Stuart Woods: Dirty Work

"Good."

"Now, you're going to have to organize a search of every floor between you and the ground, knocking on every door and checking out every woman who even vaguely fits her description."

"The FBI is already working on that," she said.

"Dino has called his people off your offices and is bringing them here, but if Marie-Therese has already made the ground floor, they're going to be too late to stop her. Our only chance is if she's still somewhere upstairs."

"We have a new description," Carpenter said. "She's wearing a pantsuit, color undetermined, and she has short blond hair and is carrying a large handbag."

"Got it," Stone said. "Call me with any news." He hung up. "She's now got short blond hair," he said to Dino, "and she's wearing a pantsuit."

Marie-Therese found the elevator key, slipped it into the lock, and turned it. She looked up at the floor lights. The car was three floors above her and headed down. After a long moment, the door opened, and she pushed the cart aboard. She looked at the buttons on the control panel and discovered that the hotel had a basement and two subbasements. She inserted her key and pressed the basement button. The doors closed, and the car started down.

To her alarm, it stopped again almost immediately, and the doors opened. A busboy pushed a room-service cart aboard, but her cart was between him and the control panel. "Push SB-one for me, will you?" he asked.

She inserted her key again and pressed the button. The elevator began moving down again.

"Man, this day is a bitch," the busboy said in Spanish-tinted English. "I got half a dozen carts to get downstairs, and somebody's stopping me every two seconds."

"Why are they stopping you?" she asked, alarmed.

"They're looking for somebody upstairs," he said, "some woman. That's all I know. Security is all over the place, and there's lots of other guys I don't know, guys in suits."

"I'm new here," she said. "What's in subbasements one and two?"

"Kitchen on SB-one, laundry on SB-two," the man said. "Hey, I buy you a cup of coffee sometime in the lounge, okay?"

"Sure," Marie-Therese said. She was starting to sweat under the two layers of clothing. And she was frightened.

Marie-Therese changed her mind and pushed the elevator button for SB-2.

"I thought you were getting off at the basement," the busboy said.

"I meant to go to the laundry," she said. "I got confused."

"Yeah, it takes a while to learn your way around this place." He got off at SB-1. "See you later."

"Yeah, sure." The door opened again at SB-2, and she pushed the cart out ahead of her. And there before her was something she had been looking desperately for: a sign saying exit, with an arrow pointing to her left. She pushed the cart in that direction, then followed another sign, turning down a long hallway. At the end was a door with an EXIT sign over it, but there was a uniformed, armed security guard standing in front of it. This shouldn't be too difficult, she thought.

She pushed the cart nearly all the way to the door, then stopped and took her handbag from the hamper.

"I'm afraid you can't get out this way, lady," the guard said. "I got orders."

She adopted the Spanish accent of the busboy. "Oh, I just want to have a cigarette outside," she said. "They give you a hard time if you smoke inside." She rummaged in her handbag, as if she were looking for her cigarettes.

"Yeah, I'm a smoker, too, so I know how it is, but I still can't let you out this door. It's orders from upstairs." He rested a hand nonchalantly on the butt of his pistol.

Marie-Therese stopped rummaging in her bag. If she tried to shoot him, he'd have a head start. "Oh, well," she said, "I'd better get back to work. I can have my smoke later." She turned the cart around and pushed it back the way she had come, looking for another way out. She found another exit, but there was another security guard standing in front of it, and he looked less friendly than the last one. Finally, with nowhere else to go, she went back to the elevator, put her key into the lock, and pressed the button. She'd try another floor.

Carpenter showed her ID to the guard and took the express elevator to the lobby. As she stepped out, Stone and Dino approached.

"She hasn't come this way," Stone said. "How's the search upstairs going?"

"Slowly," Carpenter replied. "She could have knocked on the door of any room and got herself inside, and it's a big hotel."

"Dino," Stone said, "if you can get a cop or two to watch the elevators, we could work our way up."

Dino spoke into his radio, and a moment later, two uniformed officers approached. Dino gave them instructions, then turned to Carpenter. "Okay, let's go upstairs."

"We'll take the other elevator, to the lower floors," Carpenter said, "and just do a sweep of each floor. We won't knock on every door. We'll leave that to the search teams and just hope to get lucky."

Stone and Dino followed her onto an elevator and rode up a floor. They got off and began walking the halls.

Marie-Therese got off at the basement level; at least it was closer to the street. But to her surprise, the floor contained staff offices for the hotel. A securty guard down the hallway spotted her and began walking toward her. Quickly, she got back onto the elevator, hoping he didn't have a key. The ground floor would be crawling with cops, so she pressed three. At least she could walk down quickly from that level.

Carpenter and her two companions completed their patrol of the second floor, and she started toward the stairs.

"No," Dino said. "If we get into the stairwell, we won't be able to get out on another floor; we'll have to walk downstairs, and we just came from there. We'll have to take the elevator." He pressed the call button.

"Do you really think she's still in the hotel?" Stone asked.

"I don't know," Carpenter replied, "but it's the only place we've got to look for her at the moment. If she got out of the hotel, she could be anywhere."

"Let's just keep at it," Dino said. "It's called police work, Stone, remember?"

"I remember," Stone said. They got on the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor.

Marie-Therese got off on the third floor, pushing the cart ahead of her, her handbag back in the hamper. She rounded a corner, looking for an exit, in time to see two men and a woman get off the elevator. They turned and began to walk toward her. She recognized them immediately and fought the urge to run. "Good morning," she said in her Spanish accent, as they passed her.

"Good morning," the three muttered.

They had gone a dozen steps when Carpenter held up a hand to stop them. A gun was suddenly in her hand, and she held the barrel to her lips. Silently, she pointed the weapon at the maid disappearing down the hallway.

Stone and Dino turned to look at the woman. From under her white uniform skirt, a black pant leg had fallen to her ankle.

"Pantsuit," Carpenter whispered.

Stone and Dino drew their weapons.

Marie-Therese knew she had been made. She had the maid's passkey in her hand, and, crouching behind the cart, she grabbed her handbag from the hamper and opened the door to the room nearest her, ducked inside, and slammed the door behind her.

A man emerged from the bathroom. He was enormous – six and a half feet tall, three hundred pounds, she estimated. He was dressed in trousers and a white shirt, and a necktie hung loose at his neck. "Yeah?" he asked.

She dug into her handbag and came out with the pistol. "Stand over there," she said.

"What the fuck is going on here?" he demanded.

Marie-Therese tossed her maid's cap on the unmade bed and began unbuttoning the uniform dress. "You look like you once played football."