One overweight guy passes me on the way out and one of the bathroom stalls is occupied. I use the urinal, then wash up, making the mistake of looking in the mirror. What stares back at me is a pair of dark, deep-set eyes and a pale, ghoulish face. Not my best day, clearly. Maybe I do look like Skeet Ulrich. If I played a cop on TV, I’d want to be one of those hardened, wisecracking veterans who bitches about his ex-wives and delivers the punch line after they find the body. Looks like he lost an argument with a switchblade. Well, I guess I won’t be having spaghetti for dinner tonight. Something like that—
Two things happen at once: the door of the bathroom stall kicks open behind me just as someone enters the bathroom to my right. Two men, one black and one white, both of them big and serious, both of them wearing dark suits and white shirts, converge on me simultaneously. I throw an elbow behind me and connect with some part of the white guy’s face. It feels like I hit some meat and bone, so it probably hurt. If I had any talent for this kind of thing, I would follow up with a forward kick at the black guy coming directly at me.
But I don’t. I’m off balance from the elbow toss, and the front guy has both hands on my sport coat before I can say ambush. He pushes me up against the wall, right next to the hand dryer, while the white guy recovers from my elbow.
“Take it easy, take it easy,” I say.
He thrusts a knee into my groin and I double over. Pain is a word you can look up in the dictionary, but you don’t know what it means until someone drills you in the balls. And this guy knew how to throw that knee. He got the frank and the beans.
Franks and beans! Franks and beans!
The white guy grabs me by the hair and stands me up straight again. My hands go south, primitive instinct to protect what’s left of the family jewels, while I try to catch my breath.
“This is your last warning, Benjamin,” says the black guy, fixing his tie in the mirror. “Stop asking questions about Diana Hotchkiss.”
The mention of her name shakes me awake, reminds me why I’m doing this. “I’m not afraid of Jonathan Liu,” I manage to say.
“Jonathan Liu?” The black guy chuckles, then looks in the mirror at his partner, who has a bloody face. “There’s a lot you don’t know about Jonathan Liu, Benjamin.”
From behind, the white guy delivers the next blow, a sharp punch to my kidney, and I crumple to the ground. Searing pain shoots from my groin and back and head, synapses firing in all directions. My vision goes spotty and I struggle to remain conscious. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to urinate again.
The black guy squats down next to me. “You’re going to go back to DC and you’re going to call the Hotchkiss family. You’re going to tell them you’ve made a big mistake, and you’re very sorry, but you’re sure that Diana is dead and you won’t be bothering them again.”
These guys know everything we said to each other. Whoever they are, their resources are unlimited.
“And…why…would I do…that?” I manage.
“Because if you don’t, Benjamin, they’re both going to die.” The man stands again, his polished wingtips inches from my nose. “Don’t you see the pattern, Ben? Everyone you try to talk to ends up dead. It’s like you’re pulling the trigger yourself.”
Speaking of pulling the trigger. They’ve kneed me in the balls and sucker punched me. But compared to the things that have happened over the last week, that’s like a peck on the cheek.
Point being, they aren’t here to kill me. These aren’t the same guys with automatic weapons who tore up my cabin.
So who are they?
I try to move, but the pain kicks up with the faintest of motions. I’m curled up in a fetal position on a skanky bathroom floor. At least I don’t have any question about whether I’ll be able to urinate again. A warm stain has spread across my pants.
“I’m not…” I start, but it’s hard to even speak, and anyway they’ve left. It’s just me, myself, and I in the bathroom.
“I’m not going…to stop,” I say.
Chapter 35
“George, you’re going to have to trust me,” I say into my cell phone as I walk through the covered parking garage near Reagan Airport.
“Trust you?” George Hotchkiss screams through the phone. “You tell me my daughter is still alive, and now you tell me to just forget the whole thing?”
That about covers it, yeah.
“Just for now, George. Give me some time to figure this out.”
“Why the hell should I do that? Why should I wait one damn second?”