The black guy passed Maven on his way to the door, smelling of hotel soap and pistol cleaner, his yellow eyes looking like stones in need of polishing. “Don’t don’t fuck it up, newbie,” he said with a smile.
The Latino followed him into the hallway, quietly singing, “We’re gonna have a party...,” until the door closed and they were gone.
Then it was just Maven and Royce, alone in the narrow entryway. Royce checked him face-to-face like a man examining a thermostat before leaving the house for the day, making sure it was right. He looked satisfied.
He pointed to the door, and Maven went out first.
The L-shaped hallway on the twenty-seventh floor was empty. At three in the afternoon, all the USA Todays had been claimed, the maid service had come and gone. A couple of room-service trays, set out after lunch, lay next to doors.
The Latino and the black guy waited at the near elevator. The UP button had been pressed, a glowing white eye. The Latino’s voice came back faintly — “gonna have a party” — all nervous energy and nicotine.
Maven swished around the last of his soldier’s Starbucks. He looked down at a silver-handled room-service tray containing two small jars of marmalade and honey, the congealed remains of an egg-and-pepper omelet and a bowl of hash, a linen napkin, and a side plate of wheat toast. As Royce peered around the corner again, Maven bent down and stuffed a slice of cold, buttered bread into his mouth.
Royce leaned back, checking behind them. “These guys,” he said, tugging up his jacket to expose his Beretta, “are fucking scum. You remember that.”
Maven nodded, swallowing the toast. The elevator dinged and a red arrow appeared on the overhead panel. Maven followed Royce down the hall, everyone pulling down his balaclava mask and converging on the doors.
They opened, and the first two were inside immediately. Royce advanced with his Beretta out of his holster, aimed low at the floor, ready. Muffled yells and wall-thumps, but no gunshots. Maven couldn’t see inside, remaining a few yards back, uncertain whether he should draw. The door tried to close twice, each time Royce stopping it with his foot.
The scuffle ended, and the Latino exited the elevator car with the Venezuelan in front of him, the man’s wrists cuffed behind his back. A nylon mouth gag accentuated the wild and stunned look on the Venezuelan’s face. The black guy came out second with a bigger guy, identically bound and gagged, but more bent over, perhaps more hurt. He wrenched the man’s arms higher and handed him to Maven, who gripped the guy by his elbow.
Royce retrieved the wheeled suitcase, then the black guy stepped back inside the elevator, Maven seeing, reflected in the wall mirror before the door closed, him screwing a tube-shaped suppressor onto his pistol muzzle.
Then they were running, feet thudding heavily on the carpet as they pushed their captives around the corner, rushing to the stairwell. Maven followed the Latino’s lead, strong-arming the muscle up the steps, bumping him around a little when he resisted. He saw someone moving floors below them, but it was just the blond coming up the stairs.
At the top floor, Royce squeezed past them to the front, knocking the Venezuelan’s head against the wall to get his attention. Royce unzipped his own jacket and pulled down the flap on the front of his vest. White block letters read FBI.
The Venezuelan’s gagged grunting echoed inside the deep stairwell.
Royce bounced him off the wall once more for emphasis, and the Venezuelan sagged but the Latino held him up. Royce reached for Maven’s jacket and unzipped it, tearing down his FBI patch too. Maven didn’t feel good about this.
Royce said to the Venezuelan, “Play along and your lawyer will have you out by midnight. But fuck with us, and you die resisting arrest. Comprende? Entiende?”
They went down the twenty-ninth floor hallway, met halfway by the black guy, holding another man doubled over in front of him. His face was bloody and he wheezed into his gag — probably a lookout posted at the elevator.
The blond took the lookout, and the black guy lined up on the hinge side of door 2919. The Latino pushed the Venezuelan’s face into the peephole. Royce crouched beside him, his gun pointed at the Venezuelan. He pulled down the man’s gag and knocked on the door.
A voice on the other side said, “Yep,” and the door started to open, and the Latino drove the Venezuelan forward. The black guy went in solo behind him, long gun out. Then the blond with the bloodied man, then Maven.
Maven’s guy tried to kick him and pull free, so Maven shoved him down, hard, the man crashing into a table and falling onto his side. Maven had his gun free and was in a good two-handed crouch — but it was already over.
Nobody moved. Not the goon who had answered the door and was thrown back against the wall. Not the goon by the window, his hand frozen halfway to his holster. Not the fat Maracone brothers, seated at the far table like diners awaiting their meal.
It was the letters FBI. Not one shot was fired.
The Maracones looked at the bound and gagged Venezuelan with disgust. They kept their fat hands visible and their mouths shut. The black guy went over and shouldered each one to the floor, twin silver .25 handguns falling from beneath their fleshy thighs.
Everybody was then cuffed, hands and ankles. Furniture was cleared away so that they could be laid out on the floor, heads in, like a six-petal flower. The Venezuelan’s muscle, the heaviest of them all, was left where he had fallen, lying on his side by the wall.
Then a thorough frisking, the Latino throwing mobile phones, wallets, car keys, pistols, and pistol magazines onto the bed.
“I want my lawyer!” barked one Maracone brother, lying red-faced on his big belly. “And a motherfucking receipt!”
“Who here blabbed?” said the other Maracone. “Who was it?”
The Venezuelan was trying to protest through his gag.
The rrriiippp they heard was the blond tearing off lengths of duct tape.
“What the fu—?” was all the Maracone brother could get out, as the tape wrapped around his mouth to the back of his head. Another strip covered his eyes to his ears. Leaving only his nose.
The same was done to all of them.
A couple thrashed afterward, making a racket on the floor, until the black guy went around kicking each one in the ribs until they stopped.
The blond took the clock radio from the nightstand and placed it on the floor in the center of the ring of taped heads. He found a hip-hop station and turned up the volume.
Maven, fascinated by all the activity, heard a thumping and turned just in time to see the muscle stagger to his feet against the wall. He came at Maven head-down, bull-style. Maven side stepped him and dropped the heel of his hand down onto the back of his head, flattening the guy, dropping him hard.
The black guy tossed over a roll of silver duct tape with an approving look.
The blond unfolded a medium-size white paper bag and picked up each confiscated weapon from the bed, releasing ammo clips and clearing the firing chambers. He deposited all ammunition in the bag, dropping the empty guns back onto the bed. He then removed each mobile phone battery and dumped both pieces separately into the bag. Then both room phones, including the bathroom extension.
Royce gave a low whistle, summoning Maven to the bathroom. It was spacious, with a separate interior door to the toilet, and one of those bidet things. Royce shoved the complimentary toiletries aside, making counter room for the Venezuelan’s suitcase. He ran the zipper along the sides, opening the cover to reveal a layer of plush white towels.
Beneath the towels lay tightly packed parcels wrapped in green-tinted plastic, bound with tape. Royce removed one with his gloved hand, the parcel roughly the size of a hardcover book. With a small folding knife, he opened up a three-inch gash lengthwise in the plastic wrap.