The Detachment

“There are…things,” I said. “Things that weigh on me. What a friend of mine calls ‘the cost of it.’ You know what I’m talking about?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“I don’t know about you, but when I look back, and I’m being honest with myself, which mostly I try to do, it occurs to me that I’ve done more bad in the world than I’ve ever done good.”

I wondered why I’d said that to him. I’d never thought it before. At least not in those words. Was it what Horton had said to me over breakfast that morning?

I thought he was going to blow it off. Instead, he said, “I have…dreams. Really bad ones. Related to some of the shit I’ve done, the shit that’s on those tapes. I couldn’t tell you the last time I lay down at night without dreading what I would face in my sleep. Or the last time I slept through the night without waking up covered in sweat and going for the weapon on the bedstand next to me. The truth is…”

In the dark, I saw his teeth gleam in a smile that faltered into a grimace.

“The truth is,” he went on, “I’m pretty fucked up. But what can you do? A shark has to keep swimming, or it dies.”

I thought of Midori, the mother of my son. “You know, I once said the same thing to a woman I was trying to explain myself to.”

“Yeah? Did she understand?”

I remembered the last time I’d seen her, in New York, and what she’d tried to do just beforehand.

“That would be a no,” I said, and we both laughed.

My phone buzzed. Dox. I picked up and said, “What’s the status?”

“Our diners have just left the restaurant. A nice familial hug goodnight, and our guy is currently on his way to your position alone and on foot, ETA ten minutes. Guess you were right about the clubbing.”

“Good. Have-”

“Already done. Our friend on the scooter is zigzagging the street near you. He’ll see the diner when he’s one minute out. When you get a buzz from scooter man, it’s a one-minute ETA. And I’ll move in close but not too close in case you need me. Good luck.”

“Okay, good.” I clicked off and said to Larison, “Less than ten minutes. Let’s get in position.”

We headed toward the hotel. As we neared the end of Sonnenfels-gasse, just two blocks away, a uniformed cop turned the corner, heading toward us. I wasn’t unduly alarmed-there was no reason for him to pay any particular attention to us, and Larison and I had already established that “inebriated drinking companions” would be our cover for action in case we were stopped. I retracted into my harmless Japanese persona and prepared to just walk on by in the shadows.

But a few meters away, he called out, “Hey.” Larison, I realized, and that damn danger aura he put out. The cop must have keyed on it, consciously or unconsciously.

I gave him a small, unsteady wave and moved to go around, but he stopped and put up his hand to indicate we should do the same. Shit.

The cop said, “Wo gehen Sie so Spat noch hin?” I shook my head. Even if I’d understood his words, and I didn’t, I would have pretended not to. The less basis we had for engagement, the more likely he would be to give up in frustration, or otherwise to lose interest and move on.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he said, and this I did understand. Do you speak German?

Larison answered in slurred Spanish: “Solamente espanol, y un poco de ingles.” Only Spanish, and a little English-close enough to the Portuguese I spoke from my time in Brazil to be easily comprehensible.

The cop looked at me. I said, “Mit Schlag?”

I was hoping he would smile at that and move on, but he didn’t. He said, in English now, “You are at hotel? Here?”

This was going south fast. Our cover was solid and we hadn’t committed any crimes, but I didn’t want a cop taking a close look at any of us. And if he detained us much longer, we wouldn’t be in position in time to intercept Finch at the hotel.

“Hotel?” he said again. “Here?”

I shook my head and said in Japanese-accented English, “The Sacher Vien.” It was a famous hotel in the center of the city, though not, of course, one where any of us was actually staying.

Larison said, “Voy a vomitar.” I’m going to vomit.

I glanced over at him to see where he was going with this. He clamped a hand over his mouth as though trying to dam a rising tide of puke.

No, I thought. Don’t take out the cop. If we do, we can’t do Finch…

Larison groaned through his fingers. The cop said, “Was zum Teufel?”

Larison’s body convulsed, his head shooting forward, his ass jerking back. Vomit spewed from his mouth all over his shoes.

The cop jumped back and cried out, “Verdammt nochmal!”

Larison straightened, gasping, his cheeks puffing, his hands massaging his stomach. A perfect pantomime of a drunken man about to blow for the second time in as many seconds.

“Hotel!” the cop said, pointing in the direction we’d been walking. “Go to hotel. Jetzt! Now!”

“Yes,” I said, thinking, thank God. “Hotel.”

Larison groaned again. The cop stepped to the side and again gestured angrily in the direction we’d been walking. I took Larison’s arm and led him past. From behind us, I heard the cop muttering something disgustedly. I imagined it was along the lines of asshole was lucky he didn’t puke on my shoes.

“Nice going,” I said, when we had turned the corner. “What did you do, finger in your throat?”

“Yeah. While I was clutching my face.” He coughed and spat.

“For a minute there, I thought you were gearing up to drop him. Which would have been a mistake.”

“No, I just wanted to dare him to pull me into his cruiser with puke all over my shoes. I had a feeling he’d realize he had more important things to do.”

“Where did you learn your Spanish?”

“Ops. Latin America.” It was a sufficiently vague description to make clear he didn’t want to talk about it more. Not that we had time.

“We still have a few minutes,” I said. “Quick, knock the puke off your shoes. We don’t want to track anything into the hotel.”

He whacked his feet against the side of a building a few times, then stamped and scraped his soles along the ground. Between that and the two hundred meters we still had to walk, we’d be fine.

Treven buzzed my mobile just as we arrived at the hotel entrance. ETA one minute. Cutting it a little close, but still manageable. Larison stayed outside, hunkering down between two parked cars just a few meters from the doorway, as I pulled on my gloves and went in. The corridor was still satisfyingly quiet. I quickly slipped into one of the coveralls that had been left on the tarp. They were a little large, but not excessively so. I grabbed a can of paint and a paintbrush and the length of plastic sheeting I’d cut, put the paint can on the floor next to the interior hotel entranceway, and started running the brush up and down the wall like a painter on the midnight shift. The whole thing was sufficiently incongruous to give Finch pause while he tried to sort it through, but by the time he had figured out what was wrong with this picture, it would already be too late.

A moment later, I heard the exterior door open. I glanced right and saw Finch on his way in, then looked back to the work I was ostensibly engaged in, not wanting to alarm him by paying him undue attention. In my peripheral vision, I watched him come closer. Five meters. Four. Three.

He slowed, perhaps in concern at what the hell a workman was doing here, alone and this late at night. But then the exterior door opened behind him. I glanced right again and saw Larison coming in, looking formidable, purposeful, and deadly. Finch turned and I knew that for the next half second, his mind would be fully occupied with trying to place Larison’s face; realizing he’d seen it earlier, in Cafe Pruckel; weighing whether this could be happenstance or whether he should be concerned; deciding that the man he’d just made twice was too