The fire he’d set just a few minutes ago, using three road flares he’d picked up from an unguarded construction vehicle on Market Street and a whole lot of trash stored in an alley beside the hotel.
Hardie saw a wood-paneled restaurant in the lobby. It was the dead zone between lunch and dinner; nothing save a red velvet rope guarded the place. Hardie slipped past it and snatched up a steak knife from a serving tray, then left just as quickly to catch an elevator.
The hallways up here were wide enough to park cars along one side while still leaving a lane free for traffic. He passed wide, vertigo-inducing windows that looked out upon the newer wing of the hotel across the way. Gedney’s suite, of course, would be facing Union Square. Only the best for the captains of the Industry.
Hardie braced himself for maybe a stray security guard or two disguised as a member of the hotel staff, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.
He didn’t go through the pretense of knocking; there was no time for his wire-hanger trick, either. He used his good arm to balance himself as his good foot slammed into the space to the immediate left of the key-card reader.
Gedney was perched on one of the two beds inside, watching a movie on a flat-screen TV. He was fully dressed in a gray suit, with a tie and everything, only he had kicked off his shoes and socks. Which struck Hardie as a strange way to relax. Why didn’t the man loosen his tie? Hardie kick-slammed the door shut behind him, then closed the distance between him and Gedney. He put the tip of the steak knife under Gedney’s chin. Gedney wore a blank expression. Not even mildly curious, as if he’d been expecting such a thing to happen.
“Where have I been for five years?”
Gedney inched up cautiously on the bed but said nothing. His eyes narrowed.
“Did you hear me? Where the fuck have I been?”
“Please don’t take what I’m about to say as a sign of disrespect, because that’s not what I’m intending. But who are you?”
“Charlie Hardie.”
Gedney seemed to search his memory bank for a few moments. His eyes drifted away from Hardie, as if the answer were on the next bed.
“Did you FUCKING hear me?”
Then Gedney exhaled slightly. “Of course I remember, Mr. Hardie. Unkillable Chuck, isn’t that what they used to call you? I liked that. I enjoyed the stories about you.”
“Five years.”
“It has been a long time.”
“I have no problem chopping your head off.”
“I believe you, Mr. Hardie. I really do. And a man in your position—well, I can’t say I blame you. But you have it all wrong. They could have flushed you down the toilet right then, like a goldfish. But I had a feeling about you. I knew you were talented, and could be useful to us. You still can. Let’s talk.”
“I don’t want to talk unless you care to explain where I’ve been for five years.”
Gedney frowned. “I’m guessing that site seven seven three four has been compromised. That’s a real bummer.”
“Why did you send me there? Why didn’t you just kill me?”
“Kill you?” Gedney asked. “Why? When you could serve as leverage?”
“What do you mean, leverage?”
“Every once in a while someone comes along trying to make trouble,” Gedney explained. “Guy like you, for instance. Raises a big fuss, laboring under the delusion that he’s doing something heroic. But all you’re doing is getting in the way. So we send heroes like you to site seven seven three four. A special prison. A prison for heroes. See, we couldn’t send heroes like you to an ordinary prison. You’d just join forces and eventually escape. I mean, that’s the kind of thing heroes do, right? So we came up with something special—a way to keep heroes pitted against their fellow heroes, in a state of perpetual conflict. The machinery was already in place; we just had to take advantage of it.”
“Bobby Marchione,” Hardie said. “The prison experiment.”
“Exactly. And this is what I’m talking about. Sure, we could have killed him along with everybody else. But that would have been shortsighted. That would have meant ignoring a unique situation that we could use to our advantage. A place for all you heroic types. But it seems you’ve found a way out, which either makes you a hero, or something else al—”
Gedney moved quickly, slapping away Hardie’s knife hand, bouncing off the bed and tackling Hardie right in his center of gravity. Hardie dropped the knife. Hardie dropped his cane. Hardie went down hard. Pain exploded in his lower spine. What he wouldn’t give for his old body back. Gedney, meanwhile, kept on trucking. On the other side of the room were three doors, side by side—one leading to the hallway and the others, presumably, to a bathroom and a closet. Three guesses which one Gedney would be choosing.
Hardie cursed himself for his stupidity as he rolled over. To lose it all so quickly in a matter of moments…
But Gedney surprised him by launching himself into the bathroom and slamming the door shut behind him.
Thank you, God.
Hope you’ll forgive me for what I am about to do.
Hardie pulled himself up from the floor, stumbling a bit as he recovered his cane and the knife. But the stumble was fortunate, because as Hardie raced for the door a bullet blasted through the wood, whizzing by his face before burying itself in the plaster across the room. Another second and it would have buried itself inside Hardie’s head.
Ah.
No wonder he chose the bathroom.
Gedney had a gun in there.
Gedney was very glad to have a motherfuckin’ gun in here.
Never thought he’d ever, ever have to use it, though—this was the St. Francis Hotel. Survivor of the 1906 earthquake. Site of countless Industry meetings over the decades, not a single incident. A safe zone. A dead zone. Like a womb, surveillance-wise.
A womb with a revolver hidden away.
Not so much to use on outsiders breaking in, but in case a meeting went…south.
Whatever its intended purpose, Gedney was glad to have the revolver. He kept it trained on the door. He didn’t think Hardie would just give up and go away. And he didn’t think he was lucky enough to have hit the bastard with that first shot. So the next move would be Hardie’s; the finishing move would be Gedney’s. That, or somebody had heard the shot and already called downstairs, but that was unlikely. Big old pile like the St. Francis muffled sound pretty well. Gedney would know.
So the play was simple. Hardie would either come through that door, or launch something through that door, or try to lure him out of the bathroom with some ruse. No matter what, all Gedney had to do was keep his back to the wall, keep the gun pointed at the door, and shoot when he saw Hardie.
Gedney had infinite patience; Hardie clearly did not. Or he wouldn’t have marched here straight from the prison to exact his revenge. Gedney fixed his grip on the gun and took a deep, cleansing breath. He was about to consider how infinite patience usually prevailed in these kinds of situations when the tile behind him exploded.
Not all of it—just a half-dollar-size hole. But through it, Hardie jammed the business end of the cane into the back of Gedney’s little skull and pulled the trigger. The man cried out and the gun dropped out of his hands and made a sharp clank as it landed on the tile floor.
Hardie had gone in through the wall of the walk-in closet, which he accessed through the second door. He listened, tried to remember Gedney’s height. Then he used all his might to force the cane through the wall. He might have missed completely. The cane might have snapped. But there was no way he was going through that bathroom door—it was a suicide move. Better this than nothing.