Then Thorn had another go at macho bonding:
“Tell me, him being your friend and all. What do you think about Manny being, you know, a trannie? What’s that all about?”
“I think that’s his own business. He might be fucked up in the head, but there are plenty of worse ways to handle it.”
“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with being a man? What’s wrong with being who you are?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know because I am who I was born. Got no idea what it’s like to think you’re not.”
“What?”
Joel sighed. “I’ve heard all this shit from Robin already. She claims she’s pretty liberal and bleeding heart and all that, but when she looks at Manny, she sees a sociopath. Guy who just wants attention, just wants to cause trouble for others. Now, I can’t say she’s wrong. I mean, I can, but fuck, she’s much better with words than me. She thinks I should steer clear of Manny. But …”
Joel trailed off.
“But what?”
“But I know him. I know her. Manny being her. I believe he believes to be a woman. Simple as that. A woman in pain, a fucked-up woman, but still a woman. And I don’t think she is a troublemaker. More like a trouble magnet.”
“Whatever. Did he really try to burn his cock off?”
Joel sneered. “Bullshit. Total bullshit.”
He knew it wasn’t, but that, too, was none of Thorn’s business.
Thorn checked the time. “Now what? We wait?”
“We wait.”
They waited until the meeting time had passed by twenty-five minutes, then Thorn dialed Tennyson again on a burner phone. He kept a box of them in the trunk of his car. “Always handy,” he told Joel, who wondered for how long Thorn had suspected that something was wrong with his employer.
This time, Joel couldn’t hear the conversation on the other end.
“Listen, listen, no, no, no. It didn’t work. I think he was onto — no, listen, I couldn’t. If I’d done that, he — shit, I don’t know. He’s got my phone, too. Asked to call his girlfriend, and then disappeared.”
He paced behind the car, Joel having to turn back and forth to watch Thorn and the flotilla of cars down the alley. He remembered talking to a couple of sniper buddies back in Iraq, talking about having to pick out the right car in the convoy to kill the right terrorist — the right “Ay-Rab”, the Southerner would say — maybe in a situation similar to this set-up. Those guys never froze up. At least they never told anyone if they did.
Running for cover all this time had exhausted Joel. He thought back to how he’d left Dogged and Soulfather, fighting for their lives outside an abandoned church-cum-porn-factory. No way to get in touch with them. He had to think of it the way he’d been trained: the mission first.
But for fuck’s sake, what sort of mission was this?
Lost in his thoughts, Joel also lost track of Thorn for a few seconds. Only re-focused on him when he took a deep breath and returned to their vantage point.
“Alright. Going to meet him at his hotel suite.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I am. We’re going to have to find another way in for you, obviously.”
“What kind of security has he got there?”
“We’re better.”
If that’s true, Joel thought as they headed towards the car, how did they end up here?
Back to St. Paul, the old skyline like a silhouette of Gotham City. The building they pulled up at might well have been the oldest on the block. Used to house a post office and apartments, but now a boutique hotel and an advertising agency. Couldn’t be a very good one if they ended up here, Joel thought.
He walked into the building’s ground-level parking garage and waited outside one of the service doors. So far, so good. If Tennyson had some guards hanging around, they hadn’t revealed themselves in the recon.
As for Thorn, it took a bit of ‘Chutes-n-Ladders’ via elevators and stairs to make sure he wasn’t being followed, but thirteen minutes later, he let Joel in. He’d had to pass through extra security on the inside, all of them hanging out in the lobby, but most of those guys already knew him anyway. Shit, he’d hired some of them. Only one even bothered to ask him, “Have you seen Joel?”
“Sorry, nope.”
And that was that.
Into the elevator, doors closed, safe for now. As expected, the doors opened to another couple of security guys, plus some other campaign operatives — the lowest of the low levels — milling about, sitting against pillars older than their grandparents, tweeting for the Senator, or setting up laptops on accent tables that were now worth a hundred laptops. Just another one of Marquette’s endearing qualities: casual pomposity.
The security: ex-cops? Ex-military? From the look of them, Joel guessed probably neither. One was a thirtysomething white guy like himself, muscle gradually giving way to fat. The other, a young native guy, early twenties, maybe played sports. Looked like he enjoyed running. Or like he was suffering from a particularly nasty bout of the shits. Had that tense flightiness to his movements, like he was always just a sprint away from the toilet.
They were happy enough with Thorn stepping off the elevator, even nodded at Joel, as per usual. It probably didn’t occur to them that he could have come in some other way besides the lobby, where he would have been checked by the security. If the guys downstairs had let him through, who were these peons to question their decisions?
But give a security guy a gun and a thin sheen of authority, and they turn cowboy on you.
“Excuse me, Agent Thorn? Do you mind if we check out Joel?”
“What?”
“No big deal, just routine. You know, we’ve heard a few things … no offense, Joel … just to be on the safe side.” He raised his hands apologetically, turned to face Joel. “Would you mind hanging back a few minutes?”
“Sure, sure, no problem.”
A young security guard led Joel to a room where he would probably end up flat on his face, trussed up, and tazed.
If he and Thorn hadn’t already discussed a plan to avoid just that scenario.
Thorn had been to the point: “We’ll separate the guards. One of them is going to want you to go with him. Do it, then take him out, but keep him alive. I’ll handle the mice.”
Mice. What he called the seemingly endless supply of interns.
Next step of Thorn’s plan: “Get their phones, and get them fast. We don’t want to hurt anyone, but we sure as hell don’t want them calling for back up, or recording us, or any other complications.”
Joel let himself be led to one of the other rooms, walked right past another couple of security guys lazing around the corridor, probably waiting for Tennyson to actually go somewhere. Joel nodded at them, as the guard escorting him slipped behind, a guiding hand on the small of his back.
“S’up.”
They nodded back, but their eyebrows betrayed them. A reflex, those furrowed brows: What’s he doing here?
Joel sensed the motion behind him, the guard tightening his grip on the stun gun. Spun, lifted the arm holding the weapon, and with one fluid twist brought it behind the guard’s back. It was already clicking and crackling, the guard’s finger heavy on the trigger. Joel screwed the arm up higher and forced him to loosen his grip, then took the stunner and popped it against the guard’s neck, let him fall. The security flunkies hadn’t even had time to go for their guns. Joel knelt to get the guard’s piece — poor guy passed out, pissed himself, drooling. Nasty things, those stunners.
Joel knelt down behind the bed for cover and aimed the Taser at the other guys. Saved him having to raise his voice much. “Phones on the bed. Toss them. Hands up, away from the sidearms.”
They did as they were told, which surprised Joel. He’d been nervous, imaging yet another scene where he’d have to kill fellow Minnesotans. Fellow Americans. Fellow humans. A fucking nightmare.
But the men tossed their phones, and Joel disarmed them one after the other.
They were all compliant. They were all afraid. Hands behind their heads, nervous tics in their necks, as Joel slid the guns from their holsters. Expensive leather holsters. Must have been birthday gifts from their wives. Rewards for their regular Sunday prayer group attendance and that annual good, clean missionary sex.
He shoved one of the guns into his waistband, held the other two akimbo and marched all three of the stooges out of the room, straight down the hall to where Thorn stood at a hotel door, a pile of phones at his feet, and the fat guy wheezing on his knees.
“They clear?”
Joel nodded and herded them into the room where Thorn had the interns sitting on the floor, most of them wide-eyed and sharing nervous laughs. Saying things like, “This is so fucked up right now.”
Already drafting their Facebook status updates in their minds, enjoying the prospect of finally having something newsworthy to post all over their narcissistic social networks. Never once thinking that these armed strangers might be a real threat to their fake-ass lives, because gun massacres happened in underprivileged black communities, right? Not to a bunch of white daddy’s boys and girls and clearly Joel was letting his own issues get in the way.
He shook his head and focused on the remains of the room’s two landline phone crushed into the carpet.
“Listen.” Thorn lifted his gun. Pointed it at the ceiling and tilted it from side to side so everyone could get a clear look at it. “This situation will all be over very soon. Just sit tight, someone will be back for you. No calls, no escape, but no injuries if you do as I say, and no casualties, I promise.”
One of the interns, a guy with a beard that looked like he’d sculpted it with wax and nail clippers, raised his hand.
Yes. Raised his hand.
Thorn nodded at him.
“Can we use the bathroom? If we need to?”
Thorn shook his head. “No bathroom until someone comes back for you.”
“Like, not even right now?”
Another hand went up. A young redhead in a ‘Marquette for The Future’ t-shirt. “So, like, are you going to hurt Mr. Tennyson?”
“What? No. Of course not. We’re here to protect Mr. Tennyson.” Thorn stared down the security guards, each in turn, daring them to deny it, a personal warning in his eyes that if they betrayed him once the door was closed, he’d come after them some other day, hunt down every last one of them and rip out those snake tongues with his bare hands. “Stay put. Someone will be here shortly.”
Thorn and Joel stepped out into the hall, then closed the door with a decisive tug. They ran the rest of the way, found Tennyson’s door, and knocked. The sound echoed a hollow boom like they were banging on Dracula’s coffin.
An assistant opened the door a crack. One eye peered out. Thorn pushed, knocked the woman out of the way, and headed straight past her. Joel stood back and waited, sent the assistant into the bathroom after lifting her iPhone, then marveled at this fucking room. It was the tallest hotel room he’d ever seen, more like cathedral ceilings than the usual white plaster you could reach up and rub with your fingers.
The chandelier looked like a prop from The Great Gatsby. As massive as it was tasteless.
His gaze was brought back to Earth by the sounds of Thorn and Tennyson yelling at each other.
Joel blinked.
They were in each other’s faces. Like watching dogs go at it.
Fuck this.
Joel raced over, shoved Thorn out of the way, and pushed Tennyson onto the bed. He straddled the man’s chest and jammed his gun barrel into Tennyson’s temple.
“The fuck is Manny?”
“Get off me! Get him off me, Thorn!”
“The fuck is Manny?”
“No! No! This is not how we do this!”
Tennyson bucking, hitting, kicking. Joel holding on for dear life.
“The fuck is Manny? What have you done with him?”
Thorn’s voice from behind them: “Joel, get up!”
But Joel didn’t move an inch, his hand as steady as a rock, gun hard against Tennyson’s skull. “I want answers! I want to know what this fucker did with Manny!”
“Or you’ll kill him?”
“Yes!”
Tennyson looked bored, then he turned away and laughed. The guy actually laughed. “You won’t. You’re not a killer. I don’t have to say a damned thing.”
Joel’s finger squeezed the trigger. Ever so slight. All it would take-
“Joel!” Thorn grabbed him by the collar. “Enough.”
Joel flipped the gun in his hand and walloped Tennyson in the mouth with it. Again. Blood, spit, teeth. Thorn bear hugged Joel from behind, braced his arms and dragged him off onto the floor.
Tennyson didn’t move.
All he did was bleed.
And laugh. The man was still laughing.
“You know what I call an expensive trip to the dentist, Marine? I call it a trip to the dentist. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Shut up.”
Tennyson groaned as he sat up, holding his hand to his busted lips, blood trickling through his fingers. “Now you’ve got a real problem. I’m pissed off. So I won’t do a thing to stop my boys coming up the elevator, coming down the hall, coming right for you. Can you hear them? Your last words are going to be about how sorry you are that your dad didn’t do us all a favor and wear a condom.”
Then he laughed again.
Thorn let go of Joel, and they both stood. Stood there and listened to the man laugh. Until they heard another sound, this one coming from outside the door.
Boots hammering down the hall.
Angry yelling …
“Thorn,” Joel said.
“Yeah?”
“I think we’ve just got to start shooting.”
Silence this side of the door.
Tennyson even stopped laughing.
A deep breath, then the agent nodded.
Guns gripped tight, they turned towards the door.
Eyes on the handle.
Safety off.
Any second now …
6
Meanwhile …
I was hunkered down in a State Police interview room, plotting my next move. My next move, however, was simply more hunkering. At least there was a large pot of coffee to measure out the time, one bitter sip at a time.
After forty-five sips — or four and a half cups — my captors came in to pay me a visit.
I was pretty much here of my own accord at that point. Sure, technically the trooper had ordered us to all remain at the station after I outed Raske, but had I wanted to leave a while ago, with or without Raske, I probably could have just walked out. For a change, I wasn’t expecting a hard interrogation.
Then a trooper, whose name turned out to be Leo, ambled into the room, Maureen trailing behind with the same ambiguous expression on her face. Great, they knew something I didn’t.
Here we go again.
They sat down, barely asked how I was doing, before they dropped the bad news on me like a bomb.
“Your lawyer’s gone.”
What the fuck? I shook my head, mumbled, “He’s not my lawyer.”
“Well, he sure sounded like he was.”
Maureen sighed. “Among other things.”
Her colleague tutted. “Aw, Maureen.”
“He was an asshole. Good riddance.”
Leo swiveled to face her, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t say you were wrong.”
I’d been too stunned to speak, too worried that he might already be out there delivering on his promise to kill my family. “But you told him to stay.”
Leo turned back to me. “He must’ve made a call or two, because within ten minutes of locking him into that room, we got a call from one of the big bosses down in the Cities. Never met the man, but he’d looked me up, and he gave me nine different types of hell and swore on my children that he’d have my ass if I didn’t release Mr. Raske and apologize immediately.”
&
nbsp; “Did you?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I sure did. Groveled appropriately. All he said was he’d see my head on a silver platter.”
Sounded about right.
“But what about his threats? Did you call my parents? My sister?”
“All clear from the sound of it. I mean, we didn’t want to alarm them, so—”
I held up a hand. “I get it. No worries.”
He had a point. You don’t tell people, ‘Hey, sounds like things are great. We just thought some morally bankrupt lawyer had a gun to your head.’
Leo nodded. “As for you, Mr. Jahnke, if you’d like to leave now, you’re free to go. I talked to Sandra back at the truck stop. She explained what happened.”
“Yeah, but the RV—”
“We’ll find the RV. Meanwhile, it seems you’ve got a couple of choices. One, leave and get yourself taken care of, and we’ll talk to you once we’ve sorted some things out.”
“Or,” Maureen took over, “Since it feels like you’ve got a story to tell, maybe you should tell us right now.”
I looked down. Wasn’t even wearing shoes. Great, everything was beginning to feel like a bad omen. No shoes, nowhere to go. Sure, my feet were clad in clean socks, but how many prisoners had worn them before me? And now they wanted me to tell my story … “I can’t. I’m not ready.”
“Why not?”
“People like Raske, like … like the Senator, like his campaign advisor, they’re always five steps ahead of me. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of something concrete, something real, to show you that I’m telling the truth.”
“About the RV?”
“About a lot more than that torture chamber on wheels. But let’s start with that for now. It’s a good example. If I can’t even get that right, are you going to believe the rest?”
Leo let out a breath as he reclined in the chair. It was not a chair made for reclining. Look about as close to breaking as their faith in me. Maureen crossed her arms.
“Give us a shot. Tell us your suspicion.”
I took a deep breath and … and let it out again. Call it the paranoia bug, call it post-rape-post-murder-post-arrest-trauma. I just couldn’t trust them enough to share my story.
Castle Danger--The Mental States Page 23
