The next morning was slow going, most of it spent in bed. He slept mainly on his stomach, to keep pressure off where that kidney punch had landed, breathing through his mouth, having stuck some rolled-up tissue in his nose to keep any blood off the pillow and sheets. When he got up to use the bathroom, one look in the mirror told him he'd best ask the janitor or someone to go out and get him some dark glasses to cover those eyes that were twice as black and swollen as when he'd gone to bed. Couldn't put his face in public like that. He hadn't left the room after Helen dropped him off, had ordered in pizza for dinner and watched part of a game on the tube.

Since this was day one of his thirty-day countdown with Zekov, he needed to get himself in gear and come up with some kind of plan. The one thing that kept coming back to him was that kid with the offbeat artwork on his skateboard. He sensed there was something there he could construct a nice little promotion around. Leverage into something that could generate some art world buzz, some cash flow.

So find him.

Go to where he was most likely to be. And if he wasn't there, ask around.

~~~~~~

A small crowd – sightseers with their maps, neighborhood joggers, people out walking their dogs – had gathered on Central Park's Bethesda Terrace, next to the tall fountain, to watch a skateboarder whose street name was The Wiz performing an array of eye-catching stunts – flipsides, grinds, heelflips... Between The Wiz and the crowd, a kid in a wheelchair was going back and forth with a satchel opened on his lap, people tossing coins and bills into it, compensation for The Wiz's performance, the skateboarder and the wheelchair kid a team.

A group of their colleagues in grunge gear, their posse, wove among the onlookers, urging them to give.

At the edge of the crowd, Victor Sykes, dark glasses perched on his bandaged nose, was watching the goings-on.

His distorted eyes were working well enough for him to notice one of the grunge posse, a dark-haired girl who he'd later learn was named Janna, slipping in behind a man in a business suit. She waited until The Wiz had everyone's attention, then gently raised the vent of the man's jacket. With all eyes on the action, Janna deftly lifted the man's wallet.

She stuck the wallet inside her black leather jacket and casually backed away. Suddenly she whipped around.

Speeding toward her with its siren yelping and bubble-light flashing was an NYPD interceptor cart.

The grunge posse took off in every direction. The kid with the satchel jumped out of the wheelchair and rain full speed past Janna, both of them bolting up the Terrace's grand staircase where the intercept cart couldn't follow.

The Wiz hightailed it in the opposite direction, pushing his board down a narrow path through a section of trees and out of sight.

But The Wiz and the others weren't who Sykes had come to see.

The kid who had his interest was the one off by himself there, who was playing it cool like he wasn't part of the posse – the kid who made that mod-primitive artwork that, with heads-up management, Sykes knew could be cashed in on.

Sykes watched him hop on his board and push off alone, heading for the Bow Bridge, an old cast-iron pedestrian crossing that spanned a narrow part of Central Park Lake. A breeze had come up, rippling the water, and it looked like it might rain again, dark clouds moving in from the west.

The kid rolled across the bridge, the mid-Manhattan skyline stretched above the trees on the shoreline behind him. When he got to the other side, Sykes quickly followed.

Kept his distance as the kid wove along a shadowy walkway, practicing a few tricks, basic moves, nothing like what The Wiz was doing. Sykes then had to pick up his pace as the kid pushed himself deeper back into the trees, into The Ramble, a small forest with crisscrossing paths, a woodland sanctum in the middle of the city.

The kid tried a kick-flip, went off balance and missed, his board with its artwork landing upside down. He picked it up with an irritated grab and carried it to the bottom of a set of stone steps.

He stared up the steps, and, after a moment, jogged with his board up to the top and disappeared.

Sykes went to the foot of the steps, glanced up them and started to follow. Stopped when he heard the hollow rumble of a skateboard coming toward him.

A second later the kid sailed into view, flying off the top of the steps.

Sykes ducked and watched the kid ride his board through the air, down to the walkway, landing hard, breaking a wheel, the board flipping, the kid tumbling.

He somersaulted to a stop and lay still.

Sykes started to go to him, but someone else beat him to it.

He could see it was the pickpocket grunge girl, who knelt down and bent over the prostrate boarder.

"Mavro?" she said.

Not a bad name, Sykes thought. Promotable. 

She bent closer. "You there?"

"I had a malfunction," Mavro muttered.

"You're a malfunction."

He pushed himself up and got to his feet. "That cart cop make you?"

"Just get your board and let's go."

He picked up his board, could see a large scrape on the artwork, didn't seem to mind, picked up the broken wheel.

Over by the trees, Sykes was watching from behind his dark glasses. Mavro glanced casually that way, turned and walked off with his board and the girl.

~~~~~~

They got off the subway in Long Island City, just the other side of the East River, it flowing past the street of shut-down factories and warehouses that Sykes was following them on. They didn't seem to be in any particular hurry, the two of them a few hundred feet ahead, walking and talking. The weather front he'd seen back in the park had moved in and it was starting to drizzle. The temperature had dropped and he put his hands in his pockets, stepped into the shadow of an old doorway to wait a minute and put a little more distance between him and them, didn't want to rush things.

So this Mavro hung with a crew of hustlers, or at least his girlfriend did. Sykes had heard him call her Janna back in the park. She was the operative, the others the distraction. Mavro didn't seem all that attached to them, the way he stayed off by himself like that. Or maybe that had been part of the plan. Anyway, better get moving, them having just disappeared around that next corner.

He quickstepped up to the corner and carefully peered around the deserted building there. Saw Mavro but didn't see the girl. And Mavro was running, skateboard under his arm, rapidly distancing himself.

The kid knew he was being followed.

Sykes started after him. Saw after a few strides that he wasn't going to catch him. He started to call out when suddenly a garbage can came hurtling out of an alley. It slammed into his legs and knocked him off his feet.

He landed on his back, dark glasses flying, and found himself looking up at the girl. "What's your problem, mister?" she said, squinting at his bandaged nose and black eyes. "Besides looking like shit."

"Your boyfriend," Sykes said, struggling to sit up, his back still hurting from that kidney punch.

"What?"

"I want to talk to him."

"You talk to me."

"He paints, yes?"

"Who are you?"

"Just tell me."

"No, you tell me."

Sykes started to improvise. "I manage artists. I'm an agent."

"Yeah, right." She pulled out her phone. "I'm calling you in." She started tapping in a number.

"Wait," Sykes said. "Just listen a minute."

She paused with the tapping, gave him a hard squint.

"You listening?" he said, knowing that she was faking it with the phone, not about to get her cute pickpocket ass involved with the cops. 

"Go on."

"I think maybe there's something with your friend I can work with." He glanced uneasily at two men in hard hats who had just come out of a building that was being gutted and were looking this way. "I talk better standing," he told her.

She watched him, and after a moment jerked her head. "Get up."

Five minutes later he had given his pitch and she was talking on her phone, a little calmer now as they walked along another block of mostly abandoned buildings.

"... makes no nevermind to me," she said, presumably to Mavro. "Him and me talked, I think you should listen is all. He wants to see your stuff." She listened, glanced at Sykes and nodded. "We're down the street, I'll bring him up."

She thumbed off the call and nodded to Sykes. "Okay, we're on. What's your name, by the way?"

"Victor Sykes."

"I'm Janna."

"I know," said Sykes.

She looked at him narrowly as they shook hands.

"It fits you," he said, guessing she was in her early twenties. Olive skin, no makeup, face not exactly pretty, but striking, with dark, take-no-crap eyes that were almost black.

She wasn't sure what to make of what he just said. "Over there," she said.

The drizzle was turning to rain now and they walked quickly across the potholed street to yet another abandoned building.

-