The Deluge, page 99
“Goddamnit, Keeper, go get him.” This sounds like Jansi suddenly snatched the microphone away. You set off after Henry, grab him by the arm, but he rips free. Jansi’s voice is furious. “Henry, what the fuck are you doing? You’re going the wrong way. Henry!”
She’s still talking as Henry tears the glasses from his face and throws them across the marble floor. You’re horrified by this, checking every direction to see who might be watching. Every happy hour cocktail sipper, employee, and armed guard appears preoccupied, though. There is a gold plate on the wall with a sign for bathrooms, and he bangs through one of those doors. You follow.
It’s the most incredible bathroom you’ve ever seen. Low lighting, glistening silver sinks, and each toilet with its own full door for privacy. You hear Henry in one of the stalls, crashing around. You push the ARs up on your head so they’ll be pointed at the ceiling.
“Keeper? Put those back down. What are you doing?”
“Henry.” You rattle the door, but he’s locked it. “Henry, goddamnit.” You hear him grunting, Velcro shredding, and then a low moan.
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck no no no no.”
“Henry, please open the door,” you say softly, like you’re trying to coax your son. And it works. He pulls back the latch, and the door swings wide. He’s crying. Big hot tears spilling down pink cheeks. His hair is sweaty and disheveled. He has his side angled to you. He’s undone the Velcro straps and he’s showing you something on the vest.
“Get him back on track,” Quinn demands. “We have a perfect opportunity. Get him and let’s go.”
You’ve stopped listening because you see what has Henry weeping with panic: hidden beneath the Velcro, right at the love handle, is a small padlock cinching two metal eyelets together and holding the vest tight against his body. He was trying to pull it over his head but couldn’t. You reach for your own vest, Quinn’s voice buzzing in your ear, and rip open the Velcro. You have the same lock on yours. You didn’t even feel Murdock snap it into place. Henry slumps against the stall, tugging his greasy hair. You snatch the ARs from your head and press your thumb over the microphone on the temple tip.
“You think they locked it to us if it’s fake?” Henry hisses through his tears. “They’re going to fucking blow us up.” A huge glob of drool escapes his lower lip and drips down to his lap. “I want to go home,” he moans. “Please, I just want to go home.”
“Okay,” you say, trying to think. That feeling from childhood has never left you, that you don’t understand anything that’s happening or why it’s happening or how to change it or stop it, but never has that sensation been more intense than it is right now. “Okay,” you say again.
“I just wanted to get a bike. I just wanted to get a bike and ride to Windsor,” says Henry. “My cousin said she’d let me stay there. I just wanted to buy this bike my neighbor was selling. That’s the whole reason.” And he goes on like that for some time, weeping and babbling about a motorcycle he was trying to buy and some relative in Canada. It’s hard to think with him blubbering so hard. You put the glasses back on top of your head. Jansi’s railing at you.
“—you hear me? You need to move right fucking now! Our window is closing.”
“Okay, okay. We’re moving.”
You pick Henry up by the arm, but he refuses, goes limp like Toby during a tantrum. You take the glasses off your head, wrap them in one of the hot towels available in a little oven, and stuff them in a pocket.
“Let’s go.”
“What don’t you understand? These are real.” He smacks the front of the vest with both hands and this makes you flinch, half expecting it to go off. “They’re real!”
“I can get it off you. Now let’s go.”
Henry’s face changes. There’s enough hope in what you’ve said that he collects himself. His weeping slows a bit. You grab another towel and mop some of the tears and sweat from Henry’s acned brow.
“You’ve got to try to calm down,” you tell him. “Just follow me and be calm. Okay? Everything’s going to be all right.”
He nods vigorously but can’t stop weeping. “I just really want to go home, you know?”
The two of you leave the bathroom and you’re anticipating the Xuritas guards to be waiting for you, but they’re still at the entrance. The Tesla is gone, and the valets are milling and bullshitting, hands in pockets. No one is looking at you. Henry follows you down the length of the atrium, and even though the temperature is cool and pleasant, you are sweating like a hog. You approach a woman at Guest Services. She is pretty and brown-skinned with a tight black bun on the back of her head. A nametag on a gray pantsuit says she’s Arma.
“ ’Scuse me, miss.” She looks at you like she can’t be bothered. “We need to borrow a wrench real quick. I talked to a guy in maintenance, but we’re new, we got lost…” You feel this pitiful lie even as you’re saying it. She’s just staring at you. “And, um, where’s he telling me to go to pick up this wrench?”
She shakes her head. “You mean like facilities management?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” you say too quickly.
“Second floor, down the hall to the left.” She even picks up a map of the hotel, which is labeled Blue Crystal Mountain Resort, and draws a quick line showing your route. “You’ll need your keycard.” She’s looking at your belt. “You have one, right?”
“We both left ’em downstairs. Sorry. Could I borrow yours? Promise I’ll bring it right back.”
She looks more irritated than suspicious and quickly programs a keycard on a little device. You don’t understand why she looks at you this way, how she can somehow sense, even within this lie, your true nature. She hands over the card and goes back to not thinking of you ever again. Henry follows you to the elevator, where you use the map to navigate your way to facilities management. “Wait outside,” you tell him.
You scan your way in. There are several men dressed in gray maintenance suits chatting at a desk. They look up.
“Hey, do y’all got a nut wrench I can borrow? I’ll bring it right back.”
The guy in the chair hops up. The two leaning against the desk remain, arms crossed. “Sure thing. What size you need?”
“Better give me a couple. Maybe a twenty-three and a twenty-two?”
The guy disappears into a back office and returns with the two wrenches. He hands them over without question. Wrenches in hand, you exit, grab Henry by the arm, and lead him down the hallway.
“You know how to unwire a bomb?” he asks worriedly.
“What? Fuck no.”
Down the hall, you search for the first door that looks private enough and use the keycard. It’s a supply room. You spot a roll of duct tape and strip off a small piece so you can cover the lenses on the ARs. Then you perch them back on top of your head. You can hear Quinn and Jansi having a total meltdown.
“Okay, okay, I’m here.”
“Keeper, we need to know what you’re doing,” Quinn pleads.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Then to Henry: “Get your arms over your head.”
“Okay, Keeper, I’m going to say something a bit frightening right now, but I want you to stay calm.”
“I am calm.” You fit the tips of the two nut wrenches inside the shackle of the padlock. “Calm as a virgin telling the truth.” Despite the circumstances, you laugh at that old idiom of Raquel’s.
“Those vests are going off one way or the other. Understand?”
You begin to squeeze the wrenches together. This old trick you learned ages ago, the first time you broke into a pharmacy to steal Vicodin.
“And you’ve got to think about Raquel and Toby and your mother. Not only will they not get the money, Keeper. Not only will that vest go off, but you won’t be around to protect them. They will be exposed.”
You stop squeezing. There’s a muffled exchange on the other end, and then Quinn’s voice returns.
“We can have people in Coshocton and Dayton in a matter of hours.”
Henry still has his arms above his head, thrusting out his side, looking at you with wide, expectant eyes. Unlike Schembari and his thugs, these people somehow know where your mother lives.
“We’re your fucking king now, Keeper. We decide what happens to you, what happens to your family, what happens to everyone you know or love or care about.” Quinn pauses. Then her voice is kinder, less strident. “Keeper, death comes and goes. There’s no need to be afraid. There won’t even be any pain.”
You feel the coldness of her words in your veins. It’s the sensation of the saline solution when you used to sell your plasma, the opposite of the warm crawl of heroin.
“Okay,” you say, and then you finish squeezing the wrenches together, laying all your strength into it. The padlock pops, and you tear the busted metal fragment out of the loop. Tossing the wrenches aside, you carefully lift the vest over Henry’s head, and he’s sobbing even harder now but with relief, thanking you so loudly that you take the ARs off and press your thumb over the mic again.
“Thank you thank you thank you thank you,” he says. You grab his shirt to try to focus him.
“You need to go quick, Henry. Got it? Go to that desk up front and try to get a map of the area. I got no clue where we are. Then go into the woods. Don’t use any main road, they might look for you there. Try to change your clothes quick as possible. Then you can’t go home, okay? Don’t go near anywhere they know about. There’ll probably be cops looking for you too. Just disappear, okay? Just vanish.”
He’s nodding, but you have no idea if he’s actually listening. “Aren’t you coming?” he begs.
“I’m going to keep them thinking we’re both here.” You hold up his vest, and he almost recoils from it. “Go. Get a head start, okay?” He nods, weeping for this reprieve he had not thought possible. “Go!”
Henry throws open the door, looks both ways down the hall, and then heads to the right. It’s the last you see of him. You wait in the supply closet for a moment, take a couple of deep breaths, and then replace the ARs.
“You there?”
“What’s happening, Keeper? Did you hear me?” Quinn says.
“I heard.”
“You need to tell Henry to put his glasses back on.”
“I don’t think that’s gonna work.”
“Why not?”
“Henry’s not here. I busted him out of the vest. He’s already long gone.”
Now you can hear them heatedly arguing among themselves. You wait.
“Go find him.”
“Let him go. He’s a scared kid you chumped into this. I got his vest. Just let him go.”
“We could set those both off right now.”
You’re staring at a row of hand soaps, wondering if this is the last thing you’ll see in your life.
“You would’ve done it by now. I ain’t that stupid.”
Silence on the other end. Finally, Jansi’s voice.
“Do exactly what we tell you, Keeper. Uncover those glasses or so help me God I’m going to personally put a bullet in your son’s head.”
You strip the tape away, lower the glasses over your eyes. “I’m all ears.”
“Take Henry’s vest with you.”
The green line directs you back to the elevator. From there it’s back down to the lobby. You pass by Guest Services, and Arma’s eyes lift to you. You make eye contact and try to tell her with just your face that something is wrong, but of course she thinks that wrong thing is you. Outside, the sun bathes the atrium in its ever-warm glow. The trees sway with a peaceful wind. Guests talk in hushed, polite tones. As Quinn guides you down a hallway, someone steps into the green line: a thin, bald man with a pencil mustache. He wears a suit, a purple tie, and a lighter purple kerchief poking out of the breast pocket. His voice is light and lispy. “Hi, excuse me, I know you’re just doing your job, and I know we’re on high alert and all that, but unless you’re on duty in the front lobby, if you could avoid walking past the guests and keep to the service hallways? I thought that was understood in the contract?”
“Tell him you’re doing your job and you’re in a hurry.”
“Sure,” you say. “I understand.”
“Walk away. Don’t say anything else. You’re going to the service hall anyway.”
You grit your teeth and stare at him a second longer than you have to. You think about mouthing something to him, but you can’t think of what, and in that second, he nods and walks off. He doesn’t want to deal with you any more than Arma did.
In the service hallway, hotel staff wheel room service carts with covered plates and cling wrap protecting the water glasses. Tiny, single-use ketchups and mustards and mayonnaise. A few staff members nod at you, but mostly no one notices. Just a security guard, gun strapped to his hip, carrying a vest that’s not his, sweating through his uniform.
“Okay, now into the kitchen. On your left.”
Into the kitchen, past the gas-fired range and the cooks, you follow the green line, but your stomach doesn’t truly sink until you realize you are not going to some guest’s room. The green line takes you to the edge of the kitchen and two double doors.
“Through there.”
A waiter breezes by with a tray, and as the doors swing out you see the immense luxury restaurant on the other side, hundreds of people eating dinner, packed around a mirrored bar, and sitting on a veranda with umbrellas blocking the low sun. Black columns rise into a crème ceiling that matches the tablecloths and sets off the burgundy tile. Waiters and waitresses move between the tables, pouring wine, twisting the bottles to catch the last drop. There are children eating at some of these tables, coloring on placemats and picking at chicken tenders. There is the clatter of silverware and conversation and the wind moving into the dining room from the veranda that overlooks a small waterfall, part of the river you saw on the other side of the hotel.
You stand there, Henry’s vest in hand, rooted in place.
“Keeper,” Quinn says firmly. “You need to keep moving.”
“Why in there?”
“Through the doors, Keeper.”
“You can’t set these off in there.” You don’t know what else to say, so you add, “Please.” As if that word has ever meant anything.
“Listen to me.” Jansi again. “You don’t have a choice in this. You are going to walk into that room. You’re going to set Henry’s vest on the veranda. Then you are going to walk to table fifty-one. That’s to your left. It’s a table of four—two men, two women, and you’ll recognize the man in the blue suit with the gray hair. Do you understand? Tell me you understand.”
“No.” The sweat comes racing down your temple, and an incoming waitress glances at you as she passes by. “I can’t do that. I can’t do any of this.”
“Not only can you, but you will. Remember what I said. There’s no choice here.”
You begin walking back the way you came. Quinn and Jansi are both yelling into the com at once.
“These are not innocent people. There is no one innocent in that room—”
“If you don’t turn around right now—”
“That vest is going off one way or another—”
“So set it the fuck off!” you shout, and several heads in the kitchen turn to you. But it’s the dinner rush, and they are slammed. They’re weirded out but quickly return to their various tasks. You lower your voice. “It’s just people out there. With kids. They’re just—it’s just people…”
Your plan is to get outside as fast as possible, get as far away from the crowded restaurant as possible.
“Keeper.” It’s Quinn now. Her voice calm. “We can either set it off in the lobby or you can do as you’re told. Either way. The difference is—” You smash back through the kitchen doors into the hallway. “The difference is, will your girlfriend and your son have money to survive? Will your family get a chance to start fresh? Or will they all be dead before the sun rises in Ohio?”
You stop and buckle where you stand, holding your face. You want to scream so badly but don’t dare. You feel like your head is being ripped apart. You smack one hand against this pointless ornate wallpaper, elegant even in the service hallway. You stupidly wonder how long you’d have to work, how much money you’d have to save, before you and Raquel could afford a weekend getaway at this place.
“The choice is yours, Keeper. You can secure your family’s future or you can kill them right now.” She waits for you, but you are crying too hard to respond, grinding your forehead into the wall. “Keeper, turn around and go into that dining room.”
You sniff. You have mucus all over your lower lip.
“What about a deal?”
Silence from the other end.
“The man in the blue suit. Who is he?”
More silence, then finally, “What do you mean ‘deal’?”
“You want that one guy at table fifty-one? What if I let the rest of ’em go? I let all them go, then it’s just me and him.”
There’s a pause and then you hear a man’s voice in the background. Kai. He must have been with them the whole time. “I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.”
“No!” Jansi cries. “What are you talking about? No one in that room is innocent! These are the people we’re at war with. There is not one person in that room who doesn’t have blood on their hands.”
“Just calm down,” says Kai.
“She’s right,” says Quinn, and then they are all arguing, and you just stand there with your head against the wall waiting to see what they decide. You try to interrupt them.
“I’m betting that without the one guy, this plan will mostly be for nothing. So maybe I hold more cards than you think.”
This quiets them. They mute the conversation on their end, and you wait. Finally, Quinn comes back on.
“We have a compromise.”
And you actually laugh. You laugh right out loud.
“What’s so funny?”
“Everything,” you tell her. “Just about fucking everything.”
“We want the other three people at the table,” says Quinn. “You can let everyone else go, but all four of them at that table stay.”
