Greg Rucka - Patriot acts

If he knew he'd just been pickpocketed, he didn't show it, and he didn't stop.

Alena moved back to my side, and I indicated the list, and she pulled it from the board. I glanced after the man who'd passed us by once more. He was heading for one of the service elevators, and he wasn't looking back, so I checked the direction he'd come, and saw a second locker room. While Alena scanned the papers she'd freed from the corkboard, I peered into the room, and confirmed it was the men's locker room, and that it was empty. No one was within. If the shift hadn't changed at three, then it likely wouldn't be changing until four, at the earliest. I stepped inside, pulled Alena in after me, and closed the door.

Here's something else you can count on in hotels. They have security in the lobby, and maybe they have a security office on the ground floor, or in the basement, or in the subbasement. But that's it. Where the worker bees congregate, they don't have cameras; certainly not in the locker rooms.

"Anything?" I asked her.

She was scanning the list quickly. "There are over one hundred suites."

"It'll be marked, it'll have a notation of some sort. 'VIP' or a star or something."

She grunted her agreement, kept scanning the pages. While she did so, I moved along the lockers. Most of them were padlocked closed, but a couple weren't, and in one of the unlocked I found a maintenance jumpsuit that I thought I could squeeze into. I pulled it free and bundled it up, stuffing it into my go-bag.

"They're marked with a star, you were right," Alena said. "There are four of them."

"Unoccupied?"

"Two."

"It'll be one of those," I said.

She glanced from the sheets to me, worry in her eyes. "You're so certain."

"He blocked two and a half hours for this on his schedule. He's the featured speaker; he's the main attraction. They're catering to him, they'll have a suite for him to rest or get some work done, whatever, but he sure as hell isn't going to stand around outside the banquet hall waiting to be called and they're not going to ask him to, just in case the dinner goes long. They'll call him when they're ready. He'll go down then."

A slight smile played at the corner of her mouth. "All right."

I pulled the key from my pocket, handed it to her.

"Hurry back," I told her. She was gone for thirty-seven minutes, during which time three things happened.

The first was that I got out of my pants and into the maintenance uniform. It fit, but only barely, and I had to leave the front unzipped. I swapped shirts with one from my go-bag, a plain white T, then took a moment to drop it to the cement floor and rub up some dirt. Then I put it on.

The second thing was that Panno called. The reception was bad, the phone giving me almost no signal.

"He's on his way to the hotel." His voice was choppy with static.

I checked my watch. "Can you beat him here?"

"Not easily."

"Try," I told him, and hung up.

The third thing was that the day shift began to file in, making for their lockers. I caught a couple of eyeballs, including one from the same man whose pocket I'd picked.

"How you doing?" I asked him.

"I'm all right." His accent was thick, more Central American than Mexican.

I offered him my hand, smiling. "Jerry," I said. "Nice to meet you."

"Ramon. You're new?"

"Just starting tonight. Don't know where half of anything is."

One of the other crew, in the midst of changing, laughed. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"They didn't even give me orientation," I said, keeping it cheerful. "Figure I get that after my first check?"

"If you're lucky," another one said. "Let me get changed, I'll show you where everything is. My name's Monte."

"Man, Monte, that would kick ass," I said. "Seriously, I'd appreciate that more than you know." During the course of my orientation I picked up a radio, a toolbox, and a can of WD-40. Then I went to use the bathroom, and parked myself on the toilet until I heard the last of them leave the locker room. I made a lot of noise with the toilet paper, flushed, and came out to find I was alone in the room. I moved my new toolbox to the nearest bench, popped it open, and checked the supplies. Most of them didn't interest me, but there was a rag, stained but dry, and I stuffed that in the breast pocket of the coveralls.

The radio was a Motorola, and I switched it on, then put it back on my belt. There was a little traffic, and I listened to it carefully, trying to get a handle on how the calls were taken, how they were dispatched. The dispatcher was a woman named Janet, and she sounded pleasant enough. No one was using codes of any sort, and the communications I heard were straightforward and verged on terse.

Alena peered into the locker room then, her expression curious and a little frightened, but as soon as she saw me she dropped the act and came the rest of the way inside.

"Done," she told me as she handed me back the master key on its lanyard.

"He's on his way, might be here already. Panno's supposed to call from the lobby. You want to head up there, you probably should."

"You're going to wait down here?"

"Safer," I said. "Here I'm one of the workers and we're united. Upstairs, management might notice me, and maintenance just standing around in the lobby is going to draw attention. Let me have it."

She slid the backpack from her shoulder, catching it and quickly unzipping one of the pockets on its side. "What if he recognizes you?"

"I'm hoping he won't."

"But if he does?"

"What do you want me to say? If he makes me, it's over; you know that."

From the pocket on the side of the backpack, Alena handed me a small metal container, the kind used for fancy breath mints and expensive chewing gum. I put it in my pocket with the key card.

"You need to get up there," I said.

She nodded, kissed my cheek, then my lips, and said, "Be a professional."

"There's a first time for everything," I said.

At nine minutes to six, my radio squawked, and I heard the call I'd been waiting for.

"One-four-four-one, air-conditioning not working," the dispatcher said. "Can maintenance get up there and check the thermostat, please? VIP room."

"Janet? Les. I can handle that," came the response. "Be about fifteen minutes."

"Thanks, Les."

I used my cell phone to call Panno. "Here's what I need you to do-"

"Wait," he said.

"There's no time to wait. I need this done, and I need it done now," I said. "You have to get to a house phone, you have to call the switchboard, the operator, and you have to tell them that you're in fourteen-forty-one, and that you just called down about the thermostat in the room. You need to tell them that it's working again, that you don't need anyone to come up, that they can cancel the call. Do you understand?"

"He's got guards with him."

I stopped halfway to the door of the locker room. "How many?"

"Three. I think they're all Gorman-North. Killer has a plan for getting one of them down here, but I don't know about the other two."

"Use the house phone, then call me back," I said, and hung up, and waited for my Motorola to speak once more. It seemed like it took a very long time before it did.

"Les, honey, you there?"

"I'm on my way up there now, Janet, tell them to hold their horses."

"No, they just called down to say it's working again, you don't have to bother."

"No kidding? Okay, then, I'm taking my break."

"You enjoy your dinner, hon."

My phone rang.

"Done," Panno said. "We've got one of them off the room now; your wife made a point of asking some questions about a certain guest at the front desk, and she was insistent enough to make them nervous. This guy's down here, talking to the manager."