6. RIZE

M ilgrim was enjoying the superior brightness of the nitrogen-filled optics in Brown’s Austrian-made monocular well enough, but not the smell of Brown’s chewing gum or his proximity in the back of the chilly surveillance van.

The van had been parked on Lafayette, where one of Brown’s people had left it for them. Brown had run a red light to get up here and into position, after his earphone had told him that the IF was headed this way, but now the IF was staring into the window of Yohji Yamamoto, unmoving.

“What’s he doing?” Brown took the monocular back. It matched his gun and his flashlight, that same not-color of grayish green.

Milgrim leaned forward, to get a better unassisted view through his spy-hole. The Econoline had half a dozen of these sawn through its sides, each one covered by a screwed-on, moveable scrap of black-painted plastic. These coincided, on the graffiti-tagged exterior, with solid black areas of the various tags. Assuming those were all genuine tags, Milgrim wondered, collected by leaving the van on the street, would the van’s disguise still fool a tagger? How old were those tags? Were they the urban equivalent of using out-of-season vegetation for camouflage? “He’s looking in a window,” Milgrim said, pointlessly and knowing it. “Are you going to follow him home now?”

“No,” said Brown. “He could notice the truck.”

Milgrim had no idea how many people Brown had had watching the IF stock up on Japanese groceries, while they’d entered his place and changed the bug’s battery. This world of people following and watching other people was new to Milgrim, though he supposed he’d always assumed that it was there, somewhere. You saw it in movies and read about it, but you didn’t think about having to breathe someone else’s condensed breath in the back of a cold van.

Now it was Brown’s turn to lean forward, pressing the monocular’s resilient lip against the van’s cold, sweating skin, for a closer view of the IF. Milgrim wondered idly, almost luxuriously, what it might be like to pick something up, just then, and hit Brown in the head with it. He actually glanced around the back of the van, to see what might be available, but there was nothing but the upended plastic milk crates they both squatted on, and a folded tarp.

Brown, as if reading Milgrim’s thoughts, turned suddenly from the eyepiece of the monocular, glaring.

Milgrim blinked, hoping to convey mildness and harmlessness. Which shouldn’t be that hard, as he hadn’t hit anyone in the head since elementary school, and wasn’t likely to now. Though he’d never been held captive before, he reminded himself.

“Eventually he’ll send or receive something from that room,” Brown said, “and when he does, you’ll translate it.”

Milgrim nodded dutifully.


THEY CHECKED INTO the New Yorker, on Eighth Avenue. Adjoining rooms, fourteenth floor. The New Yorker seemed to be on Brown’s list. This was their fifth or sixth time here. Most of Milgrim’s room was taken up by its double bed, which faced a television mounted in a particleboard cabinet. The pixels in the cabinet’s wood-grain veneer were too large, Milgrim thought, as he took off his stolen overcoat and sat on the edge of the bed. That was something he’d started to notice, how you only got the high-resolution stuff in your better places.

Brown came in and did his trick with the two little boxes, one on the door, one on the doorframe. They were that same shade of gray, like the gun and the flashlight and the monocular. He’d do the same with his own door, and all of this, as far as Milgrim knew, so that he, Milgrim, wouldn’t decide to leave while Brown was sleeping. Milgrim had no idea what the boxes did, but Brown had said not to touch the doors when they were up. Milgrim hadn’t.

Brown tossed what Milgrim took to be a four-pack bubble-card of Ativan down on Milgrim’s flowered bedspread and returned to his own room. Milgrim heard Brown’s television come on. He knew that music, now: Fox News.

He glanced toward the bubble-pack. It wasn’t the boxes on the doors that would keep him here.

He picked it up. “RIZE,” it said, there, and “5MG,” and what looked like, yes, Japanese writing. Or the way Japanese looks when they dress it up for packaging.

“Hello?” The connecting door was still open, between their rooms. The sound of Brown’s fingers, on his armored laptop, stopped.

“What?”

“What is this stuff?”

“Your medication,” said Brown.

“It says ‘Rize,’ and there’s Japanese writing on it. It’s not Ativan.”

“It’s the same fucking thing,” Brown said, his delivery slowing threateningly. “Same DEA Schedule fucking Four narcotic.”

Milgrim looked at the bubble-card.

“Now shut the fuck up.”

He heard Brown begin to type again.

He sat back down on the bed. Rize? His first impulse was to phone his man in the East Village. He looked at the phone, knowing that that wasn’t on. His second was to ask Brown if he could borrow his laptop, so that he could Google this stuff. The DEA had a page with all the Schedule Four products, foreign brands too. But then, he thought, if Brown was really a fed, he might even be getting this stuff from the DEA. And borrowing Brown’s laptop, he knew, was no more on than using the phone to call Dennis Birdwell.

And he owed Birdwell money, under awkward circumstances. There was that.

He put the bubble-pack on the corner of the nearest bedside table, aligning its sides with the edges, both of which had black arcs where previous guests had let cigarettes burn down. The shape of the burns reminded him of McDonald’s arches. He wondered if Brown was going to order sandwiches soon.

Rize.

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