Never Go Alone Page 15

  Hector Trizzo towered over Nikki in his depraved den. He had just listened to the most fantastic story he’d ever heard in his entire young adult life—complete with pictures that Nikki had taken on her cell phone.

  “So what do you get outta all this?

  Nikki eyed some drugs on a table near Hector.

  “I don’t care. Maybe a little pick-me-up . . . ?”

  “Revenge is a cruel mistress, ain’t it?” Hector grinned.

  “I wasn’t his mistress.”

  “Right. You were less. And it pissed you off.”

  “Coulda’ been more if he had any smarts about him. But it’s clear he don’t. ’Cause if he did, he wouldn’ta treated me like this,” Nikki said. “So what are you gonna do to him?”

  “That’s the easy part. But first I gotta find the guy.”

  “There’s the apartment . . .” Nikki said.

  “Let me guess. You left it like that, with all the spray-paint.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “That will never work. He’ll be outta there insta-like, and he’ll be on guard the whole time. Jake’s a slippery shit. He was one of the best. Always so responsible to his own version of criminality. Now I know why.”

  “I got another way.”

  “What?”

  “Some guy that Jake’s rolling with now. He left me a number,” she said.

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “He was just checkin’ up on Jake. He’s one of us—not a normie. Could be he’s Jake’s new mark.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Castle, I think he goes by.”

  “Well, maybe Castle and I should have a little chat about our mutual friend,” Hector said. He observed Nikki staring at the tray of cocaine on the table in the middle of the office. “Help yourself,” he said with resignation.

  ▪

  Jake and Mona pushed through the crowds of tourists in Flagpole Plaza on Liberty Island, but Mona stopped him before they reached the queue to the statue proper.

  “I want to be one of the last groups up. ’Cause we’ll start with the lemmings. But we’re not going to end with them . . .”

  “So what do we do until then?” Jake asked.

  “Be tourists?” Mona shrugged. She held up her camera. “Smile,” she said.

  Jake grinned goofily. Click. Mona took the shot. Then she rotated around while still holding the camera, moving into the frame herself. Click. Jake started making funny faces—like he’s a shy guy, then a sly guy, then maybe not even a guy at all. Mona loved it, chuckling the entire time. Jake started laughing too.

  “Want to know something funny?” Jake asked.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never been here.”

  “You’ve never gone up the Statue of Liberty?”

  “Nope,” Jake said.

  “Wow. I used to come here all the time with my mom.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, anyway,” Mona said, “your first time is gonna be a doozy.”

  They spent the last two hours of daylight gallivanting around the grounds of the statue like true tourists. It was the most relaxed Jake had been in months. At first he’d thought it was just this assignment, and these people, that made him feel at ease. And it was true. They were nothing like Hector, dissimilar to any criminals that he’d investigated in the past. They didn’t seem to have much evil intent, even if they were responsible for some incredibly daring and profitable robberies throughout the city. That made them bad guys, yes—but not particularly bad humans. But it wasn’t just that, and Jake knew it. The reason today didn’t feel like work, that he was enjoying his time way out in the field, was because of the woman next to him. Mona. It wasn’t because she happily talked back to him. It wasn’t due to the fact that she was in charge. It was her view of the world. She believed in the ethos of exploring, perhaps even more than Rory. She didn’t write books, run a commercial Instagram account, or reveal herself publicly for acclaim. She didn’t worry about her standing in the scene. She was the purest of them all. She just wanted to see a world that wasn’t available to anyone else—and she’d found a way to do it.

  ▪

  As the sun set over the river, Mona and Jake trailed behind the very last tour group of the evening. They entered the statue’s structure and began the 354-foot ascent up the thin steps inside her chassis. They lingered at every possible moment, until they were the last two tourists trudging up the steps. It wasn’t easy to be so tardy and make it look natural. And what would happen if one of the tourists fainted or pulled a muscle and emergency rescuers had to be called? Their whole plan would be thrown off. But there wasn’t much time for Jake to think about negative options. Not in this moment. Just before they reached the crown, Mona slowed even further to allow a full vertical story’s worth of space between them and the guide and visitors above. She glanced around.

  “Now,” she said.

  “Are we high enough?”

  “We have sixty seconds, Jake.”

  Jake and Mona launched into premeditated action. They’d spent some of their time lounging on the grass outside of the statue practicing, so now the motions were temporarily engrained into their muscle memory. They whipped their backpacks off, readjusted clasps, straps, and carabiners to turn the backpacks themselves into makeshift harnesses. Mona ducked down. She reached underneath the small steel landing and attached a carabiner to an opening in the bars holding up the stairs. Jake did the same on his end.

  They glanced at one other. Jake held out his closed fist for her to pound. But instead of reciprocating, she stepped backwards and jumped over the edge of the landing. Jake followed in his own direction. They both fell into the dark recess of the interior of the Statue of Liberty.

  Their descent was abruptly cut off with a loud clank. Both Jake and Mona were suspended, in a dark crevice, just a few feet underneath the serpentine stairs. They’d picked this location specifically. Based on the gyrations of the stairs below and above, there was no way for Jake and Mona to be visible to anyone walking up or down. They hung in the air, not uttering a word, as their own tour group worked their way down the stairs. As Jake and Mona swung around, the loud stomping above caused the staircase to creak loudly. Mona and Jake had to hold hands to stop the oscillation. Mona put her hands to her lips.

  “Shhhh . . .”

  All Jake could see were angled steel girders and industrial rivets. Jake tried to listen for the last round of security in the proverbial belly of the statue. But his ears picked up only echoing noises from below mixed with the groaning of the steel in the wind. Finally, loud footsteps clanked above Jake and Mona. The beating of a single set of feet continued for a while, before descending far below them.

  “I think that was it,” Jake said.

  “Hopefully,” Mona whispered. After a few more minutes, most of the lights that lined the stairway suddenly extinguished. Jake grinned. Mona checked her watch.

  “Time,” she said.

  She contorted her body through the air, reaching for one of the steel girders that supported the inside flank of the statue. She began to swing like a pendulum, until she finally gripped the girder with her hands. But her fingers slipped away, and she came sailing back towards Jake. The second time, Mona swung towards the girder with an open carabiner in hand. She wasn’t aiming for the support beam itself this time, but the metal mesh that the formed the inside layer of the statue’s cladding. This time around, she successfully attached the carabiner to the meshing and held on. Using her other hand, Mona quickly fed a rope through the carabiner and connected it to her harness. She gave Jake a nod, and he unclasped her from underneath the stairs. Jake used Mona’s method to reach the side of the statue as well. Now the two of them were hooked into the statue’s meshing on its inside layer, hundreds of feet in the air.

  They slowly and carefully climbed up the mesh. The inside wall was vertical where they began, but soon the slope began to lessen until they were able to stand without attachment. Jake
illuminated the path with his headlamp. They slowly walked across the steel mesh, making efforts to stay quiet. Jake noticed the exterior copper cladding of the statue narrowing around them.

  “This must be the shoulder . . .”

  Mona nodded. They were in the right shoulder of the Statue of Liberty, an area originally designed to be traversed by visitors in a manner similar to the crown. But it hadn’t been open to the public for a hundred years now, and rarely saw maintenance. Jake’s headlight beam captured old construction materials strewn about the bottom of the shoulder. Leaning down, he noticed an ancient New York Times—a collector’s item in its own right. The price? One full US cent. He also kicked over a turn-of-the-century construction helmet.

  “Don’t you think that’s weird?” Jake asked.

  “What?”

  “All this stuff was just left here? You’d think someone would have picked it up.”

  “Exactly. ‘You’d think.’ But you wouldn’t know. Isn’t it better to see it for yourself? See what’s behind the surface?”

  “It’s cool,” Jake agreed. He was surprised that the detritus of the past had been left behind. But she was right. Her theory mirrored what he knew about crime solving. The only way to truly find something out was to do the work and see it with one’s own eyes.

  Jake and Mona finally reached a ladder. This would ostensibly lead them to a platform near the top of the flame, where Jake could take some photos to prove to Rory that he’d really been there. Mission accomplished. Mona began to climb the ladder while Jake kept aim with the lamp. But as she reached the top, about fifty feet vertically from where Jake was standing, she found the entrance to the old platform had been blocked by steel bars. Mona tried to pull the steel door open, but she realized it wasn’t just locked. It didn’t even have hinges. The bars had been welded together.

  “It’s welded shut!” she yelled down to Jake. “We’re kicked, man.”

  Jake looked around. Besides the ladder, Jake shined his light on a small portal door built flush into the side of the copper tunnel.

  “We’re never kicked,” Jake answered.

  Jake examined the door. It was chained shut, but the padlock appeared to be one hundred years old—like everything else in this corridor. The chain itself was completely rusted through. Jake lifted his leg and jacked it against the lock. The chain simply disintegrated in front of him. But although he pulled on the handle of the door, he couldn’t open it. It wouldn’t budge. Jake took out a pocketknife and went after the rust, gouging out a small line of detritus around the edge of the door as if it was old caulk. He tried the portal again. The door slowly scraped open. Jake was greeted by a massive gust of wind that almost knocked him off balance. He was about to fall, but Mona steadied him. She had worked her way down the ladder just in time. Jake pulled himself through the small door.

  ▪

  Jake hung onto the exterior cladding of the Statue of Liberty’s right arm. Wind accelerated around him, rippling through his skin. His fingers were dug into tiny, quarter-inch recesses of copper plating. His rope was attached at the level of the doorway, but the higher he climbed up the riskier of a proposition this ascent would become. It was basically impossible—the cracks in the surface weren’t wide enough for him to jam a spring-loaded cam in and reattach his rope. But Jake had another idea. He’d come this far and he wasn’t going to give up. Mona peered out from the doorway entrance at Jake, who had yanked his head up in an attempt not to look down.

  “You don’t have to do it,” Mona said. “There’s no shame in living.”

  “Sometimes? There is,” he replied.

  They both stared at the arm and torch above. Mona grinned at Jake. “Explore or die, babe,” she said.

  Jake tied two of their ropes together and then attached the chord to a tennis ball. He slowly stood up and hurled the ball with all of his might towards the railing of the torch above. The ball missed and bounced off. Jake wound the rope back and tried again. This time the ball looped the railing of the torch and slid towards Jake. He secured the rope. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

  The only foot and handholds available were the rivets and edges on the side of the statue. Each rivet was about the size of a quarter, and extended off the flanking of the statue by less than a quarter-inch. Jake began to climb up the side of the Statue of Liberty’s extended vertical right arm. It was tough going—like rock climbing a sheer glass wall. Halfway up, Jake caught a view of the water below.

  He froze.

  Then he heard Mona—erupting.

  “Don’t! Don’t stop!” she was screaming. It took a while for Jake to resolve the words, but when he did, he finally regained a sense of control. He suddenly clicked out of his height-induced ordeal. He reached up with his fingers and pulled painstakingly. Once he had made legitimate progress on his ascent, Mona attached herself to the rope as well. She began the climb. Jake was now directly below the flame, where the statue’s hand tilted back against him. He was essentially climbing upside down as if bouldering in Arizona. But this was far from any rock climber’s environment, and there was no thick blue pad underneath. Jake finally reached the railing. He pulled himself up and over, collapsing on the tiny platform. After a few moments, Mona arrived as well.

  They gazed over the most amazing and exclusive 360-degree view that New York had to offer. The city flickered in front of them, but it felt like a dream to Jake. It wasn’t just the view itself; it was the endorphins that were rushing through his being. It was the way the rippling water below them reflected off the city. It was the joy that permeated through every line on Mona’s face. It was a perspective that he’d never seen before—something so sublime that he couldn’t even have imagined it. It was a one-time feeling. It would never be so good. Sure, they could take a photograph. But no one would know how it felt. That was Jake and Mona’s, all to their own.

  Mona took a few shots of Jake, then a selfie, the gold flame of the statue burning behind them.

  “Now you can rock it. For sure.”

  Jake flashed the upside down V at the camera. Click. Mona put the camera down. They stood close to one another.

  “That was pretty impressive,” she said.

  “I came this far. Wasn’t going to give up without a fight.”

  Mona looked up at Jake. There was something more in her facial expression now. He’d been waiting for this moment. He leaned in closer, focused on her eyes at first, but then her lips.

  “I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” she said.

  Jake kissed her. Hard. She kissed back. And for a second, he didn’t even know where he was. The city wasn’t behind him. He wasn’t standing on the torch of the Statue of Liberty. He simply was.

  But their kiss was abruptly interrupted by a spotlight washing across them. Jake glanced over Mona’s shoulder. A US Coast Guard helicopter was racing through the bay and seemingly headed directly for the Statue of Liberty.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE YACHT WAS A SLEEK black iceberg. It rose from the dark water like a razor blade tilted slightly upwards, befitting its name: Razor. Razor was less the rounded horizons and gilded surfaces of old and more angular—like a piece of extreme Scandinavian architecture that also happened to float. It was the pride and joy of its owner, an owner who enjoyed his high seas fiefdom immensely. Especially when the boat was in international waters, it was a fortress of solitude, wealth, and privilege. The boat’s owner had found the urban environment less and less safe recently. To call his current living situation a retreat would be unkind—but it might not be far from the truth. He resided on the boat now, bobbing around on the side of the island that ought to be his home. A bunch of pests had made it a tough place for him to live. The world was still on his side and working hard for him. But he knew deep down inside that he alone was responsible for the Damocles’s sword that swung above.

  Due to Razor’s recent birth, the ship was equipped with all manner of security instruments to defend against a professional t
hief. But the ship had an Achilles’s heel, and that was technology itself. The whole craft, from its Internet-connected cameras and locks down to the pressure-sensitive pads built into each hallway, was controlled by a computer in the engine room of the ship. There was only one way to own the soul of this boat without one’s name on the title. If a particularly creative thief could get into the engine room, possessed a specific piece of cracked encryption software, and had experience with yachts? Razor might be theirs for the taking.

  The key to the subterfuge was simple: speed. Any conspiracy breaks down over time and the thieves knew theirs was on an accelerated timeline. The man in the Chelsea Piers polo, purchased for $29.97 from an Internet printer, knew he only had a few minutes before the curtain would be drawn on his act. He had a large pack of pencils and pens in his pocket. A tape measure, an electric meter, and a current tester hung from his belt. He traipsed down the boardwalk, holding a clipboard like he owned the place, which he would for about five minutes. He spent the first few seconds aside the boat, searching for the shore power hookup and increasingly cursing. Eventually his vitriol grew to the level that the crew noticed him.

  “Hey! Can I help ya?” one of the deckhands yelled from twenty feet above.

  “We’re getting funky measurements from your current. Have you checked the continuity on a Transcat recently?”

  “Uh . . . I’m not sure . . .”

  “Well, I don’t know if you want me to take a look at it. But the computer up in systems is giving you a crazy-high electric load right now. I think it’s an error. Gonna cost you a pretty penny if you guys don’t get on it soon!”

  “You can check it?” the deckhand asked.

  “Sure,” the man said.

  Three minutes later, Mr. Clipboard stood inside the engine room. The deckhand was watching him, but deckhands are very low on the intellectual totem pole. The thief would just have to use a bit of slight of hand. While he checked the fuse box with one hand, his fingers puttered around the back of the boat’s central nervous system with the other. He found the manual power switch to the computer and thumbed it off.