Only the Details

by Alan Lee

  At 11:45, Manny finally found a hotel employee his size. A room serviceman walked down a guest hallway carrying a bucket of ice and chilled champagne, and Manny hung back ten feet. The man stopped at 3014 and let himself with a keycard.

  Without breaking stride, Manny followed.

  The man saw him and smiled ingratiatingly. “Ah, Signore, hai ordinato lo champagne? Posso mettere—”

  The lavish suite was empty so Manny pulled his new Beretta and pressed the nozzle hard into the man’s nose.

  “Amigo,” said Manny. “Take off your pants.”

  To the serviceman’s credit, he acted as though accustomed to absurdities at the Teatro di Montagna. He obeyed Manny’s requests with polite acquiescence, and in five minutes was handcuffed to the bed, wearing only his boxer shorts.

  “Here’s how this goes,” said Manny, straightening the crimson vest over the black shirt, and inspecting his reflection. “I’m leaving. But I’ll come back and release you. If you are not here…” He referenced the name tag on his vest. “Niccolo, then I find you and sodomize you with my pistol.”

  “Yes sir,” said the man, gravely.

  “You know what that means? Sodomize?”

  “No sir.”

  “Stick my gun in your butt. Maybe I pull the trigger. So you stay here. Sí?”

  “Yes sir. Very good.”

  “I'll come back and release you, and buy you a drink. To apologize.” He picked up the bucket and popped a piece of gum into his mouth. “I’m taking the champagne.”

  “As you like.”

  “Wish me luck, hombre.”

  “Good luck, sir.”

  Manny strode to the second floor, following Marcus’s directions to the unmarked guarded door. Withdrawing the guest serviceman’s identification from the vest pocket, he flashed it but the two bored sentries didn’t spare him a second glance and he went straight through.

  Once inside, Manny slowed. He took out the piece of gum he’d been chewing and pressed it underneath the cold champagne bottle. The moisture ruined the adhesion so he wiped it with a hand towel and tried again. Two handcuff keys were in his pocket, on a small ring. He separated them and forced one into the gum and, satisfied, replaced the bottle into the ice.

  He turned a corner and nearly collided with a small metal pushcart, guided by a young boy. The boy smiled shyly at him and said, “Mi scusi, signore.”

  “You speak English?”

  “A little.”

  Manny stood at a hallway T-junction. Armed guards patrolled all three directions. He lowered his voice. “Which way to the American?”

  The boy laughed. “I go there too! We both bring champagne.”

  Manny pointed at the boy’s cart. “That champagne is for Mack?”

  “Mackenzie the King! Mackenzie the Yankee! Yes, signore.”

  “Here,” said Manny. He picked up the ice bucket from the cart and replaced it with his own. “The kitchen made a mistake. You deliver mine. I’ll return yours.”

  “Good idea,” said the boy. He smiled so big Manny thought about adopting him. “My bottle of champagne is no good. I was worried.”

  “Why?”

  “I think the Mexicans poisoned it. Revenge for beating their champion.”

  “That happens?”

  “Of course. You are new, no?”

  Manny nodded. “I am new. You go, I’ll follow.”

  The boy turned left and then right down the opulent hallways, stopped at a door with an American flag placard. He knocked and tall bearded man opened.

  “Champagne,” the boy said. “A gift from the hotel. For the American.”

  “Ja,” said the man. He irritably jerked his head in. “Come in with it, then.”

  Come in viz it, zen.

  Manny angled himself enough to peer inside the room. White walls, white couches, floor the color of wine. No Mackenzie. A guard sat on a chair, his feet up.

  Two guards only? Like winning the lottery.

  Manny’s hand dropped to his side. The HK-23 was clipped to his belt, under the vest. The barrel and attached suppressor pointed upwards along his spine.

  Two guards only…

  A radio squawk echoed down the hall. A roving sentry. Big guy, buzz cut, walking with his Beretta ARX held in both hands, pointed at the ground. Impressive assault rifle. He wasn’t a fat Italian guard with his feet up. This guy meant business. Special forces. He looked Asian, but maybe not far East?

  Asians all looked the same, Manny thought, very unlike Hispanics.

  The man regarded Manny with the hostility all professional badass guards possessed and turned his direction.

  Change of plans—deal with the frowny roving sentry, and then bust into Mack’s room.

  The young Italian boy returned and shot Manny a thumbs up. The German closed the door. Still the sentry came on.

  Manny’s pulse went from 60 beats per minute to 64.

  The man asked Manny, “Sei nuovo?”

  Manny didn’t know Italian but nuovo sounded like nuevo, the Spanish word for new. He grinned and nodded.

  “Sì,” he said, shoving as much Italian into the syllable as possible. It was one of the few Italian words he knew.

  The man looked at the boy. “Gennaro, chi è questo straniero? Non lo riconosco.”

  The man’s Italian was clipped. Formal, not his first language.

  Manny said, “You speak Italian with a British accent, señor."

  The sentry, clearly startled, turned his baleful eyes back on Manny. “And you speak English.”

  “I do, though us Hispanics sound better in English than you ugly British.”

  “I’m not British and you don’t work here, amigo.”

  Manny snapped his finger. “Ay dios mio, you’re a Gurkha. Good for you.”

  A Gurkha was a member of the British special forces group comprised entirely of elite Nepalese super fighters. Gurkha’s were some of the world’s best. Manny knew enough to take the man seriously.

  Shame if he had to kill him.

  The man said, “Who are you.”

  Manny tapped his name tag. “You can’t read, Gurkha? Name’s…errr, Ricky?”

  “Tag says Niccolo.”

  Manny did a shrug. “Same thing. Italian names all sound alike.”

  Gennaro laughed.

  “You don’t work here,” the man said again.

  “Are Gurkha’s usually this rude, bebé? No manners in the special forces. You notice these hallways don’t have security cameras?”

  “Last thing rich people want,” said the giant Gurkha. “Is their behavior recorded.” His hand went to the radio on his shoulder, most likely to call for clarification about the smart-ass guest serviceman in the champion hallway. “Wait here.”

  “What is this?” said a new voice. A beautiful woman walking towards them, wearing a green evening dress. Or, wearing most of it; her breasts were about to spill out. “Is something wrong with the American champion?”

  “No, signora,” said Manny.

  The man nodded deferentially to her. “No, Mrs. Chambers.”

  The woman stopped between them. Smelled like ten-thousand-dollar perfume.

  Mrs. Chambers, the Gurkha called her. Duane’s wife. She’d been on the plane with Mackenzie.

  Gennaro smiled, looking on.

  She said, “You two men work for the hotel?”

  Manny said, “Only until you make me a better offer, mamita."

  He was maintaining eye contact with her and smiling, something he knew caused occasional and temporary insanity with women his age. Or older. Or younger.

  The Gurkha said, “I work directly for Signore Rossi, Mrs. Chambers. And I have my doubts about this man.”

  “You work for Rossi?” said Manny and he made a tsk’ing noise. “Mercenary working for an evil man? Makes you evil too.”

  “You’re about to find out,” said the man. “Just how evil I am.”

  Mrs. Chambers took a slow breath and said, “If I ordered you two to go
into my bed room and undress, are you compelled to obey? I’d settle for one, but I’d prefer both.”

  “Your wish, my command,” said Manny.

  “I am on duty,” said the Gurkha. “And I will not leave my post. Ma’am.”

  Manny scoffed. “Coward. You would not know what to do with a woman like this anyway.” He nodded his head at the hulking sentry and told Mrs. Chambers, “He’s a Gurkha. Had his penis cut off for the sake of Her Majesty.”

  The little boy named Gennaro gasped.

  The man said, “We…? No, that’s untrue.”

  “Prove it.”

  “What?”

  “Right now,” said Manny. “Prove it. Drop them pants.”

  “All kinds of bad things are about to happen to you, Niccolo.”

  “Wait here,” said the woman. “I need to check on my champion. And then the three of us, we’re going to my private suite.”

  She strode past them, giving Manny an especially smoky stare down. She went to the American door and opened it.

  Manny told the fuming sentry, “Go patrol somewhere else, Bruce Banner. I want this one.”

  “You don’t work here,” the man said in his disorienting British accent. “And that makes you a dead man.”

  “Go on, big guy. Keep walking, I don’t share.”

  At that moment, Mackenzie crashed through the door, his hand around Mrs. Chambers’s throat. Manny was too stunned to move. She kissed him on the mouth and whispered, “You may not leave yet.” Mackenzie began to deflate like a balloon. His knees went out and the rest followed.

  “Guards?” Mrs. Chambers called. “Some help, s'il vous plaît.”

  Manny reached her first. He grabbed his friend by the arm. For a minute, Mack looked as though he recognized him.

  “What is…what is happening to him?” asked Manny. “What’d you do?”

  “I have taken back what’s mine.”

  The Gurkha reached them. Growled, “This fucking prisoner keeps trying to escape.” He raised his fist, ready to break Mack’s face.

  Manny caught the Gurkha’s wrist. Held it in an iron grip. He whispered, quiet as death, “No, señor Gurkha. You are finished.”

  Their faces were inches apart. Eyes locked.

  The man said in a growl, “You definitely don’t work here, Spic.”

  Guards came running. A lot of them.

  The Gurkha understood Manny was more than a serviceman. He tried jerking his hand free, tried bringing his assault rifle up, but Manny was too quick—his free hand produced a five-inch fixed blade from his belt, a SEAL Pup. Manny delivered two short savage punches—burying the steel under the man’s ribs, into the lung, and thrusting over the hip bone, ripping the lower internal organs. Immediate and irreparable damage.

  The man had less than five minutes, his spleen spilling poison into the destroyed kidneys and liver and pancreas.

  Just as quick, Manny’s knife disappeared. Surgical destruction in less than a second.

  No one noticed the Gurkha’s silent agony and collapse, because too many guards were arriving, too much mayhem. The Gurkha and Mackenzie huddled on the floor, struggling to stay awake.

  Manny cursed quietly. Be hard to carry Mack and fight his way out…

  Not hard. Impossible.

  He turned and hurried Gennaro before him, down the hall. “Come on, mijo. This is no place for you.”

  More guards sprinted their way, ignoring the hotel staff.

  Manny’s jaw was set, his eyes hard like diamond, his heart burning. So close. The key had worked, but Chambers had some other method of controlling Mackenzie.

  He was beginning to hate this hotel.

  33

  A hotel reception clerk and two porters arrived at Manny’s door at one in the morning, as he and Veronica returned to their room, defeated.

  The clerk nodded politely to Manny and said, “Señor Garcia, it has been a bloody night. We’ve lost twenty-six guests so far, and therefore we have a more appropriate room for you.”

  “Twenty-six?”

  “A common occurrence when housing many of the world’s most…passionate guests.” He leaned closer, as if sharing confidential information. “Which is why we require payment upfront, sir. May we move you to your new accommodations? It is only around the corner.”

  Twenty minutes later the four insurgents settled into a much larger suite, with two bathrooms and two bedrooms and a mattress for all. Despite Veronica wearing a relatively modest nightie, each time the men glanced at her their spines naturally straightened and their shoulders pushed back, an involuntary response at being in the same room with a sun goddess.

  She set her toothbrush down, came out of the bathroom, perfect teeth sparkling, and said for the third time, “How confident are you that Mackenzie did not have enough time to be seduced and coerced into into sex before his escape attempt?”

  Manny grinned in the doorway, where he was using a washcloth to clean his knife. He was bare chested, in the process of changing shirts. He had nothing on Mackenzie, Veronica thought to herself. But still. The man was not unpleasant to look at.

  “I was with big Mack in Los Angeles, señorita. Even during his wild years, his single years, if he was with a girl? He was faithful,” said Manny. “Trust me. He didn’t…follarla the girl.”

  “Follarla means screw?”

  “Close enough.”

  “I have no right to be jealous,” she said, rubbing the flat of her hand along her neck. “But I am. He’s the only thing in my life worth being jealous of.”

  Typing on his laptop and yawning from his bed in the next room, Marcus asked Manny, “The hell happened to you in Los Angeles, marshal? Why’d you move here and start hanging out with August?”

  “A long story,” said Manny. “None of it good. I never met a good man, ’til Mack. Being around him, it helps.”

  “I know the feeling.” Veronica went to her heirloom bed and slid under the covers. “We’ll get him back. Right, Manny?”

  “No doubt. My bet, soon enough he’ll get out without our help. Almost did tonight.” He finished with the knife and slid it into a hidden slot along the belt line. “What about you, pana? The hell happened to you in that train yard last year? Why didn’t you kill Mack?”

  Marcus stopped typing. Leaned back against the wooden bed frame and removed his reading glasses and sighed.

  “Should have. I be a dead man, the Kings knew the truth. But I think, when I looked at him, I saw myself, if I’d grown up with parents. A man with violence in him, but…tryna do right. Because that’s a hard thing, fighting against the desire to hurt. And August’s got the fight. But he’s a good dad, a good man, a believer in the Almighty, and I couldn’t pull the trigger. Maybe August is authentically the man that I’m pretending to be. You know?”

  Carlos was almost asleep. He mumbled, “Didn’t know you could talk so much, jefe.”

  “Still waters run deep, boy. Tomorrow, Carlos and I gonna find out more about the anti-Rossi sentiment in Naples. We wanna crack this fortress? Might need to coordinate with the local militia. Loyalty can be bought with enough ice,” said Marcus, and he slid his reading glasses back onto his nose. They were, of course, black and silver.

  Veronica yawned and stretched. “I’m going sunbathing tomorrow. There’s usually gossip at the pool and I need to discover the dirt on the black bracelet he wears.”

  Manny pulled a t-shirt on, clipped the Beretta pistol to his belt, and shrugged into his sports jacket. A more dashing figure would be hard to find.

  Veronica asked, “Going somewhere, handsome?”

  “Out. Wanna go?”

  “Absolutely not. I’ll be asleep in seconds.”

  He grinned and gave them a quick salute. “The night is young. I’m loaded and the casino might still be open.”

  34

  Veronica woke and found herself lying next to Manny. She hadn’t heard him return last night, yet here he was—on the bed with her. He’d fallen asleep on top of the cove
rs, still dressed, a crime considering the value of his clothing. His mouth hung open half an inch and he breathed slowly and deep, creating a faint rattle. She slid out of the covers and went to the ladies room. Only when she returned did she notice the cargo Manny had returned with.

  Lying on the floor between the two queen beds was an ugly machine gun, a rocket launcher, and two backpacks. One backpack was full of cash in euros. Sticking out of the second backpack was what appeared to be four rockets.

  Her eyebrows lifted. The casinos in Naples paid out differently than those in Vegas. Did this hotel have any rules?

  She tiptoed around the ordnance like it might blow, and she picked up a phone and ordered room service.

  “Portami due di tutto,” she said.

  Bring me two of everything.

  Soon, guest servicemen wheeled in four carts of prima colazione—caffè latte, biscuits and butter, cornetto, bacon, eggs, fette biscottate, and a fruit salad. She helped herself to coffee and bacon and invaded Manny’s bed to eat, since he still occupied hers.

  Marcus returned from wherever he’d been. Without speaking he crouched between the two beds and picked up the rocket launcher, inspected it, and set it down. Did the same thing with the machine gun, and then he opened the first backpack farther.

  Manny rolled over, yawned, and sat up, instantly awake.

  “The rich gamblers at the casinos in Naples?” he said. “They have no idea how to play a hand of poker.”

  “Three more diamonds here,” said Marcus, holding the red-tipped jewels in his palm. “You steal more aurum?”

  “Steal? You offend me, señor,” said Manny. “They were given to me.”

  “By a dead guy?”

  “By a guy who needed killing.”

  “Rumor in the hallways, the American champion killed a Gurkha last night,” said Marcus, standing up with a slight grunt. “That you?”

  “Again, migo, a guy who needed to be dead.”

  “Six aurum you taken since you arrived. And killed a mafia special forces soldier,” said Marcus. “By now, you a wanted man.”

  Manny rolled out of bed and took off his fortune in wrinkled fashionable clothing. Veronica didn’t watch. Much. He said, “Always been a wanted man. Otherwise, what fun would life be? I live with inexhaustible joie de vivre.”