking a test question and not making small talk.

“If I knew, I’d call the cops.” Anonymously, this time. “There’s got to be some connection between all these guys—the Baxter Gang, the Strad Brothers, the guys from the pool. Someone just has to figure out what the link is.”

“And that link’ll be the mastermind?”

“Or it’ll lead us to the mastermind. I don’t know, maybe it’s just wishful thinking, that the Destructor really is finished.”

Parks folded the paper away and smiled. Celia moved on to the elevators.

The records department—a climate-controlled, brightly lit cavern of a room with row after row of steel shelves, located in the skyscraper’s basement—was in the process of scanning all the records into digital format. The job was set to take years, because as Warren had said, the company never threw anything away. Only a dozen or so sets of shelves were empty. At a computer workstation, banker’s boxes sat on open tables near scanners and high-powered shredders. All was quiet now, but the equipment probably made a hell of a racket during the workweek.

They hadn’t yet gotten to the year she was looking for. She wouldn’t be able to use a nifty computerized search engine to help her find the file on the Leyden building. The old-fashioned way it was, then. Even with the high-tech air filtration system in a modern facility, the place still smelled like archival storage: old paper, stale manila folders, cardboard, and dust. Libraries and accountants’ basements all over the world smelled like this. It was the scent of information waiting to be discovered.

She wondered, if the West Corp people transferring all this paper to the computer had come across the Leyden file, would they have noticed if it mentioned a connection to Sito? Would it have tripped the recognition in their minds that it had in hers? If so, would they have said anything?

She was meant to be here, digging up this data. No one else knew the connections. No one else could find it.

It took her three hours of looking in banker’s boxes, scanning the neatly typed labels on hundreds of legal-size manila folders. Real estate deals, stock acquisitions, mergers, sales—every deal possible to make in business was represented. Jacob West had had his fingers in a lot of pies. Oil, telecommunications, entertainment, government contracts. He’d started out importing diamonds, but quickly diversified. Economic downturns had never affected him.

Finally, she found a surprisingly thin folder labeled Leyden Industrial Park.

She filled out the appropriate form needed to take information out of the archives and slipped a card into the folder’s place in the box. If she followed procedure, her father wouldn’t have any reason to reprimand her. Really, though, she wasn’t a West Corp employee. She wasn’t entitled to remove files from storage.

She really might break down and ask her father for a job, if no one else hired her.

Feeling a bit like Pandora, she sat at an austere desk in the archives room and opened the folder.

A cover memo addressed to Jacob West outlined experiments in bioengineering. Celia couldn’t find a more detailed description than that. These were accounting records, not lab reports. The file included a list of assets, which she hoped might give her some clue as to what the experiments involved. Most of the entries were for machines with complicated names that Celia couldn’t guess the purposes of. The ones she recognized—oscillators and autoclaves—were generic, used for all sorts of purposes in every kind of lab. They could be found in dentists’ offices.

She set aside that list and turned to the payroll data. Here, she made some progress. West Corp not only owned the building, it had signed the paychecks for the dozen or so people who worked there during that time. She looked for one particular name first, and found it: Dr. Simon Sito was on the West Corp payroll. She was going to have to show this to her father.

The name right above Sito’s was Anna Riley. Her position was listed as stenographer. Suzanne’s mother’s name was Anna Riley. It might have been a different Anna Riley, except her age at the time, twenty-five, was about right.

Celia called her mother’s cell. Suzanne didn’t answer, which didn’t surprise Celia, but she left a message so she wouldn’t forget to ask the question later. “Hi, Mom. I have a weird question for you. What did Grandma Riley do for a living? Thanks.”

The prickling on the back of her neck grew even stronger when she came across the last name Baker. Analise’s last name was Baker. George Baker was listed as a lab technician. But Baker was a common last name, surely no relation.

Celia didn’t know if Analise was talking to her or not, so she didn’t call.

The last entry in the expenses portion of the trial balance was for a benefits payoff to employees. This cleaned out the account for the Leyden Industrial Park lab project. West Corp abandoned the property to the city, washing its hands of the place utterly.

What had happened there that one of the city’s most powerful investment companies didn’t try to salvage anything from the aftermath?

This was like trying to identify astronomical bodies by their distant gravitational effects. Celia was circling around the real mystery with no way of seeing it directly. That was usually how her job went. She never caught the bad guys red-handed, and only ever knew they were bad at all by the unlikely amounts of money they shuffled around.

If she’d wanted it any other way, if she’d wanted to be at the center of things, she’d have become a cop.

Somebody somewhere had to have a real lab report, something detailing the actual experiment. Most of the employees on the list had been in their twenties and thirties. A few of them should still be alive. The older ones, maybe not. She copied out the list of employees and found a phone book.

She put a check mark by Sito’s name; she knew where he was, and knew the likelihood that he’d tell her anything of use. Anna Riley—if it was the same Anna Riley—had passed away twelve years ago. Celia put a question mark by her name. Then she started at the top of the list and made calls.

“Hi, I’m with the DA’s office—” This fib would get her in serious trouble if it got back to Bronson, but what did she have to lose? “This isn’t anything serious, but I’m trying to track down some information. I’m looking for a Harold Kleinbrenner who might have worked as a lab technician about fifty years ago? Is that you?”

No, that was Harold Kleinbrenner Jr.’s father. Harold Senior had died of prostate cancer twenty years ago.

Sorry, wrong Gerald Stowe.

Aaron Masters was dead. So was Lawrence Donaldson.

After an hour of calling wrong numbers and dead ends, Celia had written “dead” by half the names. Four had question marks. They either had unlisted numbers, or no relatives who could vouch for them.

Finally she came to the end of the list. A woman answered the number listed in the phone book.

Celia said, “Is this Janet Travers?”

“Yes?”

“Are you the Janet Travers who worked as a lab tech at a place called the Leyden Industrial Park about fifty years ago?”

The phone line hissed and whispered during a pause. Then the woman said, “Yes.”

Celia whispered a prayer of thanks to the data gods. “I’m working with the DA’s office tracking down some information. Do you think I could ask you a few questions?”

Her voice was steady, but soft, whispering almost. “About what?”

“What kind of research was being conducted there? What experiments were going on? I haven’t been able to find any formal lab reports.”

“That was a very long time ago. I don’t really remember.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I was a bench tech. I processed samples, that’s all. I wasn’t privy to the overall results, Miss … What did you say your name was?”

Celia wanted very much to skip over that part. “Ms. Travers, Simon Sito worked at that lab. Can you tell me anything about—”

Janet Travers hung up.

Well. There was a thread that needed following.

At the end of the day, she collected her notes, and headed to the penthouse to find out if the museum had been robbed yet.

In the elevator, she ran the key card through the reader authorizing penthouse access. The ride up would take a good long time. Plenty of time to consider her chances on the job market. Maybe there was still time for the trial to produce another scandal that would boot her out of the headlines.

The only thing she had to look at was her reflection in the brushed steel wall across from her: red hair pushed back with a headband, baggy sweatshirt and sweats, sneakers, file folder hugged to her chest, the whole image blurred and warped. She might have been sixteen again, coming home from school. She was grown up now; she just didn’t feel like it.

The lights flashed to abrupt darkness and the elevator lurched to a stop. She braced against the wall; an emergency light came on, making the steel walls glow red. Her face looked sunburned in the reflection.

She stood still, frozen, waiting to hear something—a groan of gears restarting, someone forcing a door. Her blood pounded in her ears; all else was sickeningly silent.

The Stradivarius Brothers couldn’t possibly infiltrate West Plaza. Impossible. Not with West Corp security, not with the Olympiad’s sensors in place. Seconds ticked by, and every one of them dragged.

She was trapped, and they were coming for her.

The intercom crackled on. She flinched.

“Hi, is anyone in there?” A young man spoke. He sounded almost friendly. “If anyone’s there, could you pick up the phone behind the panel?”

Under the floor buttons, a panel had a sticker with an image of a phone on it. Celia opened the door and found the receiver.

“Yes? I’m in here.” She spoke ever so calmly. Her whole body was clenched tight with nerves, but she made her voice calm.

“Okay, ma’am. I’m Jeff, in maintenance. We were running some routine checks on this part of the building when the power accidentally cut off. We’re working on getting the elevators restarted. We should have you out of there real soon, just a few minutes. You okay?”

She almost laughed, but for Jeff’s sake, swallowed back the insane cackles. “Yes, I think so. Thanks for telling me.”

“I didn’t think anyone was working today. You’re pretty on the ball, eh?”

She wondered if she should tell him she was Warren West’s daughter.

“I just had to pick something up,” she said.

“Well, ma’am, you hang tight and we’ll get you going any minute now.”

She still believed the kidnappers were waiting for her, even after the lights came back on and the elevator resumed its climb. When the car stopped at the penthouse, her heart started racing again. She expected the doors to open and reveal masked gunmen. Even here, even at the Olympiad’s secure headquarters.

The doors opened, and Arthur stood before her.

“I could feel your anxiety twenty floors away. I was coming to check on you.”

This time she did laugh, slumping against the elevator wall. “I’m just paranoid,” she said. “Stupidly, blindly paranoid. The elevator stalled, and I thought … I just assumed somebody was about to kidnap me. Here, of all places.”

Mentis said, “Come out of there. Have a seat and catch your breath, all right?”

The sun was sinking behind skyscrapers outside the wall of windows. She hadn’t realized how late it was. He walked with her to the living room, sat her on the sofa, then went to the wet bar in the corner, more of a decorative piece than having any real function, or so Celia thought. She was shocked and pleased when Mentis found a bottle of bourbon and poured a shot into a tumbler.

He brought it to her, and she smiled. “That’s exactly what I wanted right now.”

“I know.”

Simple as that. No questions, no snap judgments.

“Robbie would have tried to feed me hot cocoa, like I’m still twelve.”

“I think Robbie misses being the fun uncle. He hasn’t quite figured out how to relate to you as an adult.”

“You always just treated me like a human being. I preferred that, I think.”

He offered a fleeting smile, then indicated the file folder still clutched in her arms. “What have you got there?”

She regarded the folder, which now seemed insignificant, a piece of historical flotsam. “The next trail marker, I hope. I’ve been tracing some of Sito’s assets for the DA. He worked for a laboratory that was housed in a building that West Corp owned fifty years ago. Lucky for me, West Corp doesn’t destroy records.”

“Still working, even after being laid off?”

“This is plan B,” she said.

An alarm sounded—the usual alarm, which meant the usual trouble. Mentis touched a hidden panel in the wall; the piece of wood slid back to reveal a small computer terminal and a comm headset. He typed a few keys, and the alarm shut off, but the computer monitor still flashed red, and Mentis put the earpiece to his head.

Ah, just like old times. Celia waited for the verdict, quietly sipping her bourbon and letting it melt the fear from her nerves.

After a few minutes, Mentis shut down the computer and closed the terminal. When he turned back to her, even he looked somber. She couldn’t taste the bourbon anymore.

“That was your mother,” he said. “The History Museum’s been attacked. They didn’t take anything; we were ready for them. They’re in custody. But she said Chief Appleton is on his way over here to bring you in for questioning.”

She almost asked why, out of reflex. But she knew. She’d guessed right. She’d known what the bad guys were going to do next, and that made her a suspect. If she’d been one of the Olympiad, they’d have been patting her on the back for her insight.

But a former member of Sito’s operation? She was a suspect.

“Well. I guess I’ll go down to the lobby to meet them,” she said, and drained the rest of the bourbon.