by Mike Nappa
Before the socialite could break the ice, Trudi stood and started sauntering toward the front of the room. She walked at an angle, toward the far left corner. From there, she figured she’d be able to see behind the right curtain. On the way, she passed the exit on the left wall and nearly brushed against a grimacing busboy standing next to his cart.
“Excuse me,” she said automatically. He ignored her, and she kept walking. Rude, she thought. But her curiosity kept her moving forward.
Before she got too far, though, she stopped in spite of herself. Like the one she’d seen Andrew Carr avoid earlier, this busboy was standing next to another completely empty bussing cart. She scanned the room again.
Five exits, she counted to herself. Five empty bussing carts with just some lumpy tablecloths on the bottom tier. And five angry young men, one stationed beside each cart.
She felt her heart rate pick up.
A waitress came skimming by with a tray full of roasted chicken and wild mushroom truffle risotto that smelled heavenly. Hope that’s the one I ordered, she thought.
“Excuse me,” the waitress said, smiling cheerfully as she passed by.
That’s more like what you’d expect from banquet workers, she thought. Not like . . . hmm.
She checked her watch. It was now 7:45. Samuel had been gone for fifteen minutes, which seemed longer than necessary for the task at hand. She thought about going out to look for him, but again her curiosity had to be satisfied first.
On the big screen behind the stage, a countdown clock was ticking for the guests, announcing there was only five minutes before the program was to begin. Please be back in your seats by 7:50 so as not to distract from the evening’s exciting festivities, it read.
Trudi pursed her lips. Where was Samuel?
She continued walking, a little faster now, toward her destination. When she reached the left corner, she tilted her head and took a peek behind the right curtain.
Her eyes went wide.
41
Raven
Atlanta, GA
Downtown
Friday, April 14, 7:20 p.m.
Sixty-seven minutes to Nevermore
“I’m late.”
I’ve been sitting here at Mama’s laptop for so long that I forgot she told me to be out of here before seven o’clock, before Max Roman’s fundraising dinner was underway. It’s now 7:20 p.m., and I’ve failed to keep my final promise to my previous employer. But I couldn’t help myself.
TysonComeHome.com.
It was my dad’s last legacy for me. Judging from the blog entries—letters, really—he started it a few days after Mom’s funeral, more than four years ago.
The homepage is mostly just a collection of pictures—beautiful pictures. My dad and me sitting on the kitchen floor, eating ice cream out of the carton. My mother and me waving to the camera while waiting in the rain for a parade. My dad and me dressed up like Mr. Incredible and Dash for a fifth-grade Halloween party. My first “real” performance as a magician, at a Sunday-night church service when I was thirteen. Dad handing me the keys to my first car. High school graduation. Random holidays and happy times. Dozens of pictures, all different sizes, spread on the browser screen like art in a personal gallery.
The only words on the homepage of the website are these:
I Love You. I’m Sorry. Tyson, Please Come Home.
There’s an email address and a place for comments, along with the phone number and address of my dad’s little church in Oklahoma City.
There are also links to his blog entries. They are all, every one of them, letters to me. He wrote to me at least once a week, usually on Sunday afternoons, I gather. Sometimes he wrote me more often. Around the anniversaries of Mom’s death, he wrote me three or four times in a week. The first letters are full of grief and sorrow and regret, telling me he loves me, asking me to call him, or email him, or anything, really. Then, after a few months, he started telling me about what was happening around OKC, what his new sermon series was going to be, asking me—me!—questions about God and faith and life. And he started remembering things, days when I was young. Times when he and Mom were first married, when he was in seminary and they were flat broke. And he told me stories, memories from his own childhood, about his own relationship with his father, about how and why he decided to follow God.
I know some of these stories, but not all. I have some of his memories from my childhood, but not all of them, either. And while reading his thoughts, I realize I’m only now beginning to understand that my dad wasn’t just my father. He was a man who struggled with fear and faith and hope and love. He was a man who was a lot like me.
I feel unreasonably grateful to God for the gift my father left behind, even though he never knew for sure that I would find it, never knew whether or not I would want it or would even receive it. I don’t deserve this gift, just like I didn’t deserve the gifts Mama Bliss gave me. But, I decide, I’m not going to question any of it. I’m just going to be thankful.
There are too many letters to read in one sitting, especially now that I’ve missed Mama’s deadline to get out of the hotel room. “We’ll talk more, later, Dad,” I mumble to the desk. “Right now I’ve got to get moving again.”
That’s when I see my cell phone, sitting off to the side where I left it. I forgot about that too. And about its secrets.
The phone still holds the voice memo I recorded earlier, the secrets of Mama’s little tête-à-tête with Viktor and the football player. I look at my watch and feel torn. It’s 7:22 already. I want to hear what went on while I was out of the room, but I also don’t want Mama to catch me lingering after she told me to get gone. I’ve got ten thousand reasons to get out of here before she gets back. In the end, I opt for the best of both worlds.
First I start the playback on the voice memo and turn the volume almost all the way up, then I set the cell on the desk to let it play. Next I pull out my duffel bag and start stuffing my clothes and extras into it, packing up while I listen to their meeting. Of course, the first thing I pack is the envelope with ten thousand dollars in it. I wait to add in the antique magazine because I want to cushion it a bit with my clothing.
From the cell phone speaker, I hear myself say, “I’ll see you in half an hour,” and then the hotel room door opens and shuts with a solid click. It’s just the three of them in the room then, and I’m hoping they spoke loudly enough for me to hear what they said.
“I like that kid,” Scholarship says with a chuckle. “He’s special. Got big things ahead of him.”
“Mm-hmm,” Mama says. “Good kid. Deserves a chance to do better. Maybe he’ll get it.”
“I think we have other things to discuss right now,” Viktor says.
I’m pleased to discover that the microphone on my cell has surprisingly good range, picking up all three voices without too much in the way of ambient noise or intermittent audio breakup. It helps that the hotel room is quiet, no air-conditioning running in the background or people banging around on the furniture, and that Mama Bliss runs this little conversation like a business meeting.
“Tell me about the wine,” she says, which I think is an odd question. But then again, I wasn’t there and I don’t know the context.
“It’ll be at the table, waiting. I’ll deliver it myself right before the doors open.” It’s Scholarship speaking. His voice is strongest on the playback, so I’m guessing that he was either standing or sitting near the end table by the hotel room door.
“Are your people in place?”
“Carr met them at the service elevator on the lower level half an hour ago.” That’s Viktor speaking, but I don’t know what he’s talking about when he says Car.
“Uniforms?”
“Yes, he had all the black waitstaff uniforms with him. By now, the Kipo are all dressed to blend in, but they won’t be roaming the halls. They’ll stay mostly out of sight until after the dinner is under way.”
“Where?”
“We’ve
got a back room off the service corridor,” Scholarship says. “They’ll sit tight there until the time is right.”
“Busboy carts?” Mama Bliss seems like she’s going down a checklist.
“Carr has them in place in the room,” Viktor says. “The Taurus MT-9s are hidden under tablecloths stored on the bottom of each cart. Five total, one near each exit. I checked them personally ten minutes ago.”
“I thought we were using AK-47s,” Scholarship offers.
Okay, this sounds bad. At the mention of AK-47s, I stop shoving dirty jeans into my bag. This sounds really bad.
“We changed it after Max stole from my shipment a few weeks ago,” Mama says. “Poetic justice, I suppose. Plus, these are the same guns being used to wage war in the Ukraine right now. We want the police to make that connection, with a little help from us. You set up the email chain, Viktor?”
“Yep,” Viktor says. “Police will discover private correspondence that shows Pavlo arranging to have the guns smuggled into Atlanta three months ago.”
“How did you backdate the emails?”
“Maybe I learned a few things from your street magician,” he says.
Hey, I think, that’s not fair. I don’t know how to backdate emails, and even if I did, I never showed Viktor anything like that. Of course, then I realize it doesn’t really matter whether or not I showed him. He apparently knows how to do that kind of thing and just doesn’t feel it necessary to explain to Mama how he learned to do it.
“Where is Pavlo right now?” Mama Bliss says.
“He’s assigned to be Max Roman’s bodyguard today,” Scholarship says. “He was pretty excited about it.”
“He has instructions to stay out of sight, but within twenty feet of Max Roman at all times,” Viktor says. “We showed him where to enter through the service hallway and where he can stay behind the black curtain at the right side of the stage. He’ll be able to see Max from there, and Max will be able to see him, but he should be out of view from most everyone else in the ballroom.”
“And the briefcase?” Mama Bliss says.
“Handcuffed to Pavlo’s left wrist,” Viktor says. “He thinks it holds some really valuable artifact that Max is going to donate to the charity auction as a surprise. A last-minute addition to wow the constituency. He says he’ll guard it with his life.”
Mama Bliss snorts in derision, then says, “Show me the remote.” There’s a shuffle in the room and then, “Why is it red? Isn’t the light supposed to be green?”
“That just means Pavlo’s not in the building yet,” Viktor says. “The remote detonator—”
Detonator? What? Now I’m sitting on the bed, all thoughts of packing driven from my mind.
“—has a range of two hundred feet in all directions. About twenty floors. We’re on the sixth floor here, so plenty close enough for the radio frequency to connect to the Grand Ballroom on the lower level. But Pavlo has to bring the briefcase into the Ritz before the remote can register the connection. You’ll see it turn green when Max and Pavlo arrive around seven o’clock, at the start of the fundraiser. It’ll be in range then.”
I check my watch. It’s 7:31, which means the detonator must be flashing green right now. Not good. I start throwing things in my bag again, faster this time. I think now might be a good time to hurry.
“It’s tamper-proof?” Mama Bliss is saying.
“Right. No buttons or controls on the remote. Display info only. The computer chip inside can’t be reprogrammed unless it’s inserted into the base unit. A sensor inside also monitors the integrity of the remote. If it detects a crack in the casing, or an attempt to break it open, it automatically resets the timer to zero to complete the countdown.”
“So if I accidentally run over the remote with my wheelchair?”
“Then you’d better hope you’re far away from Pavlo’s briefcase.”
“All right,” Mama says. “Run me through the rest of the timeline one last time.”
Viktor takes the lead on this, and he lays it out like he’s reading bullet points.
6:30: Doors open at the Grand Ballroom.
7:00: Dinner is served to all the guests.
Sometime between 7:00 and 7:15: Councilman Roman and his entourage arrive. Pavlo will arrive with them and take his place behind the black curtain.
7:40: The video screens show a countdown clock and announce ten minutes before the program begins. People are encouraged to “be back in your seats by 7:50 so as not to distract from the evening’s exciting program.”
7:50: Geneva Sims does her pre-auction presentation as president of ASLA, welcoming guests, explaining the mission of ASLA, showering praise on Max Roman for his support of the arts, and spotlighting a few of the upcoming auction lots.
8:00: Geneva Sims gives a flowery introduction of keynote speaker, Max Roman. Max begins his speech. At the same time, my partner here makes an anonymous phone call to the front desk, saying there’s a bomb in the Grand Ballroom.
8:01: Police are called. The Ritz-Carlton goes on lockdown protocol. They’ll begin preparing for police to seal the area around the Grand Ballroom. Next will be an orderly evacuation. They’ll shut down all the elevators, and security personnel will rush to station people at every floor’s stairwell. Once security is in position, the switchboard will start rolling robocalls to every room in the Ritz, announcing the lockdown and telling all guests to stay in their rooms until security arrives to usher them safely out.
8:05: Kipo take over the Grand Ballroom, conveniently shouting slogans like “Free Ukraine! Death to Russia!” and that kind of thing. Five gang members use the MT-9s to block the exits and scare the people in the room into submission. Four others use their Glocks as enforcers and start shaking down the guests for money and valuables. They have no idea there’s a briefcase full of C4 explosive in the room. They think they’re just on a high-class smash-and-grab job, and they’ve practiced it dozens of times in our simulations over the past month. They think they’ll be able to sweep the room and get out in under seventeen minutes. They’re kind of proud of that.
8:15 to 8:20: By now the first responders should arrive. They’ll work to fully secure the perimeter and assess the situation. Then they’ll wait for whichever SWAT team is on call to assemble and make it to the hotel.
8:20 to 8:25 or so: While everyone is distracted by the marauding Kipo, Andrew Carr unexpectedly breaks away and shouts “Long Live Ukraine!” He pulls his own Glock and assassinates Max Roman. If Pavlo tries to stop him, he kills my cousin too. We promised Carr a load of money, safety out of state, and even his favorite call girl from Roman’s strip club, but he doesn’t know we were lying. And he doesn’t know about the bomb either. He thinks he’ll be able to murder Max Roman and still get out with the rest of the Kipo when they break for the door. He doesn’t know he signed his death warrant when he told the police about Nevermore, when he was stupid enough to try and cut a deal after his arrest. Of course, he might not have survived the raid anyway, so either way, it was probably over for him.
8:27: The timer goes off on the remote detonator. The C4 in Pavlo’s briefcase explodes, making sure Max Roman is dead. This’ll probably kill Andrew Carr and about half the guests in the room. Kipo too. Maybe a few people unlucky enough to be on the floor above the Grand Ballroom. But the explosion should be localized to the nearest two salons of the banquet room, if that matters.
8:29: We all disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.
8:30 to 8:40 or so: SWAT finally arrives, just in time to start picking up the pieces. But we’re all gone, and Nevermore is finally complete.
There’s a moment of silence when Viktor is done speaking. No one says anything, and it’s so quiet I think maybe my recording has cut off, but then Mama Bliss picks up again.
“Justice for all,” she says.
“And hopefully,” Scholarship finally chimes in, “the police blame Ukrainian terrorist Pavlo Kostiuk. Just another extremist waging an insane war to make
a statement about Russian aggression in his homeland.”
“That’s what we hope,” Viktor says. “But even if they don’t stay with that theory, by the time they connect the rest of the dots, we’ll all be long gone.”
And Mama has a backup plan. A logbook that I mailed today that’ll arrive at the Zone 6 police station tomorrow. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that logbook will have all kinds of documentation of Max Roman’s organized crime activities and his lewd network of enterprises. For Mama Bliss, it’s not enough just to kill her enemy—twice. She intends to murder his reputation too.
“All right, then,” Mama is saying on the recording. “I believe I owe you gentlemen some money.”
I hear fingers tapping on a laptop keyboard. It must have been the same laptop she loaned me, the one I’ve just been using to read my dad’s letters. How can this woman be so kind and generous toward me yet so cold and cruel toward everyone sitting in the Grand Ballroom downstairs right now?
“It’s done,” she says. “The money is split between your accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and the Isle of Man. May you enjoy the lap of luxury in ways that I never could.”
There is shuffling of feet and mumbled thanks and congratulations, and then Viktor says, “Well, I’ve got to be going. I’ve got a few planes to catch.” He then apparently speaks to Scholarship. “You know what to do?”
“Of course,” Scholarship says. “By this point, I could do it in my sleep.”
“I don’t like that he has to stay behind,” Viktor says.
“Then you never should have taken certain matters into your own hands,” Mama says evenly. “You know that.”
“I’ll be fine, Viktor,” Scholarship says. “First I help Mama with her little errand. Then I drive north for a bit, pull over and make a panicky phone call, and then I ride off into the sunset.”
“Be sure to dump the phone after the call.”
“I got this, Viktor. You go disappear. I’ll be gone right after you.”
There’s a brief moment of silence, and then Viktor’s voice says, “Pleasure doing business with you, Bliss.”