The Asset (5 page)

Kennedy opened them. He had seen donor tissue packs before, and what was inside looked nothing like those. In the dry ice there were six aluminum cylinders with safety-locked aerosol tops, like the aerosol triggers on mace cans. On the bottoms of the cylinders, there were stickers with nondescript medical insignias. When Kennedy peeled one off he found Syrian characters laser-cut into the metal. Someone had unsuccessfully attempted to file them off. He texted a picture of the cylinders to one of his father's old air force buddies, a guy who'd worked with his dad at the Missile Systems Center in LA. The guy wasn't 100 percent sure, but he thought they might be gas canisters. Kennedy wasn't going to risk it, so he called in an airport shutdown protocol, using Glenn's office hotline.

When the NYPD bomb squad arrived, they immediately turned the
case over to the feds and cleared out the entire terminal. Military munitions experts later determined the canisters contained sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent. Minuscule amounts of the toxin can kill several people and they had enough in their two phony transplant packs to kill a thousand or more. They had rigged the canisters with locking aerosol tops that, when activated, would continue to spray long after the terrorists themselves were dead. In addition to killing everyone on board and bringing down both planes, the gas would have made the crash site a lethal hot zone, killing emergency first responders as well.

The two men were taken into custody as enemy combatants and became honored guests at the Gitmo country club. Kennedy was given a lucrative contract renewal and a big fat hush bonus, and Glenn was still trying to clean the egg off his face. His decision to let the men go was a matter of record and his superiors were well aware of it, but they didn't fire him, for fear he would leak the incident to the press. It all got swept under the proverbial rug, along with other, less egregious terror attempts Kennedy had thwarted at different airports over the years. Glenn, of course, learned nothing from the experience and made no attempt to improve himself. Instead he got fatter on the government dole and perfected the art of resenting Kennedy.

Kennedy left Glenn's office, just like he had three years back, deeply worried about what would happen in the event of another, larger attack. The problem was, there were too many Glenns in other airports around the country, and now it was a matter of public record that US airports were patently unsafe. The notion of trying to stop a threat being organized by anyone with half a brain filled Kennedy with the sharp bile of anxiety. As he zombie-walked through the airport, his mind was racing in so many directions he could scarcely remember the departure time for his flight home. He passed a Hudson bookstore, his version of a local library, and saw a rack with Noah Kruz's new best seller,
The You in Universe
. He had read it twice already but dropped in and cracked it to his favorite passage:

If you view your enemies simply as antagonists, you narrow your vision and create a self-fulfilling prophecy of defeat. When you see your
enemies as emancipators, freeing you from the rigid perceptions that create needless conflict, your mind will open to infinite solutions, and the entire concept of defeat will cease to exist.

Reading the passage made Kennedy realize he would never be able to rely on TSA to respond to the threat because the “self-fulfilling prophecy of defeat” was festering at the core of their organization.
They
suffered from the narrow vision that creates needless conflicts. Not Kennedy. Many times he had proven he didn't need their help rooting out vermin. Alone, he could move quickly, unencumbered by bullshit policy and rampant employee apathy.

In a world of infinite solutions, he was one.

LOS ANGELES

Day 2

W
elcome home.”

Gil, the British concierge at Hotel Bel-Air, was waiting by the curb when Kennedy's Uber SUV arrived from LAX a few minutes after midnight. The Bel-Air was one of Kennedy's favorite hotels. It was an oasis of Mediterranean architecture in the Westside hills, with sweeping views of Los Angeles, from the heat mirage of downtown all the way to Malibu. Although it was one of the most exclusive hotels in the city, it had managed to avoid becoming a celebrity petting zoo. For Kennedy, it was an exquisite escape, allowing him to turn the volume of LA down to zero and breathe.

“Thank you, Gil. Miss me?”

“Of course. This place is never the same without you.”

“Like Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
.”

Gil laughed as he slid Kennedy's garment bag from the back of the SUV. Aaron, the doorman, opened the tastefully gilded entrance, giving Kennedy a familiar smile.

“Nice to see you again, sir.”

“You too. I see you guys kept up the old dump in my absence,” Kennedy joked.

“We managed to chase
most
of the rats away,” Gil flipped back as they walked into the lobby.

“Hi, stranger,” said Julia, the front desk manager.

She gave him a hug and an air-kiss on the cheek.

“Welcome back—”

Gil shot her a look.

“I mean welcome
home
,” Julia corrected herself.

“What's with this welcome home business? Did Walmart buy you out?”

Julia and Aaron laughed.

“Say good night to the children,” Gil said and led Kennedy down the arched hallway.

Kennedy preferred the Canyon Suite because its warm wood and stone interior made him feel like he was in a well-appointed cave, protected from the meat eaters outside. On that evening, the glittering sea of lights from Hollywood and West Los Angeles radiated through the wide picture windows. Gil brought a basket full of papers from the kitchenette and gently placed it on the dining table.

“How about a drink?”

“What's all this?” Kennedy asked.

“Just your mail,” Gil said somewhat tentatively as he escaped into the kitchen.

“I can see that. How did it get here?”

Gil emerged with a full tumbler of Japanese whiskey swirling around an ice ball.

“Funny story that.” Gil seemed a bit nervous. “The Mailboxes n' More down on Santa Monica, where you had your post office box, went bankrupt. And you had listed this hotel as a physical address when you were shipping something that didn't allow PO return, so they sent everything here before they shut down.”

“Bankrupt.” Kennedy sipped his whiskey.

“That's what they said. I took the liberty of putting dinner in the oven,” Gil said, attempting to change the subject.

“The whole welcome home thing makes sense now. Looks like you figured out my dirty little secret.”

“How do you mean?” Gil said, walking into the kitchenette.

Kennedy followed him and leaned against the counter while Gil pulled dinner from the oven.

“That smells unbelievable.”

“Porterhouse steak, medium rare. Asparagus. Béarnaise on the side. Do you want to eat on the patio? The weather is still behaving reasonably.”

Kennedy set the basket of papers down. “I should have said something about this. I hope it wasn't any trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” Gil said.

“I guess I was embarrassed about not having an
actual
home,” Kennedy said, shooting the elephant in the room. “That's why I told you guys I was from out of town. It's weird, I know. Everyone should have an address, right? I did for a while—a great place in Westwood. Amazing view. But the dust, you know. After three weeks. It's like a quarter-inch thick. And things would happen while I was gone. Water leaks, a smoke alarm the police had to shut off. My neighbors left hate mail under my door. And when you get there, it's empty. A big fat echo. Being on the road so much, I'm just used to this, you know, hotel life. It's more home than home was.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Gil replied. “Of course, it's none of my damn business, but I do appreciate the courtesy. And for what it's worth, I think you made the right choice. Why should you have to deal with all that nonsense when we can take care of you right here? Better than you can take care of yourself, I would guess.”

“I'll drink to that,” Kennedy said. He poured Gil a drink and they toasted.

Gil took dinner to the patio and set it up, then came back inside and refreshed Kennedy's glass.

“Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?”

“No. Gil, this is great. The whiskey. The dinner. Not judging my weird life. Way beyond the call of duty. Thank you.”

Kennedy reached into his pocket and Gil held up a hand.

“Please, I deal with a universe of assholes every day, if you don't mind me saying so. Being a real person is gratuity enough. And from now on, this is your address for as long as you like. No more dirty PO boxes. Deal?”

“Deal,” Kennedy said, feeling the clean whiskey buzz radiate through him.

Gil bowed slightly and headed for the door.

“Hey, Gil,” Kennedy said, “will you marry me?”

Gil laughed. “Hell no, you're never home.”

Day 3

G
ood morning, I'm Nic Harcourt.
Happy Friday. Welcome to the KCSN morning show. This morning I have a very special guest in the studio, Los Angeles–based singer-songwriter . . .”

Kennedy woke up with a start, looking for the source of the noise, and realized it was coming from the hotel clock radio. He had forgotten to unplug it the night before. After years of living in hotels, he kicked himself for making such a rookie mistake. Especially since, for once, he'd been getting some sleep.

Who uses those fucking things anymore?

He tried to cover his head with a pillow, knowing that too much physical movement would kick his light-sleeper brain into high gear, but it didn't work. He was wide-awake and he was not pleased.

Kennedy eyeballed the device, a refreshed version of the archaic red-eyed monsters of the past, with convenient connectors and a hi-fi speaker, and wondered how it would look in pieces on the Saltillo tile floor. He rolled over, fully prepared to pay for the damage he was about to inflict, and the music that started coming out of it actually slowed his roll. A woman sang with acoustic guitar accompaniment and it was haunting and beautiful. She had the sweet melodic range of a soul singer with a slight rock 'n' roll rasp that rubbed you the right way. Kennedy turned up the volume and listened intently, struck by the familiar sound but unable to place it.

She played two more songs after that and Kennedy listened while the automatic coffeemaker in the kitchenette that Gil had programmed for him kicked on. The aroma of the freshly ground beans cleared away the cobwebs. Morning sunlight was beginning to pool optimistically in places all over the room. Inspired, he fired up an app on his phone to try to identify the singer on the radio. When he saw her name appear on his screen, he did a double take. It was Love.

Sierra Narváez had been Kennedy's sister Belle's best friend in high school. They met freshman year and were instantly thick as thieves, held together by a lightning weld of common interests and a desire to subvert everything about school, youth, society, and whatever had any semblance of hypocrisy, which was just about everything in Los Angeles.

For as long as Kennedy could remember, Sierra had been an excellent guitar player and singer and aspired to be a recording artist. Her wealthy, mixed parents—Basque father, mother from St. Croix—fostered her musical aspirations from a young age by exposing her to everything from baroque chamber music to Motown to punk. Two years after Belle died, Sierra signed with a label. She had a couple of
Billboard
singles at eighteen, and seemed destined for stardom, but found herself being sucked into a world of drugs, sleazy older executives with foul intentions, and artistic imprisonment. So one day she just up and quit, changed her name to Love, and started over, building her career from the ground up, on her terms. Kennedy had very little contact with her in her twenties but heard stories from old friends about how she made a few albums on indie labels, did small-club touring, and worked as a session player.