The mint green outside walls curved enough to remind us the suite was in a tower. Four abstract paintings hung on interior walls, as did a flat-screen TV. To the right of the entryway was a kitchenette with a bistro table for four and to the left two bedrooms and a bathroom. But I would sleep in this main room, on the pull-out sofa bed already pushed back to the closed curtains. Beside it stood a tubular steel coat rack that already held my clothes. At my request, hotel staff had removed all the decorative pottery and small sculptures, freeing tables and shelves to serve as work surfaces. Five or six people could move freely in the space between the sofa and the computer table.
“So this is it,” Phoenix said. “Command central.” She stepped down and walked around to the work side of the computer table. Her dark hair fell forward as she leaned down to look at the monitors. The glimmer cast a wave of shadow on her cinnamon cheek.
“We spent all day setting it up,” I said. “Pete, Yvonne, and I.”
“I see that.” She tapped the keyboard in front of the middle monitor. “You turned off the sleep mode so pictures are always on, in real-time. With six images to a screen, you can monitor eighteen locations at once—or Yvonne can. Twenty, now that I look at the last monitor.” She raised her eyes to me, narrowed them. “I didn’t see the camera in the hallway.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“How much is all this costing you?”
I shrugged as I went down the steps to join her. Brushing back her hair, I looked into her eyes. “A lot of stuff came from Jimmy’s. Yvonne contributed two monitors and her own computer.” I pointed to the tower on a plastic mat under the table with cords and cables bundled behind it. “A high-end machine. She linked and synched all of it and can send images to our cells. The last monitor is for the catwalk above the convention floor. We have eight rotating mini-cams activated by motion sensors. They cover each entrance and walkway and rotate ten degrees every few seconds so no one can get to the catwalk without being seen.”
Phoenix slipped her arms around me, the smooth fabric of her teal jacket making a rustling sound against the rough weave of my gray sports jacket. She looked into my eyes. “Your honor, please direct the witness to answer my question without trying to distract me.” She smiled. “Tell him not to say Sam is paying. I know Sam has only two K to put into this. One for Pete, one for Yvonne. Right? The cameras, the color printer, the rented van in the parking ramp—you didn’t get everything from Jimmy or Yvonne. I bet that fridge over there is full of food too. So, Mr. Rimes, how much is all this costing you?”
“I won’t know for sure till I get my MasterCard statement.”
“That’s what I thought.” Eyes still holding mine, Phoenix furrowed her brow. “How can you make enough to feed yourself when you give your services away? Baby…”
“My pension is good.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re a fine one to talk when you do so much pro bono work.”
“Irrelevant and immaterial.” Phoenix released me, stepped back, and sighed with an exasperation I rarely heard. “We don’t keep things from each other anymore. Remember? Why didn’t you come to me? I can help.”
I hesitated before answering. “A voice in the back of my mind says I’m overreacting. It tells me the kind of people after Sam’s cousin aren’t organized enough to take a shot at her here, so far away from their safe zone. But another voice reminds me things are usually more complicated than I expect. You know I believe in being sure. If that’s unreasonable this time, I figured the full responsibility should be mine, not yours or Bobby’s.”
“Being sure is one thing.” Phoenix gestured toward the monitors. “But this is maybe two steps below presidential security.”
“Oswald, Hinckley—even losers get lucky. I can’t afford to overlook anything.”
“This isn’t all on you, babe. The conference and the hotel share responsibility too.”
“Bobby aside, nobody involved knows Sam or how much his cousin means to him.”
She was quiet for several seconds, watching me. “You’re a good man, Gideon.”
I shrugged. “With some of the things I’ve done, had to do, I don’t know if I’m a good man or a lost man who sometimes does good things. In any case, I’m nowhere near as good a man as Bobby.” I took a deep breath. “Once when I was talking with him about the war, he told me sometimes a good man must do a bad thing to prevent a worse thing. He said something similar recently, not about me but about himself. If they can do that to Bobby…”
Phoenix smiled sadly and encircled me with her arms again. “This is about Bobby, isn’t it? Not just Sam. It’s about those skinheads.” She put her head against my chest, and I could feel the warmth of her breath through the thin cotton of my shirt. “You’ve conflated what happened to Bobby with what happened to Drea Wingard.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“No maybe about it.” She pulled back enough to look up at me. “The men who beat your godfather aren’t the same men who killed that poor woman’s husband. Different strains of the same sickness but not the same men.”
“I know that, intellectually. But maybe somewhere there’s a ledger I’ll help balance, for somebody else if not myself.”
“Lost men can’t see the books much less keep them,” she said. “You balance this ledger of yours when you do what must be done for the people you help. When you do so without becoming what you struggle against. You’re one of the few men I know who does what he says he will, when he says he will, no matter the personal cost.”
“I don’t know if—”
She cut me off with a kiss, soft and deep and slow. Afterward, she stepped back. “Like it or not, I’m going to pay for some of this. We’re a unit and we help each other any way we can. Caso cerrado. Case closed. Meanwhile…”
She slipped off her jacket, letting it fall to the carpet. Then she began to unbutton her white top, revealing her prosthetic bra and the red-gold-green phoenix rising to cover her torso. I loved to trace her tattoo with my fingertips.
“At dinner, mister, you said you would show me a Jacuzzi big enough for two. It’s time you did what you said you would.” She dropped her top and bra onto her jacket and undid my second and third shirt buttons, warm fingers reaching inside. “If you’re going to be here for the next week, I need some quality time with you to tide me over.”
16
The van I rented for transporting Drea Wingard to her various appearances was a customized metallic green Ford Transit with a drink cooler, four luxury bucket seats, a three-person bench seat in back, and no side windows. At ten-thirty Monday morning, I parked in front of the stone façade of Weisskopf Security on Delaware—to pick up the guards the publisher hired to meet Drea at the airport. As Sam moved to the bench seat, Pete and I went inside.
Still annoyed I had been unable to meet the hired guards earlier, I introduced myself to a matronly blonde woman behind a reception counter. Her nametag said Suzanne Hauser. I recognized her breathy voice from our two phone conversations. Daughter of the founder and current owner, she gestured us into chairs and disappeared behind a frosted glass door. Then she returned with an eager-looking light-skinned man in his early twenties and a shorter dark-skinned woman about forty. Each wore a tan windbreaker with a Weisskopf patch on the left breast. The patches matched the logo on the two brown sedans in the parking lot.
Hauser introduced the pair as Manuel Ramos and Lucy Bishop. Pete and I shook their hands. They would ride with us today, I explained, so we could establish the parameters of our working together. Tomorrow they would park at the hotel with a permit, which my gut told me to hand to Bishop. Depending on our schedule any given day, they would ride with us or follow us in their car. “Company jackets are okay right now,” I said. “But after today I want you in clothes that don’t identify you as security. That includes your car. If you don’t have something unmarked in your fleet, use a personal vehicle.”
Hauser cleared her throat. “Com
pany policy requires our employees to wear company clothing when they’re on duty and drive an official car.”
Museum guards, I thought, letting out a slow breath. “Ma’am, I understand it’s important to keep your logo out there, but the price of this advertising may be kind of high.”
“It’s not advertising,” she said. “We pride ourselves on our professionalism.”
“The men hunting our protectee pride themselves on their ruthlessness. They already killed her husband.” I waited a moment so the three of them could absorb what I had said. “That’s why my partner and I are wearing covert ballistic vests.” I held open my sports jacket enough to show the vest and my shoulder holster. “This is the soft armor I told you about, Ms. Hauser. A type IIIA Kevlar weave for handguns up to a .44 Magnum. It weighs about four pounds and is designed to look like ordinary clothing. A Weisskopf patch right over the heart just tells the bad guys who and where to shoot first.”
Ramos’s boyish enthusiasm had peaked when he glimpsed my gun. Now it vanished. For a millisecond Bishop glared at her boss, who obviously had not passed along my body armor recommendation. Hauser narrowed her eyes at me, annoyance evident in the tightening corners of her mouth. Pete pressed his lips together to smother a smile.
“All right,” Hauser said. “Street clothes and your Malibu, Bishop—unless you want to drive, Ramos, because you finally bought a car.”
He shook his head.
“Keep a mileage log, Lucy, so New York can reimburse you at the federal rate.”
Bishop nodded. “Can we get vests like the ones they got?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not in our budget this year,” Hauser said. “I’ll talk to the CFO. He’s finishing the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July first.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, that won’t mean jack shit to my husband and kids if I get popped the last week of June,” Bishop said. “But I got a Visa card, so if you show me to your tailor, Mr. Rimes, I’m happy to get my own.”
“You can get bulkier models for less money right here in town, with steel or ceramic insert plates,” I said. “But the best discrete armor has to be custom-ordered for one—height, weight, measurements. High-end units can run seven hundred, but for three and a two-day rush delivery you can have reliable armor designed for women to wear under regular clothing. Remind me to show you what we have for our client.”
Bishop nodded, seemingly relieved. I had a feeling we would get on fine. I also had a feeling part of her job for me would be keeping Ramos on task and out of the way. Maybe it was part of her job now.
Suzanne Hauser looked pleased to see us leave. As we took her employees out to the van, I imagined her dropping into a swivel chair and taking a healthy hit from a bottle of brandy kept in a bottom desk drawer.
Pete introduced Bishop and Ramos to Sam as they climbed into the middle seats. Then he got behind the wheel, and I took shotgun. As we pulled away from the curb, I turned to our new teammates and described the events that had brought Drea Wingard to national prominence, with Sam adding details when I requested them. Next, I handed each a pocket baton in a small sheath that could be clipped to a belt. These were identical, I explained, to the batons Pete and I carried. After that, I described our protective operation, from the earbuds that would keep us in constant contact with each other to the monitor system to the precautions we would take when Drea had an appearance away from the conference. Finally, I invited questions.
“I got a Taser,” Ramos said. “Should I bring it?”
“If it’s the kind you can keep out of sight. Remember, you don’t want to make yourself a target. We want to look like we’re with her, not like we’re protecting her.”
“I don’t get it,” Ramos said. “Looking like security should keep thugs away.”
“Thugs maybe,” I said. “But if we discourage these guys from getting close, it might encourage them to use something high-powered from a safe distance.” I tapped my vest. “Bullet resistant, not bullet proof. Odds go down with rifle scopes and head shots.”
Ramos swallowed and shifted as if uncomfortable.
“Don’t forget these people are dickheads,” Pete called from over his shoulder. “White supremacist assholes who don’t think anyone in this van belongs in this country or deserves to breathe free. If I drove into a wall at high speed right now, they’d pack a picnic lunch to watch us burn and high-five each other for the money they saved on bullets.”
“I got a permit,” Bishop said. “Never had to bring my gun to work. Should I?”
“Depends on whether you’re comfortable notching the job up to another level. Again, nothing so big you can’t conceal it.”
“What about a Colt Cobra .38, short barrel?”
I nodded. “Take into consideration how you’d carry it if you wear armor.” I studied her for a moment as she took in her surroundings with a focused gaze. She had short tight curls that were easy to maintain, a straight back, and shoulders that suggested an exercise regimen. “Ever been in the military, Bishop?”
“Eight years, sir. Army.” She smiled. “Met my husband in Kuwait. What about you?”
I returned her smile. “I was next door. Twice. Met a lot of people I’d rather forget.”
“If she orders a vest,” Ramos said, “can I use my mom’s credit card to get one?”
“Up to your mom,” I said. “You haven’t pissed her off lately, have you?”
“What?”
“Is there any reason she wouldn’t want you to have one?”
“He’s busting your chops, man.” Pete laughed. “If you were about to answer yes, we need to talk.”
Ramos relaxed and smiled. “I’m her only son and the baby. My sisters will get her to do it.”
“I guess it’s good when siblings have got your back,” Pete said. “But I’m a solo, so I’m only guessing here.” He turned left onto an expressway ramp. “Man, I love the way this thing handles. I just might get one.”
“Don’t spend your pension in one place,” I said. “I’m sure the price tag is up there.”
“Well, I can’t wait for my inheritance. My parents are the youngsters in families with good longevity genes.”
At noon Pete drove into the Preferred Parking Lot of Buffalo Niagara International and claimed a pick-up/drop-off slot near the second walkway into the terminal. He waited in the van with Bishop and Ramos while Sam and I went inside.
The Arrivals monitor near the baggage claim carousels on the first floor noted the flight from BWI was on time, due to land in five minutes. Sports jacket buttoned to hide my gun and avoid a panic that would shut down the airport, I followed Sam onto the escalator and up to the waiting area to the right of TSA inspection lines. We sat in the first row of chairs near the glass partition that separated ticketless people from the boarding gates. In an untucked white shirt and brown slacks instead of his customary gray work uniform, Sam fidgeted in his seat and kept adjusting his glasses or his baseball cap. He stood and got a bottle of water from the small bar in the corner. Then he returned to his seat and chugged a third in a single swallow.
I pivoted in my chair to face him. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Only once since the funeral.” His baritone was unusually quivery, and he gulped more water. “She invited me down after she got settled in DC” He chuckled. “But I almost didn’t recognize her without glasses and her hair short and dyed.”
“That was while she was still writing her book, before she started the TV interviews.”
He nodded. “But even then she was lookin’ over her shoulder everywhere we went.”
I put a hand on his forearm. “We’ll keep her safe, Sam. Pete’s a good cop, not afraid to do what he has to. We got extra help—”
“That lady’s okay, but the boy’s a little shaky, least to me.”
“He’s new at this. He’ll come around.” I paused. “Also, the hotel suite is secure. The woman who set up the security system—”
“LJ’s girlfriend.”
“Yes. She’s almost as good as LJ himself.”
He snorted. “Nobody’s that good but I’ll trust her if you trust her.”
“I trust her.”
We were quiet for a time. Sam seemed lost in thought as he finished his water in sips, and I left him alone. He went to drop the bottle in the recycle. On the way back to his seat, he stopped before he could sit and looked past me. His face brightened. He began to smile and moved toward the exit end of the glass wall.
I turned and saw Drea Wingard among the passengers coming toward the partition, a large brown purse over one shoulder and a lavender roller carry-on in tow. She waved when she saw Sam and started walking faster, her smile widening. She wore a pale yellow pantsuit, with a burnt orange blouse and matching heels that failed to make her look as tall as she had appeared on television. As she drew nearer, her short black hair shone under the overhead lights and large gold earrings jiggled.
By the time I got to my feet, Sam was already waiting at the exit, grinning broadly, arms outstretched. When she reached the TSA officer seated on a stool to keep people from coming in through the exit, Drea broke into a slow trot and within seconds was in Sam’s arms, her carry-on toppling over as she let go of it to embrace him. They stood there a long time, eyes closed, neither speaking nor moving as other passengers streamed around them and other reunions happened nearby. Having reached them, I sent Pete a text message and waited for the hug to end.
Finally, Sam blinked and wiped his eyes as he turned to me. “Drea, this is Gideon, the young fella I told you about. If anybody can watch your back in Buffalo, it’s him.”
At least a foot shorter than I, Drea Wingard extended her hand and smiled up at me. To my surprise, her brown eyes were more riveting than they had appeared on television. “After so many emails and phone calls, it’s nice to meet you in person, Mr. Rimes.”
“Call me, G, Ms. Wingard.” I took her hand. “Everyone does. Nice to meet you too.”
“If I call you G, you have to call me Drea.”
Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) Page 13
