Derek Haas - Dark men

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 ribs.

We slide another few inches and I’m able to reach my hand into my pocket and withdraw that cloth. The numbers above the door pass 39 and that car is coming and whatever he or I plan to do, it’s going to be in front of witnesses. He drags us the last few inches and his hands seize on that pistol, a little Colt. 22, and the pressure from his legs around my waist loosens only a bit. We both twist around at the same time, toward each other, just as the elevator dings, and he swivels with the gun as I swivel with the cloth, but I’m a half-second faster and I mash that cloth into his face and hold it there, pin it there, up under his nose and mouth. He bucks wildly but doesn’t fire that pistol and his eyes roll to the back of his head as his whole body goes slack, and his legs finally drop from my waist.

“You all right?” Risina says, stepping out of the elevator car, a Glock in her hand. I’m glad I was a half-second quicker or she might have witnessed something a bit bloodier when she emerged onto the floor.

“He’s checked into 4021,” she says as she stoops over his limp body and withdraws his key card.

“Then let’s show him to his room,” I grunt as I wrestle him up.

No sooner do we have him propped between us than a maid rounds the corner, pushing a cart. She barely glances our way as she moves down the hall. He’s not the first semi-conscious guest she has encountered in the hallway and won’t be the last, I’m sure. Probably not even tonight.

He comes out of it talking. My guess is he’s been conscious long before he opened his eyes. He was hoping we would give something away while he pretended to be sawing logs, but his patience went unrewarded.

I sit in a metal folding chair in front of him. I hit him with a full wet rag of chloroform-hell, I almost passed out just soaking the cloth-so I estimated we had a couple of hours to make arrangements. We bribed a member of the hotel’s security to take us down the service elevator and get us to our car in the garage. Five thousand dollars and a story about a Motown record producer who tripped himself stupid got us a wheelchair, an escort, and no questions. The lethargic guard might not have bought it from me, but one look at Risina sold the story.

It only took twenty minutes of driving around downtown for us to find what we were looking for: an abandoned warehouse. Shit, you could put on a blindfold and walk around downtown Detroit in any direction and find one. A cursory reconnaissance of the place yielded no derelicts and no security.

So when Deckman finally opens his eyes, it’s the three of us alone, and with his arms and legs fastened tightly, like I said, he wants to talk.

“You have no idea who you guys are fucking with. If you touch one hair on my brother’s head, I will open up a hurricane of destruction on you and your operation you can only dream of.”

I just stare at him with somnolent eyes, like I’m somewhere between amused and bored.

“Where is he? Where are you holding my brother?”

Still, I give him nothing, just let him get himself worked up.

“You might intimidate a lot of people with that thousand-yard-stare, tough guy, but I guarantee you are wasting it on me. We can talk and figure this business out together or you might as well pop me and get it over with, because the more you make me wait, the less lenient I’m going to be when we meet up later under different circumstances.”

“I could give two shits about your brother.”

He grins. “That makes two of us. You got a cigarette I can bum?”

I just shake my head and he shrugs like it was worth a shot to ask for one. I wait for him to strain at his bindings again, testing out their tensile strength. He gives up after a moment, and I lean forward.

“I want to know how to contact Spilatro.”