The radio was a Motorola, and I switched it on, then put it back on my belt. There was a little traffic, and I listened to it carefully, trying to get a handle on how the calls were taken, how they were dispatched. The dispatcher was a woman named Janet, and she sounded pleasant enough. No one was using codes of any sort, and the communications I heard were straightforward and verged on terse.
Alena peered into the locker room then, her expression curious and a little frightened, but as soon as she saw me she dropped the act and came the rest of the way inside.
"Done," she told me as she handed me back the master key on its lanyard.
"He's on his way, might be here already. Panno's supposed to call from the lobby. You want to head up there, you probably should."
"You're going to wait down here?"
"Safer," I said. "Here I'm one of the workers and we're united. Upstairs, management might notice me, and maintenance just standing around in the lobby is going to draw attention. Let me have it."
She slid the backpack from her shoulder, catching it and quickly unzipping one of the pockets on its side. "What if he recognizes you?"
"I'm hoping he won't."
"But if he does?"
"What do you want me to say? If he makes me, it's over; you know that."
From the pocket on the side of the backpack, Alena handed me a small metal container, the kind used for fancy breath mints and expensive chewing gum. I put it in my pocket with the key card.
"You need to get up there," I said.
She nodded, kissed my cheek, then my lips, and said, "Be a professional."
"There's a first time for everything," I said.
CHAPTER
At nine minutes to six, my radio squawked, and I heard the call I'd been waiting for.
"One-four-four-one, air-conditioning not working," the dispatcher said. "Can maintenance get up there and check the thermostat, please? VIP room."
"Janet? Les. I can handle that," came the response. "Be about fifteen minutes."
"Thanks, Les."
I used my cell phone to call Panno. "Here's what I need you to do-"
"Wait," he said.
"There's no time to wait. I need this done, and I need it done now," I said. "You have to get to a house phone, you have to call the switchboard, the operator, and you have to tell them that you're in fourteen-forty-one, and that you just called down about the thermostat in the room. You need to tell them that it's working again, that you don't need anyone to come up, that they can cancel the call. Do you understand?"
"He's got guards with him."
I stopped halfway to the door of the locker room. "How many?"
"Three. I think they're all Gorman-North. Killer has a plan for getting one of them down here, but I don't know about the other two."
"Use the house phone, then call me back," I said, and hung up, and waited for my Motorola to speak once more. It seemed like it took a very long time before it did.
"Les, honey, you there?"
"I'm on my way up there now, Janet, tell them to hold their horses."
"No, they just called down to say it's working again, you don't have to bother."
"No kidding? Okay, then, I'm taking my break."
"You enjoy your dinner, hon."
My phone rang.
"Done," Panno said. "We've got one of them off the room now; your wife made a point of asking some questions about a certain guest at the front desk, and she was insistent enough to make them nervous. This guy's down here, talking to the manager."
"Where is she?"
"She's outside, but you've got two either in or on the room. I don't know how you're going to manage that."
"Don't worry about it," I told him. "I'll call you when it's done."
"Good lu-"
I hung up before he could finish, took my toolbox, and headed for the service elevator.
It was as I stepped out onto the fourteenth floor that two of the things I'd missed struck me at once. The first was that fourteen-forty-one could, conceivably, not be the room Jason Earle was in; Alena had disconnected the thermostats in two of the rooms, and he could only be in one of them. I was quite possibly headed to the wrong place.
The second thing was more irrational, and struck me just as I was able to confirm that I, at least, was headed to the right room. Panno said the guards were Gorman-North. That Earle had brought guards at all worried me, and that there were only three of them confused me. If there had been more, I'd have believed he'd been tipped to our attempt at Georgetown, and was building protection around himself. But only three, I didn't know what to make of that, if it was only for show or for ego or for something else entirely. If it was a trap then it wasn't enough muscle. If it was for his protection it wasn't enough coverage.
So what the hell was it?
I came out of the service corridor and into the carpeted hallway to see two men standing post perhaps fifty feet away. They saw me as I emerged, and both turned to watch my approach, and I raised my free hand in greeting, trudging towards them. They didn't wave back, but one of the two knocked on the door they were guarding, then stuck his head in, most likely to announce my arrival.
"Sorry," I said as I drew closer. "Sorry, it's been crazy this evening, I got up here as soon as I could."
"Can I look in your toolbox, please, sir?" the larger and older of the two asked me.
"Yeah, sure." I handed it over to him. He set it down on the floor and opened it, began rifling through the contents.
The other guard, perhaps six or seven years younger than his partner, was looking at me closely. I met his eyes and he looked away, checking down the hallway. He hadn't liked the eye contact, which had been the point of doing it.
His partner closed the box and handed it back to me, saying, "There you go."
Then he opened the door, and held it until I had stepped fully into Jason Earle's suite, before letting it fall closed behind me.
CHAPTER
"Maintenance," I called.
"Go ahead."
I looked to the source, saw a man seated at the desk by the window off to my right. He was bent to his work, a large pen visible in his hand, and I watched as he put pen to paper, scribbling quickly. He didn't raise his head at all. The two words were the extent of his acknowledgment that I was even there.
I stared at his back for a moment, then moved to where the thermostat was on the wall. I set the toolbox down at my feet, snapped it open, then used a flathead screwdriver to pop the faceplate free. It dangled on its wires, and, now exposed, I could see where Alena had disconnected the mercury switch to render the thermostat useless. I ignored it, fiddled for several seconds, then dropped the screwdriver back into the box. It went in with a clatter, and at his desk, the man stiffened for a moment in annoyance, then resumed what he had been doing.
From my breast pocket, I pulled the rag I'd grabbed and sprayed it with a hit from the can of WD-40. I stood up again, using my body to block any view he might have if he turned around, pretending to work the thermostat some more while running the rag over the two buttons on the faceplate. The smell of the solvent was rich in the air.
I went back to the toolbox again, clattering through it, then pulled the small metal box Alena had given me and popped open the top. I took a second to glance to the desk, and the man still hadn't even turned to see me, now moving a new set of paperwork in front of him. With the top of the toolbox as a shield from his view, I tapped the contents of my little tin onto the corner of my rag. The granules were fat and almost chalky, light gray. I closed the tin with one hand, stuffed it back into my pocket, then turned to the faceplate one more time. I smeared each button with the rag.