The revolving door was going whisk-whisk-whisk now. The sound snapped Moose's attention as rigid as his spine aligning in anticipation of trouble. He fixed his eyes on the man walking in through the atriumlike lobby, towering for twenty stories of glorious, glassy, totally wasted space.
Immediately, Moose became suspicious.
He wasn't a suit. But he wasn't a cameraman either. They usually wore polo shirts and raggedy jeans.
This guy wore chinos and a T-shirt. He looked kinda fruity, except that he walked with a casual, almost aggravating, cock-of-the-walk grace. Like he owned the building. Moose noticed his wrists. Big wrists. Too big. They hardly looked real.
As the thick-wristed man walked toward him, his face unreadable, Moose noticed that his eyes had that flat, dead kinda look, the classic thousand yards stare of the Vietnam vet. Trying to be casual, Moose shifted his body as he stabbed a button on the monitor array, simultaneously touching the concealed buzzer button.
That alerted the hidden sharpshooters. They were the first line of defense, but a last resort. The uniformed security were already percolating around the lobby, putting themselves in position to surround the strange guy in the T-shirt.
The cameramen, of course, would be piling into the elevators to record the slaughter. The bastards. But company priorities were priorities. Mulroy was under explicit instructions to hold fire until the videocams were in place and taping. Even the wall-mounted security cams had a direct feed up to master control.
Mulroy released the button, looking up from the main monitor.
"Can I help you, sir?" he asked the approaching man.
"No, but you can help yourself."
"Come again?"
"You can tell me where to find Jed Burner."
"Mr. Burner is not in the building."
"Fine. You can tell me where I can find him, then."
"I can't do that without knowing your business with Mr. Burner."
The security team was hovering just behind the thick-wristed guy. With Moose ready to vault over the security desk, he would have no place to run.
Then the guy made it easy for everyone.
"My business is my business," he said.
"In that case, I'll have to ask you to leave." And Moose motioned for security to close in. The guy's clothes were tight. Not much danger of concealed weapons. He was thin as a rail too. Moose relaxed slightly. The guards were enough. No need to jump in. Besides, he was getting too old for that kind of crap.
One guard hung slightly back, one hand on the butt on his holstered revolver, while the flanking pair moved up to take the man by the elbows. They used both hands, just as Moose had instructed them, so the man would be instantly immobilized.
The hands came up and Moose Mulroy blinked.
The two guards were suddenly clutching one another, and the skinny guy, not six feet away just the blink of an eye before, was no longer there.
Moose blinked again.
And the guy shot up from under the desk top. Like magic. Moose Mulroy found himself looking into two dead eyes that smiled with a faintly humorous light even though the rest of the face wasn't smiling at all.
Moose was well-trained in what he did. He went for his sidearm. He heard the snap and felt the pull of his leather holster as it was unceremoniously detached from his gunbelt by a pinkish blur at the end of a thick wrist. The holster flew across the lobby, taking his revolver with it as a second hand-feeling like warm steel-took his throat while the first hand spun him around.
Resistance was the first thought in Moose Mulroy's mind. He knew a little judo, a smattering of aikido, and a lifetime accumulation of rough and tumble.
Resistance never got past the impulse stage, however.
For the man suddenly had Moose by his spine and suddenly the only thoughts in Moose's thick skull were those of pleasing the skinny guy with the irresistible hands.
Now Moose Mulroy understood that a human hand cannot reach in through flesh and walls of back muscles and seize a man's spinal column like it was a tree branch. He knew it, would have sworn to the impossibility of it. On a stack of bibles.
But standing at his security desk, looking at the two security guards doing a four-handed handshake while the third tried to separate them like Moe in a Three Stooges skit, Moose Mulroy knew without a doubt that a hand had wrapped around his spine. He could feel the fingers even through walls of muscles that felt dully painful-just the way they did that time in Pleiku when he had been bayoneted by a Vietcong sapper. It hurt. It hurt bad.
And the truly terrifying thing was that there was nothing Moose Mulroy could do about it.
The man spoke calmly into his left ear. "Say the magic words and keep your spine."
"Glad to," Moose grunted.
Before the man could instruct him further, the elevator doors opened and two sets of camera crews pounded out. They pointed their camcorders at Moose Mulroy standing there helplessly.
My job is history, Moose thought.
Aloud, he managed, "Get those cameras away from here! This is a hostage situation."
Wrong thing to say. The cameraman inched closer. The idiots obviously thought they were bulletproof.
Other security were arriving now. One guard asked a question.
"What do you want us to do, Moose-I mean, Mr. Mulroy?"
"Just relax. Nothing bad will happen if everyone relaxes." Moose directed his voice toward his captor. "Isn't that right, pal?"
"Depends on my mood," said the man in an unruffled voice. "I'm looking for Jed Burner."
"Not in the building," someone said. "Honest."
Then a desk phone rang. The man reached down and picked it up. He moved his body only slightly, but the hand holding onto Moose's spine moved with him. Moose moved too. He also saw stars. Electric green ones.
The receiver came up to Moose's ear. "Yes?" he grunted.
"Mr. Mulroy! Mr. Burner's helicopter just landed and there's something going on. I hear shooting."
"I'm a little busy right now," Moose grunted. "Can't someone else take it?"
Then through the earpiece came a shriek. It was no ordinary shriek. It sounded sharp enough to cut diamonds.
For the first time, a worried note crept into his captor's tone. "That isn't who I think it is?" he muttered.
"If you're thinking it's Haiphong Hannah, your thinking is right on the money."
"Actually, I was thinking it sounded just like Cheeta Ching. "
"That's possible, too. She blew in twenty minutes ago, all hot and bothered and looking for Burner."
"Damn," said the voice in Moose's ear, and suddenly Moose found himself walking backward toward the elevator, a human shield. It was his worst nightmare.
Security paced him every step of the way, hands on gun butts. No one was dumb enough to draw iron. And Moose fervently hoped no one would. He liked his spine-even though at this exact moment it felt like an arcing electronic cable in his back.
"You're my office guide," the voice said.
"We got pages for that kinda work."
"You just volunteered."
Then, they were in one of the elevators and the doors were closing on the frightened faces of the security team and the glassy fish eyes of the clustering videocams.
As the lift shot up, Moose grunted out a halting question.
"You here to kill somebody?"
"Maybe."
"If it's Haiphong Hannah, you'll get no argument from me."
"Right neighborly of you," said the voice of the man who owned Moose's spinal column. He showed his appreciation by giving a brain-darkening squeeze.
When Moose Mulroy regained consciousness some hours later, he was surprised to find himself alone and in one piece. The first thing he did was tear off his shirt and run screaming into the men's room.
The long mirror showed that a fist-sized area between his shoulder blades was a mass of purplish black, edged in green. It was the biggest, ugliest bruise Moose Mulroy had ever seen.