Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  They walked on.

  I ducked into the room. In one of the suitcases I found jeans that were a bit too big on me and another polo shirt with the turquoise swirl of their software company. I toweled off my hair best I could, but nothing could disguise the rising, cut bruise on my face from Felix’s shotgun or the injuries to my hands from the long cable slide. I looked like I’d been in a fight. No matter. My shoes were sodden but I left them on.

  In my disguise I went back out the door. I headed for the elevators. There wasn’t a line; it was the middle of the day, so reasonable to assume most guests were out and about, down in the casino proper or down by the pool or out enjoying Vegas’s sundry pleasures. I waited for the elevator. I didn’t want the stairs.

  The elevator stopped. Two people were aboard, an older couple who looked deeply annoyed. The intercom kept repeating the evacuation order. I turned off the buzzing security earphone and put it in my pocket and stepped on board.

  We dropped down two floors to twenty-three. The elevator stopped. Uh-oh.

  “We’re gonna hit every floor,” the old man said, as though it were a personal slight.

  “We’ll get there,” the old woman said.

  “You’re supposed to take the stairs in an evacuation,” he said.

  “She didn’t say not to take the elevator. My legs hurt anyway.”

  A security guard got on the elevator. Down the hall I could see a crowd of them at the room where I’d smashed the window-washing machine into the naked couple’s hotel room. He stepped in.

  He glanced at us all, but it was an old couple and a traveling software businessman. See? I’m wearing a polo with a logo. A turquoise logo. Clearly I am no threat.

  The elevator dropped. I could hear the buzz of status reports coming from the security guard’s earphone.

  “What’s going on?” the woman asked him.

  “I can’t say, ma’am,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Terrorists,” the old man said. “Probably a bomb scare. How much money does the casino lose every minute it’s closed? It’s economic warfare.”

  The security guard glanced at the man, and because the man was standing next to me, he glanced at me again. Then he stared.

  The cameras had been turned off by Lazard’s orders. I was sure that must violate all sorts of Vegas gaming laws, but there was no way that the cameras weren’t still off, now that he’d fallen forty-eight stories.

  I put my gaze back to the guard. He’d turned back to the front, but in the reflection of the closed door, he was watching me.

  “Son,” the old man said to me kindly. “Did you walk in the swimming pool? Your shoes are wet.”

  The security guard should have just started yelling into his mike. Instead he looked down at my shoes, and when he did I hit him hard, hard, twice, his head snapping back into the wall. The old woman screamed and the old man drew her close to him.

  The guard slumped. The elevator said we were past four and the mezzanine was the next level, and I hit the button just in time; the elevator slowed.

  The guard had a gun and a baton. I took the baton and left the gun.

  Chime. The door opened and there was a spill of crowd beyond, mingling, some waiting for the elevator. A convention of some sort, full of people wearing software shirts and logos. Purple crescents/swoops appeared to be popular. I walked out of the elevator and through the crowd with purpose. Behind me the old couple started to yell, and I moved toward the stairs that led down to the main casino floor. There was a service stairway and I took it. It spat me out into the kitchen that was already deserted.

  I went out the exit. The police were looking for me as a murder suspect, and they’d have a description. At the airports and at the bus stations. I had to find a way out of Vegas, and now. My prints would be in the penthouse, although it might take a while to process that crime scene.

  I should just run, I thought. Gather up Leonie and Daniel, wherever Mila and Jimmy hid them, and run.

  But Felix had turned against us for an unknown reason and now Belias was running. And he would just keep on manipulating the world, wielding power he didn’t earn or deserve, unless someone stopped him.

  The crowds of the Mystik’s casino were thick and heavy on the grounds, the police sirens glowing where Lazard had fallen to his death and I’d put on a show at the side of the building. I saw an ambulance, sirens blaring, blasting out of the lot. Sirens? He couldn’t have survived.

  It wasn’t hard to make my way through the crowd. I heard someone say, “There was a shooting,” and I thought news travels fast from the penthouse on down.

  And then I saw him. Felix. In his maintenance man’s uniform, forty feet away, the shifting, moving crowd a divider between us. He was staring up at the building. He could put it together. I’d gotten out. He frowned.

  Felix turned and walked away. And hanging back, I followed him.

  66

  Sunday, November 7, early afternoon

  WHAT…WHAT IS HAPPENING?” Janice began.

  “Shut up,” Belias said. “I got you out. They’ll kill Lucky.”

  “They will?” She leaned against the side of the service elevator.

  “If we’re…lucky.”

  “Who is the other man? Sam’s friend?” Belias said.

  “I…” She touched her bruises.

  “You said his name. You said Felix.”

  The service elevator chimed and the doors opened. Chaos. People running, rushing in the hallways and Janice thought, How do they know it’s a war zone upstairs? And then she heard a man shouting, “She’s been shot,” and she realized there was a wholly separate crisis going on down here.

  “Come on.” Belias grabbed her arm, steered her out of the elevator cab. No one noticed them, and she could see people swarming around an open door down the small hallway from the elevator.

  They pushed the other way, hurrying out. They stumbled out a service entrance into the bright Vegas sun. “This way,” he said. On the air they could hear the fast approaching scream of an ambulance.

  They worked their way to the side of the casino, toward the parking lot where employees parked. Beyond it lay a public lot.

  Belias pulled out a phone, selected a number.

  And behind them Janice heard screams.

  “Dear Lord,” she said as she glanced over her shoulder.

  She just caught a glimpse of a man falling. Lazard plummeting from the penthouse patio.

  “I told you they’d kill him,” Belias said.

  Janice felt horror climb her spine.

  “Come on, let’s go.” He turned and spoke into the phone. “Holly, where are you and the car?” He listened. “Meet us down the Strip. At the Carnivale Resort, it’s just a few blocks away.”

  Who was Holly, Janice wondered. Another member of the network.

  It was a dangerous thing to be in the network right now.

  “He was one of us. So was Barbara Scott,” she said quietly. They were a block away when they turned back again toward the Mystik. On the side away from the street they could see a man using the automated washer’s cables to rappel down the side of the building toward the wide disc of the automated washer.

  “Insane,” Belias breathed. “Oh, he’s crazy. In the best way. Wish I could have kept him but when his buddy showed up, there’s just no trusting him.”

  “He’ll fall. He’ll fall.” Janice didn’t want to watch—seeing Lazard tumble from the top of the Mystik was horrifying enough—but she couldn’t tear her gaze away.

  They watched Sam Capra nearly fall, get control, smash his way through a window.

  “Extraordinary,” Belias said. “He might actually get away. We need to hurry.”

  “We need to get out of here.”

  “Yes.” They hurried two resorts past the Mystik. An Escalade pulled up next to them when they reached the Carnivale. Belias and Janice climbed into the car, Janice in the back, Belias in the front.

  A woman Janice didn’t know—presu
mably the Holly he’d just called—sat in the driver’s seat. She was in her early thirties, blonde, slim but strong looking. Her mouth was a twist. “Sorry,” she said. Her voice shook and she trembled when she glanced at Janice. “When all the police arrived I didn’t want to be trapped in the lot.”

  “Understood,” Belias said.

  “Where’s Sam?” she said. She inched back into traffic. Sirens were approaching from all sides.

  “Sam got left behind.”

  “Good. Good. Sam’s little friend was here,” Holly said. “She’s followed us. He didn’t break her neck like you said.”

  “Ah,” Belias said. “So best then I left him behind.” He managed to sound both sad and furious.

  “The Russian girlfriend,” Holly said. “I shot her. In a storage closet in the employee area.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes,” Holly said. Her voice was steady. “Can we leave Vegas, please? I would really like to leave now.”

  “Tell me details.”

  “I saw her and a man dressed in maintenance worker clothes. They went into the back and I followed them—I flirted with a young guy, told him I was a hostess and had forgotten my pass. I saw him push her into a storage room, and then he left and the way he was shaking his hand…I knew he’d hit her. So I shot her and left her in the storage room. Then I ran.”

  “He’d hit her? Interesting. He hit Sam as well.” He stared back at the Mystik. “You just shot her once?”

  “Once is enough.”

  “You may have been seen. The person who let you in will remember your face.”

  “Then let’s go home.”

  “No. No home yet. We have more to do, Janice. Two down, one to go. In Chicago.”

  Janice shook her head. “I…I want to go home. Please. I’m done.”

  “You want me to take care of Diana, to make her one of us? This is the price. One more. Chicago.”

  Janice hung her head.

  “One more. One more and you’re done.”

  “Can’t you do it? Can’t she?” And Janice touched Holly’s shoulder.

  67

  Sunday, November 7, early afternoon

  I KILLED YOUR DAUGHTER, Holly thought. Earlier this week she’d thought she would spend the weekend taking Peter to his friend’s birthday party, going shopping with Mom and Emma, and maybe stopping by the bookstore and buying the new novel her book club had selected. A normal weekend. Now she had killed a young woman in a hot rage and she’d shot another in cold blood.

  And now she was going to look a mother in the eye, a mother whose daughter she’d killed. I didn’t mean to. But she killed my husband. She…

  “I…” Holly glanced back. Janice was looking right at her. Right at her. Like she knew. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You’re Glenn Marchbanks’s wife, right?” Janice looked at Belias for confirmation. “Seen you at fund-raisers.”

  “Holly, this is Janice Keene,” Belias said. “No point in pretending you won’t know each other’s names.”

  “I am not getting on a plane to anywhere until I know what is going on, John,” Janice said. “Are we driving to the airport? Just stop. Stop right now.”

  Holly turned, went down two side roads, pulled into a shopping plaza. They were in a strip center: a Thai restaurant, an old vinyl record store, a Mexican-themed cantina. Belias turned to face them both.

  “Janice, Holly’s husband is dead. Killed by Sam Capra. Sam is the man who has proven himself so adept at high-rise escapes. He’s an ex-CIA agent who crossed our paths.”

  The smell of paint, odd, sudden in her nose. How far did Belias go to get his confession from Glenn?

  “But you brought him with you,” Janice said. “But…”

  “I thought he would be useful to us. Well, he was, but he tried to trick us. Now he’s just a dead man walking. Or dead man climbing as the case may be.”

  “So Glenn Marchbanks is a dead network member. So are the two you sent me after.” Janice turned and looked at Holly. “He’s killing his own. He’s killing us.”

  “Glenn was mounting a revolt against me. Holly didn’t know it.”

  “And Barbara Scott and Lazard were part of this? Bull!” Janice yelled. “You just…You just…you’re lying. What is this really about?”

  He took a deep breath. “You know about the unfortunate death of the vice president.”

  Silence. Holly watched Janice nod. Holly wanted out of this car so badly—it was like a coffin. She couldn’t stand to be near this woman. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t look at her, she couldn’t be expected to speak to her, to act like a nonmurderer around her…

  “And, well, he has to be replaced. He is going to be replaced by a senator from New Mexico. Who is…one of us. I smoothed every path for her. There were three big obstacles in her political growth. Barbara Scott and Lucky Lazard eliminated two of those obstacles. There is one more who helped her rise, who sealed the deal. They all know she’s ours.”

  “And you need him dead.”

  Holly thought, You need everyone who knows you’re going to own the woman a heartbeat away from the presidency dead. But you just told me and Janice. And I’m not terminally ill. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

  Belias said, “I need the people who elevated her dead now. Any one of them could expose what they did, prove the connection between us. The stakes are now too high. Glenn was already rebelling against me, like Satan against God.” His voice had a sudden cold creak to it.

  You’re insane, Holly thought, but she stared out the window. I let you turn me into a killer. I let you ruin me. But that’s done, and now I just have to get back to my kids.

  She still had the gun. She could just shoot them both. End it here. Belias had told her Janice had cancer, she’d be dead soon. And Belias…Then she’d be free.

  “I’m the only thing standing between you and Capra, Holly,” Belias said. It shook her out of her reverie. Could she shoot them here? In the middle of the city? He had a plane. He had a pilot. She could just walk to his plane and say, Take me home. Would the pilot, if Belias wasn’t around? No. Okay, forget his airplane. She’d wait until they parked in the airport lot. She’d shoot him and then the woman, Janice. Who was so worried about her daughter…And now she wouldn’t have to worry anymore. Shoot them and walk away. There were probably security cameras in the parking lot, but there had been cameras in the casino although Lazard shut them down under some pretense when Belias came to see him…The cameras would catch her. Maybe she should wait. Somewhere less public…

  I’m sorry, she thought. In the rearview mirror she saw Janice watching her as if she could hear her thoughts.

  She put the car into drive and took the side roads to avoid the traffic.

  They were now ten minutes from the airport.

  “So you own the vice president. Then what?” Holly said. “Wait for the president to die?”

  “That is an option. I think having a spy deep inside the government is going to be good for all of us. People can be appointed to positions of influence. Get massive contracts. Ambassadorships. There are many ways for us to profit. To secure our futures.”

  The two women were silent.

  “I need to go meet with the senator. It won’t be easy for me to get access to her but it must be done, given this situation. And I want the two of you to go to Chicago. To deal with the last person who knows.”

  No, Holly thought in horror. No. You can’t ask me to travel with this woman. You just can’t. She stared at her hands on the steering wheel. Was that blood on them? No. Just a trick of the desert light. Diana’s blood. The Russian woman’s blood.

  Her hands shook. How could she look at her children?

  “Holly?”

  “I killed that woman. I…I have never killed anyone before.” Her voice sounded like her own but the words might have been in a foreign language.

  “It gets easier after the first time,” Janice said. “A little.”


  Holly swallowed bile at the back of her throat. The first time was your daughter; do you really want to talk to me about ease?

  “I don’t want you to worry about your families,” Belias said. “I have them being watched, so they’re safe.”

  The threat was implicit. He’d dispatched someone to watch her kids and her mother and probably another one to find Diana. Not that she could be found. What would Felix and the little Russian have done with Diana’s body? Left it in the bar? Left it for the police to find? It could be on the news. What if Janice decided to check San Francisco news websites or broke her radio silence to call her daughter? What if people in San Francisco got desperate to try and reach her? She might call Diana the moment the Chicago hit was done.

  And she’d be with her. She’d be facing a mother like herself, who’d been willing to accept the moral compromises and shortcuts, all the advantages. Someone just as ruthless when needed. And if they failed? Would her kids pay the price?

  Maybe it was a lie. Felix knew she’d killed Diana. And Felix had his own agenda, apparently, if Belias was to be believed.

  “Sam’s friend…Felix…he was in my cancer support group,” Janice said. “Felix must have targeted me. He must have known about me.”

  Belias stared at her.

  Janice kept talking. “And if Lazard told Sam Capra who the third target was…would Lazard know?”

  “Yes. He would have worked once with Rawlings.”

  “Then…Felix is maybe heading toward Chicago as well.”

  Belias said, “You’re in a race, ladies. Don’t lose it.”

  “Do you warn this Rawlings guy?” Holly asked.

  “I’ll warn Rawlings that there’s a threat to him. I’ll have him meet you both someplace private. He’ll think it’s for protection. It will make your job much easier.”