Time and Chance Read online

  Joe didn't know what was in his blood—he'd have guessed cheap wine and failure—but Lee saw something there, and that, Joe was told, was what this was all about.

  The lottery.

  He was, finally, going somewhere.

  New York City is full of brownstone buildings, block after block of them. Most are single family homes sharing common walls on two sides, a few steps up from the street, three or four stories tall.

  But not all of them.

  The limo cruised past miles of them, up First Avenue, over the Harlem River and the Bronx Kill, into the South Bronx. Finally, in Hunt's Point, across the East River from Riker's Island, there was a corner building, part of a block that looked like a hundred other blocks in the city.

  The car came to a stop. Suzanne gave Joe an open-mouthed smile.

  "We're here, Joe," she said. "Home sweet home."

  He had been paying scant attention to the world passing by outside the limo, but emerging into the bright sunshine, he realized they were in a neighborhood that he wouldn't have considered desirable or even safe. The brownstone Suzanne stood looking at appeared abandoned—boards nailed over glassless windows, no signs of habitation of any kind. The only person on the street was carrying a bottle in a paper bag and wearing rags. Joe knew the homeless had to sleep where they could, but even he had never come to a place like this to squat.

  Raymond and Lee exited the car, and the chauffeur took off. Wise, Joe thought—leave it sitting in this area too long and you'd find the wheels gone even though you were still inside it.

  He'd been under the impression that these folks had money, though. The nice car, the expensive lab equipment… what were they doing at this abandoned tenement?

  "This is home?" he finally asked.

  "Don't judge a book by its cover," Suzanne said. "Or in this case, a home by its outer shell."

  Joe shrugged and watched her climb the six stairs to the front door. She put a key in the lock and turned it, and the door swung open. Raymond touched his arm and he went up the steps behind her, into the building's entryway. The stench was overwhelming—decades of waste and decay and hopelessness had left their mark.

  Inside, it looked pretty much like he'd expected it to look. There was trash everywhere, years' worth of old newspapers, broken bottles, rusting cans. In a room just off the foyer that had probably once been a formal sitting room there were three paper-thin mattresses, stained and torn. More trash surrounded them, like the sea around an island chain.

  A staircase led up from the foyer, but the first six steps were gone, leaving a jagged-toothed mouth that opened into black emptiness.

  Graffiti covered every wall inside—huge letters spelling out gang names, obscene phrases, meaningless symbols and drawings.

  Raymond and Lee followed him inside, and Lee shut the door, locking it from within.

  "This is a nice place," Joe said sarcastically. "Ritzy."

  "I told you, don't judge it," Suzanne said.

  Whatever, Joe thought. If it gets better, let's see it.

  Suzanne led the way again, down a tiny hallway next to the staircase and through a darkened doorway. Joe followed, Raymond and Lee bringing up the rear. Inside the doorway was a room that had probably once been a half bath—pipes for a toilet and sink jutted from the floor. But the fixtures were gone, and even here they waded through the filth of years of neglect. The far wall of the bathroom was gone, replaced by a seemingly random accumulation of plywood sheets and two by fours.

  Suzanne pushed on one of the plywood boards and it swung open as if on a hinge. Joe suppressed a shiver— there was more to this place than met the eye. But he couldn't shake the impression that it was a sinister place, somehow. He felt like he was being watched…

  Carl Malone needed a quiet place to hole up and finish his bottle. He'd had to panhandle all morning to afford it, and when he got back to the overpass under which he usually slept, he found that it had been occupied by three other guys, young ones, who had stolen his bedroll. They'd chased him off with rocks.

  But he'd held onto his Thunderbird, so it wasn't all bad.

  And so he'd wandered, looking for someplace warm and private. Taking an occasional slug from the bottle as he went. When he saw the huge black car, his first thought was that he was hallucinating. He'd rubbed his eyes and squinted through the harsh sunshine. Still there. And there were people getting out of it. When the car drove away, they went into the end brownstone.

  He could barely remember knowing that there were people with that kind of money. He'd seen them, of course, on TV. Rockefellers and Kennedys and the like. But Carl had spent more than a decade on the streets, his last job disappearing in the last recession. He knew it wasn't just the job—he had some kind of mental problems, he figured, he drank to shut out the voices he heard, he got into fights now and then. He had never fit into society, so he'd left it behind.

  People with money scared him. He didn't want to go down to the end of the block where they might see him. The brownstones along this block all looked abandoned, so he decided to check one out, see if maybe there was a place he could squat for a night or two or three.

  He looked up and down the block. There was no one around. He climbed the steps to one, tried the door. It was locked tight, and boards were nailed across it.

  But there was a window level with the door. The glass was gone and there were a couple of boards nailed up there. Between the boards he could see inside—wallpaper peeled from the walls lay in curled strips on the floor, along with a threadbare brown blanket and a dozen empty Sterno cans. Someone had claimed the place once, but everything seemed covered in layers of dust, as if it hadn't been used in some time.

  He reached for the boards, yanked them from the window frame, and dropped them inside. Then he climbed through the gaping window.

  Once inside, he tried to reposition the boards, hammering the nails into the rotting wood of the window frame with his fists. No sense advertising that there was someone in here. It stank, but then, so did he. This place was out of the wind and it was quiet, and there was even a blanket, of sorts, for the night. He'd have a look around the rest of the place; who knew what treasures it might yield?

  Right after he finished his bottle.

  * * *

  "Alarm," Beckwith said. He was a light-skinned black man with pale eyes and short curly hair, dressed in a dark sweatshirt and jeans. At his hip he wore a Browning 9mm in a leather holster. He sat before a bank of video monitors showing him black-and-white images of a dozen rooms. Some of the monitors kept a constant location in view, while others switched randomly between multiple cameras.

  "Which unit?" Telford asked him. "I'll take it." Anna Telford was short, just over five feet. But she worked out with free weights five days a week, ran six miles every morning. Her arms were bigger around than most men's thighs. Her copper hair was clipped short, out of her face. She was strong and she liked to fight. It wasn't unusual for her to volunteer to deal with intruders, and it wasn't unusual for Beckwith to let her have her fun.

  "Twelve zero six," he said. "Unarmed, at least partially intoxicated." He smiled. "Be my guest. I'll alert Wager."

  "Right back," Telford said. She pushed up from her chair in the security office, grabbed a small needle gun, and climbed a concrete stairway.

  The security office was down one flight from street level. Most of the serious work of the complex took place on the level below that, two stories down. There were three of these stairways and one elevator, all leading to the main complex, which was mostly located beneath the "yards" that ran behind the brownstone buildings.

  From outside, even from the air, Telford knew, the block looked like any other block of abandoned brownstones. The poorer sections of the Apple were loaded with 'em. Looking down from above, you'd see a row of houses facing the street, each with its own small fenced-in yard. Those yards butted up against those of the houses facing the parallel street.

  What you couldn't tell from outside
was that Wager had bought, under a wide variety of names and through an assortment of dummy companies, the entire block.

  He'd knocked out walls, hollowed out passageways, and built a maze of tunnels connecting the houses to one another. Beneath the yards, he'd dug a deep pit and constructed a vast concrete bunker, dozens of rooms filled with scientific and research equipment, staffed by legions of scientists and aides and administrators.

  Ventilation shafts were cleverly hidden in the brownstones. Emergency exits led into the sewers, so in the unlikely event of evacuation, people would come out more than a block away. The nearest vehicular access was a garage two blocks away, so people coming and going usually parked briefly on the street in front.

  Security was very high-tech. Video cameras and motion sensors watched every brownstone. Guards, on duty twenty-four hours, watched the monitors and responded to any breach with swift efficiency.

  Telford was one of the guards.

  "Mr. Wager."

  Wager looked up from his monitor, glanced at the intercom unit on his desktop. He was online, tracking the fluctuations of global currency. He'd invested seven hundred thousand dollars in Japanese yen today, feeling a great likelihood that the yen would take an upswing. So far, it had gone up by almost four cents on the dollar. His profit, if he bought dollars now, would be in the neighborhood of twenty eight thousand dollars.

  Not big money. But not bad for a few minutes' work, requiring no effort on his part and even less risk.

  Wager didn't deal in risk. He dealt in probabilities, and there was no one alive who understood them like he did.

  "Yes, Beckwith."

  "Just wanted to let you know, sir. There's an intruder on the premises, but he's being dealt with."

  "And how is our friend Joe coming along?"

  "He'll be to you in about four minutes, sir."

  "That's fine." Wager turned back to his screen. A soft click indicated that Beckwith had signed off.

  Wager didn't like anyone inside his private sanctum, except for Suzanne Sawyer. It was a tiny room, to begin with—one wall of video monitors, a desk, a big leather chair, all squeezed into a room slightly less than nine feet square. It was almost dead center in the complex, built of unadorned concrete blocks.

  He felt safe there. He tilted back in his chair, savoring the sensation. Took a sip of cranberry juice from the glass on his desk.

  Another four minutes, and then he would meet his future.

  The chances that it would be an improvement over his past were one hundred percent certain.

  There had been a time when Wager had been known as Thomas Carlisle. He'd been a small man, a weak man, a frightened man.

  He was still small. The other words no longer applied.

  Within a week, two at the outside, he would be the undisputed ruler of New York's criminal community. Not weak or frightened anymore.

  Thomas Carlisle had been a gambler, and a successful one. He played the odds. Most of the time, he beat the odds.

  He traveled constantly—Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Monte Carlo, Macao—anyplace there was a game of chance, a deck of cards, a roll of dice to place a bet on. He was perfectly capable of blowing a quarter of a million dollars in the space of a single evening, because he knew—knew, not just believed—that the next roll, or the one after, would be the one that would reverse his fortunes. He believed in going home a winner, and he did so, night after night.

  He partied with movie stars and gangsters. Beautiful women vied to spend time with him. He was not big, not muscular, not especially handsome. But he was rich, and there was an undeniable energy to him. He was charismatic in the truest sense of the word.

  Until, one night in Reno, Nevada, he made a mistake.

  Thomas hardly ever bothered with Reno. It was decidedly low-rent. The stakes were small. The hotels left much to be desired, and the women were brash and unrefined compared to those of the world's gambling capitals.

  But there was an event, a poker tournament with a one million-dollar purse that he didn't want to miss. Not because he was especially a poker fan—too much of the human element, and not enough reliance strictly on odds. But he could play the game, and he could use the mil.

  A week of bad luck had put Thomas Carlisle in debt to some of his "pals." He wanted to pay it off before the friendships turned sour and he ended up with broken bones, or worse.

  He knew the chances of winning the poker tournament. He also knew the possibility of winning a cool million at any other form of gambling in the space of twenty-four hours. The tournament won out.

  He played enough roulette to cover his entry fee of twenty-five thousand, and he bought himself a chair. In the first rounds, he did well. He was a contender.

  The night wore on. Thomas knew the odds. He made his choices. He folded when he had to, bumped up the pot when he could, bluffed when he thought it best.

  At the end of it all, he had won.

  He took the million dollars. Passed out substantial tips to the waitresses, the dealer, the casino security people who escorted him to his suite, the bellman he asked to find him a woman for the night.

  Thomas Carlisle had averted catastrophe. He didn't want to celebrate alone, but he didn't know any women in Reno, and the ones in the casino hadn't been glamorous or beautiful enough to bother with. He told the bellman he wanted the most stunning woman in town, never mind the cost.

  When she arrived, she was indeed stunning. He negotiated a price with her, handed her the money, in advance.

  And she showed him her badge.

  An undercover cop, working on Reno's efforts to tame its reputation.

  Trying to bribe an officer only made things worse. He was taken into custody. Tried, and convicted.

  Six months in the care of Nevada's finest.

  In prison, his money did him no good. Most of it went to pay back his debts, which weren't forgiven just because of a little unexpected incarceration. The tax man collected a large chunk as well. He had some left, but no access to it from behind bars.

  In prison, he was small and weak and frightened.

  The other prisoners took advantage of that.

  Thomas Carlisle was traumatized by the treatment he got in prison. Life there was so different from life on the outside. Violence loomed around every corner. There was no place that was truly safe. Eventually, he took to thinking of his cell was a sanctuary, because, even though they could still get him in there, it was the closest he had to a private spot. At night, with the cells locked down, he had only his cellmate to worry about, and his cellmate was a white-collar criminal with no interest in brutalizing Thomas. Nor did he do anything to help protect his cellmate.

  Thomas retreated into himself, into his mind. The terror and the pain and the anger worked on him, twisted him, changed him into something else.

  It began simply enough. A guard was filling out a lottery ticket near Thomas. The man made a remark about Thomas's rep, his abilities as a gambler. Jokingly, the guard asked Thomas to choose his numbers for him.

  The guard won a quarter of a million dollars.

  Word spread. Soon it became clear that Thomas had a gift. Something special. And his services were quickly in high demand. Prisoners wanted to know the odds of escape plans they had made. Or of their own survival should they follow one course of action over another.

  Thomas obliged them—and the abuse stopped. More than that, he began to gain privileges and status. The warden gave him a private cell in return for a little favor involving the "accidental" death of his wife…

  And Thomas never, ever had to leave his cell. His meals were brought to him. He was given a phone, a television, whatever he wanted.

  Of course, by the time he was released, he was diagnosed as an agoraphobic—afraid of being out in the open, in public places, or, really, anywhere except his own private space—the smaller, the better.

  And his powers of computing odds were improved a thousandfold.

  Where, before, he would have been ab
le to tell the odds of a roulette ball landing on red five spins out of seven, he now could watch the ball and instantly compute its chances of falling on any given number. He knew at a glance if a blackjack dealer was going to bust, just by watching the way the cards played out. He could determine, before it happened, the chances of any given airplane crashing, or rain falling from the sky, of a police detective's being able to solve a particular crime.

  All life was odds. Probabilities. And Thomas Carlisle had become the master of probabilities. Something had clicked in his brain, something that enabled him to figure the odds on any event he considered.

  He was always right.

  He began to call himself Wager. He made a lot of money, fast. Hired associates.

  And he developed a plan.

  He'd had to beg for his life, his safety, from the criminals he met in prison. Had to put up with their abuses, their brutality. At least until his powers had manifested. But Thomas feared the day his powers would fail him. It was a terror that weighed on him constantly. He could think of only one way to ensure that he would never again suffer at the hands of criminals and thugs, he vowed. Instead, he would own them, control them. Rule them.

  He started by coming to New York City, America's marketplace, where anything could be had for a price. Anything at all.

  And then, he set out to buy the unthinkable. He would pay whatever price it took, but he would own a man.

  Carl Malone shoved a pile of wadded-up newspapers out of the way, pushed a flattened cardboard box up against the wall to provide some protection from the cold seeping up through the building's hardwood floor, and sat on the cardboard, back against the wall. He opened his brown paper bag, unscrewed the lid from his bottle. The sharp tang of his wine bit his nostrils. He inhaled deeply.

  And heard a sound.

  Looking up, he saw a dark figure emerge from a wall.

  Maybe he didn't need to finish this bottle after all.

  Anna Telford recognized that violence was not a reasonable solution to problems.