I told it as plainly as I could, about leaving the van and sitting in the bar, hearing the explosion, and rushing outside. I told him about the cop and her bulletproof vest, and I told him about Joe Billy.
Grafton felt my pockets, got the pistols out with my help, and passed them to one of the men in the car, who inspected them and slipped them into his jacket pockets. “The police officer is going to be okay. They took her to the hospital. She’s shaken up and badly bruised.”
I didn’t mean to hurt her, but there was no other way. He’d have killed me where I stood.”
Callie went to work on my head with a hand towel that the limo driver passed back. “We should take him to a hospital,” she said.
Jake Grafton looked at me with those cold gray eyes. “We can take you to an emergency room now or after we visit Dell Royston in his penthouse suite. Which do you prefer?”
“You got it, huh?”
Grafton grinned. He had a wicked grin when he was fighting mad, and he was that way now — I could see it in him.
“What about Willie?” I asked.
“Some of my friends picked him up and took him back to Jersey.”
“I want to be there.”
Callie made a last swipe at my forehead. “You may be bleeding internally, Tommy. Delay could be really bad. It could even kill you.”
“You only die once. Let’s go see the man.” Okay, I was being an idiot, but that son of a bitch owed me. I intended to collect.
Jake Grafton nodded at the driver and the limo got under way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The limo wheeled up to the main entrance of the Hilton and stopped with the rear passenger door precisely centered on the red carpet. The suits got out first, and when I followed them two more suits showed up to assist me, one on each arm.
“Who are you guys?” I muttered to the one on my left.
“FBI,” he replied in an almost inaudible whisper, as if it were a big secret.
That’s when the importance of the moment hit me between the eyes. If Grafton didn’t have Royston in the bag, the next ten to twenty years of my life were going to be spent in a very small place communing with rodents. Of course, I wasn’t really guilty of any crime except stupidity — and prosecutions for that are thankfully rare — hut it wouldn’t go down that way. Too many bodies. Someone would have to take the fall. There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my crooked mind that I was the prime candidate.
At two in the morning there were only a few stragglers loafing in the lobby. Pretending to be someone they should know, I ignored them. As our little parade marched through the ornate, cav-
ernous lobby, I was surprised to see it was growing rapidly. Over a dozen of us gathered at the elevators.
One of the FBI guys beside me flashed credentials at the two cops on duty. The plainclothes guy wanted to know about the rest of us, but the federal agent announced, “They’re with me,” in a don’t-screw-with-me tone that moved the cops out of the way. It was heartening to see such deference paid to a federal wage slave.
I looked at the plainclothes cop and said, “I’m with the government, too.”
If he was impressed he hid it well. He must have thought that with a burly escort latched on to each arm as I dripped blood on the carpet, I was under arrest. I sorta thought he might be right.
Admiral and Mrs. Grafton, Goncharov, and the suits from the limo got on the first elevator. My escorts and I got on the second along with the flotsam we had picked up in our voyage through the lobby. “Who are those guys with the Graftons?” I asked.
“Myron Emerick, director of the FBI, and Special Agent in Charge Harry Estep.”
“What’s Estep in charge of?”
“New York.”
In the tight quarters of the elevator I could smell myself. At least I assumed it was me, reeking of stale sweat and old fear. Yeah, I was really scared back there in that subway station. That was perhaps as close as I’ve yet come to being launched into eternity. We all must make that journey sooner or later, but like most folks, I’m not anxious to be on my way.
When we got to the penthouse level of the Hilton, my two agents marched me out of the elevator and down the hall. I could see that three of the agents had two guys who must have been Secret Service backed against the wall. The Secret Service types were examining credentials and talking into their lapels. I expected that; bad news travels fast. The only question in my mind was how many minutes would pass before the president and his
Secret Service entourage showed up. He was spending the night someplace in town — where, I didn’t know.
My escorts stopped twenty feet from Royston’s suite. A minute slowly passed. I could hear someone rapping on a door.
I was close enough to hear voices. “They aren’t here.” Darn if that didn’t sound like Dorsey.
It must have been, because a moment later Dorsey O’Shea walked past me. She didn’t even notice me. Her eyes were focused on infinity as she walked past the crowd and led the way toward the elevator.
Grafton paused in front of me. “They’re apparently down in Dorsey’s suite on twelve.”
I figured as much. I handed him my plastic-card skeleton key. “This will open the door if Dorsey doesn’t have a key. Unless the hotel management has changed the code.”
We trooped back to the elevator, waited for it to reappear, then climbed aboard. Dorsey went aboard the first one with the admiral and the big FBI bananas.
My back was hurting like hell, I was getting light-headed, and my scalp was still leaking. One of the FBI guys passed me a hankie, which I pressed against the scalp wound. As long as I was upright, I wasn’t going to complain. The next few minutes would have a huge impact on the rest of my life. I wanted to be there.
To tell the truth, I was also hoping against hope that I would get a chance to lay some hurt on Royston, who I figured was behind everything. Maybe one of the FBI guys would loan me his pistol. Strangling the bastard would have been fun, but I doubted if 1 was capable of it in my delicate condition. Weak as I was, I’d be lucky if I could bite him on the ankle.
I don’t know if Grafton or Emerick, the FBI honcho, pounded <>n the door, or if Grafton just used the master key I gave him, but everyone was piling into the suite when my escorts and I got there, so we followed the crowd.
It was a crowd. Dorsey’s sitting room was smaller than Roys-ton’s upstairs. I guess Dorsey went back to the bedroom. In a moment she came back. “They’re getting dressed,” she said, not too chipper. She perched on the arm of a soft chair.
Then she saw me — my face actually registered on her consciousness. Her eyes widened, then she averted them.
Callie Grafton went behind the wet bar and found a towel. She motioned me to sit on a bar stool. She wet the towel and went to work cleaning my scalp. I noticed idly that I had left a trail of tiny blood drops behind me on the carpet as I came into the room.
The room swirled around. I grasped the bar to steady myself. That was when I saw the bottle of cognac and two glasses, neither completely empty. I pointed at the bottle, and Callie shook her head no.
“Medicine,” I said with all the command I could muster, (jimme.
She rolled her eyes, then shoved the bottle and one of the glasses my way. I drained it and poured myself some more. Ahh …
Dell Royston came out in shirt, trousers, and shoes. Zooey Son-nenberg was right behind him, wrapped in a bathrobe with the Hilton New York logo on the left chest area.
“What in hell is going on?” Royston demanded hotly. He looked from face to face. The only one he recognized besides Dorsey was probably Emerick, because he addressed his next question to him. “What are you doing
