Will Staeger - Public Enemy

Too late now, Laramie. You brought him here, your guide retrieved him from the airport-you going to send him home already?

Besides-he’s already hit on something.

“You still read spy novels as much as you used to?” she said.

Rothgeb smiled neatly, the motion more compact and precise than the unwieldy shrug in which he’d earlier engaged.

“Aren’t as many good ones as there used to be,” he said. “But I still partake of the occasional best-seller.”

Laramie slipped the plastic lid back on her half-drunk cup of coffee.

“Then let’s head over to the Flamingo Inn,” she said. “You’re in for a treat.”

The velociraptor’s name was Jesus Madrid.

Madrid was currently functioning as interim business manager of Borrego Industries. As with his late boss, he worked with no pretense, but lived lavishly-there was, it seemed, a great deal of money to be made in the shipping and fulfillment industries.

At the end of each of the six days since Borrego’s disappearance, Madrid followed approximately the same luxurious routine-one he would follow on this day too. At the conclusion of the workday, Borrego’s driver chauffeured Madrid to the spa he and Borrego frequented, and Madrid did as he always did there: shower, hit the sauna, subject himself to a full-body deep-tissue massage, subject himself to twenty minutes of rapture with the masseuse who’d deeply massaged his tissue, shower again, and return to the car. He listened to a jazz playlist on an iPod nano in the back of the car, waited while the driver pulled into one of Borrego’s take-out joints to retrieve an order of spicy tuna sushi rolls for him before ferrying him home.

It was closing in on ten-fifteen when the driver, armed with the remote, opened the gate to Madrid’s estate and navigated the quarter-mile driveway that took them up the hill to the mansion. Madrid’s home was a misplaced English Tudor of just over eight thousand square feet featuring numerous amenities-seventeen plasma screens, for instance. As he had the night before, and the night before that, Madrid retreated to the master bedroom to change into his workout gear-black spandex pants; Asics running shoes; a tank top with BI SECURITY stenciled across the chest-then retrieved a bottle of Gatorade from the Sub-Zero fridge in the kitchen and came downstairs to his workout room.

In size and feel, the room resembled your average suburban health club, outfitted with a circuit of weight machines, barbells, dumbbells, the latest in cardio equipment, and one glaring exception from the norm: a floor and wall design aimed at re-creating, in miniature, the soccer pitch used by Madrid’s favorite team. The field was Old Trafford Stadium, the team Manchester United. The surface of the floor, painted with penalty and goal boxes and a midfield stripe, was covered wall to wall with the latest in artificial turf technology-FieldTurf-its green plastic reeds of imitation grass longer and softer than prior generations. As was well known among football and soccer pros who played on it, though, if you were tackled into FieldTurf, it would still give you nearly as wicked a burn as AstroTurf had.

This turned out to be unfortunate for Jesus Madrid, since Cooper-having observed the velociraptor’s routine for a couple days running, and stolen in here to nab him-decided from his place behind the water cooler that his best means of subduing the Polar Bear’s bodyguard was to offer up a reciprocal tackle-and-pin maneuver.

Cooper got his full body weight planted into the small of Madrid’s back, pulled the velociraptor’s arms around behind him, and pile-drove the man chin-first into the turf.

“¡Hijo de la gran puta!” Madrid spat.

Cooper pretzeled both of the man’s wrists against opposing shoulder blades and stabbed a knee into the lowest vertebra in Madrid’s spine. With the hand that wasn’t occupied, Cooper snatched his Browning from his waistband and secured the velociraptor’s chin to its spot near the top of Trafford’s penalty box, barrel of gun to rear of neck.

“Ain’t payback a bitch,” he said.

Cooper wore a blue-and-green Tommy Bahama short-sleeved shirt featuring a recurring pattern of parrots and palm fronds, khaki shorts with deep pockets, and his travel sandals. He allowed himself a look around the massive workout room.

“You built a weight room on a soccer field?” he said.

“Sí,” the velociraptor said. “Old Trafford Stadium. Man United.”

“Man United, eh,” Cooper said. It occurred to him that Conch Bay’s staff of soccer-loving Brits, most of all Ronnie, would appreciate this odd expression of untold wealth better than he. “You know, you’re doing pretty well for a bodyguard. Especially for an incompetent one.”

A kind of grunt came from the tall FieldTurf beneath Cooper’s hand.

“Pretty safe guess,” Cooper said, “Borrego was having you handle a few more things than physical-protection services, he paid you like this. But I don’t care what else you are. It occurred to me that your mildly late, but highly effective appearance in Borrego’s office during my visit was a couple notches too casual. Born, the way I saw it, of endless and constant routine.”

“So what?”

“Just saying I’m guessing you were always around the man. Everywhere he went. All the time. Including the trip to Central America the two of you took to buy the artifacts Borrego was shipping to Naples.”

Even though he hadn’t really asked a question, Cooper, upon gaining no response, angrily mashed the barrel of his pistol into the musculature of the velociraptor’s neck and sharpened the prod of his kneecap on his spine.

“Who’d you buy them from, where’d they get them, and how do I find these people?” Cooper said. “Start answering.”

He thought he heard Madrid say something, pushed the Browning a little deeper into his captive’s neck, heard another mumble that lost itself in the turf, then, ticked off, Cooper stood all his weight on his knee and said, “Say again, motherfucker!”

Madrid turned his face from the blades of the turf with a grimace.

“I said it’s not that simple!”

“Go on.”

“Maldita puta, this fucking turf hurts,” Madrid said. Then, turning his head another quarter inch toward Cooper, the velociraptor appeared to Cooper to smirk-or at least a corner of his mouth performed an upward curl, whatever expression was intended. “We had a pretty good idea you’d be paying us another visit. So we’re ready to answer your fucking question. Just not like this.”

“No? Why not? I kind of like the way this conversation’s arranged.”

Despite enjoying his reply, Cooper found himself mildly disturbed by the velociraptor’s use of the word we.

“Because, gringo, there’s somebody else you’d rather talk to about it than me.”

“Yeah?” Cooper felt a slow sinking sensation in his stomach-he’d been had.

“Sí,” the velociraptor said. “What’s the expression you Americans use? Better you hear it ‘from the mouth of the horse,’ I think?”

“Close enough,” Cooper said, already knowing what was coming before the bodyguard said the rest.

“Then you and your expressions probably agree it’d work out better,” Madrid said, “if you get your answers de la boca del Oso Blanco.”

Cooper sat there for a minute, planted as he was on the velociraptor’s back. Thinking he was getting pretty good at being taken to the cleaners.

From the mouth of the Polar Bear.

Doing it quickly so as not to lose the edge, Cooper stood and stepped back, keeping the Browning pointed at the velociraptor.

“On your feet, then,” he said, “Mr. Man United.”

Madrid drove about the way Cooper figured Dale Earnhardt Jr. did, wending around so many bends at speeds registering near 140 kph on the speedometer of his BMW M5 that Cooper began to think he’d need to break down and take a dose of Dramamine for the first time in his life. Despite the speed, the velociraptor wasn’t frantic in the way he drove-listless, Cooper thought, was a good way to put it, Madrid about as enthusiastic about the many gear changes, braking, and acceleration leaps as the driver of an airport rental-car shuttle might have been about his wheel-bound duties.