James Patterson - Gone

Thank you , he mouthed.

For all of it , he prayed, as a knock came at the glass at his back.

Ray Turned. behind the patio door was a heavyset Hispanic guy with a necklace of access passes over his Dodger-blue stadium-staff polo shirt.

“What’s up?” Denise said.

“I don’t know,” Ray said. “You stay here. I’ll figure it out.”

Ray pushed through the door. There were three other Hispanic stadium guys with the pudgy one. They were all staring at him funny. They were tense, Ray noticed. Like him, they were big, meaty guys, and they were watching him closely, like they were bouncers and Ray was going to give them trouble. Something was wrong.

“What’s up?” Ray said, squinting at them.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but we were wondering if we could start clearing the buffet,” said the one who had knocked on the door.

Ray stared at the guy in pissed-off shock. He’d paid twelve grand to have some privacy for himself and his friends, not to have his chops busted by busboys while Dodger history was being made out there on the diamond.

“No,” Ray said testily. “Come back when-I don’t know, the game’s actually over. Give me a goddamn break.”

That’s when the figure stepped out of the suite’s private bathroom.

“Sorry, Ray,” the man said, “but giving you a break is the one thing we can no longer do.”

Ray, looking at the man’s face, felt suddenly dizzy. Inside, at the center of himself, something slowly began to wobble like a coin spun on a tabletop.

It was Perrine. Divine Mother of God , Ray thought. It was Manuel Perrine.

Ray took a step back, raising his balled fists. One of the thugs pulled something out of the Dodger messenger bag he was holding. Ray saw oiled black metal. It was a Heckler and Koch submachine gun.

Manuel Perrine stepped over to him and put an arm over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry to interrupt the festivities, but it’s been a while, my friend.” Manuel grinned widely. There was a dreamy quality to his smile, a dreamy quality to everything.

“What the fuck is this?” Ray whispered.

“Come with us, Ray,” Perrine said, lifting a hot wing from the buffet beside them. He sniffed it and tossed it back on the pile. “And we’ll talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax. Of cabbages and kings. Or we can take care of matters here, if you wish to involve your friends.”

Ray swallowed.

“No, no, Manuel. I’ll go with you. Whatever you want. Just let me say good-bye.”

“Yes, of course,” Manuel said. “But no monkey business now.”

Ray went back out onto the patio. He stared at the flashing scoreboard. The crowd. His wife.

“What is it?” Denise said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Something about my credit card. I’ll be back in a second. I love you, OK?”

He kissed her hard, his lips burning, his fingers tracing her belly, and then somehow peeled himself away.

They led him out and into another suite down the hallway, which had its privacy blinds pulled down. Inside the door, one of the thugs slammed his head off the concrete wall hard enough to split the skin and began frisking him.

“Nothing,” the thug said.

“That’s quite unfortunate for you to go about unarmed, Raymond,” Perrine said, sitting and swiveling around in a Dodger lounge chair. “Considering how vulnerable a man you are.”

Ray stood there, blinking. He had met Perrine a few years back at one of his clubs. They quickly went into business and had become fast friends. He’d actually visited Perrine’s villa in Mexico. Manuel had been like a mentor to him, taught him how to move drugs, how to keep an eye on the cops.

“I’m out of it, Manny,” Ray said. “I don’t know what you heard, but I’m out of it. The whole thing. I gave it to Roger.”

“That’s precisely the problem,” Perrine said. “Roger is a DEA informant. What am I saying? That’s wrong. What I meant to say is, Roger was a DEA informant. Your recommendation of Roger lost me at least fifteen million, Raymond. In fact, during the seizure, my brother-in-law was popped. To add insult to injury, my brother-in-law was then killed about six months into his sentence by one of my rivals. My sister, still to this day, continues to make my life unpleasant.

“Do you see my dilemma? You screwed me, Raymond, and the sad fact of the matter is that I have to unscrew myself. And, as you well know, there is only one way to do that.”

“But I’m out of it.”

Perrine peered at him.

“Look around you, Raymond. You are very much in it. Such a shame. You were so good at it, too. The looks, the street smarts, the LA charm, truly a natural. Believe it or not, I had big plans for you. But that was then. Any last words?”

Ray’s face slackened with an almost catatonic bewilderment. He was going to die now?! Just like that!?

“I, uh. I, uh,” he said.

“Hmmm. Strange choice. I, uh, what? I, uh, therefore I am?” Manuel asked.

The thugs began giggling. A heavy blow to his kidney knocked him to his knees. There was a shriek, and then duct tape was smeared hard over his mouth and ears.

Ray stared down at the carpet, half unconscious with terror. He was unresisting as his shoes, socks, shirt, shorts, and finally his underwear were stripped from his body.

He had been adopted. That was why he’d been so excited about becoming a father. A lot of adopted people acted all forgiving about their biological parents, talked about how brave they were for abandoning their own flesh and blood, but not him. Once his kid was born, he’d been planning to show them. He was going to attach his kid to himself, hold the tiny, brand-new human in his arms and never ever let him go.

Only now he never would.

A hand grabbed his hair, pulled him up on his knees, yanked his head back, exposing his throat. Ray pinched his crying eyes shut as bright white camera light torched his face.

“This is what happens to those who stand in the way of Los Salvajes!” Manuel screamed as Ray felt something hard and cold bite under his right ear.

Parker and I decided to meet up for a late-night dinner when news of the Dodger Stadium murder dropped.

A little after one in the morning, we left the hotel and drove to a softly lit restaurant called Ammo, on Highland Avenue in Hollywood.

“I like the name,” I said to Parker as we sat at a booth. “After what happened at the ball game tonight, we’re probably going to need a case of double-aught buck and couple of boxes of fifty caliber to go.”

Instead, we ordered some drinks. Jack and ginger ale for me, a pinot grigio for Emily. I’d actually had a couple of room service beers after I heard about the ball-game decapitation, but they hadn’t worked at all. After seeing the now-national news coverage about the savagery committed in the midst of the Dodger home opener, I’d never felt more sober in my life.

On the ride over, Emily had told me that a team from our Perrine task force had been sent to the stadium, but we hadn’t heard back from them yet.

“It’s Perrine. We both know it,” Parker said angrily as she placed her unringing phone down on the corner of the table. “He’s marking his new US territory now and rubbing our noses in it in the process.”

Emily sighed as she stared out the plate-glass window. She looked tired. Pale and drained, as if she’d just given blood. The hours she was putting in would have taxed anyone, not to mention the unrelenting pressure from above. And still we couldn’t move the needle on what the cartels were doing. I shared her frustration. No doubt about it, we were getting our asses thoroughly kicked.