Ray swallowed. “We freelance for him.”
“What does that mean?”
“We do…contract work.”
“You’re contractors?”
“Yes. No. I mean, we freelance. Sometimes Horton asks us to do things on the side. You know, moonlighting. Off the books.”
“What else has he had you do?”
“I don’t know, all kinds of stuff.”
Larison didn’t answer, and after a moment, Ray hurriedly went on. “Black bag work. Eavesdropping. Surveillance. Sometimes a hit.”
So far, Larison hadn’t elicited anything we hadn’t already assumed. But I was thinking about the four guys we’d dropped at the Capital Hilton. That was an important op for Horton, and we were no easy target, so I knew he would have cared enough to send only the very best. My sense was that Ray and Carl were backup, a B team. If they were pinch-hitting for the four dead guys here, where else would they have to step in? What else would Horton have in mind for them?
“What do you think?” I said to Larison. “Are you liking this guy? Feeling grateful for what he’s telling us?”
Larison kept his eyes on the guy and shook his head. “No.”
Ray said, “Look, I don’t want to die here, okay? This is just a job for me. I’m not trying to protect anyone. Just tell me what you want, I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“How long are you supposed to watch Kei?” I said.
“Horton told us probably a few days,” Ray said. “Until further notice. He paid for a week.”
“How long have you been out here?” I said.
“Horton called us four days ago. We flew in the next morning.”
That tracked with when we took out the team at the Hilton. Horton must have gotten paranoid-though obviously not without reason-and called on these guys just in case one of us learned about his daughter and decided to make a run at her.
“Did he mention any other travel?” I said. “Any other assignments?”
“No. He just asked us to keep our schedules open-to let him know if anything was going to tie us up in the next couple weeks so he could have first dibs.”
If that was true, it meant Horton was planning something else, or was at least planning for a contingency. But that was neither surprising, nor particularly useful.
“Nothing else?” I said.
“No.”
I decided to try for a long shot. “Nothing about schools?”
He looked genuinely puzzled by that. “Schools?”
I was disappointed, though not surprised. After all, it wasn’t likely Horton would have shared anything operational with these two beyond what was immediately necessary. But Kanezaki had said there was chatter about possible school attacks. And Treven and I had been speculating about the same thing.
Larison said, “Tell me how to get to Hort.”
“Get to him? I couldn’t get to him myself. But wait…wait. Maybe I can help you think of something. I mean, he lives in the Washington area, I think. I could call him, on a pretext, tell him-”
He was just blathering now. Scheherazade, without even a story to tell. “-that I need to meet with him in person, something like that. Flush him out for you.”
“I don’t think he knows anything,” I said to Larison. “There’s no real reason to think he would.”
Larison nodded. “I agree.”
Ray said, “Look, I’m really trying to help you. I really am.”
Larison said, “I believe you,” and shot him in the forehead. Ray’s head snapped back, then his body sagged and he slumped over against his partner.
“Maybe we’ll get something from the phones,” Treven said from up front.
“I doubt it,” I said.
Larison took Ray’s body by the collar and dragged it forward, away from the rear and side sliding doors. “If we grab Kei, it’ll all be academic,” he said. “But it’s nice that Hort keeps losing guys like this. At some point, he’s going to get short on volunteers.”
I hauled the other one forward and we covered them with a tarp. We could reveal them to Kei as circumstances warranted, but I wanted to have the option. No sense freaking her out without a reason.
I didn’t mind that the two of them were dead. If Larison hadn’t been so quick to do it, I would have taken care of it myself. They were certainly here to do the same to us. Besides, as Larison had observed, it was two fewer pieces on the opposition side of the board.
But I’d have to watch him with Kei. Dox had been right. It wasn’t just that he was professional to the point of ruthlessness. There was something beyond that, something that made me wonder if he took not just pride in his work, but also a little too much pleasure.
I watched La Baig, in full daylight now, from the passenger-side peephole in the van. Larison had headed out around the corner to a small commercial parking lot on Harold Way, where he’d do some light stretches and calisthenics like someone warming up for a run or doing one of the WODs he and Dox seemed enamored of. I estimated we’d have at least a full minute from when Kei first appeared at the corner of Selma and La Baig to when she reached our position-enough time to alert Larison and for him to react. Treven was still at the wheel of the van, waiting for word from me. We had energy bars, canned coffee, and big mouth water bottles to piss in. The only thing left was to wait.
At a little past eight, I spotted someone heading toward us on the east side of the street. There had been several false alarms already-a jogger, a dog walker, two young women probably on their way to the bus and then to work-and I tried not to get excited. But as this one came closer and the sun slanted in on her face, I saw it was her. My heart kicked up a notch. “Here she comes,” I said, without taking my eye from the peephole.
“Got it,” Treven said. “Calling Larison now.” A moment later, I heard him say, “She’s on her way.”
Treven fired up the engine. I kept watching Kei. Her hair was tied back and she was wearing cut-off shorts and a white tee shirt under a navy fleece zip-up. A leather mailbag was slung over her left shoulder. A beautiful kid, even better in person than in the photos I’d seen. Leggy, curvy, with a long, confident stride. Someone who knew where she was going and how she would get there, and who wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way.
Well, she hadn’t counted on us. But with a little luck, we’d be no more than a bump in the road for her, immediately felt and quickly forgotten.
I watched her pass Harold Way. There was Larison, jogging down Harold, emerging right behind her.
“Go,” I said to Treven.
He put the van in reverse, cut the wheel right, and backed up all the way to the sidewalk on the other side of the street-essentially the middle part of a K-turn. Not too fast, not too sudden, just someone turning in reverse out of the motel parking lot to head south on La Baig. He stopped just as Larison reached Kei. Maybe she heard him coming; maybe some vestigial portion of her brain sensed the danger he radiated. Maybe both. Whatever it was, she started to turn. Too late.
Larison smacked her smartly on the side of the neck with the palm of his hand. Sometimes known as the “brachial stun,” the blow is intended to disrupt the brachial plexus network of nerve fibers, or, depending on the location of impact, the carotid sinus. Either way, the result can be temporary loss of coordination, unconsciousness, or even, if the blow is sufficiently severe and well placed, death.
The van stopped. Kei staggered and Larison clasped an arm around her. I moved from the peephole, threw open the rear doors, and caught Kei as Larison pushed her into me. We hauled her into the van and had the doors closed behind us two seconds after. Treven accelerated smoothly south and made a right on Sunset, so calm and courteous he even remembered to use the turning signal.
Kei hadn’t lost full consciousness, she was just dazed. We pulled the mailbag off her, secured her wrists
