Never Go Alone Page 6

  ▪

  Back at the apartment, Jake pulled up his browser. Sure enough, the red-haired girl had accepted his friend request. Her name was “Mona,” apparently. Jake grinned as he clicked through her profile. She didn’t have a huge amount of information listed—but it was a start.

  “So what do you do, Mona?” Jake asked as he started through her galleries. “Deep into the urban exploration scene. A real believer, I’m sure . . .” Jake found more of what he was looking for in the albums. He now had access to many more photographs. He zoomed in on one of her images and noticed Mona’s hand flung forward at the lens, forming another upside down V. It was striking. The V hand sign was also practically identical to what Tony had picked up on the surveillance tapes from the robbery at Metropolis' penthouse. Jake’s grin began to morph into an honest-to-goodness smile. He clicked through to the next photo. Eight explorers. They stood in a line on the top of a building, just below New York’s iconic red-glowing “Essex House” sign. The squad was clad in all manner of technical climbing gear, mixed with what could only be described as tactical outfits—gear belts and camo—feet protected by a variety of trail-runners, climbing shoes, and high-ankle boots. Every single face was covered. But what excited Jake the most was that each one of them had their hands turned down to form the V. It wasn’t just Mona. It was her entire crew.

  “So you got a crew,” Jake muttered as he stared at the screen, “but maybe they don’t just take photos.” Jake clicked back to Mona’s profile and scrolled through her main feed. In addition to exploration photos, she would occasionally check in at an art institute. A few of her friends there were tagged. She also seemed fond of posting her own graphic design files—in progress and finished. Pinned to the top of the feed, Jake noticed that she had posted a large advertisement for a party. His pulse quickened while he read the graphic. It was an UrbEx meetup, scheduled to go down that very night: “URBEX MIX N’ MEET. WHALE SQUARE IN RED HOOK. DJ NISE & ONE BUCK BEERS.”

  Jake pushed back from his computer. There wasn’t much time before the shindig, and he intended to find the belle of the ball if it killed him. One thing was for sure. The world was expanding in front of him. His case was opening up, just like they always did. He always relished this exact moment in each file. It was the tight-rope walk between darkness and the illumination. He saw the pinprick ahead. The grand solve wasn’t anywhere near focus, but at least the light was on. Someone was home. And he was gonna go see who.

  Jake stepped to his closet. He pulled out a combination of athletic gear and tactical clothing. Should he go with the collared Under Armour or the black and gray camo tee? About to select the collar, he switched it up and went camo. He paired that with long brown pants that zipped off below the knees and a pair of black Nike trainers. He wrapped a bandana around his neck, emulating a couple of the male explorers he’d noticed in Mona’s photos. Something was missing. Jake gazed around the apartment before his eyes rested on a bottle of vodka sitting in his small kitchenette. Jake poured out a large shot for himself. He chugged it. Now he was ready to go to a party.

  SEVEN

  AFTER CIRCLING FOR FIVE MINUTES, Jake parked his motorcycle on a side street in Greenwood, Brooklyn—just south of Gowanus and Red Hook. A few blocks away from the address listed on Mona’s poster, Jake figured it was safer to walk the remainder. It was a lonely area, an old warehouse district along the water of the Upper Bay. The industrial boonies. Dating back to the mid-1850s, this particular quadrant of the city had been formerly dominated by the whale oil industry. The eventual depreciation of the supply of ocean whales and thus their accoutrements—whalers, refiners, and distributors—contributed to the initial decline. But after whale oil, even petroleum had been refined and processed into lubricants and various manufactured oils inside these warehouses. That is until the mid-1960s, when economic and environmental concerns finally pushed the stubborn and aged conglomerates out of the region once and for all. They left behind two hundred years of history and a decrepit Stonehenge of crumbling buildings nicknamed “Whale Square.” Whale Square had remained rough for about fifty years. It was only after the Great Recession that real estate developers had become interested in the area again. It was still not a fancy location. Whale Square was on the fringes of trendy, which is saying something. But Red Hook was already too expensive, and the big money was starting to place their bets further and further down the risk line again—now they were focused on these old brick structures to the south with their shattered windows framing gorgeous water views.

  As Jake walked down the block, he noticed a banner strung across chain-link construction fence separating the street from one of the old lots. With 3D-rendered text and sky-blue coloring, the banner announced the construction of a “Mixed-Use Masterpiece,” stock full of “Reclaimed Wood and European Masonry,” from none other than Arthur Metropolis and his firm, MetroVenture. Jake chuckled at the blue. It was apparently the universal color of the future arriving, right now. It was sickeningly fresh, designed to keep the past at bay. As he turned the corner and away from Metropolis' construction site, he saw a bunch of graffiti scribbled over the next advertisement.

  The next street was pure old school. The mortar between the bricks of these structures could easily fall out with a finger brush. Some of the buildings had been haphazardly updated for structural safety with the addition of internal steel cabling—the square anchors of the cables like a line of gunshot wounds to the skin of the incredible relics from bygone era. As Jake paced down the street, he heard laughing ahead. He noticed a young, flashy, olive-skinned man with a girl to each side of him. The ladies were dressed up, and the man wasn’t so bad either in tight dark blue jeans and a casual blazer. Suspecting they were headed to the same party, Rivett glanced down at his ensemble and suddenly felt quite underdressed. At least he was headed in the right direction. The trio ducked to the right, into a tight alleyway between two Whale Square buildings, and all went quiet again.

  Jake hustled into the alley. But it was a dead end. The people had mysteriously disappeared. Jake had no idea where to go next. Then he noticed that a giant metal door to one of the warehouses was rolled up and open. He stepped inside. The bottom floor of the warehouse was largely barren, brimming with old wooden stalls now filled with trash. Jake heard a girl’s laugh splice through the abject darkness. He reeled around but still found nothing. Since there was no illumination in the room, Jake could only resolve details near the door. As he stepped into the darkness, Jake pulled out his cell phone and turned on the flashlight. Another makeshift wooden barrier. A brick wall behind it. He washed the flashlight beam over the wall again before he noticed a peculiarity—a giant white arrow had been spray-painted on the wall. About four feet high by three feet wide, the arrow pointed directly towards the ceiling. Jake guided his flashlight vertical. He could just make out a ledge far, far above him—about forty feet up. Green and purple neon lights danced in an almost imperceptibly thin line along the edge of the outcropping.

  “Hey!” Jake shouted desperately.

  No one replied.

  Jake studied the imposing wall. How was he supposed to climb this damned thing? He put his hands to the bricks, feeling the grooves with his fingers—just a millimeter’s span to grip. Perhaps there were expert rock climbers who could rip up this obstacle. He wasn’t one of them. Was it a requirement of every party participant to ascend a sheer rock face? Couldn’t be. He gave the wall another look and shrugged. Whatever—if that’s what they wanted? He’d give it a whirl. Jake placed his right hand into a small, one-centimeter-wide groove and lifted his body. He jammed a foot into another piece of broken mortar and reached up with his left hand. His back muscles ached after about fifteen seconds. Once he’d managed to rise three feet, Jake fell off. Sitting on his butt, Jake heard footsteps behind him.

  “Where’s your gear?” a voice said.

  “Huh?” Jake pushed off the ground and spun around awkwardly. A man of approximately thirty years stood in front
of him. He was at least six foot five and on the leaner side. He had dark, chiseled looks and determined green eyes. His hands on his hips, he didn’t seem very impressed by what he was witnessing.

  “Yeah bro, I’m an idiot,” Jake said. “Didn’t realize there was going to be a wall . . .”

  The mysterious man stared at Jake with slight suspicion, as if he’d answered the question wrong. Then the guy swung his backpack off his shoulders and placed it on the ground. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a racquetball racquet. He unspooled a long rope hanging by a carabiner. The man finally spoke again. “This has been a covert preparation for an overt operation,” he said.

  A tennis ball was attached to the end of the man’s rope. He tossed the ball up into the air, as if serving it. He smacked the ball with the racquet. The ball expertly arced through the air and looped around a pipe on the ceiling, a good ten feet above the platform that Jake had identified earlier. The ball fell back down to the ground, and the man removed it. The guy secured the rope with a noose knot, yanking the rope taut. Jake watched with amazement as the man fashioned a rappel harness using rope alone. Once the harness was ready, the man nodded at Jake and began to slowly climb up the wall. He reached the ledge above and pulled himself over.

  “Hey! Will you leave the rope?” Jake yelled as the man disappeared over the ledge. After a second, the rope came slinging down back at Jake like a whip. Jake ducked out of the way then glanced back up. The man stared over the ledge at him. “Thanks,” Jake said. “What’s your name? I’m Jake.”

  The man observed Jake silently. Apparently he wasn’t a particularly loquacious human. Jake attempted to emulate the guy’s knots with the climbing rope. The man watched him fumble.

  “Where you rollin’ from?” the man finally asked.

  “The Bronx,” Jake answered.

  “No. I mean . . . What crew?”

  “I . . . Uh . . .” Unsure how to respond, Jake told the truth. “Don’t have a crew.”

  “I’ll see you around, then,” the guy said. He dipped into the darkness above, leaving Jake alone again.

  But at least Jake now had a rope.

  Sweat poured off Jake’s brow as he used all his strength to pull himself up the wall. He hadn’t figured out how to use the harness in exactly the same manner as the tall man, so his method resembled one long pull-up with rests in between when he placed his legs horizontally against the wall. He finally pulled himself over the ledge, which consisted of wooden planks supported by two steel cantilevered support beams. As his chest heaved in and out, Jake stared ahead. He wasn’t anywhere near a party. What he did notice was a long, thin steel beam leading from the ledge towards another side of the warehouse’s top floor.

  “Unbelievable,” Jake muttered. He avoided looking down. His eyes followed the beam to its conclusion: a small hole. Through the hole, Jake could see the neon flashing lights. He could also hear music thumping from a party that obviously was occurring in whatever space was through that hole. Jake steeled himself, and gazed over the edge below. Shit. He was a solid four stories in the air. And the steel beam that he was expected to cross? It was three inches wide.

  Heights were not Jake’s strong suit. They were the opposite—his Achilles heel. He certainly hadn’t let Susan in on this fact because Jake was also an expert at reading people. He hadn’t wanted to give her any reason to sack him right then and there. The truth was that he liked being a cop—even if he didn’t happen to like cops. So his dirty little secret remained. The man assigned to infiltrate a group of building climbers was deathly afraid of heights. Ever since he was a teenager, the sensation of vertigo had affected Jake immensely.

  It wasn’t purely mental. It began with sweaty palms and ended with blurred vision and reality tilt-a-whirling in front of him. But he had no choice. The beam was the party, and the party was the job. He decided he could shimmy. There was only one direction to go, after all. He slowly worked his way onto the beam. He thought that the relative darkness below would help him, but his pupils had fully expanded by now and he was beginning to resolve the details of the warehouse. He could clearly make out the floor far below him. It was beginning to fade in and out as if his contacts were blurring. But he knew they weren’t. It was his brain, trying to stop him from succeeding. Jake closed his eyes tight and began the painstaking process of pushing his body, inch by inch, across the steel beam.

  Jake’s fingers finally reached the brick ledge on the other side of the warehouse. He crawled across. Now all that was left was the hole. Two large white arrows were spray-painted beside it. It wasn’t large, maybe about two and a half feet wide. But compared to the gauntlet that he’d just conquered, it was nothing. Jake contorted his body and slid through.

  Jake was immediately greeted by the “uhhhnntss uhhnnts uuhnnts” bass beats of sick electronic dance music—an epic, underground party. The crazed crowd articulated in the middle of the room, the bar outside on the roof. Jake stood up and dusted himself off just as a beer flew towards his face. He caught the beer before it nose-smashed him.

  “Good work, man. You’re only the eighth person to come through that way. Free beer for ya,” another urban explorer grinned at Jake.

  “Uh, thanks . . .” Jake said, discombobulated.

  “Anyone else behind you? I gotta pee.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Jake said and then calculated. “Wait. Did you say the eighth?”

  “Yeah. Get a free beer that way. Come in the main entrance and you get nothing,” the guy said. He pointed towards the other side of the space. Jake noticed a large stairway easily leading up to the party from the other side of the building.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Jake said as the guy filtered back into the crowd. He sipped his hard-earned beverage.

  Jake pushed through the crowd and emerged outside on a long balcony overlooking the Upper Bay of the Hudson. The Statue of Liberty was also visible—the size of a small stick figure in the far distance, backlit by New Jersey. Jake drank his beer and observed the crowd. They were a diverse sort. He hadn’t yet been able to get a full grip on the urban exploration “scene.” The culture seemed to consist of people from almost every income bracket and walk of life. Maybe that was the magic of it, but the concept struck Jake as bizarre. Something had to unify these people. But what was it? As Jake sipped, he noticed the well-dressed, olive-skinned young man from the street. The man grabbed three beers from a cooler on the floor, underneath the makeshift bar.

  Noticing the freeloading, the bartender turned. “Three beers. Three bucks.”

  “Tell Rory I’m good for it,” the man sneered with a Dominican accent.

  “Emanuel, right?” the bartender asked.

  “So what?” Emanuel replied.

  The bartender reached towards Emanuel and grabbed his shoulder. “That’s messed up, bro. You can’t just take stuff. Rory doesn’t run this bar . . .”

  In one fluid motion, Emanuel snatched the guy’s hand off his shoulder. He twisted the bartender’s arm practically 360 degrees, forcing the poor guy to his knees. Emanuel held the bartender in a submission hold. “Don’t ever touch me, bro,” Emanuel said. He dropped his hold and walked off—no remorse.

  Jake’s body stiffened from the action. But he didn’t know what to do. No one else in the crowd seemed particularly surprised at Emanuel’s actions. The bartender shook it off and took up his position behind the bar again. Jake began to relax just as a young woman sidled up next to him at the bar.

  “I don’t know why a guy would want to come to a party when he knows that no one there likes him,” the woman said.

  Jake did a double take.

  Standing right in front of him was the red-haired girl from UrbEx. Mona—in the flesh. She had dark red hair and light brown skin of unidentifiable ethnic origin. He glanced up and down at her, making a reading. Impeccable style. Her tight black jeans were tucked into stomper boots with inch-thick soles and bright red laces. She wore three layers of shirt, the longest one a d
ark gray that extended almost to her knees. With no makeup, her hair was tied back into an easy ponytail. Something struck a chord inside Jake while he stared, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. It wasn’t lust. It was understanding. She was a creature who was completely comfortable with herself. He could tell that she knew what she wanted. She conducted life on her own terms. She was the personification of the rainbow-gradient-race-and-culture zeitgeist of the future. She definitely listened to Lorde, Sia, and Lana Del Rey. And she was also about to turn away from Jake, her conversation starter greeted with a gaping open mouth from the quiet blond man standing by himself at the bar.

  “That’s sort of the problem with putting a party on social media, isn’t it?” Jake finally said.

  Mona decided to play ball, for just a moment. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Can’t really throw, like, an intimate thing anymore because inevitably someone else who’s not there is going to see their friends tagged in a photo and get upset and probably exclude you from their next event, and then you’ll get jealous a few weeks later when you see their cool party that you weren’t invited to . . . So the next time, you say, I’ll just invite everyone. Don’t want to leave anyone out.” Jake nodded in the direction of Emanuel. “And then a guy you don’t like shows up and steals your beer.”

  Mona chuckled. “You figure that little conundrum out, you’ll probably make a billion dollars.”

  “Nah. I got bigger worries. Like paying rent.”

  “Damn right,” Mona agreed. “Look, it’s not the three dollars that I care about. You know that? It’s the whole point.”

  “Which is?” Jake asked.

  “Serious? Look,” Mona pointed to a small sign atop the bar. Jake read it with interest, “All proceeds go to the Friends of Unincorporated Brooklyn. The only way we fight the developers is together!”