“‘Think so,’ nothing. You’re feeling me. I see it in your eyes.” The valet reappeared, Royce’s car pulled curbside. Royce tipped the kid and sent him on his way. As Royce climbed into the driver’s seat, he said to Maven, “I’m your ticket out of that parking lot and into one of these cars.”
Overnight
Where you at tonight?” asked Ricky, chewing Sour Patch Kids.
“Huh?” said Maven, zoning out on a stool before the wall of cigarettes behind the counter, ruminatively working his deformed tongue against his gums. “Nowhere. Tired maybe.”
“Two a.m.” Ricky flipped on the small television between the cash register and the pump monitors, tuning in a re-airing of that afternoon’s The Tyra Banks Show. “Time for my girl.”
When Ricky was still stateside in Kentucky during the ramp-up to Iraq, Tyra Banks visited Fort Campbell as part of a post–9/11 USO thing. Ricky lucked out, drawing the assignment to escort her vehicle back to the airport. Before they left the base, Ricky was sneaking a Snapple out of the hospitality tent when Tyra and her entourage breezed past him, as close to him as Maven was now.
“And it wasn’t even her body, you know, which is, by the way, ka-pow! No, it was her skin. No lie. She has this perfect, like, creamy cocoa complexion that you’ve never even seen in your life. And her hair — she had on a patrol cap with her name on the back, BANKS — her hair had a life all its own, like a fifth limb. And the way she moved... I mean, lust just demeans it. It was true love. I seriously understand now why kings and shit launched entire wars over just one woman — risked their countries, their fortunes, gave away everything they had. I understand chivalry now, dude. She is Tyra of Troy. Just look at her.”
She came out to applause, turning on her big Tyra smile, playing surprise at the warmth of the reception, putting a flat hand to her breathless, voluptuous chest, then pursing her lips in a kiss.
“There. The air kiss. That’s our little signal.”
Maven looked at skinny Ricky hunched over before the small screen. “Your signal?”
“This cruel world keeps us apart. Experts say there are three events that could trigger a worldwide cataclysm. One — the sun burns out. Two — an asteroid impact destroys the atmosphere. Three — Tyra Banks marries a white man.”
Maven thought about it, and agreed. “I think three would cause the most typhoons.”
Ricky watched his goddess on a flickering four-inch screen. “She should wear stretchier tops.”
A pickup stopped outside, the driver bald, leather-jacketed, with the extremity of a tattoo — something dull, blue, penal — visible at the sides of his neck. He left the pickup running with a pit bull sitting in the front seat, came in, paid cash for a box of Phillies Blunts and some beef jerky, then drove off feeding the jerky to the dog.
The prison tat jumped out at Maven, got him feeling that nervous energy again. Beyond all his qualms, beyond all the questions he still had, beyond the voice in his head telling him, Don’t, he was undeniably excited. He couldn’t wait for his shift to be over. For the new day to begin.
He had gone into this thing wanting to know more about Danielle Vetti, and instead found himself beguiled by Brad Royce.
Ricky said, his mouth full of Sour Patch Kids, “You’re not eating tonight?”
Maven shook his head. Tomorrow Man. “I’m thinking about trying to get back into shape.”
That straightened Ricky. “You’re going to reenlist,” he said, as though it were something he had been dreading all along.
Maven smiled and shook his head, looking out the window again, searching the sky for signs of dawn.
Rats Dance
The sight of handguns on the hotel room bed jolted Maven. He hadn’t seen a plain-view hot weapon since returning to the States. In Eden, they were standard-issue, like bottles of water. Here in a Back Bay hotel room, a pistol loaded with live rounds looked like a bomb waiting to go off.
He geared up with the others. Royce provided him with soft tactical body armor that fit all right, except for riding up into his throat when he wanted to sit down. The vest had full-wrap protection, critical for close-quarter engagements, when an arms-out gun stance left the sides of the torso vulnerable. Because soft body armor did a decent job of fragmenting pistol bullets but repelled rifle fire about as effectively as a wool sweater, Maven was used to wearing ceramic plates in the front and back pockets. So the vest felt light and almost silly, like wearing a life preserver indoors.
A patch was Velcro’ed onto the vest front, wide and rectangular. Maven started to pull on it when Royce’s hand touched his arm. “Later,” he said, handing Maven shooting gloves made of neoprene and synthetic leather, and a police-blue windbreaker long enough to hide his belt holster.
Maven stepped to the corner and drew his sidearm, a Sig Sauer 225. He was familiar with the weapon, knowing, for example, that the 225 was manufactured without a safety. He pressed the side button and caught the magazine as it ejected from the grip. He racked the slide and found the firing chamber empty, then racked it a few more times, trusting that it wouldn’t stick if he needed it. He then thumbed the rounds out of the magazine, counting eight, a full load for the 225. He fed them back inside the magazine, one by one against the spring, and slid the magazine home into the Sig’s grip. The weapon felt comfortable in his hand, but without his having fired it, nothing really mattered. Borrowing a handgun is like borrowing a parachute. And the first rule of jump school is, always pack your own kit.
Royce said there shouldn’t be any shooting. “Not if we do this thing right. You think you can do this thing right?”
Maven racked one round into the firing chamber, then decocked, releasing the magazine again, now one short of a full load, and thumbed an extra round from one of the two backup mags in the nylon pouch on his belt, then inserted it into the current mag and thrust it back inside the grip. Now he had nine, a full wad. He holstered the weapon and zipped up his blue jacket to cover it.
The Latino’s left cheek egged out from a fat dip of chewing tobacco, another thing Maven hadn’t seen much of since Eden, where everyone dipped. Royce and the others looped ZipCuffs onto their chest straps, but Maven wasn’t issued any restraints. They pulled black balaclavas down over their faces, fixing the stitched holes so they sat over their eyes, then rolled the masks up to sit on the tops of their heads like knit caps. Maven did the same.
He appreciated the seriousness in the room. These were men dressing for work.
Royce’s phone buzzed. The blond guy had left the room a while ago. Maven realized that he had gone down to the lobby, to eyeball the Venezuelan as he entered the hotel.
Royce listened and reported, “He’s in. With muscle. One man, rolling an oversized suitcase. Tan jacket, bulge underneath. Waved off a bellboy at the door.”
Maven yawned deep. From tiredness, from nerves, from the hormones released by his battle-alert brain, already relaxing his bronchial tubes for deeper breathing. His chest, tight inside the shell of the protective vest, felt like a jar of fireflies. He tore open a foil packet of Nescafé instant coffee crystals — nicked from City Oasis — as he hadn’t got any sleep that morning, emptying it into his mouth and dry-crunching it like candy, ramping up on undiluted caffeine.
“Second elevator,” reported Royce, hanging up. “Remember the security camera in the elevator panel. First man in body-blocks it.”
“That’ll be me,” said the green-jacketed Latino, spitting his plug and a string of brown drool into the plastic-lined trash can.