I could hear the flames crackling behind me, near where I’d seen the bar. They could only get worse with the extra oxygen that would be sucked in, now that I’d broken the window. That left me with some pretty stark choices. I could burn to death, if I stayed in the room. Get shot, if I tried to leave. Or possibly suffocate, if the oily fumes continued to grow thicker.
None of those options really grabbed me so I decided that since Fothergill’s buddies had shown up anyway, it would be nice for one of them to lend me a hand. I crawled across toward the spot where I remembered them lying and stopped when I came in contact with a body part. It turned out to be a leg. I worked my way up until I reached the face. Then I found the guy was no use because he’d been shot in the right-hand side of the head. I left him in peace and kept on going till I stumbled across his buddy. He’d taken his slug in the left side, so I dragged his body back to the safety of the wall. Then I propped him up and wrestled him out of his baseball jacket. I’d forgotten just how hard dressing corpses can be, so combined with the smoke and rising heat I was breathing pretty hard by the time I’d replaced it with my own.
The person who’d shot at me had been somewhere to my right, so I dragged the body I’d dressed to the far side of the left-hand door. I went back for the remaining chair and used it to break the window. Another bullet hit the woodwork. I dropped the chair and waited for thirty seconds. Then I hauled the body upright and maneuvered it close to the door. I tipped it forward so that its right hand flopped forward, as if trying to grab hold of the frame, ready to climb through. Another shot rang out. A bullet smashed into the body’s chest. I simulated jerking it back under the impact, but kept him on his feet. Two more rounds hit him, both in the chest, and I decided enough was enough. His last stand had been a glorious one, after all, so I let him slip to the floor for the final time. There was silence from the corridor. A minute passed. The smoke was growing noticeably thicker. My eyes were beginning to water and it was becoming hard not to choke. And then I heard the sound I’d been waiting for. Footsteps. Running away. I risked another thirty seconds in the room. Then I went back to the first window I’d cleared and vaulted through to the other side.
EIGHTEEN
There are many reasons for a person to take action.
Some are positive. They lead to doing things because you actively believe in them. Such as joining the army in 1939, like my father had done. Or in 1914, as his father had done before him.
Others are negative. They lead to things you wouldn’t normally do, simply to avoid alternatives that strike you as worse. Like not wanting to spend time in a hotel room with nothing but certain red-raw memories to keep you company.
An old boss of mine once warned me against the second kind.
But it’s a lesson I still haven’t learned very well.
The first assistant I saw at the Gap store on Michigan Avenue wrinkled her nose when I walked in. Then she dumped the stack of shirts she’d been folding on the nearest table and retreated to the back of the store. Normally I’d have been insulted by that kind of reaction, but on this occasion I couldn’t really blame her. My clothes and hair stank of smoke. A film of gray soot coated my skin. My jeans were ripped from the broken glass in the door at the Coq d’Or and specks of blood from the White Sox guy had ended up on my shirt. All things considered, I looked and smelled pretty damn unpleasant.
I picked out suitable replacements for my ruined garments, including a new jacket to replace the one I’d loaned to the dead body, and made my way back to my hotel. I went straight up to my room, locked the door behind me, and headed for the bathroom. Taking a long shower is something I usually enjoy, but in this case it wasn’t an option. It was a necessity. I stayed under the cascade of warm, cleansing water for nearly twenty minutes, not moving. Then I pulled on my new outfit and retrieved my phone from the pocket of the discarded jeans. A message on the screen told me that Fothergill had been after me. He’d tried twelve times since I’d been in the bathroom. I guess he must have been anxious to reach me. It was tempting to leave him dangling after he’d ignored my message, earlier, but I had ulterior motives. I was hoping he’d have some interesting news, so I called him right back.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Seems like you’re having communication issues with your people,” I said.
“David?” he said. “Are you OK? What happened?”
“I’m fine. I can’t say the same for your guys, though. Looks like you’ll be needing new rent-a-goons from now on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe you can find ones that can follow instructions. And understand simple concepts, like being stood down.”
“They showed up? At the Drake?”
“They did.”
“I don’t understand. I told them not to go. Well, I got a message to them, telling them not to.”
“Well, I guess it never got through.”
“So what happened? I’m hearing that shots were fired. Something about a fire breaking out. I can see smoke from my office window, right now. And fire trucks. The whole north end of Michigan is closed off. People are being evacuated.”
“Someone torched the place.”
“While you were there?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Really? Who?”
“You tell me.”
“It was a deliberate torching? Are you sure?”
“It was a pro job. No doubt about it. They used incendiaries, triggered by a light switch. Not explosives. They wanted the place to burn, not blow up.”
“It was a trap?”
“From the start.”
“But you got out.”
“Evidently.”
“And the guys I sent? Or tried not to send. Lady Luck wasn’t smiling on them, quite so much?”
“She wasn’t smiling on them at all.”
“So what was it that did for them? The fire? The fumes?”
“Neither. They were shot in the head.”
“By the Myenese?”
“I presume so. I don’t know for sure, though. Your guys were dead when I got there.”
“When you got there? Were you late?”
“Me? No. I’m never late.”
“So they were early?”
“They were both. Early, and late. At the same time. Sounds like a riddle.”
“David, this isn’t the time. Didn’t the Myenese say anything? Shed any light on what they did? Or why?”
“No. I never saw them, let alone spoke to them. They just locked me in the bar with the dead guys and tried to incinerate me. And then shot at me. They were persistent. I’ll give them that.”
“So nothing happened to derail things. It wasn’t like you were leading them down the garden path when my guys jumped out and knocked everything out of kilter?”
“No. It was a setup from minute one.”
“Which points to one person.”
“McIntyre.”
“Exactly.”
“Which is why I was calling. I want some news. Good news, preferably.”
Fothergill didn’t respond.
“Any progress on McIntyre’s new contacts?” I said. “Any word from the IT guys?”
“Maybe,” he said. “In fact, yes. We think so. They’ve narrowed the dating site traffic down to a defined range of IP addresses. And with a bit more work, we should be able to pinpoint a specific user.”
“Excellent. How long will that take?”
“David, after what you’ve been through, don’t you think that’s a question for tomorrow?”
“No. I’m asking now.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. No one would bat an eyelid if you took a few hours to reset.”
“How long will they take?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do I need to come down there and ask them myself?” I said.
“No,” he said. “I’ll find out. But don’t worry. They don’t think it’ll take too much longer.”