full of lobster Newburg ain’t strapping on any suicide vests, if you know what I mean, and I think a few of you out there do… All right, I see I’m losing some of the wives out there tonight, so on with the big toast, which I hope will soon become the unofficial slogan of the summit.” Serge raised his coffee cup and voice. “Let’s give each other slack!”
The audience stared.
“Come on,” said Serge. “Get those glasses up!”
Guzman raised his. “Everyone! Glasses up!”
They complied.
“That’s more like it,” said Serge, raising his own goblet higher. “To slack!”
“To slack.”
“Louder!”
“To slack!”
In the back of the room, Malcolm Glide slapped himself in the forehead. “This is a disaster.”
Victor Evangelista collapsed against a wall. “I feel faint.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Four blocks from the Diplomats’ Ball, a high-rise hotel overlooked Bayfront Park.
On the fifteenth floor, a man who had dyed his blond crew cut lay on the bed, watching a blank picture tube. The bed was made and the man was clothed. An empty room-service tray by a lamp.
A cell phone sat on the nightstand. It remained still.
One floor below, another man lay on his bed. Another TV remained off.
The cell phone on his nightstand began to vibrate.
The man flipped it open and read a text message.
“!”
He closed the phone and walked to the dresser. A black leather bag rested open.
The man checked the contents, zipped it shut, and headed out the door.
Back at the Diplomats’ Ball
Victor Evangelista grabbed Malcolm by the lapels. “We have to do something! Serge is making a scene!”
“Let go of me!” Glide shoved him. “We need to keep our heads until we can get an undercover detail in here.”
“For what?”
“To capture Serge,” said Malcolm.
“And then?”
“Get him to one of our black-box locations and find out what he knows.”
“What if he doesn’t talk?”
“Either way, he won’t see the sunrise.” Malcolm dialed a cell phone for reinforcement.
“But look at all the attention he’s getting,” said Evangelista. “It’s too high profile to make a move.”
Malcolm closed his phone. “Chill out! Serge finished his toast. Now he’ll just fade back into the obscurity of the crowd.”
“That makes sense. We’ll hang tight. Time is on our side…” Victor stopped and glanced around. “Is someone playing the piano?”
At the front of the room, Serge’s fingers tickled the ivories as he scooted the stool up to the baby grand. “… And now, to celebrate our new era of slack, I’d like you all to gather round while I play an inspirational song for global understanding.”
“But, Serge,” whispered Coleman. “You don’t know how to play the piano.”
“They don’t know that.” Serge finished warming up and cracked his knuckles. “This song has just a few simple notes at the beginning that I taught myself, and when they start singing along, no one will notice the rest…” He looked up. “Everybody ready?…” A few slow, repetitive notes on the keys. Serge cleared his throat:
“Hey… Jude!..”
“Jesus!” said Evangelista. “He’s playing ‘Hey Jude.’ ”
“We have to hurry,” said Glide. The pair began working their way along the walls past steam trays.
“I can barely move in this mob,” said Evangelista. “Look how far the entrance is.”
“We’ll get there,” said Malcolm. “Just stick behind me…”
They continued pushing forward, brushing past a man with a black leather bag going the other way.
“… Naw… naw… naw… naw-naw-naw-naw… naw-naw-naw-naw… Heeeeeey Jude…”
Glide and Evangelista finally broke through the crowd. They reached the sidewalk in front of the Olympia Theater and waited for a black van.
Back inside, everyone crowded round the piano, getting sloshed, joining in. The song reached its climax.
Serge jumped up and kicked out the stool, banging the keys like Jerry Lee Lewis. “… Jude-ay! Jude-ay! Jude- ay! Jude-ay!.. Yowwwwwwww! Owwwwwwww!..”
More drinks grabbed off trays and downed. Everyone singing along at the top of their lungs.
Serge hit the keys a final time, stood, and bowed to wild applause.
Guzman slapped him on the back. “I didn’t know you could play the piano.”
“Neither did I.”
The president laughed again. “You’re quite the people person. I could use someone like you.”
“I have to take a squirt.”
“And you always get to the point.”
A line of people shook Serge’s hand as he headed for the restroom. Felicia trailed behind.
“Just be a minute,” said Serge. He ducked in the door. Seconds later, he stood whistling at a urinal. He stared at the ceiling. Then the floor. “What the hell-”
His urinal was next to the handicapped stall. On the floor, barely visible below the partition, the edge of a dress shoe. Turned sideways.
“That’s pointed the wrong direction for anything good.” Serge finished his business and tried the stall door.
Latched.
He got down on hands and knees. Inside, a man slumped on the floor. And a black leather bag.
Serge wiggled underneath and felt veins on the man’s left wrist. Then checked the bag.
The bathroom door burst open.
“What’s up with you?” Felicia looked him over. “And your tux is filthy-”
“It’s the doctor!”
“Who is?”
“How they’re going to take out Guzman!”
“Slow down,” said Felicia. “What’s going on?”
“Does Guzman have a regular personal physician?”
“He always travels with one, but we use several different ones.”
“The real one’s dead in there. Handicapped stall,” said Serge. “The bodyguards won’t be alert to the doctor. We have to find Guzman-and a guy with a black leather bag.”
They rushed back into the ball.
“What about the dead guy?” asked Felicia.
“I left the stall locked and pulled his leg inside so nobody would find him,” said Serge. “If panic breaks out, it’ll make the killer’s job that much easier.”
Felicia reached in her clutch purse. “Take this.” She slipped a small. 25-caliber automatic in his hand.
“There’s Guzman!” Serge waved urgently.
Guzman cheerfully waved back.
