by Thomas Perry
“Good,” Eddie said. “You got a knife on you?”
“Sure.”
“Then go around the back behind room 112 and climb in the bathroom window. It’ll be just like this one. Then come to the door on the other side and unlock it. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
The boy extended his arms, let go of the window frame, and dropped the last two feet to the long grass behind the row of rooms. He walked away from the lighted part of the motel where the office was. The open end of the horseshoe was a field with bushes and shrubs, so he had no trouble walking farther out, where no light would reach him, and hooking back. He confirmed that the fourth door was room 112. In a minute he was behind the fourth bathroom window of the other wing. There was a garbage can a few yards away with some grass cuttings in it, so he dragged it over, inverted it, and climbed up to the window.
The window consisted of two sheets of smoked, tempered glass. He used his knife to bend the frame a little and slip it in between the glass and the frame to reach the latch. He completed the maneuver, used the blade as a lever, and depressed the latch to slide the window aside.
He hoisted himself up, slithered in sideways to his waist, rested his weight on his hip, dragged himself in until he could press one hand on the wall above the toilet tank, and then braced himself to pull one leg in. He pulled in the other, tentatively rested his weight on the sink, and then stepped down into the nearly dark bathroom. He slid the window shut. Then he walked through the sleeping area, between the twin beds, and unlocked the door. He opened it a crack and then closed it again.
A few minutes later Eddie slipped in the door and closed it. He was carrying something in the duffel bag they used for their laundry. “Good job, kid,” he said. “We’ll spend the night here.”
“Are our suitcases in the other room?”
“Everything is back in the car except what we’ll need here. I used the pillows and extra blankets and towels to make it look like we’re in the beds.”
“Won’t they notice?”
“Only after it’s too late. I took the bulbs out of the lamps.”
The men arrived around three in the morning, during the boy’s turn to watch. A big sedan rolled into the lot with its lights off and stopped. The car doors all opened, but the dome lights were turned off, so the car didn’t emit light except for the faint glow of the dashboard dials. The driver stayed behind the wheel while four men got out and left the doors open so there would be no slamming sounds.
The boy stepped to Eddie’s bed and nudged him. “They’re here.”
Eddie got up and picked up his shotgun. “Stay down.” He went to the window and watched.
The boy didn’t stay down, but he stayed back in the darkest part of the room. He watched the four men kick in the door of room 212, step inside, and fire. There were bright orange flashes and showers of sparks as burning powder followed the bullets out the muzzles of the guns.
Eddie’s first shotgun slug blasted through the side window of the big car and pounded into the head of the driver waiting behind the steering wheel. The far window of the car and the left part of the windshield looked as though a bucket of red paint had been splashed against it.
Eddie charged. He sprinted from the doorway of room 112 to the attackers’ car, leaned on the hood so the engine block would shield him, and fired four more slugs into the open doorway of room 212. Someone in the darkened room pushed the door shut, but Eddie fired two more shots through the door at belt level, ducked down to reload, then retreated from the car to the end of the 200 wing of the building, keeping his eye on the door.
The boy ran along the other wing to the lighted windows of the lobby. He appeared on the outer side of the glass near the front desk just as the clerk was coming out from behind it with a rifle in his hands. The boy waited until the man came out the door and then killed him with a pistol shot to the head.
As the boy started back toward Eddie, the damaged door of room 212 swung open. Two men had evaded Eddie’s shotgun slugs, and now they ran from room 212 toward the big car. They saw that the driver had been killed behind the wheel, so they each took one of his arms and began to drag him out of the seat so that one of them could get in and drive. Eddie and the boy each shot one, and they fell beside the driver.
Then Eddie stepped over the driver and the two fresh bodies, leaned in, and put the car in gear. Very slowly, the car moved forward toward the field at the end of the lot. The boy went to the door of 208, where they had left their car facing outward. Eddie went into room 212 and collected two men’s wallets, then came out and got the other three wallets.
As they both got into Eddie’s car, he tossed all five wallets in the boy’s lap, and some of them fell in front of the passenger seat. Eddie started the engine. “Nobody woke up, which means they kept the motel empty for this. But the whole town can’t be deaf, so cops will be on their way.” He drove off, heading back north, the way they had come. “Take out the money and the driver’s licenses, and toss the rest out the window.”
10
Schaeffer woke up and it took a second before he remembered he was in Australia now, not Chicago. He had been lying on top of the bedcover fully dressed. He looked at the bedside table, where the electric clock read 8:45 p.m. He sat up and looked around him at the hotel room. It was beautifully furnished and comfortable. The sun had set already, but he could see through the window that his room was very high, even with the tops of many buildings. It occurred to him that nobody was likely to use the stairway to or from the twentieth floor except in an emergency.
His memory of the night in Chicago stayed with him now that he was awake. It seemed to him that the memory had floated into his consciousness for a reason. Something about this situation was similar, and it felt like a warning. What had saved him and Eddie that night was sleeping where they weren’t expected to.
He stood up, went to the closet, and took the spare blanket from the shelf. He picked up one of the pillows off the bed. He made sure he had his wallet, his room key, and his phone. He picked up his leather carry-on bag, walked quietly to the door, opened it, crossed the hall, and entered the stairwell. It was cool and, at this level, quiet. He partially unfolded the blanket, set the pillow on the floor above the steps, and then stretched out to wait.
Schaeffer heard the sound of the elevator doors opening and then the rattle of china as a serving cart rolled out and came along the hall. The cart stopped, and Schaeffer looked out the small window set into the stairwell door.
It was a room service cart, and it had stopped in front of the door to his room. There were two men. The one pushing the cart wore a waiter’s white coat; the other, a suit.
The men knocked on the door of Schaeffer’s room. They waited. The man in the suit leaned close to the door and listened. Then he rapped on the door harder. The man in the waiter’s coat called out, “Room service.”
The man in the suit removed something from under a white linen tablecloth on top of the cart. Schaeffer recognized a Steyr bullpup rifle with a short barrel. He knew that some countries issued the Steyr to their military, and supposed Australia might be one. The man shouldered the short rifle and aimed it at the door while he waited a few seconds for an occupant to open it.
The waiter used a key card to unlock the door, turned the handle, and pushed it open. The man with the rifle slipped in past him, staying low. The waiter stepped aside and leaned his back against the wall in the hallway. About thirty seconds passed.
The man in the suit emerged, looking angry. He set the rifle on the cart and the waiter covered it again with the cloth. The man in the suit closed the door of the room and wiped the door handle with a handkerchief. The two returned to the elevator, rolled the cart into it, and then disappeared behind its closing metal doors.
Michael Schaeffer sat in the stairwell and began the process of repacking his clothes and other belongings more neatly in the leat
her carry-on. Australia had been a terrible idea. He had been trailed right off his plane onto the train into the city, and it had taken only a few hours after he’d lost his trackers to be found in his hotel. His chances of not being found again were poor.
Probably the Americans who wanted him dead had hired fixers to put out a contract on him in many countries, sending his photo ahead. They must have realized he’d go as far as possible from York after the first attack, and would have guessed he would go under the surface in a place where people looked like him and spoke the same language, more or less—the UK had been used up, so it would have had to be Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, or South Africa. There were probably freelance shooters in all those countries with a photo of his face in their phones.
Why now? He hadn’t bothered anybody in years, so it seemed insane that someone was afraid of him. The other two times he’d been attacked since he had gone to England there had been an element of accident. Somebody had happened to spot him in a public place and known he was a chance to make money. This was bigger. They were hunting him on the other side of the world. Something important must have happened, and the place where it had happened must be the United States. He had stayed unobtrusive in England and used the Internet to keep abreast of major events involving people in organized crime. And he had seen nothing that could prompt this sudden manhunt. He would have to go back to America to find out what it was.
11
The best method he could find to get to the United States was a flight to Melbourne to throw off any pursuers and then a fifteen-hour flight to Los Angeles. He had lasted less than one day in Australia, and he knew he was lucky to have made it that long. He hoped that since he had just gotten there, the hunters had stopped looking for him in airports.
It was still dark when his plane took off for Melbourne. Before he went to the gate for his flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles, he stopped in one of the airport stores and bought the three American newspapers that were for sale: the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. As soon as he was in the airplane aisle, he studied the people on the plane to make sure there was nobody he’d seen before and nobody who showed an unusual interest in him. He sat in his seat and watched the rest of the passengers board.
He spent the first two hours studying the newspapers for signs that the American organized-crime families were in some kind of upheaval or under special pressure. No police organization had announced big arrests, and there was no mention of the deaths or disappearances of any bosses. Gambling, prostitution, drugs, extortion, stock fraud, and money laundering were in no danger of going out of style.
While he was searching, he kept thinking about Meg. He couldn’t help worrying about her. He couldn’t quite feel sure she was safe. By now she should be in the private home of some friend or relative of hers somewhere in England, Scotland, or Wales. A few of them actually lived in houses that had withstood medieval warfare. She was probably safer than he was, but he still worried. American criminals had turned their attention on him once more. Whatever was going on in that world now was something big and frightening, and had come to England for him. He searched his memory and his imagination to figure out what could have prompted someone to start a worldwide search for him after all this time.
He awoke as his plane swung around and came in over the dry, jagged landscape east of Los Angeles and landed facing into the west wind off the ocean. When the plane was on the ground, he walked to the Southwest Airlines terminal and bought a ticket to Manchester, New Hampshire, with a stop in Charlotte.
He had decided not to fly into New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, or any of the other airports where the watchers from the police and the Mafia stared at one another all day long, and the watchers from Homeland Security watched everyone else. He’d never had much trouble with the police, because he had never been arrested. But he knew there might be something that the police or FBI knew about him now that could make them interested. He purchased a ticket using a passport with the name Charles Ackerman, and the airline employees didn’t see anything on their computer screens that disturbed them.
When he reached New Hampshire, he stayed at a hotel close to the airport to keep things simple. He was back in America now, so he would do what Americans did—get a car and then go shopping for guns.
He knew it was not prudent for him to rent a car. It was easy for the companies to trace their rental cars. Leasing a car was worse, because it required a serious credit check and a bank’s approval. What he needed was to find a used car being offered for sale by its owner. The normal way to buy a car like that was cash, since nobody would take a check for that much money from a stranger.
He slept the night in the hotel, went down to the dining room for breakfast, and stopped to buy a copy of the New Hampshire Union Leader. He searched the ads placed by private owners. He could see that there wasn’t much variety or supply. Had that end of car sales moved online since he’d left the country? He set aside his newspaper to use his cell phone to look for ads, and found more online.
He called a couple of the phone numbers, got names and addresses, and made arrangements to look at the cars in the right price range. The third car he saw was a six-year-old Toyota Camry. He offered $4,000, settled for $4,500, and paid for it in cash. After less than an hour of pink-slip signing and counting and lying, he drove the car away, already on his way to his next errand.
One reason he had chosen New Hampshire was that it had virtually no meaningful gun laws. He visited several gun shops and bought two .45 pistols modeled on the M1911, with threaded barrels and caps for silencers. After buying his last plane ticket, he knew there was nothing about the Charles Ackerman identification that would alarm the authorities, so he used it for the federal background check, which was completed while he waited.
Schaeffer drove to another gun shop and picked up a rifle, an AR-15 clone with one hundred rounds of ammunition, a flash suppressor, and a scope. He had seldom used a rifle in the days when he was working, but he had no idea what he would be facing this time, and when he found out, it might be too late to go shopping.
He went to the trunk of his car, stowed the rifle, loaded the two pistols and put them in his coat pockets, closed the trunk, and began to drive. When he could, he turned south. As he drove, the weight of the two pistols in his coat made him think about the old days again.
He remembered the night he and Eddie had survived the ambush at the motel outside Chicago when he was sixteen. Eddie had driven away from the motel, and the boy had turned around so his knees were on his seat and his chin and hands were on top of the backrest as he stared out the back window of Eddie’s car.
The men he could see were all dead, some lying in the entrance to room 212 where they had fallen and the driver a few feet off, where he had been dragged from the car. He could see the man from the front desk who had come running with a rifle.
Eddie turned as the car bumped down off the lot into the street. He didn’t look into the rearview mirror, but he seemed anxious.
“They’re all dead,” said the boy.
“I know, but the police aren’t. The manager kept the rooms empty, but the rest of the town can’t be deaf. We all made a lot of noise back there.”
“Are we going home?”
“Not for a while,” Eddie said. “We have to make things right with the people who run the place.”
“What place? The motel?”
“No. Chicago.”
It was already daylight when they reached the middle of the city. Eddie parked and called a number on a pay phone in a drugstore. The boy heard a bit of what he said. “This is Eddie Mastrewski. Do you know who I am? I would like to have a moment of Mr. Castiglione’s time. Anytime he can spare it. I’m going to be waiting at the restaurant of the Brewster Hotel with my boy. I’ll wait for word from him as long as I can. But if he won’t talk to me, I’d appreciate it if you would call the h
otel and let me know. Thank you.”
They drove to Michigan Avenue, where the hotel was. The building was tall, like some Pittsburgh buildings, but it was bigger and fancier than the ones he’d seen in Pittsburgh. He and Eddie went in the front door of the building, through a giant lobby, and into the restaurant.
Eddie selected a table near the back of the room, away from the front windows and the entrance. When the boy looked at Eddie, he said, “I know, kid. I like a window too, but we’re going to be here for a while, and there will be people around who won’t like us. We want a thick, hard wall behind us and clear paths to a couple of doors.”
“Should we be afraid?”
Eddie’s lips gave a quick twitch that the boy knew was a smile he had smothered. His face turned serious again. “Fear isn’t always bad. If it keeps you thinking, it can’t hurt. When we’re working, we don’t have any friends. All our friends are regular people back in Pittsburgh. The man I asked to meet with us is very powerful and important. He hires hundreds of people to do things for him. They make him more money and protect him and so on.”
“Is that why we’re meeting him in such a fancy hotel?”
“Not exactly. I suggested this hotel because he owns it. Everybody you’ve seen, from the parking guy to the waiter, the cooks, the desk clerks, and the chambermaids, all work for him. Even the hookers in the bar work for him. Our coming here is a gesture to show I mean him no harm.”
They ordered fried chicken and mashed potatoes for lunch. After they had finished eating, and Eddie was drinking coffee and the boy cola, two young men in suits and shiny shoes with dark, slicked-back hair came through the double door across the room from them. They closed the doors behind them, looked at each person in the room, and then walked toward the table where Eddie and the boy sat. The boy straightened in his seat, but Eddie seemed to be concentrating on moving as little as possible.