“Compliments of the Grand Valley Hotel managing staff,” I repeat the lie. “To thank Mr. Vargas for his continued patronage.”
They both look at the cart, loaded down with fruits and pastries, and of course, the bucket that contains the large bottle of champagne. I make a point of looking at the two glasses, then at the men on the sofa, then at the men on the balcony.
“Will we be needing any more champagne flutes, gentlemen?” I ask. “I see I need two more, but will—”
“No, we don’t need anymore. They’ll be the only two drinking,” interrupts the man in the chair.
“Oh, I see,” I reply. “Might there be anybody else here who requires—”
“I said there’s nobody else here,” snips the man in the chair. “Now leave the cart and get the fuck out.”
“Gladly,” I say.
I kneel down to secure the locks on the wheels and casually reach beneath the table-cloth and snag the pair of sidearms I secured there. The sound suppressor is long and a little awkward coming out from under the cart, but I manage to make it work.
I rise to my feet in a flash, already bringing it up. I squeeze off the first shot, taking the man in the chair in the forehead. His head snaps back, a spray of viscous red chunks covering the fabric behind him.
The second man is quicker. He gets to his feet in the blink of an eye. He’s not that fast though, and even though he already has his weapon in hand and is drawing it out of his shoulder holster, I pivot and squeeze off two shots. The first hits him in the stomach and the second in the chest. He topples over backward, falling back onto the couch. He looks up at me, his eyes already starting to glaze over with that glassy stare of death, but he tries to raise his weapon anyway. I look down at him, feeling ice flowing through my veins as I squeeze the trigger, putting the third shot square in his forehead.
The four shots had been as soft as a muffled cough. I take a deep breath. When I turn to the glass doors leading out to the balcony, the two men were still conversing with each other. It looks like some of the steam’s been taken out, and they’re speaking without as much heat. Whatever wrinkle they’d had seems to have been ironed out.
Taking the bottle out of the bucket, I walk to the glass doors, hiding my sidearm behind my back. They both look up as I open the doors, their hands instinctively flinching toward the weapons they’ve got beneath their coats. When they see me standing there with a bottle of champagne in hand though, they relax and put their hands on top of the table, exchanging a glance and a nervous chuckle with each other.
At least until Vargas notices the two dead men in the living room behind me. I see his eyes widen in an expression of shock. I drop the bottle and in one fluid movement, raise my weapon and take the shot. It catches Vargas in the arm. He spins out of the chair, hitting the ground with a grunt. His weapon goes skittering across the balcony, and I kick it away even further.
McGregor is moving, but it’s too late. I step over to him and press the barrel of my weapon flush against his temple. His eyes are wide, his mouth hanging open.
“Please don’t,” he gasps. “I can make you a rich man. Powerful.”
“For all you have, you have nothing I want,” I glower and squeeze the trigger.
His head snaps to the side, a spray of red mist and tissue floating out onto the breeze high above the ground floor. He slumps to the side, his eyes wide and bulging, and his mouth hanging open, a long string of saliva and blood spilling down his face. I put another round into his chest just to be thorough, before stepping back to Vargas. I squat down beside him, tapping the top of his head with the barrel of my weapon.
“It’s your lucky day, Javier,” I say. “Somebody out there doesn’t want you dead. I have no idea why, but they do.”
Clutching his injured arm, blood squeezing out between his fingers, he scowls at me, his face a rictus of rage. He’s not a tall man. Five-nine or so. He’s thin and has a full head of dark hair, dark eyes, and sports a stylish goatee. He’s nothing remarkable to look at honestly, but he does seem to have a presence about him. He seems larger than he actually is. And I’ve seen the photos. I know he’s ruthless as hell. I guess he’d have to have that force of personality and ruthlessness to run a cartel.
“You fucked up, my friend,” he hisses. “I am an important man. I have friends in high places. And if you don’t kill me right now, I will find you, and I will kill you, and I’ll make it hurt, puto. But before I finish you off, I’ll make you watch as I kill everything you love, pendejo.”
“That would be an incredibly short show,” I chuckle. “Since I have no idea what I love, man.”
“I’m going to find you and cut your head off while you’re still alive.”
“That’s better. More visceral,” I nod. “That’s an excellent threat. Except for one thing—I’ve got the gun to your head right now, and I could just pull the trigger and end you.”
“Then do it, asshole,” he growls.
“Like I said, somebody inexplicably wants you alive,” I say. “But at the same time, I can’t have you alerting your guards until I’m well away from here.”
Reaching back, I bring the butt of my sidearm down on his temple. His body goes limp, and he falls face-first onto the balcony, out cold. Moving quickly, I walk off the balcony, closing and locking the door behind me. After that, I walk down the short hallway and open up the front door. The guards all look at me as I step into the corridor and quickly close the door behind me. I give them a theatrical grimace and then a grin.
“Seems a bit tense in there,” I say. “They asked me to tell you they wanted to be left alone for the next hour. No interruptions.
Nobody says anything as I turn and head back for the service elevator. Before I get there though, I cut into the stairwell and start to descend quickly, stripping off my apron and vest and throwing them on the stairs behind me. I untuck my shirt and pull a ballcap out of my back pocket, shaking it out and slap it onto my forehead, pulling it low over my eyes.
I open a door and step out onto one of the hotel floors, then find my way to the elevator. I take it down to the ground floor and move quickly out of the hotel and to my car. Jumping in behind the wheel, I drive out as quickly but casually as I can. All hell is going to break loose in there soon, and I want to be as far away from it as I can before it does.
Chapter Eighteen
“Thank you so much,” Marisol beams. “You have no idea what this means to me. And your meal is on the house today.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I appreciate it, though.”
“I insist,” she says. “Your money isn’t good here.”
“Well thank you for that then,” I give her a smile. “Though in all honesty, I didn’t do anything. I’m definitely not the one you should be thanking for the opportunity.”
“Well, you could have blown me off that night. Could have ignored me,” she points out. “But you didn’t. And you helped me. So thank you.”
“Well, in that case, you’re welcome,” I reply. “And good luck.”
She flashes me another smile before turning and flouncing away, all but turning somersaults through the diner. I’m glad to see that she’s getting an opportunity to fulfill her dreams. Everybody should have that chance.
I pick up a french fry and pop it into my mouth. It crunches perfectly. Greasy as hell or not, the food here at Randy’s is delicious. I take a bite of my burger and savor the flavor of it. I chase it with another fry and then a long swallow of my soda.
It’s been four days since the discovery of the murder of DEA Chief Ellis McGregor and the attempted murder of so-called local businessman Javier Vargas. And as I predicted, all hell broke loose. Representatives from all the alphabet agencies showed up, each of them claiming their slice of the territorial pie, all of them gunning for headlines and glory. And there have been plenty of headlines.
One headline I expected to see, I didn’t. I did, however, get a very interesting tip from Publius. According to her so
urce inside the cartel, the Vargas shipment of guns and drugs arrived on schedule. The goods being imported were impounded by the DEA, of course, although their current disposition was unknown. Given the fact that Vargas’ shipment went off without a hitch though, I have a bad feeling about where the rest of the guns and drugs ended up. Or will end up.
The bells over the door chime. I look up to see a familiar face step inside. She sees me, but before she can make her way down to me, she is cornered by a very excited Marisol. The girl jumps up and down, squealing and crying as she talks to Temperance, who speaks with her for a few minutes before Marisol finally lets her go.
Finally free from the excited girl, Temperance makes her way down to my booth and slides in, immediately snitching a few fries. She munches happily on them as she looks at me. We sit in silence for a few moments as I try to collect my thoughts.
“I guess I should say congratulations,” I start.
“For?”
I unfold the newspaper I picked up that morning and slide it across to her. I point to the small sidebar story buried deep on page five. The day after McGregor’s murder, the DEA had named a new bureau chief, and it is none other than the woman sitting across from me. I look around, making sure we’re not being observed and can’t be overheard. We seem to be in good shape on that point.
“The body wasn’t even cold yet,” I say. “That’s the government moving efficiently.”
“The DEA needed to make sure there was continuity in leadership,” she offers. “You know how that is.”
I chew on a fry, my eyes never leaving hers. “So I did all this so you could get a promotion? Are you fucking kidding me?”
She shakes her head. “You know he was a bad guy. Corrupt,” she says. “You know he was working with Vargas. He needed to be taken out.”
“So you could get a promotion.”
“So I could be in a position to effect positive change,” she insists. “So I could be in a position to fight our opposition.”
“But McGregor wasn’t even part of our opposition.”
“No, not technically,” she says. “But we need a reliable source of funds to keep our operations going.”
“You’re kidding me. So you’re taking McGregor’s spot alongside Vargas?” I say. “Jesus Christ, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I thought we were trying to get people like Vargas and all the shit he sells off the street.”
“Don’t be naive, Echo. I know you’re smarter than that,” she snaps, her tone growing icy. “It’s not like we have a military budget to fight this war. We have to secure a means of funding our operations. Unfortunately, money doesn’t just grow on trees.”
“So the Tower is in the drug and gun-running business?” I sputter, feeling the outrage growing inside of me.
“Where do you think all your resources come from, Echo? Think about it,” Temperance glares at me. “All these guns and cars and cash had to come from somewhere.”
I’m taken aback. I’d never thought of it that way. But it makes sense.
She leans forward, steeling her eyes into me. “And with our people—people like me—running the show, we get a say in how those illicit items are sold. In where they go. For instance, the load we seized—”
“The load that disappeared?”
“It was moved overseas,” she explains. “The guns are being sold to the military of our foreign allies. The drugs—well, they’re being sold.”
I sit back in the booth and let out a long breath. This is the last thing I expected to hear when I signed on for this. I run a hand over my face and take a drink of my soda, trying to wash out the foul taste it’s suddenly filled with.
“Echo, you can choose to be outraged and play the martyr. You can take an outraged stand on moral principles, naive though they might be,” Temperance says. “But ask yourself this, what would happen if we weren’t here? If we weren’t fighting the Hellfire Club? Who would step up and keep them from doing the terrible things they want to do?”
I take another drink of soda and say nothing, letting her play this out. I’m interested to hear what she has to say.
“If this were a perfect world, we wouldn’t need the Tower. But it’s not perfect, and so we have to fight. But because we are not sanctioned and don’t hold positions of real power or funding, we have to find our own,” she says. “Maybe it isn’t pretty. Maybe it’s shady as hell. But we don’t have a source of income. We don’t have a budget. We need income to pay our operatives and fund our operations.”
I sigh and continue to remain silent. I understand what she’s saying. I get it. And it makes a certain amount of sense. Actually, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. The government is replete with these Hellfire Club assholes, which makes any sort of funding for our operations impossible. Intellectually, this all makes sense. But I still don’t like it.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, Echo. Believe me; I don’t,” she says. “But we have to do what we have to do to get by. If we want to stop evil, we can’t be afraid to get our hands dirty. We have to fight fire with fire.”
I sigh. “Yeah, I know. I get it. I don’t like it though, but I get it,” I reply. “You go too far down this road though; you lose sight of yourself. You start to forget what you’re fighting for. And I don’t want to lose sight of myself. I don’t want to have to stop and question who the good guys and bad guys are.”
Temperance leans forward, her eyes pinning me to my seat. And when she speaks, her voice is filled with conviction and earnestness.
“We may not always do good things, Echo, but we are the good guys. We are trying to protect the many instead of benefiting the few,” she tells me. “We may not like how we have to get things done, but we have to do them for the good of the country and everybody in it. We are the good guys. Never lose sight of that.”
She pulls a few more fries off my plate and munches on them. She gives me a warm smile and gets to her feet.
“It was a pleasure workin’ with you,” she says. “You’re everything High Priestess said and more.”
Temperance turns away and heads out of the diner, leaving me alone with my burger and a feeling of unease coursing through me. Yeah, we’re the good guys. We’re fighting for the country. But how can we claim to have the moral high ground when we’re in bed with guys like Vargas?
Arthur Adams’ advice from back in Minneapolis rings out in my ear. Maybe he really was right. Maybe there’s no such thing as clear-cut good or bad guys in this game. Sure, I don’t think this makes the Tower as bad as the Hellfire Club, but how can we possibly say we’re helping people when we still fund atrocities?
I take a bite of my burger, trying to reconcile everything in my own head. I can’t though. All I can do is make some sort of peace with the fact that the world is not strictly black and white. There are only shades of gray. There is no ultimate good or ultimate evil. Good guys do bad things, and bad guys sometimes do good things. But as long as our scales are tipped more toward the doing good sides of things, I have to find a way to live with myself and what we do. What I do.
I think that might be about the best it’s going to get, and I have to learn to make peace with it.
Chapter Nineteen
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
I look down at Jafi and nod. “I’m sure.”
“If they find out—”
“Let me worry about that.”
We’re sitting in the back office of Jafi’s shop, which I’ve learned is actually his business. And unlike his home, the place is immaculate. Everything is in its place, and nothing is out of place. There are no empty, greasy pizza boxes, there are no trash bags piled haphazardly in the corner, and everything is tight, clean, and freshly painted. Neatly organized stacks of computer parts and equipment fill shelves, and there are several monitors connected to high-powered, custom-built desktop computers all around the workroom.
The two sides of Jafi’s personality are jarring. It’s like he’s two different p
eople. A super nerdy, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At home, the slovenly dopehead who lives like a less civilized version of a drunken frat boy. At work though, he’s neat, tidy, and even borders on anal-retentive.
“Why is your house not like this?” I finally ask.
“Dude. Home is where I can let my hair down,” he says. “It’s where I’m free to be me, man.”
I laugh softly. “All I’m sayin’ is run a broom through it now and again,” I tell him. “Find yourself a girl. Stop living in a toxic waste dump.”
He grins. “I think it makes me colorful.”
“If you say so.”
“I do,” he grins. “Now, hand over the phone.”
I pause and look at it for a long moment, running through the last-minute arguments for and against following this course of action. I want to believe I can trust Delta, but she’s broken that trust. First, by deliberately keeping things from me, then by giving my identity to Temperance. She claims to have her reasons, but I don’t work that way. I want to walk into a situation with my eyes wide open, be the reasons good, bad, or indifferent. I want all the information I have to make my own determinations. To decide for myself whether or not I can do what is asked of me.
But I also know if I go down this path, there’s no turning back. Once I do this, I’m committed to this course of action, regardless of where it leads me. It could turn out to be a good thing, but it will most likely turn out bad. Still, I have my convictions. My beliefs. I have my own moral compass and will continue to do things my own way.
I give him the cell phone Delta gave me. He plugs it into his computer, and then I watch as his fingers fly across the keyboard in a dizzying display. I have no idea what he’s doing, but he’s grinning like a fool. I have a feeling he and Justice would get along great. As data scrolls up his computer screen, he sits back and looks up at me.
“Well, I can tell you that the calls to this phone originated from Seattle,” he says.
“That’s a big city.”
Mission Mayhem Page 8