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humanity below. Outside clocks told time in Roman numerals.
Green-white-and-red Italian flags waved proudly.
The side streets were narrow and crooked, and impossible to navigate by car.
Double-parking seemed to be the law of the land.
"Any spot in particular?" asked the driver.
Remo noticed a Chinese restaurant on a corner and said, "Right there."
After paying the driver off, Remo pretended to start into the Chinese
restaurant, then slipped around the corner.
He walked the narrow streets, trying to orient himself. He couldn't recall the
name of the street the building had been on. He knew better than to ask
pedestrians, knew better than to attract attention in a close-knit
neighborhood such as this one.
Salem Street, off the main drag, Hanover, looked vaguely promising. It was a
dark alley of dirty brick bindings that suggested they had been there forever.
The soot looked eternal. The streetlamps were an ornate black iron. It was
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very Old World.
Remo started down it.
Even when he realized he had found the building, Remo kept on going. It was a
storefont with its lower windows curtained off; the dingy glass above said
"SALEM STREET SOCIAL CLUB."
Across the street a burly man sat on a wooden straightback chair, his
shirtsleeves rolled up and a package of Marlboros tucked into the left roll. A
lookout.
Remo continued on as if he were a lost tourist and rounded the next corner.
Here he might have been negotiating a forgotten section of town. There was a
barber shop whose fixtures were so ancient they reminded him of his first
haircut, a million years ago in Newark. The nuns of Saint Theresa's orphanage
had taken his entire class there one Saturday. Remo could still smell the
spicy odor of the hair tonic the barber had used to plaster down his wet hair,
as if it were yesterday.
A lifetime ago.
Remo doubled back to Hanover Street and the Chinese restaurant, where he
ordered a bowl of fluffy white rice and a glass of water. The rice was tasty,
even if it was a domestic Rexoro. The water tasted like it had been hauled out
of Boston harbor in a rusty pail.
He ignored the water and nursed the rice, chewing every mouthful to a starchy
liquid mass before swallowing, as he waited for darkness to come.
When Remo stepped back out into the street, Hanover Street was ablaze with
neon and the narrow sidwalks were choked with every type of person from
priests to hookers.
It was still early, so Remo sauntered up and down twisting sidestreets and
alleyways that might have been built by a coven of nineteenth-century witches.
The ornate streetlamps simulated gaslights and shed a feeble light that suited
Remo's nocturnal prowlings perfectly.
After the sun had set, Remo found a high black brick wall one street over from
Salem and, looking both ways to be certain there were no lookouts, went up it
with spidery silence.
The bricks were irregular enough to make his ascent as easy as climbing a
stepladder. Remo quickly gained the roof and crossed the gravel to the
opposite end.
Inland, beyond an elevated green artery, the lights of Boston blazed. The
North End lay all around him, a shadowy clot of land along the waterfront that
had been cut off from the city proper by the artery.
Not far behind him was the spire of Old North Church. To the north, along the
coast, the angular spider's web of Old Ironsides wavered in the ocean breezes.
The Bunker Hill monument stabbed at the stars.
Remo found himself looking down Salem Street. The social club was diagonally
across the street, three buildings south. Below, the lookout still rocked back
in his creaking wooden chair.
He showed signs of nodding off, which meant that he was probably just taking
the air. There were no lights coming from the storefront itself.
Leaning over, Remo released a droplet of saliva onto the lookout's thick black
hair.
The man was more alert than he looked. He reacted instantly, putting his hand
up and cursing in Italian when it came away wet.
"Fuckin' pigeons," he snarled as he dragged the chair indoors. A door
slammed.
Above, Remo grinned. He worked his way up the street by the roofs. They were
so closely packed he didn't have to jump.
When he was directly across from the storefront, he stepped back several paces
and sprinted for the parapet's edge.
The street flashed under him like a dark canyon. Remo's Italian loafers made
almost no sound as they made contact with the opposite building. He checked
his own momentum with a twist of his upper body.
Looking around the roof, Remo discovered a trapdoor. He laid both hands on it
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and closed his eyes.
The weak electrical current of an ordinary burgler alarm made his sensitive
fingertips tingle ever so slightly. Wired. Remo left it alone.
He walked the parapet, looking for the inevitable fire escape. He had not yet
seen a building that lacked one. These were firetraps, probably built at the
turn of the century-if not before-and never upgraded.
This one clung to the back of the building like exposed iron ribs. Remo's
eyes, trained to pick up ambient light and magnify it, detected the faint
gleam of moonlight on wires wrapped in shiny black electrical tape. Probably
an electric eye or some other alarm system.
Remo decided not to fool with it. He worked his way around to one side and
just went over the parapet, finding finger-and toeholds that brought him to a
closed window.
It was far enough above the alley below and beneath the roof not to be wired.
Just in case, Remo straddled it and examined the casement molding for any
signs of wire or aluminum stripping.
Finding none, he attacked the dirt-streaked glass over the simple latch
closure with one fingernail. He scored a semicircle of glass, withdrew his
finger, and tapped the glass under the curve.
The semicircle cracked free, except along the base, where dried wood putty
held it in place. Remo reached two fingers into the gap and extracted the
glass like pulling a stubborn tooth.
He pocketed the glass and then pushed the lever open.
That was actually the easy part, he discovered.
The window had been painted shut. It was better than any lock or alarm.
To anyone else, that is.
Remo set himself, and applied controlled pressure to the edges of the lower
sash. The tiny cracking and groaning told him when to move on. It took some
time, but he got the sash loose enough to move.
The sash had to be eased up slowly or the dry wood would squeal and snarl. He
applied upward pressure.
When Remo had an opening he could use, he lowered himself until his head was
level with the sill. He slid in like a silent python coiling through a hole on
a tree.
Inside, it smelled of dust and must. Remo moved through the gloom on cat feet,
found a door, and eased it open.
His ears detected sounds. A steam radiator hissing. The dull roar of an
electric furnace far below, probably in the basement. A mouse or rat scuttled
among some papers on this floor.
There were no indications of human life. No sleeping heartbeats, no wheezing
of lungs, gurgle of bowels, and other human-habitation noises.
Remo padded down two flights of stairs until he reached the first floor. The
food smells were heavy here. Garlic predominated. They made Remo slightly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]