Read Online Crooked by Brian M. Wiprud - Free Book Online

their attraction was instantaneous, their bond deep, their love palpable and kinetic. He came to realize that the love of a woman was one of the most precious things he could ever have collected. It was like owning a rare work, in a way, and you only needed one to be happy. Love had a life of its own the way art had provenance, history. And like his collecting, it required Barney to give a lot of himself. The more he put in, the more he got. But love also filled a different void in him, one not only of the soul but of the heart. Keeping it filled—the way he’d kept his storage locker full of rare collectibles—grew to define him in a way that
objets d’art
never had. Never could have. Being with, even talking with, Nicasia kept that void filled.
    But she didn’t know the truth about his past. And she didn’t know about his current enterprise. The truth barrier remained. If all went according to plan, Barney aimed to break down that wall once and for all.
    As Barney approached the pay phone, he ached to hear Nicasia’s voice. He hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to be apart from her. So why didn’t Drummond want him to call her or talk to anybody? What harm was there in calling? He’d just use his calling card and say he was in Costa Rica.
    But Barney didn’t know he was supposed to be dead.
    He dialed and the receptionist answered. “Nicasia Grieg, please.”
    Her line began ringing. What harm could there be in giving her a call? Unless…
    Barney scanned his surroundings, the parking lots and stadium behind the pay phone. There it was, a small red pickup truck with tinted windows, peeking from behind one of the Triborough Bridge’s fat legs.
    “Grieg here.”
    Barney’s chest tightened at the sound of her voice, but he hung up without a word and went back to his car. He’d noticed that same red pickup, or one too much like it, parked across from his temporary digs in Pugsley’s Point. Barney wasn’t completely sure, but with all the loot at stake, his employers would be keeping an eye on him, wouldn’t they?
    Only one more week. Then he’d be back with Nicasia. One more week.
    From the car’s trunk he produced a satchel and slung it over his shoulder. Was getting involved in this venture a very serious error in judgment? He could, after all, just tell Nicasia about his past and be done with it. But there was something from his more distant past, something that happened in a Japanese garden—before the thieving—that needed to be settled.
    The whiz of tires sang overhead on the Triborough Bridge, trucks grumbling and gurgling as they shifted their way out of the tollbooths above. He checked the contents of his satchel: eight wood stakes, a hand sledge, fluorescent red tape, a couple of black Marks-A-Lots, a handheld GPS device, and a folder of old blueprints. Car locked, he took his coffee cup from the roof and started toward the spot where Little Hell Gate Bridge once connected the two islands.
    The City of New York had, at some historic juncture, decided to dedicate Randall’s and Ward’s Islands to the civic cause of handling refuse: solid, liquid, and human. The channel of water that had once divided the two islands had been completely filled in with debris by the Army Corps of Engineers. It had become overgrown with saplings and haphazard drainage ponds. Above the channel, aligned along the east side of the island, loomed the New York & Connecticut Railroad trestle, a striding monster with oddly Oriental accents and gargantuan balustrades. Aligned along the west side was the Triborough Bridge. A paved asphalt road at ground level that ran between the two and across the filled channel had obviated the necessity for the Little Hell Gate Bridge, and so it had been demolished.
    Bag over his shoulder, Barney walked around to the back of the stadium, to an entrance for an overflow parking lot along the Harlem River. The back lot was several acres of broken macadam, dirt, and occasional decorative