Umbrella Man (9786167611204) (38 page)

He strained his ears for approaching
footsteps, and waited.

***

As the minutes passed without Ferrero
crashing into the room, Tay began to breathe more easily. At one
point he thought he had heard something that sounded like
footsteps, but he couldn’t tell for sure if they were coming toward
him or moving away. He guessed if the sound had really been
footsteps at all, they must have been moving away.

So what had he heard?

Ferrero shooting August and then leaving the
shophouse? No, he was pretty sure he would have heard an exterior
door closing if Ferrero had left, so he must still be somewhere
inside. Most likely upstairs. Maybe he had to sanitize the place
before he took off. After all, if he had been having meetings here
that involved whatever it was Paraguas Ltd was doing, there might
be paperwork or notes lying around that Ferrero wouldn’t want to
leave behind. Tay shifted his body upright and strained his ears.
But he heard nothing at all.

***

When he started feeling more secure, Tay
began thinking about how he could free himself. His first thought
was to get to his phone somehow and call Kang. Kang probably had a
handcuff key on him. Who knew whether that key would work on the
cuffs August had used on him, but that was still a good place to
start.

Tay’s phone was in his left front trouser
pocket. He twisted his body against the wall and tried to pull one
hand far enough away from the pipe around which he was cuffed to
reach into his pocket, but he quickly realized it was going to be a
lot harder to do than he thought. Tentatively, he shifted position,
first in one direction and then in another, but a way to contort
his body enough to get either cuffed hand into his pocket eluded
him. Finally he gave up even trying and decided try again from a
standing position. He grabbed the pipe and began to pull himself
upright.

Tay was startled when the weight of his body
caused the base of the pipe to pop loose from its coupling at the
bottom of the wall. The noise was no more than the pop of a
champagne cork, but in the silence of the little storeroom it
sounded to Tay like an explosion.

Tay froze, his eyes flying to the tiny crack
where the steel door stood ajar. He breathed as quietly as he could
and listened.

Nothing.

Moving slowly and quietly, Tay squatted and
slipped the cuffs over the end of the pipe where it had broken
loose from the wall. Then he stood up and turned toward the door
that would take him out to the carport. All he had to do was get
the hell out of here. After that, he could call Kang and Kang would
bring in some support, and they could grab Ferrero.

Still…Tay hesitated.

It would take a while to do all that. At
least fifteen or twenty minutes. Maybe longer.

What if Ferrero was gone by then? What if
August was dying in there and getting him to a hospital right now
would save his life? How much time did he really have?

Tay couldn’t just turn his back and walk out
that door, but what was he going to do? His hands were still cuffed
in front of him and he had no weapon. Then he saw on the floor the
Maglite August had taken away from him when he jerked him in
through the carport door. It wasn’t much, but it was better than
nothing.

He scooped it up and hefted in his hands as
well as the cuffs would let him, then he stepped toward the steel
door. Leaning forward he put his ear to the crack where it stood
open, but he heard nothing and Tay could see no light beyond the
door.

He put his shoulder against the door and
cocked the Maglite back ready to swing it as well as he could. He
pushed gently and the door swung open without a sound.

***

Straight ahead was a short hallway. At the
end of the hallway Tay could see the main entry door to the left
and opposite it a staircase leading to the upper levels. Now that
Tay was inside, he could also hear soft rustling noises from
somewhere up the stairs. He had been right. There was someone up
there and he had no doubt it was Ferrero.

The dim light seeping down the staircase was
just strong enough for Tay to see the body sprawled at the foot of
the steps.

He crept forward as quietly as he could and
risked a quick look up the staircase. The rustling sounds were
louder now, but he saw nothing in the gray dimness.

He squatted and examined the body at his
feet. He knew it was August even before he saw his face. There was
a lot of blood, and Tay thought he could see two entry wounds in
August’s chest. Neither was pumping blood but a thin trickle was
oozing from each hole. Tay supposed that was a good sign, if you
could ever say there were any good signs connected with taking two
shots in the chest.

Tay placed a hand against August’s neck and
was relieved to feel a pulse. It was faint and irregular, but it
was there. August was still alive. At least he was for now. But he
had to get to a hospital, and quickly.

***

All at once the rustling noise from upstairs
became much louder and Tay froze. He listened as footsteps came
toward the staircase, then they stopped and moved away again.

He had to have a weapon or there really
wasn’t anything he could do. A real weapon, not just a heavy
flashlight.

Being careful not to let the chain connecting
his handcuffs rattle against the floor, Tay felt around for the gun
August had when Tay watched him disappear through the steel door.
He couldn’t find it. Tay decided Ferrero must have picked the gun
up after he shot August.

But just in case the gun had somehow ended up
pinned beneath August’s body, Tay lifted August a little, first one
side and then the other. He saw nothing, but one of August’s legs
made a curious clunking sound as it rolled against the floor so he
ran his hands over the area where it had hit. One hand brushed
August’s shin and he knew immediately what he had found.

A back-up gun in an ankle holster.

Tay raised August’s cuff and pulled the
little gun from its holster. It was a Glock 26, the Baby Glock,
barely six inches long and only about a pound and a half in weight.
But it was still effective enough at short range if you were a
decent shot which, Tay reminded himself, would be an extremely
generous characterization of his own limited skills. And he wasn’t
sure what having his hands cuffed together would do for those
skills. Somehow he doubted it would improve them.

Tay slid away from the bottom of the
staircase and dropped the clip. He was relieved to see the glint of
brass-jacketed 9mm rounds and pushed down on the top one just to be
certain. Full. He had ten shots. Returning the clip to the gun as
quietly as possible, Tay chambered a round.

Should he go back outside and call Kang? Then
guard the front of the shophouse while Kang guarded the back and
wait for help to arrive?

Yes, of course he should. It was obvious that
was exactly what he should do.

But that wasn’t what he was
going
to
do.

When you decide to do something big,
something bold, it’s better not to think about it too much.
Examining how scary whatever you are about to do actually
is
doesn’t help.

So you just do it.

With his cuffed hands thrust in front of him,
the Maglite in one and the Glock in the other, Tay began to climb
the stairs.

THE RUSTLING NOISES stopped. Out on the
street the sound of a passing motorbike with a broken muffler was
clearly audible, but Tay could no longer hear anything from the
floor above him.

The stairs were carpeted with something that
looked cheap and nasty and may once have been green. Tay couldn’t
say much for its decorative value, but whatever the stuff was it
muffled his footsteps as he climbed so he was happy it was there.
Tay kept his feet as close to the wall as possible to reduce the
possibility of a riser squeaking and giving him away. The light
above him was dim and gray. He climbed slowly and deliberately, the
Glock and the Maglite leading the way.

As Tay’s head rose into the second floor
space he saw a short corridor at the top of the stairs with two
doors opening off it: one to his immediate right and one at the end
of the corridor. The door to the right was half open. The door at
the end of the corridor was closed.

Tay stopped and listened again.

Nothing.

He climbed a little farther, stopping just
before he reached the top. Staying close to the wall, he leaned
forward and risked a quick glance through the doorway on the right.
The room beyond it appeared to be deserted, so he cautiously moved
up the last few steps and took a better look.

The space was furnished as a meeting room.
There was a worn oriental rug in the middle of the floor on which
rested a nondescript, rectangular table and six chairs. At the end
of the room, three grimy windows looked out over the roof of the
carport. Other than the ambient light filtering through, the room
was dark. Tay stepped through the doorway, flicked on the Maglite,
and swung it from side to side.

There was no one there. There was no sign
anyone
had
been there. There was nothing to see. It was just
an empty meeting room.

***

As silently as he could, Tay moved back out
into the corridor and looked at the closed door at the end. If
Ferrero was here, that’s was the only place left for him to be.

Tay crept forward and put his ear to the
door. He heard nothing. He examined the crack at the bottom of the
door. He saw no light coming from the other side.

If Ferrero was in there, and he was standing
in a dark and silent room, then Ferrero knew he was coming, didn’t
he? Well…he knew somebody was coming. He had no way of knowing it
was Tay. He probably thought it was August’s backup, whoever that
was.

Now what?

Suck it up, Sam. This is what they pay you to
do.

***

Tay took a deep breath and counted to three
to steady his nerves.

Then before he had the chance to change his
mind, he lifted his right leg and smashed his foot into the door
next to the knob.

It sprang open and Tay lunged inside. Staying
low and keeping his back to the wall on his left, he twisted the
Maglite as far away from his body as the handcuffs would allow.
Then he flicked it on and swung the beam quickly back and
forth.

The room was empty.

***

There was another worn oriental rug, and this
one held a large desk and an office chair. There was a laptop
computer open on the desk and the surface around it was heaped with
stacks of files that looked as if they had been hastily collected.
Or perhaps hastily abandoned. A black canvas duffle bag lay on the
floor next to the desk, but Tay couldn’t tell if Ferrero had
brought the files to the shophouse in the bag or was getting ready
to carry them out.

Along the back wall were eight or ten gray
metal filing cabinets pushed up side by side. They were the old
fashioned kind, one drawer wide by four drawers high, and they all
looked old and beaten up. Above the filing cabinets, dim light
leaked into the room from three small windows even dirtier than the
ones in the front room.

It took a moment, but then Tay registered
that the windows were too far back to be immediately above the
filing cabinets. He played the beam of the Maglite over the
wall.

That was when he saw the narrow staircase. It
started in the left-hand corner of the room and disappeared
downward behind the barrier of filing cabinets. Tay realized
immediately that those had to be the stairs leading to the back
door he had Kang watching from the alleyway.

But if Ferrero had escaped that way, why
hadn’t Kang called him? Had Ferrero overpowered Kang? Maybe even
shot him like he did August?

Tay walked over to the head of the staircase
and played the beam of the Maglite downward. Sure enough, at the
bottom of the stairs was a heavy-looking black door with a silver
push bar across it. It was closed.

Tay twisted his cuffed hands to the right
side of his body, put the Glock into his right-hand pants pocket,
and shifted the Maglite from his left to his right hand. Then he
moved his hands back to his left side and dug his cell phone out of
his left-hand pants pocket.

Tay had just pushed a button on his cell
phone to light up the keyboard so he could call Kang when he felt
the muzzle of a gun against his neck.

“You’re not very good at this, are you,
Tay?”

Ferrero sounded genuinely amused.

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to clear a
room completely before you let your attention wander? A mistake
like that could get somebody killed. In this case, that somebody is
you.”

Tay said nothing. Where had Ferrero come
from?

“There’s a bathroom over there,” Ferrero said
as if he could hear Tay thinking. “You didn’t bother to clear it.
You should have. Of course, it might not have done you much good.
Since you’re not carrying anything but a flashlight and a cell
phone, I would have just shot you in the head and finished
collecting the stuff I came here to get.”

Tay realized then Ferrero must not have
stepped out of his hiding place until after the Glock had gone into
his pocket. Ferrero didn’t know he had it.

But what good that would do him Tay didn’t
really see. He was holding a cell phone in one hand and a Maglite
in the other, and both his hands were cuffed together. That made
losing a fast draw contest pretty much a sure thing.

***

Tay felt the pressure of the muzzle leave his
neck and he heard Ferrero’s feet scrape the floor as he took
several shuffling steps away from him.

“Drop the phone and the flashlight.”

Tay did. When they clattered against the
floor the sounds they made were as loud as explosions in the quiet
room.