Mask Market Read Online Free PDF Page B

one of the half-dozen cell phones I keep on a shelf in separate charging cradles rang. I have each one marked with a different-colored piece of vinyl tape so I don’t make a mistake, but I don’t really need that system anymore, since I finally figured out how to give each one a different ring tone.
    I pushed the button, said, “Lewis.”
    “It’s me.”
    “Okay.”
    “You don’t sound happy, honey.”
    “I was expecting another call,” I lied. Only one person had the number to the phone I was holding, and she was at the other end of the conversation.
    “I won’t keep you. I just thought you might like to come over and see me later.”
    “How much later?”
    “In time to take me to dinner?”
    “Ah…”
    “Oh, come on, sugar. We all have to eat, don’t we? So why can’t we do it together?”
    “I’m a private person.”
    “There’s plenty of places we can go where you won’t—”
    “There’s no place where you won’t draw a damn crowd,” I said, trying for the soft deflection.
    “I won’t dress up, I promise. Please? You won’t be sorry.”
    I let the cellular silence play over us for a minute. Then I said, “Eight, okay?”
    “O kay !”
    I hung up without saying goodbye. She was used to it.
     
    T he easiest person in the world to lie to is yourself. Anyone who’s done time knows how seductive that call can be. The Prof warned me about it, back when I was still a young thug, idolizing the big-time hijackers who pulled major jobs and lived like kingsuntil the money ran out. Then they went looking for another armored car.
    “You pick up a pattern, it’s harder to shake than a hundred-dollar-a-day Jones, Schoolboy. You let motherfuckers read your book, they always know where to look.”
    I had a few hours before dinner, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep where I’d be spending the night, so I grabbed a quilt and curled up on my couch.
     
    O ne of the cells woke me. The ring tone told me it was family.
    “What?” I said.
    “There was a lot on that CD, mahn.”
    “A lot of stuff, or stuff that’s worth a lot?” I asked Clarence.
    “A lot of stuff for sure. I cannot tell you about the other, mahn. You probably want to look for yourself, yes?”
    I glanced at my wristwatch. Couple of minutes after six.
    “Could you bring it by tomorrow?”
    “Sure.”
    I cut the call. Showered and shaved. Put on a pair of dark cords with a leather belt polished with mink oil—a trick I learned from a couple of working girls whose private joke was that I’m a closet dom. A rose silk shirt—I know a sweet girl who gets them made in Bali for a tiny percentage of what I used to pay Sulka—a black tie, and a bone leather sport coat that was pulled out of inventory before it ever got the chance to fall off a truck. Alligator boots with winter treads and steel toes, and I was ready to walk.
    I strapped a heavy Kobold diver’s watch on my left wrist, fitted a flat-topped ring onto my right hand: a custom-made hunk of silver housing a tiny watch battery that powers a series of micro-LEDs on its surface in random patterns. I slipped a black calfskin wallet into my jacket. It held a complete set of ID for Kenneth Ivan Lewis.
    I shrugged into a Napapijri Geographic coat, a Finnish beauty like the ones they used in the Antarctic Research Mapping Survey. It’s made of some kind of synthetic, with enough zippers, straps, hooks, and Velcro closings to stock a hardware store. Weighs nothing, but it sneers at the wind and sheds water like Teflon.
    By seven-fifteen, I was on the uptown 6 train.
     
    I answered the doorman’s polite question with “Lewis.” He opened his mouth to ask if that was my first or last name, caught my eye, changed his mind.
    “I’ll be right with you, sir,” he said, making it clear he wanted me to stay where I was while he walked over and picked up the house phone.
    I couldn’t hear his end of the conversation…which was the whole point.
    “Please go on up,