The Vaults (30 page)

Some hints were here. He knew of St. Mark’s and All Souls’—an orphanage and an asylum, respectively. The orphanage, in particular, was rumored to be squalid and neglected. These convicted killers seemed to be contributing money to these two institutions and another, St. Agnes’. But why? To what end? It was hard to imagine a label more vague than General Fund, and that most of the money was going into it made it particularly frustrating. But the amount of money was what was truly curious. How were these convicted murderers coming up with this kind of money? It was hard to figure, especially if they were out in the sticks like Freeman’s Gap.

Bernal had said that these papers and a meeting with Samuelson would give him the full picture. From what he had here, it did seem that an explanation from an insider would be revealing. With this in mind he set his alarm for six and crawled into bed. It was four thirty in the morning.

There was a new shift of minders the next morning, a tall one with a crooked nose and his partner, a human pit bull, all jaw and shoulders. Puskis went through the conversation about keeping his own per diem all over again. Crooked Nose seemed less inclined to go along with it until Puskis told him that the previous day’s shift had allowed it, at which point the minder relented, his discretion lasting as long as his culpability.

Breakfast at Kostas’ was considerably busier than dinner—the turnover faster, the talking louder. The two officers had an intense conversation about a boxing match they had attended the other night. It sounded as if the Pit Bull had lost a fair amount of money when a fighter named Tino Juarez had knocked out his guy.

“When did that little wetback get cojones?” he complained to his partner, who made sympathetic noises.

The conversation gave Puskis time to think. Police officers had moved desks and two machines that looked like huge typewriters into the Vaults. The officer in charge said that more machines would be added as they progressed through the files and more room became available. Today the people who would actually use the machines were to arrive, and the converting of the files to the form used by Ricks’s machine would begin. The first day of the Vaults’ death throes.

The officers’ gabbing had slowed their eating, and their plates were still fairly full when Puskis finished.

“I’m going to pay my bill,” Puskis said as he stood.

The officers nodded at this and watched as he strode to the counter.

“Good morning, Mr. Puskis,” said Ferenc.

“Good morning. Are they watching us?” Puskis asked through a forced smile. His heart pounded and there was fear, but it was thrilling, not debilitating.

Ferenc smiled. “Yes.”

“I am going to give you two slips. Please put them both on the spike.
When we’ve gone, I need you to find the one I’ve written on and get it to Francis Frings at the
Gazette
.”

Ferenc smiled and nodded. “I understand.”

Puskis handed him two fives. “Please only give me a couple of bills to make the transaction look legitimate.”

Ferenc kept the smile, but his eyes were concerned.

“Don’t argue with me please,” Puskis said. “I can’t afford to have attention drawn.”

Ferenc handed back the change and shoved both slips down on the spike.

Puskis had composed the note the previous night:

Dear Mr. Frings,

I am a prisoner. There are two men watching me at all times. They (I know that you know who I mean) are destroying the evidence held in the files. I write you this note so that you will know the reason for events that may follow. They can not destroy the past, but they can edit our memory.

A.P.

Poole was back in the Hollows, wondering why the hell it kept coming back to this. A bitter wind drove a mixture of rain and sleet like darts, challenging the limits of the turnout jacket he had received from a fireman as a gift for all the money the guy had made while Poole was playing football.

He was back at the old railroad tracks, trying to remember from which warehouse he had heard Casper’s name the previous day. He spent twenty minutes narrowing the choice down to three warehouses that fell within the span of two blocks. He stood outside the building on the far right, gathering his courage to enter. In the end, the sting of the freezing rain on his cheeks sent him inside for shelter, his adrenaline surging.

Inside, it was surprisingly warm. The smell of burning wood mixed with the smells of other, unidentifiable burning things. The warehouse seemed to be organized around a score of fires that danced like serpents out of oil drums. Each fire was encircled by people either standing around or sitting or even sleeping, but keeping close for the warmth. It was also surprisingly quiet. What conversation occurred was kept at a low murmur, and the sum of all the voices came to Poole as a low hum.

He walked through the center of the warehouse, looking for a group of kids. The floor was strewn with glass, debris, and the bones of small animals. He drew glances from hunched figures that seemed to be parts of their huddled groups rather than individuals. But he did not receive the amount of attention that he feared he might. He completed a circuit of the warehouse without finding a group of children. Individual children were with groups of adults, probably with their parents. The composition of other groups was impossible to discern, the people huddled in blankets or in clothes that completely concealed them. A film of greasy smoke residue covered everything. The few faces that he saw up close were filthy and vacant or deranged with hunger and disease. He felt revulsion, then disgust with himself for this reaction, flashing to what Carla would think if
she knew his thoughts. He wanted to leave, forget the whole thing: Casper, these people, the ASU. But he was more disgusted with cowardice and knew that retreating now would gnaw at him. It would confirm the doubts he had about his resolve, doubts that originated in part from his participation in the point-shaving. He couldn’t allow the prospect of personal comfort to dissuade him from his duties. So he continued on.

He chose to approach the group closest to the door for two reasons. First, they seemed marginally better off than the other groups, and Poole thought this might explain their favorable position on the floor of the warehouse. He imagined a social order that determined various groups’ locations based on some strange intuitive criteria. Second, it was the easiest point from which to escape. The urge to flee filled a space in the back of his mind like ambient noise.

He approached them with an assertiveness he did not feel, using the same strategy, he realized to his disgust, that he would with a pack of strange dogs. Approach with benign confidence. They would smell fear or hostility. He was dismayed that he regarded as less than human these people whose only deficiency was very likely ill fortune. He did not change his approach, however.

“Excuse me,” he said to the group of six men and a woman standing around an oil barrel that pitched flames and noxious smoke.

Their expressions ranged from surprise to distaste, but stopped short of outright hostility. The woman, he noticed, had bruises under both eyes.

Poole tried again. “I’m looking for a boy named Casper Prosnicki.”

The group continued to watch him in silence.

“Does he live here? Do any of you know who he is?”

One of the men spoke. He had long, unkempt hair and a stringy beard that fell to his chest. Poole thought he might be thirty years old, though it was hard to tell under the black filth on his face.

“You with the force?”

Poole shook his head.

“Then why you looking for him?” The man’s voice sounded as though filtered through boiling water.

“His mother asked me to find him. This child is missing from his mother.”

“Lots of children missing,” said another man, with patches of hair growing around a spattering of burn marks on his scalp. “Lots of kids running around without kin.”

Poole nodded, trying to look sympathetic. “I know. I know. But I’m just trying to find one of them. Casper Prosnicki.”

“You sure you’re not a blue?”

“I’m private. I’m a private dick. I’m trying to find Casper Prosnicki and bring him back to his mother. Do any of you know him? Is he here?” He was speaking slowly, enunciating carefully as if speaking to children.

The man with the beard spoke again. “Nah, we don’t know him. Nobody around here knows nobody. You keep going around asking questions, people going to think you’re a cop. Cops have a way of disappearing around here at the warehouses. Cops sometimes come in and somehow don’t seem to get back out again. Sometimes cops come in bunches now. Watch each other’s backs. Mostly cops don’t come around at all.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“Maybe you aren’t and maybe you are. You go around asking questions, people are going to think you’re a cop. Then maybe you don’t leave one of these warehouses next time.”

The man held Poole’s eyes. His body language and expression were not threatening. Poole took his words as a warning.

“Thanks for your time,” Poole said, and tipped his hat. The group returned to their fire without acknowledgment.

The rain and cold outside shocked his body. He squinted against the rain and wind and marched toward the adjacent warehouse. As he approached the door, he heard voices coming from the next warehouse down the line. In the storm, it was hard to discern anything but the silhouettes of ten or twelve men. Poole began to move in their direction, but more slowly now. The men did not notice him approach, apparently involved in some commotion by the door. Poole walked still closer and could now see what was happening. Men were escorting—or was it dragging?—kids out of the building. There was yelling, unintelligible over the howl of the storm.

Poole was so transfixed by the scene in front of him that he didn’t notice the two men approach until they were ten yards from him. At this distance he could see that what he had guessed was, in fact, true. These men, and the group of men at the warehouse entrance, were ASU.

The rain had abated somewhat by the time a sober Frings found his way to Freeman’s Gap, but the ruts in the road had turned to canals. He would have had no chance of finding this hardscrabble community except that Lon Kingsbury down in Advertising had grown up in Sylvan, the adjacent town to the west, and had given him precise directions. The village consisted of a couple of taverns, a country store, a gas station, three churches, and a post office. No one was on the streets. Frings continued on through and out the other side.

Outside town he encountered unmarked roads branching off at irregular intervals and, unable to figure out which might lead to Samuelson, returned to the town. He stopped at the country store, where he asked an elderly man wearing square bifocals for directions. The man paused to think for a minute, gave him directions, decided that they weren’t quite right, then gave him a second set that he seemed happier with. Frings thanked him and got back on the road.

As the man had promised, a road branched off by a giant felled oak. He took this road, which quickly turned into a dirt drive that led into the forest. It was slow going on this track. Rain-fed streams crossed the narrow road at intervals, and Frings had to build up momentum to ensure that his wheels didn’t get stuck. The road eventually curved to a clearing where a ramshackle cabin dominated a yard cluttered with rusted car chassis, broken bicycles, and other assorted large junk.

Frings pulled his car into an open area near the front of the house and got out, wishing for the first time in his life that he had a gun. It was the country, he thought, that had him so ill at ease. He had been with thugs and murderers hundreds of times in the City. But that was his turf. Out here in the sticks he felt vulnerable.

A porch ran the entire length of the front of the house, and Frings trotted to it through the steady rain. On the porch he wiped the water from his face and knocked on the wooden door. The windows were covered from
the inside—there was no way to look in. He could see light coming from inside through the gaps in the planks of the door. The place was buttoned up. The floor inside creaked under footsteps. Frings knocked again.

“Who’s that?”

Frings was surprised by how close the voice was. Possibly just on the other side of the door.

“Mr. Samuelson?”

“Who’s that? I’m not asking a third time.”

“My name is Frings. Roderigo Bernal sent me to talk to you.”

No response.

“Mr. Samuelson? I want to talk to you about the Navajo Project.”

“Stand back from the door.”

“I’m going to move to my left, your right,” Frings said, taking two sideways steps to his left.

“You clear?”

“Yes.”

The door came open fast and hard, and Samuelson emerged with a shotgun braced against his shoulder, sighting Frings. He was a huge man, not fat but not thin either, a round Scandinavian face under his tangled blond curls. He assessed Frings with suspicion.

“You’re Frank Frings?”

Frings nodded, looking at the shotgun.

“How do I know?”