Sherwood was ahead of her. “No, dear... What I mean to say is, you go into the office next door, you can use that hole in the wall to watch and listen.” He pointed to the head-sized hole she’d noted coming in; the aperture was a foot or so behind Sherwood and would give Max the perfect place from which to monitor the transaction.
“I’d still feel better knowing who the buyer is.”
“That is not negotiable, dear. I would protect you, likewise.”
She rose, picked up the metal folding chair on her side of the desk, and there was a loud crack as she snapped the back off it with her two small leather-gloved hands.
Sherwood’s eyes flared. “I do like an assertive female... Mr. Glickman is his name, and that’s all I know. He’s actually another layer of insulation, the agent for a consortium of buyers. What I do know... and this should please you... is that Mr. Glickman pays top dollar, in untraceable cash... tens, twenties, twenty-fives... and he never haggles much about the price. For quality such as this, he’d expect to pay a quality price... Shall I make the call?”
A tiny smile formed on her full lips as she said, “Go ahead and drop the dime.”
Sherwood’s smile was a delighted one. “You do know some pre-Pulse slang, don’t you, you little vixen?”
Twenty minutes later, the rain still beating its staccato rhythm on windows, echoing down the hall like gunfire, Max and her Ninja were safely snugged in the office next door when she heard a car door slam outside. She crept to the hole in the wall and assumed a position that would conceal her and reveal the mysterious Glickman.
For his part, Sherwood didn’t seem the least bit nervous, and Max realized she was no doubt not the first person to witness a transaction from this hiding place. She did wonder if the porthole had been formed by a dissatisfied client shoving the fence’s head through the wall...
Tucked into the shadows, Max could see through the broken-glass door frames of her private office as two men walked down the hall, passed her without looking in, and strode into Sherwood’s office. The two men stayed near the door, and Max couldn’t make out anything more than their shapes.
“What happened to the chair?” one of them asked, his voice sounding nasal and somehow muffled.
“Vandals,” Sherwood said distastefully, as he rose, and then his tone warmed up. “Mr. Glickman, I apologize for bringing you out in such vile weather...” The painting was on the desk, like a colorful blotter. “... but, as I told you on the phone, this is a major Grant Wood.”
The fence, smiling proudly, held up the Masonite board.
“It certainly is,” a rather refined voice replied.
“I, uh... haven’t met your associate. This is a breach of etiquette.”
“Breach of etiquette?” another, rougher voice responded. “I can think of something worse.”
An icy shiver spiked through Max: she had heard that voice before ... in the foyer at Jared Sterling’s mansion. One of his security team! Maurer, the black, clean-cut guard...
“Something worse?” Sherwood said, clearly off-balance.
The pair stepped forward into the fluorescent’s path and Max’s view. In a black rain-dripping raincoat, Maurer stood on the right, his nose heavily bandaged, while on the left, the other “insulation,” Mr. Glickman, stood in a London Fog, and Max recognized him, as well — his hair in the same iron-gray crew cut, the scars still on his cheeks, each about the size of a dime.
Sterling’s security chief.
“I mean,” Glickman said, “trying to sell back a painting stolen from my boss.”
Sherwood’s whole body seemed to go slack. “I... I... I had no idea...”
“It was heavily covered in the media. You work in the art field. Certainly you knew this painting was Mr. Sterling’s.”
“But... gentlemen... I was not aware that Mr. Sterling was your client. I was under the impression you represented a consortium of overseas buyers... Forgive me.”
“No,” Glickman said.
The security guard was reaching inside the London Fog, and Max did not think he was going for a handkerchief. She took three quick steps back, then threw herself at the Sheetrock wall. She burst explosively into Sherwood’s office just as Maurer fired the first shot. Max couldn’t get to him in time, but in reflexive if pointless self-defense, Sherwood lifted the painting in front of his face.
The nine-millimeter slug tore through the painting leaving a hole bigger than a golf ball, then ripped through Sherwood’s head, blowing away a piece of the old man’s scalp.
“The painting!” Glickman called, in warning.
But Maurer’s second shot shredded even more of the masterpiece before cleaving its way through Sherwood’s chest and sending him backward, upending the chair, pitching the painting, which cracked against a wall, while the fence lay on his back, asprawl.
Max leapt, kicked, her boot connecting solidly with the bandage across Maurer’s face. He screamed, dropped his pistol, and fell backward to the floor, a hand covering where the blood erupted from his nose, red streaming through his cupping fingers. Glickman had dodged when Max came through the wall, and from the sidelines fired at her, but was off-balance, and missed, the bullet burrowing into Sheetrock. She rushed him before he could get his equilibrium, ducking a wild shot, and kicked sideways, her boot slamming into the man’s groin, knocking him into the Sheetrock behind him, air whooshing out of him; he slid down the wall, and his mouth was open in a silent scream.
But Sterling’s security chief was no pushover, and hardly a stranger to pain; plenty of fight left in him, Glickman squeezed off another shot, this one whizzing past Max’s shoulder, again thunking into Sheetrock.
On the floor near the dead fence (who was on his back staring sightlessly at the ceiling) Maurer — his hands smeared and slippery with his own blood — was scrambling for his pistol; he got hold of it, and raised it at Max, stupidly heedless of how close she and his superior were. Just as the black guard fired, Max dived out of the way and Maurer’s bullet missed her and sent up a puff of pink as it punched Glickman in the chest.
The iron-haired security chief’s eyes went wide with shock, and he slumped back against the wall. He looked down at his wound, then up at Maurer. His last words were a kind of cough: “You dumb fuck.”
“Oh, shit,” Maurer said, and brought his pistol around, searching for his target, who seemed to have disappeared.
Then Max was suddenly at his side, and grabbed his arm and bent the elbow the wrong direction; Maurer screamed and his fingers popped open and he dropped the blood-smeared pistol. She kept going, applying torque to his shoulder as she cranked his arm around behind him.
The guard was in so much pain, he couldn’t even scream.
“One question,” Max said, her voice cold, hard. “Wrong answer, I break your arm.” She applied a little more pressure to make her point; Maurer arched his back and groaned pitifully.
“Ask! Ask!”
“Where can I find Sterling... right now?”
He tried to twist his head around to see her, but she cranked up on the arm and his head dropped, as he yelped with pain.
“Let’s have that answer,” she said, and started moving the hand upward.
“Okay, okay! He’s at the Needle.”
Frowning, Max relaxed her grip somewhat, and with the lessening of pain, all the air went out of Maurer, who sagged; she felt if she let go of him, he’d drop like an armload of firewood.
“Space Needle?”
“What the... fuck other Needle... deal going down.”
“More,” she said, not bothering to punctuate her question with a ratchet of pain; the guy was cooperating now.
“The boss and that Russian, they’re selling some shit to some Koreans, there. Up top.”