I checked the chairs. Even checked the fireplace. I got my hands and knees all dusty digging around in the old ash. There was nothing. I sneezed and backed out, wiping my face, only to realize that I spread black all around my mouth and nose.
“Excuse me?”
I yelped and jumped. My head hit the edge of the fireplace entrance and I cursed, clutching at my scalp, and I turned to find a young girl standing in the doorway.
She stared at me, blinking rapidly. She wore dark jeans and a black shirt, and was pushing a cart loaded with cleaning supplies. It was the night maid, the girl Dad hired to go room to room making it look like real humans lived here instead of ghosts. She looked at me like I was a feral tiger, and I stared right back, not moving, not sure what the hell to do as the injury on my head throbbed like crazy.
I must not have heard her when my head was in the fireplace. Stupid, stupid me. I should’ve been more careful, but now I was caught, and if this girl decided to tell my dad about finding me in his office at two in the morning, I was finished. Absolutely finished.
I sat back on my knees. I gave her an awkward smile and raised my hands.
“Uh, sorry. I was just looking for—uh, for something.”
She frowned a little and looked uncomfortable. Her eyes flicked over to the bookcase behind me and back again. She frowned deeper when I didn’t move and did it again.
I followed her gaze. Looked back.
She did it again. Stared at the bookshelf. Then looked back at me.
“Are you trying to—” I started, but she interrupted me.
“I should go finish the other room,” she said. “I always do the boat statues last.” She bit her lip and turned, practically running away.
I watched her go and my entire body vibrated with a mixture of elation and fear. When the door was closed, I jumped to my feet, ran to the bookshelf, and stared at a tiny bronze statue of a sailboat bookending a few titles on economic history.
I grabbed it and tried to pick it up—but it wouldn’t budge.
“What the hell,” I whispered, and began to fiddle with the statue, trying to yank it up, pull it forward—and finally turned it in a circle.
Something clicked in the wall and a deep, resonant thunk broke the stillness.
The painting over the fireplace, a bland rendition of a desert landscape, stood slightly ajar. Like it’d popped out from the wall.
“Holy shit,” I said and walked over. I pushed it all the way open.
Behind was a hidden safe.
“What a cliché,” I said, laughing to myself, giddy with excitement.
The cleaning girl helped me.
I didn’t know why, or how she found out about this—probably from poking around and dusting during her normal nightly routine—but I’d gotten lucky. For whatever reason, she chose to point me in the right direction instead of turning me in.
Well, she might still turn me in, but I doubted it.
The safe was black with a handle in the middle and a number pad. I began entering every pin I knew, all the four-digit combinations I’d ever heard my father use, from an old ATM number to the code to a cousin’s garage door. I tried them all and hit enter, but each time the LED light beeped red, and nothing happened.
I paced back and forth, thinking.
This had to be it. If my dad had any useful information in this office, he’d hide it in this thing, behind a freaking painting, like an old-timey gangster. He liked to think of himself as akin to the old bootleggers and gunrunners from the early twentieth century, like a classic Al Capone or something. Except my dad dealt in death and drugs, and he’d destroyed my best friend to build his empire. There was no honor in him, and never would be.
Then I stopped. I stared at the numbers. Four digits ran through my head, over and over.
“He wouldn’t,” I whispered, feeling sick.
But I tried them.
Six.
Four.
Eight.
Five.
The light beeped green, and the lock thumped open.
I gagged as I pushed the handle down and pulled the door forward. I wanted to be sick but I had to hold it together. Six four eight five. He’d used that code. Those four numbers. Like he was taunting me.
The bastard. That sick, evil bastard.
I rifled through the safe. There was a gun, some cash, and a ton of papers. I ripped them out and began flipping through them on the floor. Some contained lists of bank accounts. Some had lists of names.
I found one toward the bottom. It was a bunch of addresses in San Antonio, most of them in Five Points. I’d never seen them before and didn’t recognize any, so I took a quick picture with my burner. I finished going through what I had, but there was nothing else useful, at least nothing that looked like it would help find Clem.