by Mike Nappa
“Mm-hmm,” she says. I hear the sound of shoes on carpet, then the door to Room 614 opens and shuts with a heavy metal click. After Viktor’s gone, Scholarship speaks.
“You need anything before I go downstairs?”
“No, you go on. I’ll meet you down there later.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’m going to go pick out a nice bottle of red wine.”
“Mm-hmm,” she says.
Again the door opens and shuts, and I hear Mama shuffling around lazily in the hotel room. Maybe she’s reading, or judging from the clicks and sighs, maybe she’s inserting a new insulin pump, I can’t tell for sure. But I know the conversation time is over. I check the recording, and even though there’s about twelve minutes left, I figure it’s safe to turn it off. I tap the pause button, then turn to make a final sweep of the room.
Got all my clothes, I think. Don’t need to get my bathroom stuff, I can buy a new toothbrush anywhere. Got my money. Don’t need anything else, really. Just have to fly away again, like the Raven of Noah’s ark.
Now I lay the Poe collectible magazine gently into the duffel, and a thought I had earlier returns like a hammer to my head.
How can Mama Bliss be so kind and generous toward me yet so cold and cruel toward everyone sitting in the Grand Ballroom downstairs right now?
It didn’t register with me before, but it does now.
Trudi Coffey is downstairs, sitting in the Grand Ballroom. Right now.
At 8:27, a bomb will explode in there, killing at least half the people in that room. Maybe killing Trudi.
I’m standing with one hand on my duffel bag and another pressed against the headache that’s suddenly creasing through my temples. It’s 7:45 now. Only forty-two minutes until Nevermore.
I have to save Trudi, I think. But how?
As if in response to my unspoken question, a keycard slides into the lock on my hotel room door.
42
Bliss
Atlanta, GA
Downtown
Friday, April 14, 7:33 p.m.
Fifty-four minutes to Nevermore
Bliss saw Samuel Hill exit the ballroom and head toward the bathroom. She sighed and tapped the football player’s arm, but he’d already seen it too.
“Finally,” he said. “I was getting a little worried.”
“What took him so long?” Bliss said.
“Apparently he’s got a higher tolerance for Rohypnol than I expected. His mass is good-sized, but I didn’t want to overdose him, so I only put one pill in his wine.”
“So where’s the girl?” Bliss snapped. “She’s half his weight. Did you overdose her?”
He stepped to the door and peeked inside the ballroom. “She’s not in her chair. Maybe she left already and we missed it?”
Bliss felt tension spreading through her shoulders. Where was Trudi Coffey? Was Viktor Kostiuk going to get his way, after all? Was Trudi going to get caught—and killed—in Nevermore tonight?
Nothing to be done for it now, she thought grimly. Collateral damage, like Viktor said. Going to have to take what I can get. She sighed. At least I can still save Samuel Hill.
“Get in position,” she ordered, “and be careful.”
The football player obeyed, standing just outside the door of the men’s room. It was only a moment or two before Samuel left the restroom and walked right into her muscle.
“Nice to see you again, detective,” he said as he wrapped a chokehold around Samuel’s neck.
Stupid, Mama Bliss thought. He obviously doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.
Even impaired by alcohol and roofies, Samuel Hill knew how to protect himself.
In a flash of speed and strength, Samuel dipped his head to the right and down, instinctively taking the other man’s left-handed grip into account. He pulled them both into a crouch. Then he stepped sideways to the left and skipped his right leg behind the other man’s left knee. Samuel twisted his head inside, then slid it deftly out of the chokehold while simultaneously twisting the footballer’s left wrist painfully behind his back. Then Samuel kicked the back of his attacker’s left knee. When the football player dropped to the ground, Samuel leveled a punch across his cheekbone that sent him sprawling.
“Samuel!” Mama Bliss shouted. He turned glazed eyes toward her. She stood up and started walking toward him. “Samuel, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Mama?” The detective was stunned by the sight of Bliss. “I’ve never, not ever, seen you out of your wheelchair.”
“This chair of mine is a convenience, not a habit,” she said tersely. “I told you that before, didn’t I?”
“I guess so, Mama. If you say so.” He shook his head. “What’s going on here?”
“Stop fighting,” she ordered, and Samuel let go of the other man’s arm. “Somebody dosed you with Rohypnol. You need to lie down.”
“Are you . . . Am I . . . Am I hallucinating?”
“Yes, Samuel. You’re hallucinating. Now just—”
At that point, her football player had recovered enough to retaliate. He delivered a crushing fist to the side of Samuel’s head. The detective stumbled but didn’t go down. Before a second blow could land, though, Mama gave an order.
“Stop,” she said. “Give him a minute.”
Samuel Hill tried to say something, but the drug was now taking full hold on him. “I don’t feel right, Mama Bliss,” he mumbled. He sank down to one knee.
“Pick him up and put him in my chair,” she said, “or, big as he is, we’ll never get him upstairs in time.”
The football player spit blood out of his split lips. “I say we leave him down here, let him take his chances.”
“He beat you fair and square. Now let it go and do your job. You’re enormously rich, and he’s just a workaday cop, remember?”
The linebacker was still breathing hard, but he nodded. He wrapped his arms around Samuel’s torso, and this time the policeman didn’t resist. A moment later, Detective Hill was slumped in the chair, slowly passing out and mumbling something about Mama Bliss and wheelchairs.
“Use your belt to strap him in,” Bliss said. “And let’s get him upstairs before we run out of time.”
It was 7:44 by the time they got up to the sixth floor. Samuel Hill was out cold before the elevator ride was over. She could tell that her companion was itching to leave, but she admired his unwillingness to say anything about it to her.
“Help me get him into the room,” she said when the elevator stopped, “and then you bug out. You need to get off the premises before you make that call.”
He nodded and led her to Room 614, pushing the wheelchair ahead of him. She slid the keycard through the lock, then stepped back for him to deposit Samuel in the room.
“You want me to put him on a bed or something?” he said.
“No,” she said. “Just go.”
The football player nodded. He didn’t bother to say goodbye.
After the hotel room door shut, Bliss let a deep exhale slide through her lips. She was already feeling the effects of the insulin, and she instinctively longed for the comfort of her wheelchair. But there was no way she was going to be able to move that mountain of a man now sleeping in her chair. She left him by the half-shut bathroom door where the football player had deposited him.
The room was quiet.
She looked at her watch, saw her hands shaking instead. She checked the alarm clock on the nightstand by the bed. Seven-fifty, she thought. Time for Geneva Sims to begin blowing hot air about Maksym Romanenko.
She sat on the edge of one of the queen beds in the room and closed her eyes to let a dizzy spell pass. She felt dampness on her forehead and under her arms. Her stomach complained for food, but she ignored it.
When she could, she walked over to where Samuel sat. She leaned down and pecked his cheek fondly.
“You were a good man,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
She reached into a pocket on the wheelchair and fumbled
for the remote detonator she’d hidden in there. The status light on the rectangular little box burned a steady green, as it had for almost half an hour now. She turned away from Samuel and momentarily forgot what she intended to do next. Then her stomach leapt inside her, and she remembered.
She stumbled over to her bed, irritated at herself for timing this so close. She lay herself down and set the remote beside her right hip. She heard someone breathing hard, a labored gasping like she remembered from when she was a girl, gone swimming, who’d stayed underwater too long before coming back to the surface.
She repositioned herself on the bed, pulling her head up higher on the pillow, feeling the familiar lump of the Beretta BU9 Nano pistol she always kept there. She willed her breathing to slow down to almost normal. Her mind wandered.
It had been relatively simple, really. Just before five-thirty, after her last meeting with Viktor but before The Raven had come back to the room, she’d inserted a new catheter into a spot by her hip and attached a fresh insulin pump, one full and ready for three full days of use. Then, about half an hour later, she’d begun slightly increasing the insulin drip on her pump, inputting data that told it she was about to eat a new snack but then forgoing the snack. Around seven-thirty she told the pump it was time for dinner. Now she could feel the effects of the insulin overdose flooding her system, clogging her mind, taking away her consciousness. At her age and in her health, she wouldn’t last much longer. Diabetic shock would first send her into a coma and then—well, then the end would come.
If I’ve figured this right, she thought dizzily, I’ll be gone before Max Roman is. I won’t even hear the blast.
That thought gave her a little comfort, but also, for the first time, she felt a little fear.
She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out the picture of her grandson one last time. So handsome, she thought. She placed four fingers on the front of the image and felt the tears drip from her eyes. She turned it over and, through bleary eyes, read the list on the back.
There were six names, all lined through.
Jameis Jackson.
Walter Evans.
Mark Jenson.
Ashland Forney.
Maksym Romanenko.
Bliss June Monroe.
“Everyone responsible for Davis’s death,” she mumbled to herself. “Justice done. Justice for all. Including me.”
She pressed the picture against her breast, closed her eyes, and invited the darkness to come. “I’m sorry, Davis,” she whispered. “I should’ve protected you better. Should’ve watched over you better. I just should’ve been better.”
Behind her eyes, Bliss saw a light flicker and dim.
What have I done? she said to herself suddenly.
That was her last thought.
43
Trudi
Atlanta, GA
Downtown
Friday, April 14, 7:51 p.m.
Thirty-six minutes to Nevermore
Trudi felt her eyes widen and her heart race.
I know that guy, she told herself. I almost had to jab him in the throat with spear fingers about a month ago.
There was no mistaking it. Sitting placidly behind the black curtain, maybe ten or fifteen feet away from Max Roman himself, was a heavyset Ukrainian. He was someone she knew personally to be a mafia enforcer employed by Viktor Kostiuk. A cousin or something, if she remembered it right. He was also someone who supposedly had zero connection to Max Roman, yet here he was comfortably ensconced in the councilman’s inner circle, playing what appeared to be the trusted bodyguard role tonight. Max’s guard was dressed in an uncomfortable gray suit, eyes blank and bored, holding an expensive, hard-shell briefcase.
Trudi tried not to stare, and simultaneously tried to fade into the background. She didn’t want to be noticed by this guy. Not now, not ever.
She stepped away, out of sight of the man behind the curtain, then halted herself. Is he holding that briefcase? Or is it tied to him?
She risked getting close enough for another look. Sure enough, the briefcase was attached to his wrist by virtue of heavy silver handcuffs. Despite what her ex-husband had said earlier, she knew this was suspicious.
A mafia enforcer handcuffed to a mysterious briefcase? Samuel should have trusted his instincts. This could be Nevermore, after all.
A prissy old woman, powdered with garish makeup and a plastic smile, was onstage now. She was thanking everyone for coming, droning on with praise for Councilman Max Roman and his support of the arts. Trudi slid away from the front of the ballroom and began working her way unobtrusively back toward her seat. Almost everyone else had settled in at their tables, ready to give rapt attention to the show happening up front. Trudi felt a little conspicuous. She tried to shadow a nearby waitress, hoping that might mask her rude walking tour through the ballroom while Old Priss was speaking.
She slid into her seat, welcomed by the disapproving frowns of her high-society tablemates, and she noticed immediately that Samuel still hadn’t returned. Alarm bells went off in her head. Then she realized something equally important.
Viktor Kostiuk is not in this room.
She forced herself to breathe slowly, calmly, through her nose even while her lips pursed with worry.
Kostiuk had called himself a true believer, had personally invited her to come to this political fundraiser out of his passion for Candidate Roman. Said he wanted to recruit her for the Roman campaign and yet, now that the moment was here, he was not.
Instead, Viktor’s cousin, the mobster, was here. Alone. With a briefcase.
Perhaps Viktor Kostiuk had skipped this party because he knew something bad was going to happen, and he didn’t want to be there when it all went down?
Trudi couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t take any more chances.
I need to call the police, she thought. I need to find Samuel. And I need my gun.
She scanned the exits and saw the same five busboys standing next to the same empty bussing carts. There were no more waiters or waitresses in the room, though. Just the busboys at the exits, and a few more busboys standing back near the entrance to the kitchen. She noticed Andrew Carr standing among that crowd.
None of the busboys looked happy.
Now Old Priss was spotlighting some of the items to be auctioned off later, but Trudi ignored her completely. She snatched her purse off the floor and headed for one of the exits leading out to the pre-function area, where the bathrooms were located. This time she didn’t care if people thought her rude. It was time for action, not good manners.
She hurried to the door, but before she could get out, an angry busboy stepped in her way.
“You need to go back to your seat,” he said gruffly.
Thoughts flashed like lightning through Trudi’s brain. She could disable this cocky young kid with a well-placed kick followed by an expertly applied elbow . . . but that would bring too much attention to her. And it might warn the mob enforcer behind the curtain that someone was on to him. That could set off events before she had an opportunity to get help.
She took a chance on her acting ability instead. “I know, I know, Councilman Roman is about to speak,” she said lazily. She made herself wobble a bit in her boots, and she bent forward, draping an arm across the angry boy’s shoulder, letting wet lips smear on his cheek. She stage-whispered in his ear, “But I’ve been drinking wine since four o’clock, Mr. Waiter Man in your fancy black pants and matching shirt. So either you let me go to the bathroom right now, or in about two seconds I’m going to throw up all over your neck.” She added a little gulp and hiccup for effect.
The busboy looked disgusted. He shoved her aside and stepped out of her way. She pushed through the door and ran out toward the lobby. Where are you, Samuel? And why are you never around when I really want you?
She skidded to a stop at the front desk but couldn’t get the white-faced clerk to put down the telephone long enough to listen to her. She quickly understood why. Even from w
here she was, she could make out the sounds of a panicky man on the other end of the line, and she heard the word bomb at least once among the garbled prose. The desk clerk ignored her completely and waved toward a co-worker. “Call the police,” he rasped as he covered the receiver with his hand. “Tell them we need a SWAT team. And a bomb squad. Call them now!”
That was good enough for Trudi. She sped from the lobby and out to her car.
Inside, behind the steering wheel, she worked through the situation. There was a bomb in the Grand Ballroom, and she had a pretty good idea of who was holding it. She reached under her seat and retrieved her Beretta Tomcat. She’d never had to actually use this particular gun in a real-world situation, but just feeling its familiar contours helped settle her nerves.
Okay, she thought. Nevermore is about to happen, after all. Police have been notified. Do I go in and try to take out the bomber? Do I wait for the police?
She stuffed the handgun into her purse, saw Samuel’s badge that she’d stuck in there earlier, and remembered the thing that really worried her.
Where is Samuel?
She let her face fall into her hands, forced herself to take deep, cleansing breaths. Think, think, Trudi! she commanded herself. And she heard herself cry out silently to God. She wasn’t even sure what she was praying, it was pure emotion and a plea for help. She opened her eyes and saw her purse again. She suddenly knew what to do.
Trudi grabbed her cell phone out of the purse and tapped on the Find My iPhone app button. She logged in as her husband and activated the Urban Enhancement—Atlanta Edition extension that overlaid city blueprints on the map on her screen.
Where is he, where is he? she fretted, looking for the icon that would tell her where his cell phone was located at this moment. She really hoped he was with his cell.
“There,” she said out loud when the icon finally appeared. She zoomed in for a closer look. “Still in the Ritz-Carlton. Sixth floor. Room 614.”
She was out of her Ford Focus and running toward the hotel entrance so fast that she couldn’t even remember if she’d closed her car door. It didn’t matter, not now. The clock on her cell phone told her it was 8:03 p.m.
