Outcasts

Chapter 2 - Deep Debt

They let him out the next morning. He'd managed to talk the night duty officer at the Midtown South Precinct into listing the incident as a misdemeanor. When they got around to the actual paper work, after he'd gotten a few hours sleep in the holding cell, the duty cop who'd come on with the shift change let him go with a scofflaw warning. Said to behave himself and nodded toward the door.

He grabbed a quick Egg McMuffin on his way over to Tenth Avenue (the rain had stopped), checked into a cheap hotel he knew that was squeezed between a used furniture store and a Korean market (a friend of his used to date the grocer's oldest daughter), threw his duffle bag onto the narrow bed in the cramped room the day clerk had given him, took a shower and shaved, dug a fresh shirt out of the duffle, put it on with a tie and rumpled sportcoat (the extent of his business wardrobe), made a call from the phone beside the bed (made a mental note to buy a cell), had a short conversation, hung up and stared pensively at the receiver, then went downstairs and headed uptown.

He decided to walk the mile or so to where he was going. It was a nice spring day, clear and cool after the rain, and it felt good to know he could go in any direction as far as he wanted with no walls to keep him in.

But that didn't mean he couldn't be followed.

He'd been tailed right from when he stepped out of Midtown South onto West 35th, even though he'd been checking his back. It was a different tail from last night, and the man had stayed far enough behind and blended well enough so that Sykes didn't spot him. The man was peering now out the window of a laundromat across Tenth Avenue, catching glimpses of Sykes walking along behind the trucks and cars lined up at the 53rd Street light, making his way uptown. The man pulled out his phone and made a call.

"He's going north on Tenth," he said. "I'll give him a block and then stay with him."

Sykes kept walking north until he got to Lincoln Center, cut across the plaza with its glass-faced theaters where the world's best came to perform, past the big fountain that everybody got their pictures taken in front of (a young couple was there now trying to fit it in a selfie), continued east on 64th, took the Tavern on the Green entrance into Central Park, went catty-corner across Sheep Meadow, remembered tossing a Frisbee there, kept going until he came to Fifth Avenue, walked two more blocks north, turned and went up the wide granite steps into the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He crossed the Great Hall with its vaulted ceiling, people crisscrossing and meeting each other for this or that exhibit, got a nice whiff from the giant flower arrangements he recalled were replaced every week, compliments of a donor he wouldn't mind meeting, and went over to the ticket counter that was tucked under the second floor balcony.

"One adult, please," he said to the woman behind the counter who gave him a smile.

"It's been taken care of, sir."

"Excuse me?"

"You're Mr. Sykes, aren't you?"

"I am. How did you know?"

"I was given a good description." She nodded toward a set of marble stairs going up through a tall archway. "Mr. Tierney said he'll meet you in the Old Master's section. Said you know where it is, that you'd probably want to check in there."

Sykes nodded with a wry smile. "Mr. Tierney's memory serves him well. Thank you."

"You're most welcome. Here's your pass, just pin it to your jacket."

She pushed a plastic card to him and he pinned it to his lapel.

The guard at the foot of the stairs glanced at the card and nodded him by. He went up through the arch and made his way to the European Paintings Galleries. Got there and looked around and felt like he'd returned to some exclusive club and was visiting old friends. He walked slowly and began taking in the classic canvases that the world had known for centuries – Rubens, Velazquez, Caravaggio...