Deceived (28 page)

It was a rush
job, and the man hated rush jobs. Normally he would have staked out the marks,
gotten to know their habits, then picked the time, the spot, and the means. All
contingencies would have been considered.Instead he got a call, and less than
thirty-five minutes later here he was, knocking on a door, ready to carry out
orders. He didn't know the layout of the apartment, didn't even know if the
marks were armed. All he knew was that there were two men and one woman inside,
and the three must be eliminated. When he was done, a disposal crew would
sanitize the apartment.

He knocked
again on the door. "Electrician," he announced, and, after waiting a
few seconds, knocked once more and said, "We've got an electrical circuit
out. We think we've traced the problem to your apartment."

The peep hole
darkened. The man tried to appear bored. He carried a tool box and wore gray
pants and a dark blue work shirt with "Zimmer Electric" embroidered
above the right breast pocket.

He knocked a fourth time. "Hello?"

Dennis
retreated from the doorway, index finger crossed over his mouth, and sought out
the nearest lamp. He turned its switch
—
nothing happened
.

Nick went to a
window overlooking the street. He waived Dennis over and pointed out a van
below, "Zimmer Electric" printed on its side. He whispered, "The
electricity's out, and there's a van below
…
what's the problem?"

Dennis's face
had gone white. He swallowed once and whispered in return, "Everything. They
might have had a tail on you, or maybe your phone was tapped, thinking I might
call you.
…
They've probably heard everything we've said."

Nick skewed his
eyes. "A tail? What are you talking about. And how could anyone hear what
we've said?"

Dennis scanned
the apartment desperately, answering Nick almost as an afterthought. "A
parabolic dish from the street. Passively through the phone lines using the
handset as a microphone. Any number of ways."

"All
right," the voice from the hallway announced, "the superintendent
gave me a passkey. In case anybody's there, I'm coming in."

"Jing-mei,"
Dennis said urgently under his breath, pointing to the door, "try to get
rid of him."

Jing-mei nodded
uncertainly, then called out, "Just a moment." She approached the
door. "I don't have any problems in here," she said.

An insistent
voice came from the hallway: "We've got a whole circuit out downstairs,
and the wiring loops through your apartment. I gotta check it out, ma'm."

Dennis
whispered to Jing-mei, "Stall him," then ran toward the rear of the
apartment. Nick tucked the papers Dennis had given him into his coat pocket and
followed.

As Jing-mei
argued with the electrician, Dennis pulled a butcher knife from a cutlery block
in the kitchen and ran into the back bedroom. His head flipped side to side,
and Nick mirrored the movement. The bedroom was small: a bed, a chair, a
dresser, one window, a bathroom off to the left
.

Dennis ran to
the window, slid it up, and peered outside. He froze for a moment, then drew
back and leaned against the wall, his chest rising and falling in shallow
heaves, perspiration showing on his upper lip
.

Nick took his
place at the window There was no fire escape, nothing between him and the
pavement five floors below. He might, possibly, survive the jump, but would
break his legs in the process.

Dennis swore
under his breath before saying, "If we get out of this, you'll go to
Carolyn. Tell her what happened. She's our only chance. Don't trust anyone
else."

As the incessant banging on the apartment's front door continued, fear
finally took Nick, tightening his rib cage and squeezing his stomach.

The man made an
instant decision. His ruse had failed and direct action was now called for. He
set his tool box on the ground and opened it, lid toward the door's peep hole,
obscuring the contents within. His hand went into the box, when it came out it
held a 9mm automatic equipped with silencer.

He fired three
shots to the immediate right of the door knob, splintering the jam. A hard kick
and the door banged open. Two hands on the gun, the man swung the barrel toward
the only movement within the apartment: a young Chinese girl, eyes wide and
standing stupefied.

The scream
building in Jing-mei's throat never got a chance to exit. The man pulled the
trigger twice; both bullets took Jing-mei in the throat, rocking her head
forward and her body to the ground. Her limbs shook violently for a few seconds
as thousands of nerves fired in unison, then the life went out of her.

First mark
accounted for.

The man closed
the apartment door then moved forward, gun sweeping in front of him in a short
arc
—
eleven o'clock, one o'clock, eleven o'clock, one o'clock. It
appeared to be a railroad apartment: a living room, a kitchen, and finally a
bedroom. No one could get past him. He would clear each room, one after the
other
.

The room he
stood in, the living room, had one closet. He pumped two bullets into it, waist
high, to the left, then the right. He opened the door and jumped back. Empty,
just a vacuum cleaner and clutter
.

The kitchen came next. He hesitated, listening. All was silent and he
continued forward.

Nick heard the
front door burst open. From where he stood, he could not see the gunman raise
his weapon and fire, but did see the aftermath. His impulse on seeing blood and
tissue spray from the back of Jing-mei's neck was to rush forward to help. But
his body overruled his mind, held his feet in place until reason returned. Jing-mei
was beyond help.

Two more
"pops" sounded and Nick and Dennis ran for cover. Nick to the
bathroom, Dennis to one side of the bedroom door. Dennis clutched the butcher
knife fiercely, his knuckles white.

Nick's mind
shifted through possibilities and just as quickly discarded them. Run? Run
where? Jump? Five stories? Attack? With what?

Suddenly the
wall to the opposite side of the doorway from Dennis exploded. One moment it
was intact, the next moment two holes the size of fists appeared, a hollow cone
of plaster and wallpaper jutting from each
.

Nick realized,
a fraction of a second late, what would come next. Before he could shout a
warning two blossoms of red appeared on Dennis's front, one on his chest, the
other just above his groin.

Dennis managed
just one step, then his eyes rolled up and he fell. He landed face down and lay
motionless. The two blossoms of blood on his front were mirrored on his back. As
Nick's eyes locked on spreading red, another bullet ripped into Dennis's skull.

Reflexively,
Nick stepped back from the bathroom door. He forced his mind to again consider
alternatives
—
there were none.

He shut the
bathroom door and fixed its lock. How long would the door hold the man? And
then? What would it feel like, a bullet tearing into his body?

There was a
small window over the bathtub, and Nick jumped inside the tub and pounded it
open. Given the alternative, a jump of five stories seemed far less daunting
than a few moments earlier, but the window was small, impossibly small. He'd
never fit through it.

Nick's knees went weak. There was no way out. The man would finish him
with a bullet in the brain, just like he'd finished Dennis. The end of
everything.

With
satisfaction, the man saw the body fall to the floor. Only amateurs felt safe
from a 9mm bullet behind a wall of plaster. Dead amateurs.

He pumped an
insurance bullet into the downed man's brain. That left just one last mark, now
a cornered and dangerous, animal. He proceeded cautiously.

 His gun's clip
held fourteen rounds, he'd used eleven, leaving three. He popped the clip and
inserted a full replacement. Fourteen rounds, one target.

The man jumped
into the bedroom, instantly taking in its configuration. A double bed, a chair,
and the door to, he guessed, a bathroom. He fired one shot, a dull pop, through
the chair's upholstery, and three more through the mattress of the bed. All
four shots were met with silence.

That left the bathroom. He raised his gun and aimed for the center of
its door.

"
Phhtt
."
A bullet slapped the wall inches from Nick's head. Bits of tile stung his
left cheek. Another bullet struck almost instantly, this one waist high, two
feet to his right. Instinctively Nick dropped and flattened against the bottom
of the tub. A hail of bullets followed, some pinging loudly of the side of the
tub.

Nick covered
his head with his hands as tile fragments rained from above. Then the noise
stopped.

Nick's mind spun; he had only seconds now. The man would come through
the door; if Nick did nothing he would die. He had to move. Had to search the
bathroom for some sort of weapon. Had to find something, anything, that might
give him a fighting chance at life.

All was silent
beyond the bullet-ridden door, still the man popped the gun's clip and inserted
a third. The mark was dead or playing dead. Either way the time had come to end
things.

"Come
out," the man urged.

Silence.

Cruelty wasn't
a character trait of the man, not by nature, but there were realities to face,
one being that at the end of the day he had to look his wife and child in the
eye. And so he did not think of the mark as a human being, did not think of the
mark's friends or dreams or fears. He thought only of his own job, nothing
more.

He sent three bullets into the jam, just to the side of the knob, then
kicked in the bathroom door.

Startled, Nick
reared back as the door jamb exploded. He had left the tub and now stood just
to the side of the door, his back against a pedestal sink. He knew what would
come next, and a fraction of a second later it did
—
the door burst open.

Nick had to act
immediately.

Arm cocked, he
leaned into the open doorway, eyes locking on those of the other man. Nick held
a can he found under the sink, and as the man's gun rose toward Nick's chest,
Nick slung the arm holding the can forward. Blue crystals sprayed from the open
can, streaming toward the man, fanning out like lead pellets from a shotgun.

The crystals
slapped the man across the face, dropping him instantly to his knees.

The man
screamed in agony as the drain cleaner burned out his eyes.

Nick surprised
himself
—
he showed no mercy. He rushed forward and kicked the man hard in
temple; the man crumpled to the floor and after two equally vicious kicks
remained still.

Nick retreated
to the wall to his rear and slumped against it, riding down to a sitting
position, trying to catch his breath. He held his head in his hands, the
reality of all that had happened in the last few minutes striking home. Dennis
lay dead, and in the other room, Jing-mei lay dead; before him his attacker lay
blinded and unconscious.

A voice came to
Nick then:
Run. Here, in this apartment, you are in danger.
He scrambled
on all fours to the gun of the downed man. The weapon's weight surprised him;
its lethal potential struck home.

Nick ran for
the front door, the gun held poised for use. He paused over Jing-mei for just a
moment. Too long. Her staring eyes seared their way into his memory.

Less than a
minute later Nick was out of the building and on the street, the gun and the
hand holding it tucked from view within the tux coat.

He ran blindly
until his lungs gave out.

A vast
rectangular hall with a one hundred feet high barrel-vaulted ceiling bisected
the center of Union Station, the hub of D.C. train and subway travel, yet Nick
felt claustrophobic. It was the crowd: a scurrying throng of late afternoon
commuters.

He had jumped a
Metro car, uncertain of where to go, what to do, knowing only that his car
might be watched and he had to put as much distance between himself and the
apartment as he could. He had gotten off at Union Station
—
the idea of
being surrounded by people appealed to him, gave him a sense of security, but
his feelings had changed dramatically. Dressed in formal wear, he hardly melded
into the background.

As he walked
the length of the hall his eyes swung from face to face to face; each appeared
briefly out of the jostling mob in front of him then folded into his wake. He
realized what any cop could have told him: a crowd gave an advantage to the
hunter, not the hunted.

Jing-mei's
image came to him then: an unblemished face, but at her neck a red scarf of
blood. Dennis's image now, his face far from unblemished, marred by a gaping
exit wound. And Nick would have been next
.

Nick spotted a
police officer stationed by the ticket booths and retreated into the flow of
pedestrians.

A part of his
brain screamed at the idiocy.
Two people were dead—you have to go to the
police.
Another part of his brain ran an endless loop of Dennis's warnings:
"The police can't protect me, Ford, not from the people I'm involved with.
I go to the authorities, I enter police custody, and I'll end up dead."

Would Nick
suffer the same fate if he called the police?

What had Dennis
said about himself, that he was "an embarrassment to people who didn't
like embarrassments?" Would those who had removed Frasier, who had hunted
Dennis, assume Nick had learned all from Dennis? Was Nick himself now the
embarrassment, the next in line for removal?

Nick berated
himself for conjuring conspiracies, but immediately Jing-mei's and Dennis's
images returned. Two people were dead. He wasn't conjuring that.

Nick crossed
the hall to a restroom. He sat in a stall, door closed, trying unsuccessfully
to organize his thoughts. From his coat pocket he pulled the phone records
Dennis had given him.

The sheets were
marked with four columns: the first the date, the second time of day, the third
outgoing phone numbers, the fourth incoming phone numbers. He flipped through
the pages, finding it hard to concentrate, waiting for something to "jump
out at him"
—
Dennis's words. Nothing did. All he saw was a swirl of
meaningless numbers, mostly local with a smattering of area codes around the
country.
This was Dennis's proof?

Nick did a
quick approximation: there were five pages and maybe sixty phone entries a
page. That meant he would have to run a check on three hundred phone numbers.

Nick slammed
his hand on the side of the stall.

All your
life you've ignored crises in the hope they'd go away. They never did, and this
one won't either. No more hiding in closets. Time to face things head on.

Nick took a
deep breath, gathered himself, and left the restroom. He wouldn't go to the
police, not after what had happened, not after Dennis's warnings. Instead he
would follow Dennis' advice and go to the one person he could trust. The one
person who had the power to protect him.