Greg Rucka - Patriot acts

"There's a lot on the north side, just off Reservoir Road. I'll meet you there."

I hung up and started driving. After a second, I switched on the radio, punched my way through the AM presets, finally landing on an all-talk station. Nobody was saying anything about any new crisis in the world, and that was a good sign, I thought, because it meant that whatever the reason Earle had canceled his trip out to Georgetown, maybe it wasn't a reason that would cause him to cancel his evening plans as well. And I needed him to keep his evening plans. I needed him to go to the Watergate.

If we didn't hit him today, I didn't know when, or if, we would get another chance. It had taken almost three months and Elliot Trent's death to put this together. Another three months would be all the more complicated, and all the more dangerous for us. It didn't matter that we weren't in the news anymore. The public's memory is for shit, but it's not that much for shit. Alena was exactly where she said she would be, wearing her custodial coveralls and carrying a ratty-looking backpack that went with the ensemble. She had cut her hair very short, and maintained the blond look, and I guessed that was why she'd had to cut her hair; it had been bleached one too many times.

I pulled in and stopped, leaving the engine running, and she opened the passenger door and slid in, dropping the backpack at her feet. I started to turn back to the wheel, but she surprised the hell out of me by reaching out and grabbing me with both hands. She put her mouth to mine, kissed me fiercely and for not long enough, then released me.

"I love you, too," she said. "Drive."

I pulled back onto Reservoir, turning right, heading once again in the direction I had come.

"Has he called you back?"

"Not yet. I'm trying to get confirmation about the Watergate."

"You want to try to hit him there?"

"You see another alternative?" I asked. "There's no way we can take him at his house, and I'm thinking the window on this is rapidly slamming shut."

"We can't dose the podium there," she said. "The first lady will be speaking, we can't take that risk."

"We won't dose the podium. We'll find another way. How do we get to your place?"

"You're heading the wrong direction. Turn left up ahead."

I took the left, followed her directions, turning towards Annandale. "You've already packed up?"

"There wasn't much to pack." She nudged the backpack at her feet with her sneaker. "Why are we going there?"

"We need to stage," I said. "And you're going to have to change clothes."

"Then we'll need to stop somewhere to buy some. How nice?"

"Watergate nice."

"You do have a plan."

"I'm working on one."

"If we don't do this today, we're going to have more than just Earle as a problem," Alena said. "I don't think Panno's friends will be very happy with us."

"I'm trying not to think about that."

"Probably wise."

My phone rang, and I handed it to Alena to answer, heard her side of the conversation. It lasted all of eleven seconds before she was hanging up.

"According to his information, Earle will be honoring his commitment to the first lady this evening."

"Call him back, tell him that we're going to need to know the second he's on the move, and then tell him that he's going to need a suit, and he needs to meet us at the Watergate."

She did so, relaying exactly what I'd said. There was a pause, and then she handed the phone back to me. "He wants you."

"What?" I asked him.

"I'm not playing on the field," Panno said.

"Like hell you aren't," I said. "You want to use a sports metaphor, here's one: You're off the bench. We may need you there."

"You're seriously going to try this?" Panno asked. I couldn't tell if he was impressed or worried. "You're seriously going to try to do this, there?"

"Hell yeah."

"If he's twitched-"

"Then I'll die trying," I said.

There are certain constants to be found in hotels around the world. They differ, of course, in levels of service, in the amenities they provide. Some offer twenty-four-hour room service, or same-day laundry, or an on-call masseuse, or a video library for your viewing pleasure. Some have concierge services that will literally bend over backwards to get you anything you could need or desire. Some have more, some have less.

But all of them-all of the good ones, at least-have two other things, and you can rely on them being there every single time.

They have a housekeeping staff, and they have a maintenance staff.

They have to. Otherwise, they can't call themselves a hotel.

It took us until three minutes to three to reach the Watergate, and because Alena had bought new clothes at Abercrombie amp; Fitch on Wisconsin, and because I didn't look that ratty to begin with, no one paid us any attention at all when we walked into the lobby. It wasn't crowded, but it was busy, and it was easy to pass without drawing notice, just a couple looking at the famous hotel, the woman carrying a natty, new backpack over her shoulder, the man with a small duffel in one hand.

We spent nine minutes walking through, admiring the decor and using the opportunity to scope out the hotel security. Once we'd made the guards and the cameras we headed for the elevators. Nobody stopped us because nobody had a reason to.

We went down, not up, and when the elevator stopped we got out like we knew where we were heading, moving down a slate-gray cinder-block corridor lined with laundry carts and pieces of broken furniture stacked atop one another. There were signs posted saying that this area was for employees only, and there was a bulletin board near where we'd exited with various notices posted, some of them official, some of them not. I stopped long enough to scan the board, and not finding what I wanted, moved on.

At the end of the corridor was a T intersection, and another bulletin board. We could hear the sounds of the hotel's engines working away, the physical plant nearby. The Watergate has two hundred and fifty rooms, and when it's hot, every one of them that's occupied is running its air conditioner. That's a lot of stress on the compressors, and it makes a lot of noise. Add to that the demands for power to all of those rooms, and to the kitchens, and the laundries, and the common areas, and the front desk, and it's amazing that more things don't go wrong in such places.

There was another corkboard, outside a locker room, and while Alena glanced through the door to confirm it was for the housekeeping staff, I found what I was looking for, thumbtacked beneath an admonishment to always wash my hands. It was the master room list, prepared each morning for the housekeeping staff, and it indicated which rooms were in use and which ones weren't, and in some hotels, it would even list the last name of the occupying party. The Watergate's list wasn't that generous, confining itself to providing room numbers and a notation as to whether they were occupied or not.

I heard a jangling of keys, glanced to my left to see a Latino man maybe in his late forties coming our way down the corridor. He was wearing a gray maintenance uniform, baggy on him, a radio on his belt beside his ring of keys, and I saw a lanyard hooked to his belt loop, disappearing inside his left rear pocket. He glanced our way with curiosity, but he didn't say anything. Class is a factor in hotels, and more often than not housekeeping and custodial services are handled by recent immigrants. The last thing a new arrival wants as he works his new job, trying to build a new life, is trouble.

The hallway was narrow, and he had to squeeze to get by, and as he did I reached out with my right hand and caught the clip on his lanyard between my thumb and index finger, squeezing to free it from his belt loop. It came loose, and I snapped my wrist up, and the key card the lanyard was holding came free from his pocket. I made the move as quick and sure as possible, and once I had it, I stuffed the card into my own pocket, the lanyard after it.