Dmitri Volkov worked out of a basement on Orchard Street, down a flight of stairs that smelled like mold and old newsprint. I'd found the address the hard way — walking, watching, listening to conversations I wasn't part of. The Memory Palace kept trying to help, fragments of future knowledge surfacing at wrong moments, but the show had never bothered with street-level details like forger addresses.
Useful for knowing who Sherlock would encounter in Season 3. Useless for finding them three years early.
The door at the bottom of the stairs was unmarked. I knocked twice, paused, knocked three more times. The rhythm came from somewhere — overhead conversation, rumor, the sort of criminal etiquette that travels through back channels. I had no idea if it was current or obsolete.
The door opened a crack. An eye examined me.
"I'm not buying," a voice said. Accent — Eastern European, specific region hard to place. "And you're not selling. Wrong address."
"I need documents. Full package. Someone gave me your name."
"Someone doesn't know me." The eye narrowed. "Go away."
I put my hand on the door before it could close. "Twenty minutes ago, a man named Felix Grayson deposited eighteen thousand dollars in a checking account at Chase. The money came from a shell company in Delaware that's connected to a loan shark operating out of Red Hook. You owe that loan shark forty-two hundred dollars. You're eleven days past due."
Silence.
The door opened wider. Dmitri Volkov was smaller than I'd imagined — five-six, wiry, with the kind of face that disappeared in crowds. His hair was thinning and his eyes were sharp and he was looking at me like I'd just sprouted a second head.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who knows things." I kept my voice flat. Confident. Like this was nothing, like I dropped leverage casually in every conversation. "I can tell you when and where Grayson will be vulnerable. You handle your debt problem. I get my documents."
"Information isn't money." But he was wavering. I could see it in his shoulders, the way they dropped just slightly. "Full package costs two thousand. Cash."
I had two hundred and eighty dollars left. "You misunderstand. I'm not offering information instead of money. I'm offering information that's worth more than money. Grayson's not just your problem — he's connected to people who'd pay to know where his weak points are. I'm handing you a payday."
Dmitri studied me. His tongue ran across his bottom lip, a tell he probably didn't know he had. Calculating.
"You know things," he said slowly. "Fine. Everyone knows things. But how do you know this? Felix Grayson keeps his books clean. I've looked."
"Not clean enough." I didn't know the specifics — that part was improvisation, extrapolation from fragments I'd assembled walking through neighborhoods all day. But I'd seen enough to know the type. "His girl works at the Chase branch on Delancey. Every Friday she processes deposits after hours. Next Friday, she'll be alone in the building for eleven minutes between security rotations."
I didn't know that last part was true. But it fit the pattern, and Dmitri didn't know enough to call the bluff.
His eyes went distant. Doing math in his head. Weighing risk against reward.
"You want full package," he said finally. "That's ID, social, bank account, credit history. Backdated enough to pass a background check. Takes seventy-two hours."
"I'll wait."
"Name?"
"Cash Dalton."
He wrote it down on a scrap of paper. "No ID means no nothing. You just appeared? Out of nowhere?"
"I just moved from London." The lie came easily. "Burned some bridges on the way out. Need a fresh start without the baggage."
"London." He tapped the pen against his teeth. "You don't sound British."
"I'm adaptable."
That got a small smile. The first crack in his professional skepticism. "Yeah. I can see that."
He moved to a workbench covered in equipment I half-recognized — laminator, printer, something that might have been a specialized camera. His hands were sure as they arranged materials.
"The Grayson information," he said without looking up. "You're certain it's good?"
"Good enough." I leaned against the wall, keeping my posture casual. "But that's not why you're doing this. You're doing this because you're curious. Someone walks in off the street knowing things they shouldn't know — you want to know how. And the only way to find out is to let them stick around."
Dmitri paused. Glanced back at me with something like respect.
"You're dangerous," he said. "I can tell that much. Someone who knows too much is always dangerous."
"I'm useful. Dangerous comes later."
He laughed. Short, sharp, the kind of laugh that meant I'd passed a test I hadn't known I was taking.
"Seventy-two hours. You have a place to stay?"
"I'll manage."
"Sure you will." He handed me a slip of paper with an address written on it. "Boarding house. Brooklyn Heights. Mrs. Petrova asks questions but doesn't expect answers. Tell her Anton sent you."
"Anton?"
"My cousin. Don't worry — he doesn't exist either."
I took the paper. Memorized the address. Slipped it into my pocket anyway, because that's what a normal person would do.
"I'll be back in three days," I said.
"You'll be back when I call you." Dmitri had returned to his equipment, already dismissing me. "Cash Dalton. That's a good name. Sounds like someone who does things for money."
"That's the idea."
I climbed the stairs back into weak afternoon sunlight. Orchard Street was busier now, the usual churn of Lower East Side foot traffic. I joined the flow, just another face in the crowd, nobody worth remembering.
Three days to wait. Three days with nothing to do but prepare.
My stomach growled. I'd forgotten to eat since... since before. Since the other life, the other body, the headlights and the screech and the nothing.
A cart on the corner sold hot dogs that smelled like heaven. I bought two and ate them standing on the sidewalk, grease running down my chin, and for a moment I wasn't thinking about anything at all. Just the taste. Just the simple animal pleasure of food after fasting.
Small joys. The dead man's money paying for the living man's lunch.
I wiped my hands on a napkin and kept walking. The Memory Palace stirred behind my eyes, offering fragments I hadn't asked for — Dmitri's future role, his connection to cases Sherlock would eventually solve, the way his forgeries would save lives and end them in equal measure.
I pushed it down. That was later. That was Season 3 problems. Right now I needed to be here, present, learning the geography of a city I knew from screens but had never walked in person.
Nineteen days until Sherlock arrived. The countdown had started.
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