He holds up his empty hands, then crosses his arms like he’s hugging himself. “No, nothing else. That’s it. If he had a home address, he never gave it to me.”
I nod, and look into his eyes, like I’m checking to see if he’s lying when I already know he’s telling the truth.
“Okay, Mr. Deckman. Thank you.”
He looks at the duffel as we head to the door. “Sure, no problem.” He follows us closely…
“So… the rest of the money?”
I stop, like I had forgotten about it. “Yes, sorry. My associate here will deliver it when we make sure there isn’t any other way to get to your brother’s identity through you.”
“There isn’t.”
“I’m sure there isn’t. It’s just a formality. You mind if we give it to you in cash? Makes it cleaner for us.”
“No, yeah, I mean, cash is great.”
“Karen here will get back to you shortly. We, uh, we know where you live,” I say with a laugh.
He laughs too, like he’s relieved. As we step back off his stoop, “How… how did he die if you don’t mind my asking?”
“It’s classified,” I offer, trying my best to look apologetic.
He nods again, then gives us a half wave, drops his hand like he was embarrassed about that, and then just shuts the door.
Risina and I climb in the car, and she chuckles. “Okay, not all of this job is miserable.”
“No, not all of it,” I agree as I hold up the phone. “Let’s go find a place to call Decker and see if he might want to come say hello.”
We take him at the casino.
Downtown Detroit has three of them, one in Greektown, and two in the middle of downtown. The MGM is a Vegas-style complex, with a full floor of gaming tables, restaurants, nightclubs and a show theater attached to a forty-story hotel.
I call the number from his phone and know it’s going to be recorded, so I evince my best impression of his brother’s nasally whine when the woman picks up with “National Investments.”
“It’s Lance. I’m outta money. And these guys at the MGM, they’re not messing around. Tell my bro… tell Ro I gotta… I’m going in at midnight to room 4001 to meet these guys… just tell him I love him.”
I hang up. The phone chirps in my hand three minutes later, but I ignore it. I don’t remove the battery so they can pinpoint the location with whatever satellites do that type of thing. Since Risina and I are already checked into the hotel, it should paint a convincing picture.
I’m certain he’ll come alone. He doesn’t want his employers to know any more about his personal business than absolutely necessary, and certainly not about his deadbeat brother who got himself in a bad way with some casino heavies. No, my guess is he’ll come in by himself, pissed off, armed but not ready to shoot, not ready to play defense. And as a man who understands the value of surprise, I’m betting he won’t try to contact the casino owners ahead of time to straighten out this matter. If he does, my plan is sunk, but what better place to play the odds than right here in a gaming joint?
At eleven-thirty, Risina spots a man heading to the elevator, and after he gives it a cursory glance, he backtracks toward the reception area. His face is similar to his brother’s, but better looking-a stronger jaw, brighter eyes-like the superior chromosomes bandied together to favor him and exclude his alcoholic brother. Still, the family resemblance is there.
The top floor requires an extra security card to trigger the elevator, so he’ll have to request the floor, another indication this is our guy. Risina ducks in behind him, hears him request a room on the fortieth floor, and then
listens to the receptionist give him room 4021.
He thanks her politely and heads back to the bank of elevators. I’m sure he’s surging with grim energy, ready to confront the guys in room 4001 before his brother arrives, straighten out the situation, turn it ugly if he has to, whatever it takes to get his brother off the hook. After he presses the up button, the first doors to open are for the middle car in this deck of three, and as soon as he’s in it, Risina calls up to me.
“Middle elevator, up now.”
I’m on the twentieth floor. Above the doors are LCD readouts displaying the floor number of each car’s current position. I watch and hit my own “up” button as the middle car passes the tenth floor. We tested this a few times and ten out of eleven, the elevator heading up is the one that stops; the only exception was when one of the other cars was already on the twentieth floor. But the right and left elevators are elsewhere and the one rising should be the correct choice, come on. Except now as I look, the elevator up on twenty-eight is heading down this direction and if it gets here first, I don’t know what will happen, which door will open. The middle one continues to climb, please don’t let someone else in the teens press “up” and stop it. It’s moving up steadily, 17, 18… while the one on the right continues to fall, 22, 21, and then it hits 20 and I hold my breath, but it keeps heading down, 19, 18 on the way to the lobby and then the middle elevator door dings open. No one else is inside but Decker. I have a ball cap slung low so he won’t get a good look at me. I doubt he knows my face but if he’s working closely with Spilatro, I can’t be sure.
I move in quickly, pull my card out to clear security for the top floor, then shrug since the 40 button is already lit up. I move to the back wall as the doors close, hoping he’ll scoot up but he’s experienced enough to keep his back to the wall. I have a burnt cigar in my mouth to mask the smell of what I’m about to do.
This is different from my usual work, an anomaly because I don’t want Decker dead. If this had been an assignment, I would have popped him when the door opened. But I want him alive, unconscious. My left hand drops to my pocket, where the handkerchief soaked in chloroform rests. I can see him in my periphery, and he definitely checks me out as the elevator crosses 30 on its way to the top.
I have about ten more seconds to do this. I hope the smell doesn’t give me away, but the cigar’s scent is strong and should overpower the chemicals.
The elevator passes 34. I have eight more seconds, maybe five, but before I can pull out the rag, he says, “Do I know you?” and I can feel the pressure of a handgun’s barrel pressed against my temple. He’s a professional, a government professional, and he’s trained to spot anomalies like warning flags, so a guy on twenty pressing forty must stand out. He may not know I’m Columbus, but he knows I’m someone sent to shadow him, and he probably mistakes me for one of the guys who is about to hold his brother in room 4001.
The elevator chimes as the floor hits forty and in that little jostle elevator cars make when they come to a rest, I duck the gun and drive my forehead into his chin. He jerks back instinctively, and I pin his arm to the wall, the one fisting the gun, and I bang it one, two times into the back paneling and the gun drops. Unfortunately, by focusing my energy on the gun, my rib cage is vulnerable, and he takes advantage, pounding me in the side with his free fist, just as the door springs open.
He’s a strong puncher, even in close quarters, and he connects in my kidney with a rabbit punch that doubles me over. He drops for the gun but I’m able to kick it out the open door onto the fortieth floor hallway and luckily, no one is up here waiting to catch a ride down. The door starts to shut on us, and he dives for the gun, but I grab his leg and the door bangs into him before springing open again. He kicks backward at me and connects with his heel to my chest before he dives for his gun in the hallway.
I leap for him. If he gets to that gun first, I’m sunk and this whole damn thing is for naught. I won’t let that happen, can’t let that happen. He’s on the gun, but I’m on him, and before he can roll over and come up with it, I drive my fist into the crook of his elbow, snapping his arm backward. The elevator behind us closes and heads down again, leaving us to battle it out here in the fortieth floor foyer. I can see another car heading up this way, in the thirties and climbing. If it’s coming to this floor, we’re going to be spotted and who knows how quickly security will be here next. Somebody might have heard the scuffle and the hotel dicks are already on the way.
Unexpectedly, Deckman or Decker or whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is works his legs around my mid-section and squeezes my torso in a scissor-lock. I’ve seen mixed martial artists do this shit on TV, but it’s a new one to me. Before I know it, he’s forced me off of him, and I can barely breathe, barely move my arms as he squeezes the air out of my lungs. At the same time, he gropes with his hands, reaching behind him for the gun on the ground…
The elevator continues to climb toward our floor, 35, 36, but the numbers are going fuzzy, like I’m looking at them through a kaleidoscope. I pound my elbows into his thighs, but the muscles there are like rocks.
He keeps pulling us backward, just a few feet from his gun now, and if I’m going to make a move, it’s going to have to be in that last instant, when he reaches for his pistol and releases just a little bit of pressure from my
