the place old and damp and covered with cobwebs. Ahead of them Archer could see a thick metal door with a spin-dial lock, the kind seen on a bank vault. Farrell worked the dial three times. It clicked, and he reached for the handle, but suddenly turned, looking past his girlfriend at Archer.
‘You say a word to anyone about what you see in here, I’ll kill you. They’ll never find the body. Clear?’
Archer nodded, looking him in the eye.
Farrell looked back at him for a moment, then turned and opened the door.
This room was a basement, but unlike the storage room it wasn’t empty. There were a series of tables and chairs in the room, light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, the place gloomy and starkly lit. Across the room Regan and Tate were sitting at two tables in front of sewing machines, each machine purring as the men fed some dark fabric underneath, the needles hammering up and down the lengths of cloth. The two of them looked up as the trio entered, and Archer saw Regan glower under the white light from the bulb above.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’ he asked Farrell.
‘He’s joining us,’ Farrell said.
‘What? Are you crazy? Why?’
‘We went for a drive yesterday. He’s ten times better than Brown ever was. He’s solid.’
‘Who’s Brown?’ Archer asked, interrupting.
‘Our old driver,’ Farrell explained. ‘Unfortunately he had a medical condition.’
‘What?’
‘He couldn’t keep his mouth shut,’ Farrell said. ‘So Carmen shut it for him.’
Across the room, Regan went to argue but Farrell cut him off.
‘Save it, Bill. I don’t want to hear about it,’ he said.
Archer felt Regan’s gaze burning into him as the trio approached him and Tate. Up close, he saw that the cloth under the needle of each sewing machine belonged to two black jackets. Both of them were fully intact, no tears, no rips. It looked as if they were stitching something inside the cloth instead of mending it.
‘How’s it looking?’ Farrell asked Tate.
Tate paused in his work and lifted the black jacket from the machine, raising it upright on the table and grunting from the effort. It seemed heavy. He tapped the front twice with his free hand, and it gave two metallic thunks.
‘Solid,’ Tate said.
Farrell turned to Archer, pointing at the jacket.
‘Aramid and steel plates,’ he explained. ‘Body armour. That thing will stop a twelve gauge round, easy. Put that shit on with a bullet-proof helmet and no cop is ever going to stop you, not with their firepower. You ever see the North Hollywood shootout?’
Archer nodded. ‘I remember. 1997, right?’
‘That’s right. Two guys took on the entire Los Angeles Police Department outside a bank wearing that shit. The pigs shot over six hundred rounds at them and couldn’t put them down.’
‘What the hell do you need it for?’
Farrell paused a moment, then beckoned to his right.
‘Follow me,’ he said.
He moved to a door across the room, Ortiz following, the towel wrapped around her shoulders, taking mouthfuls of water from the plastic bottle as she walked. While Tate got back to work with the sewing machine, Regan was still glaring at Archer, contempt and a sneer on his face.
‘Asshole,’ he said.
‘Go for a nice walk yesterday?’ Archer replied, with a grin.
He saw the other man’s eyes narrow as he turned to follow Farrell and Ortiz into the side room to the right.
There was just a single table and four chairs under a light hanging from the ceiling in here, the walls and ceilings unadorned and unpainted, all dusty red brick and grey cement. There were a series of wide sheets of paper on the desk, harshly illuminated by the naked bulb above.
‘Shut the door,’ Farrell said.
Archer did so and glanced down at the sheets. He realised what they were.
Blueprints.
He looked closer. They were extensive floor plans, four pages stacked on top of each other which would mean four levels or floors. He examined the uppermost sheet. He saw designated seating areas, the boxes numbered from 1 to 428, around a central rectangular area. He saw four towers, A to D, on each corner.
And he saw the name of the building in the top right corner of the page. Gerry’s voice echoed in his head, three words, matching the three on the blueprint.
Madison Square Garden.
‘Take a seat,’ Farrell said.
NINE
‘It was Carmen’s idea,’ Farrell said. Archer was sitting across from him, Ortiz was leaning against the wall. ‘We were making shit from fighting, and this place isn’t gonna make us rich any time soon.