The Detachment (22 page)

Treven said nothing.

Larison’s head kept tracking. He looked like a rattlesnake trying to make up his mind about in which direction to strike.

I thought we had maybe two more seconds before the tension boiled over. I couldn’t figure out a way to stop it.

Suddenly, Dox brought the muzzle of his Wilson Combat up to his own neck. “Hold it,” he said. “The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it.”

I blinked and thought,
What the fuck?

“Drop it,” he said. “Or I swear, I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!”

He looked from one of us to the other, his eyes wide in faux lunacy.

Larison started to grin, then guffawed. “All right,” he said. “You win. You win.” He eased his pistol into the back of his waistband and held up his hands.

Treven glanced at Larison, then his eyes went back to Dox. His pistol stayed on me. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“Good Lordy-Lord,” Dox said, his voice a falsetto now. “He’s desperate. Do what he say! Do what he say!”

“You’re crazy,” Treven said, but he lowered his gun a few inches. I did the same.

“What,” Dox said, “y’all never saw Blazing Saddles? Cleavon Little? I always wondered if it’d work for real.”

Treven’s gun dropped a little more. “You’re crazy,” he said again.

Dox kept his own gun in position at his neck. “Well, it’s a film, you see. A very fine film, in which—”

“I know the movie,” Treven said.

Dox took the gun from his neck and slid it into the back of his waistband. “Well, maybe the part you’re missing, and this could be due to the subtlety of my delivery, is that two seconds ago we were on the verge of committing a big old group suicide here. Besides hoping to get y’all to come to your senses, that’s what I was trying to demonstrate. You see, placing my weapon to my own neck was a metaphor—”

“We get it,” I said, slowly lowering my gun. Treven did the same.

“I’m waiting for someone to thank me for not doing the campfire scene,” Dox said.

Larison was still grinning, and I imagined this was the first time he appreciated just how cool Dox could be when the shit was hitting the fan. And how much method there was to his hillbilly madness. “Oh baby, you are so talented,” he said, and it was incongruous enough to make me realize it must have been another line from the movie.

“And they are so dumb,” Dox said, confirming my suspicion. They both laughed, and I thought maybe they would be okay now. He wasn’t a man you’d want to fuck with, but laugh at Dox’s jokes and chances were good you’d have a friend for life.

Treven, though, was still an open question. I slid the gun back into my waistband. Treven hesitated, but then followed suit.

“Let’s try to stay chilly,” I said. “We have enough people trying to kill us just now without doing the job for them.” Dox and Larison were still laughing, so the message was mostly for Treven. And, I supposed, for myself.

I briefed them on my conversation with Kanezaki. We all agreed that, overall, our safest move was to stay put until we met him in the garage.

“I should have known these targets and this thing were too big for them to leave us alone afterward,” Dox said. “I let the damn money cloud my reason.”

No one spoke. Dox looked at Larison. “I believe you’ve earned the right to say ‘I told you so.’”

Larison shook his head. “The question is, what do we do now?”

“Exactly,” Treven said. “Wherever your guy takes us, all right, we’re out of the crosshairs, at least for the moment, but what do we do then?”

I turned to Larison. “You said you had a way of getting to Horton.”

He nodded. “If you’re really ready to hear it.”

I looked at him. “I am.”

“Okay, then. We’re going to need your friend’s car. Not just to get out of the area. To get back to Los Angeles.”

L
arison briefed us on the vulnerability he had discovered. It was Horton’s daughter.

“She’s a film school grad student at UCLA,” he explained. “Name is Mimi Kei. Parents are divorced and she uses her mother’s maiden name. The mother’s Japanese.”

“But I checked him out on Wikipedia,” I said. “When you first mentioned his name, in Tokyo. There wasn’t much outside a few highlights of his military career, but it said he’s divorced with no children.”

“He doesn’t want people to know about her,” Larison said. “He has a lot of enemies. That’s probably why she uses her mother’s name. Makes it that much harder for anyone to make the connection.”

“Well, how did you make it?” Dox asked.

Larison smiled. “I always knew if I ever got exposed and someone came after me, it would be Hort, and I wanted an insurance policy against that possibility. So after I pulled my little disappearing act, but before I made my move with the torture tapes, I tracked him. Caught a lucky break, observed him having lunch one day with a pretty young woman in downtown D.C. Followed her back to Georgetown University. Spent some time on Facebook and found her. Her page was privacy protected, but it was easy enough to use the name to confirm she was an undergrad at Georgetown, to track the name Kei to Hort’s failed marriage, and then to do some judicious social engineering to get her to accept a friend request from a Facebook profile I created. I can tell you from her photo page that she’s close with both her parents. And more importantly, that Hort dotes on her. You should see his face in the photos of them together. I guarantee you, take her as collateral, and Hort will do anything we tell him.”

I realized that an hour earlier, I had reacted with anger and disgust that the plotters were threatening someone’s family. And yet here I was, contemplating the same. I had two routes of rationalization available: first, that unlike Schmalz, Horton had brought this on himself. Second, that unlike those of the plotters, our threats against Mimi Kei would be bluffs.

I looked at Larison’s expression, and realized we weren’t going to see eye to eye on that last point. I would have to watch him. Closely.

“And she’s at UCLA now?” I asked.

Larison nodded. “Second-year this fall. Taking summer classes even as we speak. I’ve been keeping tabs.”

“That’s why he knows L.A. so well,” I said. “I wondered about that the two times I met him there. In fact, he suggested L.A. to me. I first thought he was just proposing it as a convenient point between Washington and Tokyo, but no. He was looking for an excuse to visit his daughter.”

Larison smiled again. “His little girl.”

“All right,” Treven said, “but what’s the play? We don’t know where she lives, we don’t know her habits, I don’t think we know much about UCLA. Where do we grab her? Where do we hold her? Without the right tools, I don’t see how we’re going to ensure she’s quiet and cooperative without being brutal. And look, we’ll do what we have to do, but if we fuck her up too much, it’s hard to say which way it’ll cut with Hort. We want to threaten her, absolutely, but if we have to start actually doing it, we lose leverage.”

“I don’t know about that,” Larison said. “I’d even argue that hurting her, with the promise of much worse, would be the ideal way to ensure Hort is as compliant and cooperative as possible. But I’m confident he’ll do what we want either way.”

“Okay,” Treven said. “Assume we grab her. Hold her somewhere, threaten to hurt her if Hort doesn’t cooperate. But cooperate how? Even if he calls off the dogs, the second his daughter is safe, they’ll be on us again. You planning on holding her forever?”

“Not forever,” Larison said. “Just long enough to recover the diamonds.”

“You’re still thinking about the diamonds?” Dox said. “Shit, I’m just looking for a way to get the president to take my ass off his personal assassination list, and not put me in one of his secret prisons for the rest of my life.”

“It’s the same thing,” Larison said. “You ever thought about how much security you can buy with twenty-five million dollars?”

“I know you want those diamonds back,” I said. “But I don’t think the diamonds alone are going to solve the problems we have now. We need to be clear about our new situation, and how we address it.”

Larison rubbed his hands together. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know exactly. But I agree it’s going to involve the daughter one way or the other. Find something that’ll act as…well, if not a guarantee of our safety, then at least an inhibition on Horton’s ability to direct forces against us. Anyway, we don’t have to figure it all out now. We’ll have plenty of time while we’re driving.”

Dox said, “Road trip!”

I checked the secure site. Kanezaki, confirming the pickup was on schedule.

“My contact should be here in just a few minutes,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”

We wiped down the surfaces we might have touched and policed up all sandwich wrappers and other visible evidence that anyone had been in here. Not that anyone would be looking, and there would likely be some hair and other DNA evidence regardless of our other efforts, but better to leave less of a trail to follow than more.

We moved to the door. I looked through the peephole—all clear. I was about to turn the handle when I remembered the two bodyguards I’d seen at the other end of the hallway. I hesitated.

Larison said, “What is it?”

I turned to them. “When you all arrived, was there a security detail at the other end of the hallway on this floor?”

They all shook their heads.

Well, that was odd. These weren’t the kind of men who would overlook something like that.

“Why are you asking?” Larison said.

“Because there was one when I got here. Two bodyguards, who must have taken up their position after you all arrived but before I did.”

No one said anything, so I went on. “Could be a coincidence, of course. Just a high-profile guest who happened to check in after you arrived but before I did. But still.”

I paused and considered. As always, I assumed the worst, the worst in this instance meaning that Horton had somehow anticipated us, or followed the others, and had people in place in the hotel even now.

Put yourself in their shoes. They’d be expecting you to take the stairs, not the elevator. Which, from their perspective, would be perfect. Suppressed weapons, no witnesses, all loose ends disposed of quickly, quietly, cleanly.

“Here’s how we’re going to play it,” I said. “Treven and I are going to head out into the main corridor first. If those two guys I saw are just someone’s diplomatic security detail, fine, we’ll hold the elevator for Dox and Larison and we’ll all go down together. But if they’re not just security, and we have a problem…”

I thought for a moment. I wanted Treven alongside, not behind me, so that was good. But…

I looked at Dox and Larison. “If we have a problem, Treven and I will drop and create a clear field of fire for the two of you. Whatever happens, we’re going to use the elevator. I don’t like the idea of the stairs right now. Everyone okay with this?”

They all nodded. I checked the peephole again, turned the handle with my jacket sleeve, and opened the door. The three of them moved out past me and I closed the door behind us as softly as I could. Then I moved ahead again.

I looked at Treven. “You’re too tight,” I said softly.

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you look tense. Even if those guys are legitimate, they’re watching for trouble. I don’t want to do anything that makes them remember us. And if they’re not legitimate, let’s not do anything to make them feel like we’re clued in. Not until we’re clearing leather and putting rounds in their heads. Okay?”

He frowned more deeply.

“Goddamn it,” I said, “it’s not a criticism. Just relax and follow my lead, okay? Relax.”

We turned the corner into the main corridor. I saw the two bodyguards, same position as before. My heart kicked up a notch.

“I told him,” I said, remembering a banal sports conversation I’d once overheard. “I told him, ‘What the hell were they thinking, trying to play a zone defense against Kentucky?’ I mean, you don’t play a zone against Kentucky.” I actually had no idea what this even meant, but it must have meant something.

To his credit, Treven picked up the vibe immediately and ran with it. He laughed and said, “I was saying the same thing. Told them, ‘not unless you want to get your ass kicked, you don’t.’”

The two bodyguards peeled off from the wall and started moving toward us. Rather, the two not-bodyguards. My heart started hammering harder.

“Best part?” I said. “Those dipshits were betting. Against someone trying to play a zone against Kentucky! Kentucky, can you believe that?”

The two not-bodyguards’ hands were empty. But they were wearing suits. There were a lot of possibilities for concealed carry.

“You know what?” Treven said. “I love people like that. People who bet without thinking. Think they know the odds when they don’t. Means more money for me.”

We reached the elevator bank. The not-bodyguards were ten meters away. “Excuse me,” the one on the left said, his eyes invisible behind his shades. “We’ll need to see some identification.”

“Identification?” I said, my tone indicating this was the most absurd sentence anyone had ever uttered. I reached out and pressed the down button with a knuckle.