“Fine,” Quinn told her. “Could you direct me to your restroom first?”
She stopped. “Oh, of course. Back there and to the right.”
“I could probably use a stop, too,” Daeng said. He smiled at the waitress. “Which table will be ours?”
She pointed toward the windows. “That one there. I’ll have water waiting when you get back.”
“Great.”
The two men headed through the restaurant, bypassed the restroom entrance, and entered the kitchen.
Eight people were present — five cooks and three in the cleanup crew. The only ones who had so far noticed Quinn and Daeng were the two men washing dishes near the door. But both went right back to what they were doing without saying anything.
Along the back wall in the corner was a metal security door, clearly denoting where the restaurant ended and the rest of the building began. In other words, a rear exit.
Quinn and Daeng walked quickly toward the door, and were halfway there when a member of the cook staff said, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be back here.”
“DC police,” Quinn barked.
If the guy said anything in response, it was lost as Quinn and Daeng rushed through the rear exit into a long service corridor.
A bundle of pipes ran along the ceiling in one corner, while evenly spaced fluorescent lights hung in a line down the center. Quinn immediately ran to the left, mentally working out the distance between the restaurant and the doorway the others had entered. Exactly where he expected it was a short corridor that ran all the way back to the outside wall. No one was there.
He could feel the tick of every second as he scanned farther down the central hallway, trying to figure out where the man and woman might have gone. He spotted a door about fifty feet away to the right with a sign that read:
COURTYARD ENTRANCE
“This way,” Quinn said to Daeng, hoping he was right.
He raced over and pushed the door open.
Bare trees and bushes lined a short, windy path that led from the door to a walkway. On the other side of the walkway was a tan block wall, high enough to conceal the rest of the courtyard from view. They followed the path up a series of steps until they could see over the top of the obstruction. The brick wall turned out to be supporting a central section where a few trees and grass probably grew in the summer.
To the left of this area, another set of stairs led up to a portion of the large courtyard that was raised even higher.
“I think someone’s up there,” Daeng said.
Quinn had heard the footsteps, too, clacking rhythmically on the stone path. He jogged up until he could just see over the top of the stairs, then stopped.
The woman and the man from the sedan were nearing a set of glass doors that led back into the building, their backs to Quinn and Daeng. At first Quinn thought they were going inside, but instead a pudgy man with salt and pepper hair stepped out and greeted them.
Crouching, Quinn moved up the steps as far as he could without being detected. He pulled out his phone again and reattached the telephoto lens. This time he was able to get much better pictures of the woman and her colleague, as they would occasionally turn enough for him to snap nearly three-quarter profile shots. He was also able to take several pictures of the man they were meeting.
From their interaction, Quinn sensed that the older guy held rank over the woman, and that she held rank over the man who had come with her. At one point, the woman turned to her companion and said something. In response, he handed the older man the suitcase.
Quinn was curious what it might contain, but unless they were going to open it, that would have to remain a mystery for the moment.
The trio spoke for a few more minutes, then the woman and her partner began to turn back the way they’d come.
Quinn dipped below the level of the stairs and looked over at Daeng.
“The older guy — you saw him?” Quinn said.
“I did,” Daeng replied.
“See where he goes. Nate and I will keep on the other two.”
Daeng nodded and moved down the stairs far enough that he could stand up without being seen. Then, as if he belonged on the premises, he headed back up again, his hands stuffed in his pockets.
When Quinn reached the bottom, he hurried along the path they’d taken into the courtyard. If he was right, the other two’s business here was done and they were leaving. He needed to be back on the street when they appeared. He skipped the entrance to the hallway in favor of a door marked GARAGE. This led him down one level, where he quickly located the car ramp and reached the public sidewalk before the others reappeared.
His phone vibrated only seconds after he got there.
“The sedan’s heading back to the drop-off point,” Nate said.
“Figured. Looks like they’ve wrapped up here. Meet me same place as before.”
Quinn headed down the sidewalk to be in position as soon as Nate arrived. Before he got there, however, he heard the door the man and woman had used earlier open behind him. He turned on his phone’s front-facing camera and angled it so he could see behind him. As expected, the woman and man had exited the building.
The moment Nate pulled to the curb, Quinn jumped into the front passenger seat.
“Where’s Daeng?” Nate asked.
“We’ll pick him up later. Right now, let’s see where these guys go.”
Daeng didn’t even receive a passing glance from the woman and man as he walked by them in the courtyard. A goateed Asian guy with hair down to his shoulders, he’d probably been pegged as a service-industry employee at one of the local hotels. The joys of racial profiling — an ugly practice he had taken advantage of on more than one occasion.
By the time he reached the door at the end of the walkway, the older man who’d met the two people had gone inside. Daeng wasn’t worried, though. He had seen the guy turn to the right, but being overweight, the man wouldn’t get far.
When Daeng stepped through the doorway, he found himself in a lounge area set up with seating and tables. It had a path curving through the lounge in a way that some architect must have thought was a flash of brilliance. The fat man was waddling down the thruway, so it took almost no effort at all for Daeng to close the distance between them to a mere ten feet.
Up close now, he could see the man wore an expensive overcoat, and though Daeng couldn’t see the man’s suit from behind, he was willing to bet that it, too, was made from the finest of materials.
Because of the raised area in the courtyard, this section of the building was on the second floor. Ahead was a marble stairway leading down, and to its right, a set of elevators. The target skipped the former and headed straight for the lifts. Daeng thought this meant the guy had been intending to go up, but the man waited for and then entered a car heading down. Daeng and a few others shuffled on with him.
Before the doors closed, several buttons were pushed for the lower levels of a parking garage. That had to be it, Daeng decided. Taking the down elevator made sense to him now. Until the target reached out and pushed the button for level 1.
You lazy son of a bitch, Daeng thought. No wonder the guy was overweight.
A short ride down, the doors opened again and the target exited. Daeng tried to keep the disapproval off his face as he followed the man.
They were in a main lobby area, with dozens of people moving about and several more waiting in line at a coffee shop along the west wall. A podium was set up near the front door, and behind it stood a middle-aged man in a sharp black uniform, white shirt, purple tie, and black doorman hat.
As the target approached the podium, Daeng moved in as close as he dared.
“Mr. Boyer,” the man behind the podium said. “Leaving us already?”