Blow the House Down Read Online Free Page A

“Yeah, just the ticket next time you’re blown out of Long Island Sound and end up lost in the Azores.”
    â€œOne thing, Max. How do you know that that’s the way these things work?”
    â€œWhat things?”
    â€œNot tipping off a tail.”
    There was something new in Chris’s voice—a genuine curiosity. Maybe he was seeing me for the first time as I was, not as he wanted me to be. Maybe he was thinking about dumping his own little side plate. At this point, I didn’t care.
    â€œSome guy I met in a bar,” I said. “He told me all about it.”

CHAPTER 2
    â€œBaton Rouge, this is Selma. Che’s on the move. South on Park.”
    â€œRoger that. We’ll take it from here. Over.”
    A LWAYS DRESS TO FIT someone else’s story line. If that means a sensible black cocktail dress, suck in your stomach, slip it on, and go shopping for a strand of pearls and size-sixteen pumps. I could no longer remember who told me that—some Old Boy, six gins to the breeze, like they all are these days—but it was another piece of advice I’d never forgotten. To Chris, my worn-at-the-elbows linen jacket, baggy olive chinos, and scuffed maroon loafers said gentleman consultant, a guy who didn’t need to drape himself in hand-stitched Hugo Boss to set his table. For my fellow pedestrians waiting to cross Park at Forty-eighth, my clothes and dead-on stare—immune to noise, traffic, skyscrapers, muggers, usurious bankers, fee gougers, and prying eyes—typecast me as someone who had wandered out of the Upper West Side on his day off. Trouble was, I didn’t know what script the surveillance team in front of Quick & Reilly was reading from…if it was a tail, if they could read, if I wasn’t just listening to the squirrels racing around that cage I call a brain.
    I crossed with the light, then headed for the underground passage to Grand Central Station. I wanted to take a quick look up Park in the direction of the Quick & Reilly pair, but flying on instruments was the only way. If I was going to have any eyes in this game, they would belong to my old pal Chris, twelve stories above me. It was up to him to decide whether or not to use them.
    I was out the underground ramp and halfway across the Grand Central concourse, flogging myself with the usual self-doubts, when my cell phone chirped cheerfully in my jacket pocket.
    â€œI told you you’re nuts. As soon as you crossed Park, they took off. No one’s following you, Max. No—”
    â€œWhat direction?”
    â€œWhat what?”
    â€œNorth, south, east, west? Manhattan’s laid out on a grid, you know.”
    â€œNorth. Uptown.”
    â€œWhen did they move? Be exact, Chris. It’s important.”
    I had my eyes on a Middle Eastern–looking student carrying a pizza box just right for a ten-pound load of plastique. Maybe a platter charge to levitate the 11:53 to Poughkeepsie.
    â€œThe two of them left just as soon as you crossed Park and headed south.”
    â€œThey walked north, right? Went on foot?”
    â€œNo. Someone picked them up and drove them up Park.”
    â€œSomeone?”
    â€œA van.”
    â€œHotel van? JFK shuttle?”
    â€œHow would I know? It didn’t have anything written on the—”
    â€œDid it have a sound stick on top?”
    â€œA what?”
    â€œAn antenna. Short. Stubby. Maybe—”
    â€œI didn’t—”
    â€œWere other people in it?”
    â€œI couldn’t tell. There weren’t any passenger windows. You couldn’t see in. Max, Jesus, I was looking out a twelfth-story window!”
    â€œYou dumb guinea peacock. A 747 could land on Park and you wouldn’t notice. But tell me, how often do you see someone picked up in front of Deutsche Bank in a windowless van?”
    â€œAll the time. Never. It’s not something I ever think about.”
    â€œMaybe you