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Chapter 24 - It's All in the Cards

Waiting is the name of the game that I don't cherish playing. It feels like I'm wasting time and I've always been a man who likes to be moving forward, or at least tries to, but this time I didn't have that ability. I had so many people, so many lives, helping me with this that I had to defer to those who were much better at leading groups and seeing the bigger picture than I was.

As much as I loathed to admit, I was just a former chimney sweep from London; I didn't have a criminal background, I wasn't an expert knife thrower, sharp shooter, lockpicker, explosive expert, street brawler, etc. My talent was, sadly, that I was good at climbing and I wasn't afraid of heights. Among the people in this large room I felt sorely lacking in any kind of meaningful skill.

While the meetings continued, I got up from the table and wandered out into the kitchen to make food for everyone. I was actually a decent cook and had been the assistant ship's cook on Paramour before I left. I also cooked a lot for Rut and Fiz. I found I enjoyed the job, so I set about the task of making everyone a hot meal. Renaldo kept the club stocked with a lot of food, and he told me to go ahead. I think everyone was hungry.

I had settled on a stew for everyone, since it would have something in it that everyone would like, and it was hearty. I spent time cutting up the vegetables and the meat, picking the spices and getting myself lost in the work for the short time I had with my own thoughts. Of course, alone like this, I knew I wouldn't be forever.

Avery was suddenly in the kitchen when I turned around, leaning over a pot and breathing it in. His tail wagged as he looked up at me. "Stew?" he asked.

"Yeah," I responded and added some potatoes into the large pot. Avery was poking around the kitchen some and I grinned. He did this when we were boys, cooking our Sweeper Stew. "You haven't been around a whole lot. Am I no longer insane?"

"You don't need me around as much," Avery said, peering over some uncut vegetables on the cutting board. "You're... living again, if that makes sense."

"It doesn't," I said as I added some pepper to the stew.

"You were just existing for a long time, Simon," Avery said and hauled himself up to sit on the counter, kicking his feet. "You never enjoyed life. You were scared too. You aren't anymore."

"So you showed up because I was scared?"

"No," Avery said with a frown. "I showed up because I saw you were hurting and I wanted to help you."

"And am I helped?" I peeked over at him with one eye. "I feel better than I have in years, you know."

Avery smiled. "Almost. You're much more like your old self. You actually tell your jokes again. Even the bad ones."

"My jokes aren't bad," I countered, pointing the wooden spoon at him. "You always laughed."

"You'd've kept going if I didn't! So I knew how to minimize the damage. Just give him what he wants. Billy told me that trick."

I laughed. It was something Billy would do. He was always clever in finding out ways to solve problems neither Avery or I could dream of. I wondered about him again for a moment and hoped he was having a good life. Maybe when this was all over I could go back to London and see what he was doing.

"You didn't add any cabbage," Avery said, snapping me out of my daydream.

I grimaced and stuck my tongue out. "And for good reason," I said. "It's vile."

"It's good for you!"

"It tastes like dirt!"

"How do you know what dirt tastes like?"

"I don't want to get into that story!" I said with a mock twinge of frustration in my voice. I wasn't mad. But Avery knew the story. "Let's just say I can't really eat chocolate cake anymore, not after that 'cake' you made me that one day!"

"Hey!" Avery said with a grin and a follow up pout. "It was from the heart."

"Next time try making it from the stomach, Av."

We both laughed. The sound was so wonderfully familiar. I almost went over to hug him but I knew if I touched him I would know this was all in my head, my friend wasn't really here. So I enjoyed the moment.

My stew was done. I exhaled and pulled off the cooking apron and hung it up on a peg and began to serve out bowls to take to the meeting room. It felt nice being able to contribute something even if it was minimal like this.

---

"It's time to hit him," Renaldo said as he stood up from the head of the table. "Tonight. Most of the cleaning staff is going to be 'delayed' and security will be lax as Mordecai himself is at a party with his rich windbag friends. That means we go in, get what we need, and end this once and for all."

"Without killing," Nickel quickly added, looking around. "Anything you find needs to be solid, too. I can't make my case against him if it's on rocky ground. So make sure if you're going to bring out evidence it's perfect, otherwise--"

"We stick to the plan. Twenty-four people are going to go in, twelve from each gang. Break that up into groups of three, that's seven floors apiece. Each group will have someone good at brawling if things go south, but let's try to avoid that."

"If we start shooting up the place and the police get involved, things'll start to look very different in the eyes of the court and the public," Nickel added again. He looked tired. Everyone looked a little worn down, save Fiz, but then I'd never seen him tired.

"Fifty-two floors is a weird number for a building, isn't it?" I asked, looking at Rut who was writing something down on a piece of paper.

Rut shrugged. "Not really. Maybe he really wanted to show off the fact that Crossbell Tower uses the latest construction techniques and is an engineering marvel, being the tallest building ever constructed. The next tallest, the Park Row Building, only has thirty-one floors, so he really left his competitors in the dust."

I chuckled. "But a twenty-one-floor difference is pretty extreme."

"True. I tried to look in the past newspaper articles for any reasons as to why Mordecai specifically chose to have fifty-two floors, but nothing came up -- but a deck of cards. You know if he plays or gambles?"

"Hell if I know," I admitted with a shrug. "It's not like I actually know the man. For as insane and infatuated as he is with me, we've only spoken once. We didn't really get to the 'hobbies and leisure' part of the talk before he revealed to me that he killed my friend."

We had all left that meeting feeling energized and ready. The teams that had gone into the building had split up with orders to meet back outside at 1:00 AM three blocks away. That gave us hours to wander the glowing building.

It had also been like Tin said; so many people were absent that the inside of the building felt abandoned. I was teamed up with Fiz and Rut, the twins saying they wanted to keep me close to protect me, and I had insisted on going inside because I wasn't going to hang back a second time and let my friends potentially die. I was tired of being a bystander in my own story.

We scoured through our designated floors one by one, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

I watched as Rut checked his pocket watch and frowned. "We're running out of time," he said softly. "We need to wrap this up but so far we haven't found anything odd..."

"Bored." Fiz said and scowled a little. "No knife."

"You can't use your knife until we need you to. People will notice someone flicking a knife about."

"Want to use knife."

"Fiz..." Rut said in his warning tone.

"Fine guard. Use knife. Happy," the black fox said with a chillingly perky tone to his voice.

Rut fished out of his pocket some sweets he always had. "Here, have some candy." After tossing a few to his brother, he sucked on one himself. He knew that sugar sometimes placated his twin. I had to smile as I watched Fiz find a purple candy and quickly pop it into his mouth, content.

That bought us some time.

"This office could be promising," I said, turning to look at a set of ornate cherry wood doors. There was some logo above the doors on frosted glass but I couldn't make it out in the dim light. "Maybe Mordecai's office?"

"We're high up but you'd think he'd want to be higher... but it looks ornate enough to be his. I just hope those creepy lights aren't inside." He pointed to the wall decoration that held the incandescent light bulb in its place -- a golden statue of a caracal's head holding the light bulb in its open mouth.

I tested the door and was surprised that it was unlocked. Upon inspection I saw there was no lock. Crossbell Tower probably considered themselves so secure they didn't need it... or they didn't think anyone would dare go against Mordecai.

Inside the large office it was clear it did not belong to Mordecai; the office was way too cluttered with drafting tables and blueprints and framed sketches and photographs of buildings from all over the world. I stepped closer and looked at the pages, tilting my head to the side. The words "Wexler and Son" were written on everything in flowery, embellished cursives. Behind the large desk and over the huge chair was a giant painting of Crossbell Tower, glittering and glowing in the nightscape of a dark city that had not yet embraced electricity. It was oddly disturbing.

I heard papers shuffling and saw Fiz going through things on the other side of the room, not caring what he was doing. Rut was looking annoyed but just let him be, the damage was done anyway... he was going up to a large drafting table behind the desk and tilted his head slightly. "I think this is Crossbell Tower," the white fox said.

I walked over and peered down at the blueprint. I had never seen one before so the lines and numbers felt alien, but at the same time also so familiar. I remembered back when Bensley was teaching me about geometry... It was nothing so complex as this but it made me long for my old friend and mentor.

"It definitely is. You can tell by the decorations near the post at the top here that make the building look even taller," I said, pointing to the ornate and very decorative spire that added feet to the tower's height. It was cheating in my book, but then I didn't build towers for a living.

I smirked when that brought up an image in my head. "You know, these rich people competing against each other to build the tallest building in the world reminds me of some guys arguing whose cock is the largest."

That brought a chuckle out of Rut, who until this moment seemed all tense and nervous. "Yeah. A fifty-two-story cock," he mused.

Fiz walked up behind Rut and I, crunching his candy loudly in both our ears. We scowled over our shoulders at him and he ignored us.

"No. Fifty-three."

I blinked. "Um, what?"

"Fifty, three," Fiz said, emphasizing each number. He leaned over and tapped at the top most floor of the building. Right there, scrawled with black ink, was the number 53.

"I thought you said the building only had fifty-two stories," I said to Rut, not taking my eyes off the plan.

"It does," Rut said, frowning at the blueprint. "All the newspaper and magazine articles on Mordecai that I could find mentioned the Tower having fifty-two stories. And the blueprints I got from city hall and the ones in the lobby downstairs mention it too. I also counted the elevator buttons. The top floor is fifty-second."

"Look!" Fiz said, tapping on the blueprints again. His finger was on a large floor near the middle of the tower. It took up the height of two, which was only rivaled by the penthouse that was listed at the very top of the building.

"We were on this floor when we got here and nothing was that tall," Rut said, the pieces coming together in his mind. He looked up from the blueprints and chuckled. "That's fucking genius."

Fiz was grinning ear to ear. He looked at my confused face. "Hidden floor!" he said and patted me on the shoulder. "Fifty-two is fifty-three!"

Rut took a closer look at the sheet of paper in front of him. "Just by looking at this blueprint, I can tell that the building has a lot of empty space. I'd bet my whole week's pay that Mordecai has hidden rooms and corridors all over this place."

"That sounds like something he'd do," I agreed and looked the blueprints over some more. "He's been killing people and coming and going without being seen; he probably designed this place so he could get in and out without a care in the world."

"We should consider--HEY FIZ NO!" I heard Rut shout.

Fiz slammed his knife into the decorative (and very expensive!) framed picture, resulting in glass shattering everywhere. The black fox nonchalantly brushed shards of glass aside and then cut out the blueprint. He looked it over before folding it up so neat and perfectly that I swore a machine couldn't have done a better job. With a big smile, Fiz walked over to Rut and handed it over to his white-furred twin.

Rut stared, eyes wide and mouth tight. He took the blueprint and didn't break eye contact with his brother. "Fiz, what did I say about randomly breaking things?"

"Don't?" Fiz answered with an innocent tilt of his head to the left.

I noticed some strange symbol when Fiz was folding it. "What's that on the flipside of the blueprint?" I said as I walked over and gently took the paper from Rut. On the back of the blueprint was a sketch of an ornate playing card. It was stylized to look expensive and had the measurements as if it was actually going to be crafted. There were a few other rectangles next to it but blank. Very weird.

"Why would this be on the back of an official blueprint that was in a glass frame?"

I turned to the smashed case. The case was nailed to the wall, so no one would've been able to see the playing card motif on the back of the blueprint that was stored inside the case.

"Mordecai is a man who likes hiding things," I said. "This may be a new method to hide some of his secrets, but even secrets need blueprints. As much of a genius as he is, I doubt he is any good at metalworking."

We stepped out of the office, still lost but thinking. This was the best piece of evidence that something wasn't right here, but now with the damage and the stolen blueprint, we wouldn't be able to come back here, not without heightened security. We had to solve the problem tonight.

"Rut!" Fiz said, pointing to something near the door we had just come in. A golden plaque.

Rut and I stepped closer and looked at the plaque. It was gold and beautiful with the name of the engineering firm that the offices must have belonged to. But in the corner, hidden among some of the ornate linework at the border, was a playing card etched into the metal.

"Well now..."

We heard running and turned. Fiz was running down the hallway back to this floor's lobby and the elevators. I looked at Rut who was already running. He seemed to know better than to call out for his brother. I sighed and ran after the two of them, trailing behind.

When I found them in the lobby, Fiz was standing near the elevator and pointing to the directory on the wall. It was an etched map of the building and the floors with the names of various offices filled in along the side, businesses that had rented space from Mordecai. Fiz was gripping his brother's arm, tugging on it and pointing. Rut was ignoring the tug and looking at the directory closely, even standing on his toes to see something up close.

"Damn," Rut said with a slow sigh of surprise. He looked over at Fiz. "How'd you see this?! It's so small."

"Remember," Fiz said, tapping the side of his head with a finger and smiling. "Notice everything!"

"Yes..." Rut said slowly, almost forlornly. "Father did drive that lesson home once or twice..." Rut said and then looked over his shoulder at me, waving me over. "Simon! Look what Fiz found."

On the metal etching, hidden again along the decorative line work, were card suits. Clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades.

"Thirteen clubs at the bottom, then thirteen diamonds, followed by thirteen hearts, and finally thirteen spades..." Rut observed.

"Fifty-two!" Fiz said.

"Like a deck of cards," I said, eyes wide.

"But there are fifty-three floors."

"Wait a minute..." Rut said and closed his eyes, hand over them and deep in thought. Rut only did this when he was trying to remember something obscure. I'd seen it once or twice. I imagined Rut was standing in the middle of an expansive library with thousands of books. When he got like this I pictured the books flying open and all that information fluttering free of the bindings and swirling around him, the white fox able to pick out everything that passed his face and knew what it meant.

"Simon," Rut said, looking up at me. "This is going to sound strange, but do you play any cards?"

"I mean I played some when I was on the Paramour, but I didn't really love it like some of the crew. I was never good at bluffing in poker."

"Right. Okay. A deck of cards also has a joker card. It's not generally used, but some card games do use it. Such as poker. It's usually used as a wild card, a card that can tip the balance of a game in the favor of someone who draws it."

"And what does this have to do with Mordecai and his weird numbering system?"

Rut frowned. I was ruining his reveal and his tail lashed once in agitation. He always enjoyed showing how clever he was. "I'm getting to that... Have you ever heard of the 'one-eyed royals'? They're the Jack of Spades, Jack of Hearts, and King of Diamonds. They're called that because the faces on those cards are only shown from the side, so only one eye is visible on the card."

"And Mordecai is..."

"Jack. Spring Heeled Jack," Fiz said without the usual levity in his voice.

"And the 'one eye,'" Rut continued, "is the reference to your fur. Your marking on the fur -- it covers one eye. Don't you see, Simon? He's obsessed with you. There's no way he didn't start to include you in his crazy ideas. So that means the Jack of Hearts or the Jack of Spades -- the thirty-seventh or the fiftieth floor -- are important to him."

"That's a bit of a leap, isn't it?" I said with a frown. "We're assuming he cares enough about me to have hidden parts of this building because it references me and his weird obsession."

Rut pulled out the blueprint from his vest and opened it up, holding it against the wall. His finger slammed on the hidden floor without a number. It was near the upper middle of the building.

"This 'empty floor' is right next to the 37th. The Jack of Hearts."

"Simon," Rut said with a soft chuckle. "You're the key to all of this. You always were."

As much as I wanted to protest, I knew Rut was right. Deep down this made sense to me, in the twisted odd way I knew Mordecai operated.

I just hoped it was enough to lead us to the end.