Chapter 30 - Rough Side Of Town

Chapter 30: Chapter 30 - Rough Side Of Town

Jesse was halfway across the lobby when he heard the quick click of heels behind him.

"Mr. Byrne! Mr. Byrne, wait!"

He stopped and turned around.

Kimberly hurried toward him, ponytail swinging, smile already in place. She’d reapplied her lipstick. Somewhere between the VIP lounge and the front desk, she’d also undone the top button of her blouse.

"I just wanted to say again how sorry I am about earlier," she said, a little breathless. "Truly. It was completely unprofessional of me." She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and lowered her voice. "I hope you’ll let me make it up to you. I saw how generous you were with Marcus, and I was thinking, maybe, if there’s anything I could do..."

She let the sentence trail off. Her eyes drifted meaningfully toward the phone in his hand.

Jesse almost laughed.

Twenty minutes ago she’d called him a church rat. Now she was angling for a tip.

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he smiled.

"Turn around."

Kimberly blinked. "I’m sorry?"

"Give me a three-sixty," Jesse said. "Let me see what you’re working with. Front and back."

For a second, she just stared at him, her smile frozen. She glanced at Marcus by the elevators. At the woman in the armchair, who had very quickly gone back to her magazine.

Jesse didn’t blink. He just waited, eyebrows slightly raised, the way a man waits for something he’s already paid for.

Kimberly’s smile came back, slower this time. Coyer.

She lifted her chin, put one hand on her hip and turned. Slowly. Deliberately. She rolled her shoulders back and let her hips sway as she went, glancing back at him over her shoulder like a model at the end of a runway. Then she came all the way around to face him again and struck a little pose, one knee bent, lips pursed.

Jesse looked her up and down.

And he felt nothing.

Not a flicker. Not even mild curiosity.

He’d felt something with Carrie, the second she walked up to his booth with that menu in her hand. He’d felt something with Natalia, even with her looking at him like he was dirt. He’d felt something with Tatiana, even after everything.

With Kimberly, there was nothing there. Flat in the front. Flat in the back. And under all that sharp eyeliner and contour, a face that, without the makeup, would be a four out of ten. Five on a generous day.

He wasn’t going to spend a single cent on her. Not because the system wouldn’t reward it, but because she didn’t deserve it.

But he wasn’t going to let her walk away from this clean, either.

"Hm," Jesse said.

Kimberly’s smile widened hopefully.

"Is that all you’ve got to work with?"

The smile faltered.

"Because I’m not impressed," Jesse said pleasantly. "At all."

Kimberly’s face went red. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

Jesse slipped his phone back into his pocket.

"You have a lovely day, Kimberly."

He turned and walked out through the revolving doors.

Behind him, Kimberly stood alone in the middle of the marble lobby, one hand still on her hip, her pose slowly collapsing. Over by the elevators, Marcus was trying very, very hard not to laugh.

******

Jesse got into the Porsche and pulled out onto the street.

He had one more thing to do before six o’clock.

Dean Monroe.

He turned the name over in his head as he drove south, then east, then south again, leaving the clean, quiet streets of the Upper East Side behind.

Dean had been his father’s personal accountant for almost fifteen years. He was a quiet, odd, brilliant man. Jesse remembered him from childhood dinners: thin, pale, always in the same gray cardigan, never looking anyone in the eye. He’d hated small talk and loud noises. He used to sit in the corner of the living room during his parents’ parties with a glass of sparkling water, counting the tiles in the floor under his breath.

But give him a spreadsheet, and he was a magician.

Dean was autistic and a savant with numbers. He could look at a page of figures for five seconds and tell you exactly where the error was, down to the penny. Jamie Byrne used to brag about him at dinner parties. "Dean’s the smartest man in New York," he’d say. "He just doesn’t know how to say hello."

When the fraud came to light thirteen years ago, everyone assumed Dean would be the first one dragged off in handcuffs. If anyone knew where the money went, it was the man who’d moved it.

The Feds tried. They raided his office. They subpoenaed his records. They hauled him in for questioning more times than Jesse could count.

Nothing stuck.

No missing money in his accounts. No offshore transfers in his name. No paper trail. Nothing. Whatever Dean had touched, he’d cleaned it so thoroughly that not even the FBI’s best forensic accountants could find a fingerprint.

People whispered that he’d retired early to sit on a mountain of Jamie Byrne’s stolen money somewhere warm. Others said he’d moved overseas. Jesse didn’t know what to believe. All he knew was that Dean Monroe had walked away from the biggest financial scandal in New York history without a single charge, and then simply vanished.

Almost.

Jesse had done some digging years ago, back when he still thought he could find his father on his own. There was one place Dean still kept. An office where he quietly met with a handful of private clients. Nobody famous. Nobody who’d ask questions.

He had no guarantee Dean would be there. But it was the only lead he had.

The address took him to the very edge of the city, out past the last subway stop in Canarsie, where Brooklyn started to fray into marshland and warehouses.

The neighborhood was the kind of place people drove through with their doors locked. Boarded-up storefronts. Chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. A burned-out car sitting on blocks in an empty lot. Three guys on a stoop across the street stopped talking and watched the Porsche roll slowly past.

Jesse parked in front of a narrow brick building with blacked-out windows and a heavy steel door. There was no sign. No name. Just a number spray-painted beside the door.

He sat in the car for a minute, engine running, watching the three guys on the stoop watching him.

He really didn’t want to leave the car here.

Finally he turned off the engine and got out. He locked the doors. Then he pressed the lock button again, just to hear the chirp. He took a few steps toward the building and looked back over his shoulder.

The guys on the stoop were still watching.

He took a few more steps and looked back again.

He turned around to face the building and nearly walked straight into someone.

Jesse jerked to a stop.

A man stood directly in front of the steel door, blocking it completely. He was lean and wiry, maybe in his late thirties, wearing a fitted black jacket and black jeans. He had close-cropped dark hair, a thin scar through one eyebrow and the kind of stillness that made Jesse’s skin prickle. He looked like a man who didn’t need to be big because he knew exactly where to hit.

"What are you doing here?" the man asked.

His voice was quiet. Flat. It wasn’t a friendly question.

Jesse straightened. "How is that any of your business?"

The man didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

"I’m in charge of security for this building," he said. "So it’s my business." He tilted his head slightly. "I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?"

Jesse studied him.

Everything about this guy said he wasn’t bluffing. The stance. The calm. The way his eyes had already swept over Jesse twice, taking stock of his hands, his pockets, his suit. The faint bulge under his jacket, just below his left arm.

Jesse decided now wasn’t the time to be cute.

"I’m looking for a family friend."

"Name."

"Dean Monroe."

Something shifted in the man’s face. It wasn’t recognition, exactly. More like he was filing the name away and checking it against a list.

He looked at Jesse for a long beat. Then he stepped aside and pulled the steel door open.

"Follow me."

Jesse didn’t move right away. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Porsche. The guys on the stoop had gotten up and were slowly drifting toward the curb.

The man followed his gaze.

"Don’t worry about your car," he said. "Nobody’s going to touch it."

He said it so flatly, with so much certainty, that Jesse believed him.

Across the street, one of the guys on the stoop met the security man’s eyes. A second later, all three of them turned around and went back to sitting on the steps.

Jesse swallowed.

Then he followed the man into the building.