by Jim Heskett
“It’s the humidity. It can surprise you in the wintertime. Did you know there’s an outdoor ice skating rink here?”
“No way.”
“Yep, just like tits on a bull. It doesn’t stay all the way frozen, though. But, close enough.” Jonah lets the drapes swing closed, and he turns to face Layne. “It was nice meeting your smoking hot wife last week.”
“Uhh, sure. Me and Inessa were glad to have you.”
“My brother moved to Denver last year, so I expect I’ll be around a lot.”
“Let’s get together more often. I can show you all the good spots around town. But, just so we’re clear, I don’t tell Inessa most of what we do on these trips. We don’t talk shop in front of her.”
“At all?”
Layne tilts his head from side to side. “She has a vague idea of what I do, but not the whole picture. I know a lot of people end up telling their spouses, even though we’re not supposed to. I want to keep her out of the worst parts of it.”
“I’m picking up what you’re laying down,” Jonah says as he crosses the room and opens one of his suitcases. From it, he draws a Desert Eagle and a box of ammunition. He checks the magazine and sets it aside, then removes an Uzi submachine gun.
“I can’t believe you have that antique,” Layne says, tilting his chin at the Uzi.
“Antique? This thing is still top of the line. You won’t be saying nothing about it when it saves our asses at some point this week.”
Layne grins. “Daphne says she’s gone back to calling you 'Thorny.'“
“Yeah. I expect it has a lot to do with my rosy personality.”
“You think so?”
“Damn straight,” Jonah says. “The other handles she tried never quite fit right.” He eyes Layne’s suitcase. “Can I see that intel?”
“Sure thing.” Layne opens the suitcase and pulls out a file folder. He flips it to the first page, a dossier on the target. He angles it so Jonah can see it.
Jonah shakes his head since he’s halfway through disassembling his Uzi. “I ain’t interested in squinting that far. Read it to me.“
“Satori Watanabe. Forty-one years old, originally from Osaka, and most recently, New York. Wanted in connection with the murder of Senator Cortland Sutter’s brother last year in Connecticut.”
“No address?”
“No address. He’s in the city, though. We know that for sure.”
“I heard he gave locals in New York quite a ride.”
Layne nods. “He did, man.”
“Do you have details?”
“I know some. Our friend Satori found himself holed up in an apartment in Chelsea or Hell’s Kitchen, I think? I’m not too familiar with New York. Anyway, after killing the senator’s brother, Satori was on the run for a few days. He was robbing bodegas and grocery stores to fund himself. Cops had a few close calls, but nothing concrete. So, they get this tip about a man fitting the description in this building. High-rise thing. He buzzed his way in somehow, and a civilian spotted him on the elevator. Small, thin, Asian, dark clothes and sunglasses indoors. Shaved head.”
“Sounds like our guy.”
Layne takes a water bottle from the mini-fridge and pops it open. “So they’ve got a helicopter buzzing the roof since he’s been known to do rooftop escapes already. They’ve got at least a dozen cops in the stairwells and elevators, marching up one floor at a time.”
“Let me guess. He stole a cop’s uniform and sneaked past everyone, like in that movie.”
Layne shakes his head. “Nothing so quiet. No, this ballsy guy leaped onto the helicopter and killed everyone on board. He landed it a few buildings over. Disappeared from New York after that.”
“Not possible,” Jonah says. “This little guy managed to assassinate everyone on the chopper, and it didn’t crash?”
“That’s the story.”
“You believe it? This coming from a reputable source?”
Layne shrugs. “It’s not in anything official. The only thing public is that the men on board the chopper died that night trying to apprehend a suspect in a crime.”
“And now, we’re the two tasked with bringing down this lunatic.”
“Yep.”
Jonah frowns. “Remind me again why FBI or Secret Service isn’t handling this?”
“No idea. Doesn’t matter, though. It fell to us, so someone wants to keep this quiet. He’s embarrassed the feds enough already.”
“Ours is not to reason why, eh, Boy Scout?”
“Indeed, Thorny.”
Jonah opens the box of .50 caliber ammo for the Desert Eagle and removes a single bullet. He holds it up to the light, twisting it. “Fine with me. He’ll be dead soon enough, either way.”
7
Layne strolled behind Cameron and Inessa. They were holding hands, swinging, with little Cam skipping along to keep up with her mother. Layne smiled at them. While he and Inessa often didn’t see eye to eye, he did believe she was a good mother. She could be cold and impersonal to Layne, but she was never that way with Cam.
The three of them were out for a walk through Turtle Bay Exploration Park, currently visiting the botanical gardens. Gravel paths led between trees and plants of all types. Layne didn’t know much about the different categories of foliage, and he didn’t have enough time to stop and read the little placards at each place. He had to keep up with Cameron. She wasn’t interested in the details.
Also, he had to stay on his guard. Layne always ran the risk of encountering someone from Hillcrest. It had only been a few hours since his job interview. While Redding wasn’t a tiny town where you’d see everyone you knew every time you stepped out of your front door, it wasn’t a metropolis where you could become invisible, either.
His plan, if he encountered Kelly Krafft-Jones or flirty Mariana Flores or even Farhad Jahandar was to put distance between him and his family, and to keep his voice down. He doubted if Inessa would care about him talking to someone, nor would she try to introduce herself.
But, if they ran into Jonah, that would be a problem. He and Inessa had met, not long before the New Orleans operation. Jonah's apparent amnesia could become a serious problem if they had to have a public conversation between the three of them. It’s not as if he could prep Inessa for it.
So, Layne kept his head moving, taking stock of every person within a reasonable distance. So far this evening, he’d had no trouble. He wanted to keep it that way.
Layne’s phone rang, and when he saw the name on his lock screen, he slowed to let his ex and daughter progress a few more feet in front of him.
“Hi, K-Books.”
“Good evening, Layne,” said Harry Boukadakis. “Long time no see.”
“Longer than some, not as long as others.”
Harry snorted a laugh. “You taking a poetry class or something?”
Layne grinned as he walked along the gravel path. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
“You, too. How have you been?”
Cameron tugged away from her mother to approach a dog sitting in front of a fountain. A big dog, German Shepherd. For a second, Layne tensed as Cameron walked right up to it with her hand out. He’d taught her many times how to handle meeting strange dogs in public, but she seemed to have forgotten all about it when the lure of a new doggy grabbed her attention.
But, the dog lowered its head and let her pet it. The owner of the dog, a woman loosely holding the leash, turned and smiled down at them. A moment later, Inessa tugged on Cameron’s hand, pulling her away from the dog, as she apologized to the woman. Right after doing so, Inessa shot a look at Layne, and he understood the intention. She wanted him to walk side by side to help with the parenting.
He held up a finger and then pointed at the phone. She sneered at him and diverted Cameron back toward the path.
“I’m good,” Layne said into the phone. “I’m out west with my family. How about you?”
“Oh, you know. Ups and downs. My son is getting into tabletop ro
leplaying games, which is great, but he hates all the ones I like, which is just the sort of cruel joke Fate likes to play on me. You think you’re going to open your child’s mind to all the wondrous things in the world, and they couldn’t care less about what you think is cool.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, chuckling. “Yours is a little too young for that. She probably thinks everything you do is the greatest thing ever.”
“Pretty much, man.”
“Last year we took our son to Niagara Falls, and I thought he’d be blown away. I remember loving it as a kid. But all he wanted to do was complain about the spotty WiFi.” Harry cleared his throat and let out a slow sigh. “Daphne told me I should expect a call from you, so here I am. What can I do for you?”
“This is one of those situations where Daphne told me not to do something, but she actually meant for me to go ahead and do it without telling her about it. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, yes I do. I know exactly the scene, and I can picture her saying it. You need something else, besides that fake fundraiser invite?”
“I was hoping you could come to California. Just for a few days. I’ve got a big job, and I don’t think I can do it alone. It’s the sort of thing that requires your operational expertise and your talent with field medicine.”
“Hmm. Well, now you’ve properly buttered me up, why don’t you tell me what it is you want to do?”
“I want to kidnap an old friend of ours.”
8
The next morning, Layne showed up at Hillcrest to receive a visitor’s badge. He met Kelly Krafft-Jones at the front door, and she greeted him with a smile that seemed to stretch beyond the limits of her face. He stopped fingering the capped syringe in his pocket to shake her hand in the doorway.
“Ronnie has the paperwork for you,” she said. “I hope you can appreciate how we went outside our normal operating procedure for all this. We try to be expedient, but we’re not usually the best at it.”
Layne took that to mean the discussion about him in the staff meeting had gone well. “Oh, absolutely. I’m thrilled to be here, and I’ll do whatever I can to help out while I’m in the building.”
Kelly walked him down the first-floor hall to a little office on the right side of the east wing. Not much bigger than a closet, the place was brimming with plants. It looked almost as dense as the botanical gardens Layne had taken his family to yesterday afternoon.
A heavyset man in a blue uniform faced away, single-finger-tapping at a keyboard. He made no motion to turn and acknowledge the two people standing inside his office door.
“Ronnie, this is Louis Pastori.”
Ronnie spun in his chair. He was older, about sixty. Black, tiny glasses sitting on the edge of his nose, with a short mop of kinky white hair on top of his head. He looked like the kind of guy who had seen some shit.
Ronnie stared Layne down for a moment and didn’t offer to shake a hand or even stand up to extend a greeting. A cold silence blossomed in the room.
“Take a chair from over there,” Ronnie said, then he peered over his glasses at Kelly. “I’ll have him back to you in a few minutes.”
“Wonderful,” Kelly said, then backed out of the room, as cheery as ever.
Layne grabbed the chair and scooted it over toward Ronnie. Not too close, but not too far, either. About five feet. Layne knew Ronnie would want to get a good look at him. He needed to be sized up.
“Mm-hmm,” Ronnie said, pursing his lips into a frown. “So you just gonna hang out here for a few days.”
“That’s right. Supervised observation. It’s pretty common back where I work now.”
“Mm-hmm,” Ronnie said again, staring.
“Is there something I don’t know about, man? Something else I need to do to make this happen? Because Kelly gave me the impression this was a done deal.”
Ronnie sat in silence for a few more seconds, the shadow of a leafy green plant above him casting a streak across his face. “No, son. Nothing you need to do.” He picked up a stack of papers and pushed them across his desk toward Layne. “I put the little yellow thingies on the pages you need to sign.”
Layne scooted forward in his chair, not breaking eye contact with Ronnie. Chin up, shoulders squared. From what Layne could put together, this older man would see a lower stance as a weakness. After another pause, Ronnie finally said, “Well, go on then and sign. Ain’t got all day.”
“Right,” Layne said, and opened the pages with the yellow tabs attached to the sides. He scribbled Louis Pastori on a few different pages and then pushed the stack back toward Ronnie.
“Mm-hmm,” Ronnie said as he picked up the pages without looking at them. Still with the eye contact, Ronnie reached into the top drawer of his desk and took out a visitor’s badge.
“Kelly has access to the label maker.”
Layne accepted the badge. “Okay, then. Anything else?”
Ronnie gave a slow shake of the head, back and forth, back and forth.
“Thanks for your time, Ronnie. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
Layne stood and considered offering his hand, but decided against it. He gave the security guard a nod and took a couple steps away from him, still locked at the eyes.
As if by magic, Kelly appeared in the doorway. She was holding the label maker in one hand, a box of labels in the other. “All sorted out?”
“We good,” Ronnie said, and then turned back around to peck more on his keyboard.
Kelly waved Layne out into the hall, and they walked toward the main hall of the building. When they were at the intersection of the east and west wings, she paused. “What did you think of Ronnie?”
Layne again touched the syringe in his pocket. “He’s got a certain personality, that’s for sure.”
“He’s our lovable grump. Anyway, day treatment or group sessions? Pick your poison for the day.”
After a brief moment weighing his chances, he said, “Day treatment.”
“Excellent. Mariana will be glad to have you.”
Damn it. He’d guessed wrong. Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter for today. He would see Jonah around at some point. And, he was still waiting for Harry to arrive, so it wasn’t urgent. Not yet.
Kelly escorted Layne outside the main building, through a covered walkway, and down a stairwell. They operated day treatment out of a smaller side building at one end of the complex. Like a house, but with high-quality digital locks on the doors and windows. Much better than the ones Layne had seen on the rest of the building.
“Here you go,” Kelly said, opening the door for him.
“Thank you. I’ll do whatever I can, for as long as I can.”
Kelly smiled. “We’re glad to have you, Louie. I have a good feeling about your interview.”
With that, she ushered him through the door. Layne stepped inside to a room the size of a large living room, with a kitchen off to one side, and a couple doorways to bathrooms and smaller meeting spaces. Day treatment was a place for mentally ill patients to spend their days, away from group homes and homeless shelters. Bussed in five days a week from various places around the city. They could eat meals, have activities, go on outings. Layne had interned at a place like this in college, and he found he enjoyed building these long term relationships with patients. Much better than doing an intake or an initial treatment plan, where you might not ever see the patient again after.
A dozen men and women populated the living room, most of them on a collection of couches and beanbag chairs. A small television at one end of the room had captured their attention. The morning news. A couple sat around a square folding table, eating eggs and sausage on Styrofoam plates. Both of them kept their eyes down.
From the bathroom emerged Mariana Flores, the flirty woman from the break room two days ago. Today, Mariana had swapped out her sexy business outfit for something a little more practical. A blue sweater—still a little too tight across the chest—and slim black jeans le
ading to dressy sandals. The woman knew how to put together an outfit, for sure.
She grinned at Layne as she paused at a side table and squirted a dab of lotion into her hands. “Louie,” she said, her hips swishing side to side as she crossed the room to him. Layne wondered if she’d had to use pliers to get those jeans over her hips.
She rubbed her hands together, smoothing the lotion. “They told me you might be here today.”
Layne held up his visitor’s badge with a freshly-made label reading Louis Pastori. “Just until I know more about my next interview.”
“Believe me, we’re glad to have you. We’re about to do crafts, so I’m hoping you’re handy with scissors and glue.”
“I do okay.”
“Everyone,” Mariana said to the room. “This is Mr. Pastori, and he’s going to help out for today. You can call him Louie.”
Most in the room turned their heads to him and gave waves. A couple didn’t look away from the television. The general level of excitement in the room barely rose above a yawn.
“Does Wade Nicholson come down here to day treatment?” Layne asked.
Mariana looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Wade? Sure, from time to time. Why do you ask? Do you know him or something?”
Before Layne could answer the question, the door opened behind him. Layne caught the expression on Mariana’s face first. Disdain. She stopped short of sneering, but she wasn’t pleased, for sure. The room had almost darkened, despite the rush of outside light from the open door.
Layne turned to see Farhad Jahandar enter the room. He adopted a broad smile across his wrinkly face. “Good morning, everyone!”
“Morning, Mr. Jahandar,” a few of them mumbled in unison.
Farhad opened his hands wide and tilted his head at Layne, with a smile that looked like he was greeting an old friend after a prolonged absence. “Louis Pastori. So good to see you again.”
He crossed the room, and they shook hands. Not a regular handshake, but Farhad put his hands above and below Layne’s, pressing them together. His palms felt cold, as if he’d been digging in snow.