I knew she had long tried to land the Libido account, but had made little headway. Now to have this opportunity fall in her lap, well, I was pretty sure she’d forgive me for making her sit through a football game.
We got on the elevator and as the doors closed behind us I thought about Monk DeVane working for Libido Resorts. It was like the fox getting hired to run the henhouse.
“So what do you do for Darcy Whitehall?” I asked Monk. “You the Vice President for Rubbing Suntan Lotion on Female Guests?”
Monk laughed.
“No, I’m in the security business these days, Zack.”
“Ah, you make sure the female guests don’t get hit by falling coconuts.”
“It’s slightly more complicated than that,” he said. “We’ll talk about it.”
The elevator dinged as we reached the skybox level. The doors slid open and a crush of people began pushing their way on before we could get off. Not the sort of behavior you’d expect from this exclusive crowd.
It helped that Monk used to be an offensive guard. He bulldozed a path out of the elevator. We followed him into the narrow hallway that led to the skyboxes. It was packed with people, all heading for the elevators.
But something was off, way off. This was not a jolly football gathering. No, these people looked scared, on the edge of panic.
I saw the lieutenant governor using his wife as a battering ram to get to the elevators. I saw a fairly famous golfer elbowing his way through the fray. I saw the junior U.S. senator from Florida desperately yanking open a fire door. As people split off to follow him down the stairs, the alarm shrieked a soundtrack to the mayhem.
A short round woman collided with Monk. He caught her as she tumbled and helped her to her feet.
“You alright?” Monk said.
The woman gasped, words hanging in her throat. She shot an anxious look back toward the skyboxes.
“There’s a bomb,” she said.
3
The bomb was in skybox 14, row 1, by a floor-to-ceiling window that looked down on Florida Field. It was fastened under the seat of a leather-console chair. Sitting in the chair, gripping the armrests, was Darcy Whitehall.
I wasn’t the best judge of whether Whitehall really was as sexy as People insisted, but there was no denying that he had a presence about him. Pale blue eyes and a mane of silver hair, he reminded me of an aging rock star who hadn’t lost his chops. His face bore the deep lines of indulgent living that on some lucky bastards only seem to enhance their good looks. Darcy Whitehall was one of them, a guy who would go to his grave looking good.
Unless, of course, the bomb beneath his butt did him in. In which case we’d all be waltzing off into the hereafter a bit less photogenic than we might have wished.
Whitehall was taking slow, deep breaths, like they teach you in yoga, trying to stay calm. He seemed to be doing a pretty good job of it, considering that just a few minutes earlier he’d received a call on his cell phone from a man who said: “There is a bomb under your chair. One move and you’re a dead man.”
Except for a handful of people, everyone had evacuated the skybox. I recognized William B. Barnett, the tanned and dapper president of the University of Florida. Flanking him were a pair of UF campus cops. They stood by a counter filled with God’s own hors d’oeuvres—fat shrimp in remoulade sauce, beef tenderloin crusted with cumin and peppercorns, and sushi of every description.
Not that I would consider snacking at a time like this. Well, I’d already considered it, actually, but dismissed it as bad form. Rare are the occasions when my self-restraint shines through, but this was one of them.
A young man and woman stood a few feet from Darcy Whitehall. The woman was in her twenties and nothing short of beautiful. Exotic, smoky features and long black hair. She was crying, wiping away tears with a sleeve of her sheer linen blouse. She wore it loose outside of a long embroidered skirt. Stylish, classy.
The young man wore a charcoal gray suit and wire-rim glasses that gave him an air of seriousness well beyond his years. He had an arm around the woman, trying to comfort her.
Monk kneeled on the floor by Darcy Whitehall, who was still clutching his cell phone.
“When did you get the call?” Monk said.
“Couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes or so after I sat down, while you had stepped away,” Whitehall said.
“You recognize the voice?”
Whitehall shook his head no.
Bill Barnett shifted anxiously between the two campus cops. The cops looked pretty nervous, too, out of their element. But then, we all were.
Barnett checked his watch.
“Bomb squad should be here by now,” he said. “Been seven minutes since I called 911.”
Down on the field the Gator band was marching in formation to start the halftime show. Speakers around the skybox blared the Florida fight song.
Monk said, “You done anything to get the rest of the stadium emptied?”
Barnett shook his head.
“Not yet.”
“Well, you’ve got people pouring out of the skyboxes screaming about a bomb. Got to do something or else there’s going to be pandemonium down there.”
As Barnett pulled out a cell phone, Monk told him, “Blame it on the weather.”
The president paused, puzzled. The weather outside was gorgeous—puffy white clouds against a perfect blue sky.
Monk said, “Say the weather service has issued an advisory that there’s a squall line moving in from the Gulf. NCAA has a rule says that if there’s lightning spotted within six miles of a stadium, then the teams have to leave the field. You have to tell them something or else eighty-five thousand people are gonna go ape shit.”
Barnett nodded and made the call. Given Florida’s freakish out-of-nowhere thunderstorms, it was surely plausible.
I had to admire the way Monk was handling things. He was cool and focused, in control of the situation, a far cry from the break-all-the-rules hellraiser I’d known in college and in the years we played in the pros.
I watched as Monk moved aside a few shopping bags and a briefcase that sat by Whitehall’s chair. Then he flattened himself on the floor and looked under the chair. He crooked his head to get a good view of whatever was underneath it. No one in the skybox said a word.
Barbara pulled me close. I put an arm around her. Part of me wanted to turn us both around and march out the skybox door, but the other part felt obliged to stay there with Monk, at least until the police arrived.
Monk stood up. He looked at the young man and woman.
“Alan, Ali . . . I want you to step slowly away and exit the skybox.”
The young woman said, “What about you?”
“I’m staying here with your father,” Monk said.
The young woman, sobbing now, flung herself at Monk, burying her head in his chest.
“Please, please, no,” she said. “Don’t let this happen.”
As Monk comforted her, he spoke to the rest of us: “I want all of you to get out of here. Except you, Zack. You mind sticking around?”
“No problem,” I said.
Barbara looked up at me, her eyes wide. I kissed the top of her head and hugged her and turned her away so we could have a moment.
“You be alright?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I really need to get back to our seats.”
I looked at her.
“I left my book there, Zack,” she said.
“Your book? You want to go back for your book?”
“Why, yes, I do. It’s a first edition. It’s signed by Naipaul. It’s very dear to me, a gift from my mother, and I fully intend to . . .”
I turned her toward the door.
“Just go,” I said. “We’ll worry about the book later.”
I watched as she left the skybox and disappeared down the hallway, followed by Bill Barnett, the two campus cops and the skybox attendant.
The young man and woman said their good-bye
s to Whitehall, but as they moved to the door, the young woman turned on the young man and shouted: “It’s all your fault! If you hadn’t decided to . . .”
“Ali!” Darcy Whitehall silenced her. “That’s enough. This has nothing to do with your brother.”
The woman held his look for a moment, then stepped into the hall. The young man stood in the doorway, anguish in his eyes.
“Dad,” he said. “If this is about me, I’m sorry. I’ll quit. I’ll drop out. I’ll . . .”
Whitehall put up a hand to quiet him.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Whitehall said. “It’s not your fault. I’ll be alright. Now go.”
The young man stepped away. That left just me, Monk, and Darcy Whitehall in the skybox. With a bomb.
Some fun party this was turning out to be.
4
Outside, the band stopped playing and I heard the stadium announcer telling the crowd the game had been postponed “upon advisement of the National Weather Service.” There were boos and catcalls, but they quieted down as several dozen state troopers moved through the stadium, and everyone began heading toward the exits.
As Monk stepped over to the window and gazed out on the stadium, Darcy Whitehall looked me up and down.
“So, you’re the one Monk’s been telling me about, are you?”
“Zack Chasteen,” I said, sticking out my hand. Whitehall gave it a shake.
“Forgive me for not getting up,” he said.
“Gee, what’s the world coming to? Put a lousy little bomb under a guy’s chair and good manners go out the window.”
Whitehall smiled.
“Reminds me of that movie,” he said. “Lethal Weapon something-or-other. The second one, I think.”
“The one where Danny Glover sits down on the toilet and there’s a bomb rigged to the seat?”
Whitehall nodded.
“Mel Gibson walks in, checks it out, and Danny Glover looks at him and says, ‘Tell me I’m not fucked.’ And Mel Gibson says, ‘Don’t worry, guys like you don’t die sitting on toilets.’”
“Compared to Danny Glover you got it good,” I said. “Your pants aren’t down around your knees. And you don’t have to listen to Mel Gibson make wisecracks.”
Whitehall laughed.
“Nor do I intend to die at a bloody football game.”
“Makes two of us,” I said.
Monk turned from the window and stepped next to the chair.
“You want to take a look at that thing down there, Zack?”
As if I knew a bomb from a Bundt cake. But I kneeled and looked under the chair and tried not to think about what could happen if Whitehall was overcome by a sudden butt twitch. Might ruin my schoolboy complexion.
There wasn’t much to see. Just a rectangular box, a shoebox it looked like, fastened to the bottom of the chair with duct tape. No wires. No ticking clock. Nothing that shouted: Bomb! Which made it all the scarier.
I stood up.
“Beats heck out of me,” I said, “but I’m guessing it’s not a new pair of Nikes in there.”
Monk looked at Darcy Whitehall.
“We’re going to get this worked out,” he said. “Just sit tight.”
“I intend to,” Whitehall said. He looked at me. “So, Mr. Chasteen, assuming we put this bomb business behind us, Monk tells me you’ll be coming down to Jamaica.”
I looked at Monk. He winced, then shrugged an apology.
“Sorry,” Monk said. “But that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Zack. I need some help.”
“Doing what?”
“Backing me up, lending a hand, doing whatever needs doing security-wise.”
The whole thing was coming at me from so far out in left field that I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just stood there.
“I think it’s rather obvious that I require some looking after,” said Whitehall. “And you strike me as a man who would be a good hand in a tight spot. We could use you.”
Monk said, “It will only be for a couple of weeks, Zack, just until I can find someone who . . .”
“Who what? Knows what they’re doing? Hell, Monk, I don’t have any experience in the security business. And I damn sure don’t know anything about bombs.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just need someone I can trust. That’s why I’m asking you, Zack. How about it?”
Before I could answer, there was a commotion in the hall and I turned to see the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad coming through the door.
5
Actually, the bright yellow letters on the back of the black T-shirts said “Anti-Terrorism Unit.” But unlike a S.W.A.T. team with its macho bravado, they moved in slowly, quietly, their group demeanor geared toward instilling a sense of calm.
I counted six of them, seven if I included the dog, a German shepherd. Once inside the skybox it rested on its haunches, looking up at its handler. The dog’s long pink tongue lolled from its mouth, drool dripping on the skybox floor.
The other members of the unit rolled in handcarts and dollies filled with all sorts of high-tech gear. Some of it wasn’t so high-tech. I saw bolt cutters and sledgehammers, too.
A trim man in a crew cut approached Monk and I. He eased us away from Whitehall’s chair and introduced himself as Captain Kilgore.
“We’re going to take care of a couple of quick things, then I’ll need to ask you some questions,” he said. “After that, I want you out of here.”
Kilgore signaled the shepherd’s handler, who unleashed the dog. It went straight for Whitehall’s chair, sniffing and pawing the floor, and otherwise signaling that there was something down there that might blow up and go boom.
“Heel, Sweeney,” said the handler, and the dog returned to his side.
Sweeney? The dog didn’t look like a Sweeney. It looked like a Duke. All German shepherds do. Duke, or Rex, or King maybe. Sweeney was what you called a bloodhound. I’d have to take it up with the bomb squad’s nomenclature department.
Kilgore turned to the only woman in the unit, a blonde with her hair tied back in a ponytail.
“OK, Syzmeski, you’re primary. Suit up,” said Kilgore.
She looked like a Syzmeski. Thick-faced and squarely built, the sleeves of her T-shirt rolled up just like the guys. Her biceps bulged just like theirs, too.
Two men held the jacket and pants of a military-green Kevlar suit. They helped Syzmeski into the heavy outfit. Then she lumbered toward one of the carts and removed a stubby black wand, sort of like the kind they use at airport-security stations. She flipped a switch on the side of the thing.
One of the men opened a laptop computer. He studied the screen.
“It’s showtime,” he told Syzmeski, and she moved toward Whitehall’s chair.
Another of the men knelt on the floor in front of Whitehall, cradling in his arms a Kevlar blanket.
“Sir, if you don’t mind, I’m going to drape this around you,” the man said. He unfolded the blanket until it covered Whitehall from his shins to his shoulders.
“Is it to protect me or you?” said Whitehall.
“Both,” said the man. He smiled and looked Whitehall in the eyes, holding his gaze. “You doing OK?”
Whitehall nodded. He glanced down at the woman as she stuck the black wand under the chair.
“What in the devil is that thing?”
“An RTR4,” said the man kneeling on the floor. “Real-time X-ray. Whatever it sees is gonna pop up on the computer over there.”
Whitehall thought about it. Then he said: “Excuse me, miss.”
Syzmeski looked up at him.
“Yes?”
“As long as you’re down there, would you mind giving my prostate a quick look-see?”
Syzmeski bit back a smile. She got back to work.
Kilgore zeroed in on Monk and me.
“OK, one of you fill me in on what I need to know,” he said.
I let Monk do the talking. He stood there, casual as
could be, hands in his pockets, giving Kilgore the lowdown. He might have been talking about the game. Just seeing him like that made me relax a little. Things might actually turn out OK.
The guy studying the computer screen called out: “No signs of fragmentary.”
“That’s a good thing,” the guy kneeling by the chair told Whitehall. “That’s a real good thing.”
“So what next?” said Whitehall.
“Well, after Syzmeski finishes playing tourist down there, we’ll figure a way to get you out of that chair. It’s mostly a matter of keeping steady pressure on the seat while you step away.”
“You make it sound like a walk in the park.”
“Well, sir, it’s a scenario we’ve worked on in the past.”
“A scenario. Meaning you’ve never actually encountered the real thing.”
“No, sir. Not actually.”
I backed up to the counter. No one was paying any attention to me, so I sampled one of the shrimp. It was sweet and briny, and the remoulade sauce had a nice tang to it. Maybe a little light on the horseradish, but far be it from me to complain. I didn’t want the shrimp to feel lonesome, so I tried a piece of tenderloin and followed it with a couple of spicy tuna rolls and generous dabs of wasabi.
I checked out the bar. Mostly top-drawer labels. Johnny Walker Blue. Some small-batch bourbons. Grey Goose and Beefeater. But they’d cheaped out on the rum. Bacardi Gold. Monkey piss, meant for umbrella drinks.
I was going in for another shrimp when I heard Syzmeski holler: “Goddamn . . . !”
I looked up to see the box with the bomb in it dangling from a piece of duct tape under the console chair. It hung there, vibrating.
“It’s engaged!” Syzmeski shouted.
She flung herself backward. So did the guy kneeling by the chair. The rest of the squad scattered, too, bailing out through the skybox door. Captain Kilgore rolled behind a row of chairs and pulled Monk down with him.
Darcy Whitehall sat rigid, eyes wide open, looking right at me as I dived behind the counter, toppling trays of food and bottles of liquor.
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