ESPER FOLLOWED ME into the lobby. A man stepped in front of me, in a suit that only a Fed would wear, unless it was for a joke. But he didn’t look jokey. He had the kind of smug look that made me want to punch him. Just to watch his expression.
Vesper said, “Daniels. I’m so glad I ran into you.” She said it quickly and maybe just a little too loud.
So, she knew him. And he was a Fed. Of course. And how did he happen to find us here? It was all too damned obvious. Why did I ever trust a fed in the first place? Now here I was with two of them.
The man she called Daniels was looking at me when he said, “I see you have our prime suspect.”
“I’m taking him to a hotel. He claims to be staying there, and says that there’s material evidence in his room.” This was all news to me. It seemed that she had played me all along. In all probability, I’d be heading straight back to the house of many doors to pay the price for someone else’s crime. This time for a much longer stretch.
Daniels told her, “I’ll come along. Give you a hand.”
“Appreciate the help.” She held my upper arm. She squeezed with the tips of her fingers. Maybe that was supposed to reassure me. It felt like a personal way of saying, We’ll get this straightened out, don’t you worry. Which is what lawmen always say. Right before they shovel your life into a chute and down the shitter.
These two were well trained. They stayed either side of me and just behind. If I tried to run they could stop me. They were too near for me to launch a blow at either of them.
Vesper asked Daniels, “You have a car?”
“We’ll take a cab.”
She steered me out the front entrance and down the steps. A flunky in a long coat asked Daniels if he wanted a cab. Daniels nodded and the flunky made haste, stepping into the street, pointing his white-gloved finger aloft and blowing a whistle. The poor sap was working hard for his tips today.
He flagged a cab and stood erect holding the back door open. Vesper slid across the seat to the far side, I got in the middle. Daniels thanked the flunky and showed him his badge as appreciation. The look on the flunky’s face was so civil; he could have taught anger management at the UN. He turned, leaving the cab door open.
I looked in the mirror. The cab driver’s eyes rolled. He looked back at me and fixed me with a cold stare. I could see him thinking, What’s worse than two Feds for a fare? Two feds and a perp.
Daniels talked straight across me like I was the luggage. “You heard what happened?”
“The SAC? That was awful.”
“Seems he must have been a bad apple.”
“I guess so. Who put out the ‘locate and secure’ order, do you know?”
Daniels shifted in his seat. “Must have been pretty senior. Maybe not even New York.”
His hand was in his coat. The hard muzzle of a pistol pushed behind his scratchy suit coat and against my ribs.
Special Agents never get tired of saying how they’re all marksmen. If he wanted to shoot me at that range, he wouldn’t need any marksmanship. He’d have a hard job not hitting Vesper, though. That was what I was thinking as I looked in his eye. I could have been looking at a stone. His eyes were like the eyes of a Roman statue. Round, hard and with no hint of anything inside.
Outside the hotel, Daniels sniffed the air. We went up the stairs in a line. Me first, then Vesper. Daniels at the rear.
At the door to the room, Daniels asked her, “So, Agent Cross, what is the nature of the evidence you were hoping to find here?” I didn’t like him using the past tense there.
She didn’t miss a beat. “Going only by what the suspect has told me, Agent Daniels, I’m expecting material evidence connecting the suspect with the intermediary known as ‘El Guapo,’ including voice recordings. Also, material evidence in the form of cell phones and phone chips used in communications that may be components in a number of criminal conspiracies.”
He had me open the door and go in first.
“Not a bad haul. If any of it turns out to be there.”
She followed Daniels in and shut the door behind her. “Oh, that’s not all I’m expecting, Agent Daniels.”
“No?” Daniels’ automatic was in his hand. He was fast. No doubt about that.
She said, “I’m expecting to uncover evidence pointing to your own complicity in said conspiracies.”
He smiled. “When you first showed up, Agent Cross,” in no hurry, Daniels checked his weapon and cocked a round into the chamber, “I could see you were ambitious.” He raised the gun. Pointed it at me.
She said, “You didn’t ‘happen’ to be in the lobby of the Algonquin, Daniels. You tracked my phone. Mine or Horse’s.”
He smiled, “You know it’s routine procedure to track any devices believed to be in the possession of a suspect.”
“Of course. But to make those connections, you would have to have been keeping an extremely close eye on Agent Schultz.”
“Ah, yes. Schultz.”
Her foot lifted and her leg snapped out, shooting her heel into the side of his head.
He saw it coming, but he didn’t have time to get entirely out of the way, and she caught him with a glancing blow. The heel of her boot tore a long jagged slash above his ear that began to bleed immediately.
Moving aside, he caught her ankle. He moved to bring the gun to bear on her. To be sure the gun went up, and not down, I had to dive right in front of him. When the gun went off, a searing lash ripped into the top of my forehead. I knew he’d killed me.
Vesper was fast. She turned and shoved back. Daniels’ head hit the floor with a crack. As the world turned red and went dark, I was amazed I could still hear and know what was going on. And I was still standing. After a moment, something wet wiped across my face.
I groaned, “I’m dead.”
Dabbing at my face she said, “Manflu. There’s a gash on your forehead, Horse. It will bleed a lot. But you’re fine.” She handed me the cloth.
Her voice was tenderer than I’d heard it before, an unhelpful observation in a complicated moment. She said, “It’s nothing serious, but you’ll bleed until we can get it sealed up.”
I held the cold cloth against my head. Daniels was on the floor, groggy. His hands were cuffed around the radiator pipe.
“That’s a favorite trick of yours, I see.“ Her eyes shone as she looked back at me. “Hey, you’re not going to…”
She raised a hand and looked hard in my eye, “Stop that sentence right there. Do not say another word.”
She fished two phones out of Daniel’s coat. “Tell me the passcodes, Daniels.”
He didn’t move, like he was unconscious. I held the wet rag over his face and squeezed. Cold water and warm blood splashed right in his eyes and into his nose and mouth. He flinched, so we could see he was awake. I put my foot on his balls. “You like these?” Now his eyes were open.
I looked in his eye as I told him, “Vesper’s bound by the rules,” I pressed a little harder with my heel. “Laws, Geneva convention. All that shit.” He flinched as I pressed “But I’m not.” His eyes widened. I pushed hard. He folded and his arm in the cuffs yanked and twisted with a nasty wet ripping sound.
“Passcodes, asshole, or you can put any dreams of starting a white picket fence family life behind you.” He howled as I put some weight against my heel. Then he told us. Then, after Vesper nodded that they worked, I kicked him hard in the balls. She glowered at me. I shrugged.
My forehead dripped blood onto his face as I bent down. “Don’t take so long with your answers next time. Asshole.”
“Interrogation skills, Horse.” There was a wicked smile in her voice. “It’s all about building a rapport.”
She got into the phones and was looking at the screens. Checking numbers, I figured. Absently she said, “Intimidation and mistreatment just doesn’t get the results. When they feel threatened, people will say anything. You know more than ninety-two percent of the evidence obtained through torture is completely useless?”
“You get into the phones OK?”
She looked up with a grin. “Yup. Perfect, thanks.” I really loved that grin. I could have fucked her right then. She might not have liked it so much, though, having her treacherous colleague as a captive audience.
Then, more serious, “He sent a text message like five minutes ago. Must have been just as we got here.” She looked up, “It gives the location of the hotel.”
I looked over her shoulder at the phone. I knew the number. “Show me the call lists.”
She held up the two phones. I didn’t know ay of the numbers on one. On the other, the one with the text message, about half of the calls were to or from the number I used for El Guapo. I took the phone from her and pressed the number.
After about two rings, the voice I knew on the end said, “Why the fuck are you calling me now?”
“I think I’ve got something of yours.”
There was a pause and his voice dropped a notch. “Horse.” He didn’t sound so pleased to hear from me. “You’ve got some fucking survival skills, I got to say that.”
“Coming from you, that’s something. You’ve stress tested them pretty extensively in the last few days.”
“Okay.” he said, “What is it you want?”
“Daniels is kind of tied up right now,” I told him, “I wondered if you’d like him back.” I hung up. I didn’t wait for him to reply.
“This room’s about to get pretty crowded. We should get out of here.”
We took Daniels’ phones, along with his wallet and his keys. “Take his shoes, Horse.”
“You like them?”
“Makes it all the harder for him to leave. That’s in case he can get free.”
I had to admit, he looked pretty motivated. I pried the shoes off his feet. Nice, expensive shoes, too. He didn’t look at all pleased. I took his socks, too.
“Tell you what,” I told him, “I can call the cops. Tell them you’re here.” His eyes widened. “The Bureau, too, if you’d like. You can play a fun game guessing who’ll get to you first.” Then I leaned nearer to his ear. “Which would you like it to be, Daniels? The cops, your colleagues, or whoever El Guapo’s going to send for you?”
I ripped a sheet, stuffed his own sock in his mouth and gagged him.
“I need to get back to that computer. Fast.” Vesper said, “And we need to get out of here.”