The Thieves of Manhattan - By Adam Langer Page 0,82

and a thick, dark green handle. Our car was parked at the side of the two-lane road, and we were now walking alongside it underneath the darkening skies. Our footsteps crunched frozen grass as we passed old silos and barns. Desolate soybean fields were easy to find; not so, a golden cross.

I walked slowly, pretending to limp, and used the shovel as a cane even though I was fairly sure I could run now. But I couldn’t see anywhere to run to; there were no cars on the road, and only the occasional truck passing some distance away on Route 177. I knew that route number was the Dewey code assigned to books about social ethics, but if there was a joke or clue in there, I wasn’t getting it.

Iola studied her map, then pivoted sharply to the right and began to walk away from the road and onto a vast, snowy field. The night was dark and blue; the half-moon and the halo around it were becoming more distinct. The winds were beginning to pick up. I kept one hand in my pocket, the other on my shovel-cane, my eyes focused on Iola Jaffe’s shoes. Norbert stopped to light a vonnegut, throw down a match, and take a drag, but he was still holding his gun and was far too close for me to consider running.

Iola was no longer muttering or soliloquizing. She walked faster over the white field. Still no crosses in sight, golden or otherwise—only snow, dead crops, grass. Soon we were walking in single file—Iola in front, Norbert behind, me in between—moving almost in unison.

With the flashlight, I kept sweeping the barren landscape in search of a road with a police car to flag down, a trucker to befriend, a charming old farmhouse where I could hide. Nothing. No sounds save for wind, footsteps, breaths, and, once, a lonely saramago dog howling far away.

Venus and Jupiter had become visible overhead when I began to discern something white and glowing way off in the distance. And as we continued to walk, that bright whiteness began to resolve itself into individual balls and beams of light shining down upon something enormous, enough light for a stadium.

The faster Norbert and I walked, trying to keep pace with Iola, who had seen the light and was now running toward it, the clearer the image became. The balls of light became blindingly bright bulbs illuminating low, boxy brick buildings and a parking lot. We seemed to be approaching a shopping mall or a highway rest stop, but I couldn’t say for sure because, when we finally stopped, we were standing behind whatever it was, and I could see only light brown bricks, slate-colored doors, and a half-dozen snow-covered stone steps that led down to black dumpsters. Iola was no longer consulting her map. Gesturing to the building, she gleefully exclaimed, “We’re going in there, lads!” Then she led the way around to the front.

ILLUMINATION

Probably some time in the past, this too had been an empty field, certainly when Iola Jaffe’s book of maps had been published, maybe even when Jed and Faye had hatched their plan. Maybe there had even been a golden cross here, whole fields of them. Tonight, though, this was a shopping mall.

On our drive, we had passed scads of malls just like this one, each with their chain fast-food and sit-down restaurants, electronics and clothing stores, and cineplexes. The only difference was that this one was empty—no cars in the parking lot, not even a single security vehicle. The lot was awash in light, but the stores themselves looked dark inside. The numbers 1 through 12 were visible on the cineplex marquee, but there were blank spaces where titles ought to have been.

To our right was a shuttered Best Buy; across a service road, a dark Potbelly Deli Sandwich Works; and before us was the entrance to 3B: Big Box Books. The company had gone into receivership, and the two other big chains were vying to take it over; this particular 3B was going or had already gone out of business. In front of the locked doors were shelves of remaindered hardcovers—travel guides, children’s story collections, an atlas of the moon. Anyone could have taken the books, but no one else was here. Snow had flecked onto the frozen book spines.

The doors were locked, but Norbert jimmied them open with the sharp blade of the jackknife he took out of a pants pocket. A sign in the