The Killing Kind (21 page)

Special Agent Charlie Thompson scanned the room from just inside the massive double doors, but if Leonwood was here, she couldn’t see him. The chatter on her earpiece indicated that Pendleton’s security team—and Garfield, monitoring the CCTV feeds from the casino’s surveillance room—was faring no better. Of course, looking for a specific burly, red-faced man at a Kansas City casino was something of a losing proposition, and anyway, the balloon-filled netting rigged to the ceiling was obstructing the camera coverage. Thompson wondered if she’d been wrong to mislead casino security about the severity of the threat—as far as they knew, she was here to take down a fugitive hedge-fund manager on the run from an insider-trading rap.

She hadn’t anticipated the environment would be so uncontrolled. Plus, there was the matter of not knowing who the target was. Four people were expected to take the stage. There was Norville Rogers Pendleton, majority owner of the casino and grandson of the namesake Pendleton, whose money—after a protracted legal battle between his many heirs—was used to build the casino complex. Ditto Bernie Liederkrantz, Pendleton’s longtime pit boss and—word had it—former mob enforcer out of Las Vegas who’d burned some bridges when he went legit. Ken Carson, mayor of Kansas City (KC for KC read the signs leading up to Election Day) and scourge of the local crime community thanks to his crackdown on prescription narcotics dealing, would be up there, too. And then there was the guest of honor, one Edward Palomera of Springfield, Missouri. Of the four of them, Palomera was the only one she could safely say wasn’t Leonwood’s likely target—he was a lower-middle-class wage slave with no sheet, no enemies, and no ties to organized crime. The guy didn’t so much as have a speeding ticket to his name.

Of course, Alexander Engelmann knew otherwise. He loitered on the left-hand side of the room halfway between the main entrance and the stage, his elbow propped against the chair rail, an untouched gin and tonic in his hand. He wore a white button-down with a periwinkle check and a pair of charcoal slacks that terminated over suede chukka boots the color of putty.

Engelmann had taken full advantage of the casino’s lack of metal detectors in suiting up today; he was determined to be prepared when he finally met his quarry face-to-face. His button-down hid beneath it a concealment shirt—a formfitting wicking tee into which was stitched two heavy-duty nylon holsters, one beneath each arm. The holster beneath his left arm was stocked with a Ruger LC9 compact 9mm pistol he’d purchased from a prison-inked neo-Nazi at a paramilitary compound west of town. The Ruger held seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. He carried two spare magazines in the holster beneath his right arm. That meant he had twenty-two rounds in total. He hoped not to use a one of them.

Strapped to Engelmann’s right thigh was a knife sheath containing a Blackhawk double-edged combat blade, also courtesy of his new Aryan friend. He’d removed the interior of his trousers’ right pocket for easy access. His left pocket contained a garrote of his own making, comprising a low E acoustic guitar string and two wooden trowel handles. It had taken him a half hour to track down the necessary components and mere minutes to construct, and cost him eleven dollars.

He had no intention of using those, either.

No, Engelmann thought the ice pick hidden in his sleeve would suffice.

It was not affixed, instead held in place by the cuff of his sleeve, and by the angle at which he held his wrist. It sat point down, its handle resting against the meat of his forearm. He’d practiced deploying it in his hotel room—a flick of the wrist and it slid down his arm, its point passing through his fingers, its handle just clearing his cuff and dropping into the palm of his hand. He pictured driving it sewing-machine fast into his quarry’s back—
snick snick snick snick snick
—puncturing his renal artery so often and so quickly he would scarcely have a moment to react before his heart filled his abdominal cavity with blood. The narrow bore of the ice pick ensured little external bleeding, which meant that Engelmann should have time to guide his quarry into a chair and walk out of the casino before anyone was the wiser. Now all that remained was to identify his quarry, and he would fulfill his Council contract. Such identification required nothing more now than patience and a keen eye—because unlike the Feds or casino security, Engelmann had Leonwood in sight, having followed him since he’d left Pendleton’s on Tuesday.

Hendricks had Leonwood in sight as well. It was no surprise the authorities had yet to spot him; the close call with casino security had forced Leonwood into altering his appearance. He’d shaved his stubble and his mustache, and tamed his unkempt hair—now wearing it slicked into a severe part, which made it look dark as well. He’d traded his flannel and work boots for an off-the-rack suit of checkered gray, worn tieless over a cheap, shiny blue oxford. Though the suit was ill-fitting, the jacket did wonders to hide his gut, and the overall effect was to transform Leonwood from the rough-hewn redneck security’d encountered into one of the many low-rent traveling businessmen that filled the casino, blowing their per diems at the blackjack tables.

Leonwood sat a few tables back from the stage. With a bottle of beer in front of him and his carry-on at his feet, he looked like a guy whiling away the hours between checkout and flight. But his carry-on contained a compact, fully automatic Heckler & Koch MP5K Personal Defense Weapon with collapsible stock—capable of delivering nine hundred rounds per minute—as well as four magazines of thirty rounds each and a large, cylindrical suppressor. The suppressor was not—as movie silencers would lead you to believe—enough to dampen the sound of the gun’s report entirely, but enough to dull it such that folks might mistake the shots for balloon pops long enough for Leonwood to make his escape.

Hendricks was once more in his cowboy getup, though this time a faded snap-button chambray shirt stood in for his flashier red check, and weathered jeans replaced his ink-dark ones. He wasn’t as heavily armed as either Leon-wood or Engelmann. He carried only the ceramic knife and penlight zip gun Lester’d sent him. The zip gun jutted from his shirt pocket. The knife he wore in a jury-rigged belly sheath of Ace bandages and duct tape; he’d left the third button of his shirt unsnapped and could draw the knife at a moment’s notice.

Despite what he’d told Purkhiser, Hendricks had hoped to tail Leonwood from the moment he entered the casino and kill him long before the ceremony started. He only led Purkhiser to believe it would happen during the balloon drop to keep him occupied, so he didn’t get any ideas about changing the routing on Hendricks’s millions. The threat of death does wonders for keeping people on the straight and narrow.

But Leonwood hadn’t entered the casino through the main lobby—he slipped in through one of the restaurants with both exterior and interior entrances, no doubt wishing to avoid being recognized by the concierge. Hendricks didn’t spot Leonwood until he was walking into the banquet hall—only recognizing him in his new getup because he looked as fresh-faced as his childhood mug shot—and the man hadn’t budged since claiming a table. That meant plan B.

Plan B was to feign drunkenness, staggering through the crowd of tables and stumbling into Leonwood right before the ceremony began. Before Leonwood ever had a chance to open fire, Hendricks would sever his femoral artery with the ceramic knife and let him bleed out where he sat, all evidence of the crime obscured by the dim lights and floor-length table linens.

24

Hendricks cut through the crowd, approaching from his target’s seven o’clock, his eyes locked on Leonwood. The big man was no more than forty feet away, a thicket of spectators between. As the lights dimmed, Hendricks focused on navigating the darkened space—on readying himself. He didn’t notice that to his right, a lithe blond man was tracking his approach.

Leonwood peered intently at the stage, where a cluster of presenters and security sporadically obscured his line of sight to Purkhiser, who sat waiting in the wings. He never saw Hendricks coming. He did
,
however, see the Pendleton’s security guard surveying the crowd from the stage linger a hair too long on him before his gaze continued past—and likewise noticed that same guard mutter into his shoulder mic a moment later. The guard was a pro—he’d only paused on Leonwood for a second, and he’d waited a beat, all casual-like, before reporting in—but Leonwood was a pro, too. He knew he’d been made.

He’d hoped to bide his time until the balloon drop, spray the stage with bullets—his suppressor blunting the worst of his gun’s report—and slip out before the popping of the prize-hungry casino patrons died down. But that plan went out the window the second he was spotted. If he was gonna take out Purkhiser, he was going to have to do it now.

Just inside the entrance to the banquet hall, Charlie Thompson’s earpiece crackled. “We got something,” Garfield said to her from his perch in the Pendleton’s surveillance room. “One of the casino’s guys spotted Leon-wood. Says he’s seated three tables back from the stage.”

“You got eyes on him?” she asked.

“Wish I did,” Garfield replied. “The cameras ain’t picking up a thing but balloons and netting.”

The impending balloon drop, thought Thompson—her chittering heart rate registering what her instincts were telling her seconds before her brain caught up. An obscured line of fire created by security and bystanders both. Leonwood’s position in the middle of the crowd—too close and too exposed for a precision rifle shot, but too far away to count on the limited accuracy of a handgun. A picture of carnage took shape in her mind.

“Could their guy see his hands?” she asked.

“What?” Garfield replied, perplexed.

“His
hands.
Could their guy see Leonwood’s hands, or were they under the table?”

An electronic crackle as Garfield broke the line, a pause as he conferred with casino security, and then he broke back in. “Under the table. What’re you thinking?”

Thompson’s stomach lurched. She unsnapped the thumb break on her holster and drew her sidearm. “I’m thinking he’s assembling an automatic weapon. I’m thinking he means to open fire. We need to put him down, and quick.”

Thompson moved along the right-hand wall of the room, her arms down and gun held ready, scanning the crowd for any sign of Leonwood. There were too many people still milling around for her to see. Too many bodies. She probed the crowd’s edge here and there—standing on tiptoe, or shoving folks aside—but he was lost to her. All she succeeded in doing was scaring anyone close enough to see she had a gun.

Tension seemed to ripple out through the crowd. The volume rose. And there was still no sign of Leonwood. Thompson broke out in a sweat. She was running out of time.

Leonwood’s hands worked frantically under the table: locking the hinged gunstock of his MP5K into place, inserting the magazine with a satisfying
click,
threading the suppressor onto its truncated barrel. Hendricks noted from Leonwood’s outline his flurry of activity beneath the table and realized that the time line for the hit had shifted. He lengthened his stride and reached for the knife inside his shirt. Engelmann saw Hendricks put on the speed, and did the same.

Hendricks closed the gap between him and Leonwood: ten yards, five. He threaded through the crowd like a running back—a quick sidestep, a glancing blow—receiving dirty looks and muttered epithets along the way. Engelmann cut through the crowd as well—like a dancer, or a knife through silk. The ballroom thrummed with agitation. The folks onstage could sense the crowd’s distress but didn’t know the cause—they stood awkwardly waiting for their cue, sweating through their fineries beneath the stage lights. Leonwood, heart racing as he too sensed the sea change in the crowd, completed assembly of his weapon and began to rise.

Hendricks never saw the waitress coming. He was three feet behind his intended target, who stood in an awkward half-crouch, his hands still hidden, as if waiting for the proper stage alignment to open fire. Hendricks drew his knife, knowing in that moment a stealthy end to Leonwood was no longer in the cards. He had to do something—even if it meant blowing his cover.

The waitress had been serving a group of men to Hendricks’s left from a silver platter of crudités and cheese. As Hendricks darted by, she wheeled, and they collided.

An upturned tray. A pretty face, eyes wide with surprise. Crudités everywhere. Dip smearing down the waitress’s shirt. Hendricks’s training kicked in, and—muscle memory guiding him—he spun away from her and caught the tray before it hit the floor.

That waitress—and that tray—saved Hendricks’s life.

He’d grabbed at it with one fluid motion, snatching it from the air like a Frisbee and carrying the motion through while he pivoted around the waitress. The sudden turn brought him momentarily face-to-face with Alexander Engelmann. Engelmann lashed out with the agility of a puff adder—five strikes with his ice pick in the blink of an eye. But he hadn’t counted on Hendricks catching the serving tray. The ice pick left behind five dimples in the silver and drove the tray into Hendricks’s chest, a far cry from the killing blow Engelmann intended.