Mark Gilleo - Sweat

It was his third day off from surveillance. Hobbling on one leg was no way to try to kill a man. He had no idea if his ankle was broken or not, and he wasn’t going to the doctor to find out. Ice, compression, and elevation were the self-prescribed treatment for the dark blue bruises on the oversized appendage. As soon as he could get his foot back in his shoe, he would be back in business.

Besides, Peter Winthrop had proven to be a hard target. He didn’t come to the office with the same strict regularity as the rest of the building. Chow Ying had come to recognize dozens of faces coming and going, but in a week of stakeouts he had seen Peter get out of his black sedan-for-hire, enter the building, and move quickly into the lobby exactly one time. He had waited until midnight for him to exit the building, but the man he had met in Saipan over a month ago never showed his face. There were reasons. There was a private parking garage under the building and another exit facing the street around the corner. It was a lot of ground for one person to cover. It was impossible on one leg.

But Chow Ying had notched one hit under his belt in just over a week in the capital. And it had been a thing of beauty. No gun, no knife. No piano wire around the neck, no pillow over the face. And no suspicion. There was nothing on the news about a killer loose on the street, and there was nothing in the paper beyond a brief mention of an accident and the normal obituary. He now needed a plan to get both father and son, and when they joined their secretary underground, he could work on executing his long-term survival strategy.

He still carried the gun Mr. Wu had given him in New York in the back of his pants, his shirt pulled over it. But as a tool of an assassin, the gun had its drawbacks. He had never test fired the .38 caliber weapon, and with a loose pistol grip he couldn’t be sure of its accuracy. He had wondered why Mr. Wu hadn’t at least provided a new gun, perhaps one with a silencer, but deep down he knew the answer. Mr. Wu didn’t expect Chow Ying to live that long. When C.F. Chang sends you on a mission to the U.S. and threatens to take your passport, contributing to a retirement account is a waste of good money.

As easy as it sounded, walking up behind Peter Winthrop and his son, if he could get them together, and blowing their brains out on the K Street sidewalk, would bring an immediate and intense police response. He knew from experience that you could stab someone on a crowded street and keep walking before anyone noticed. It was done everyday in prison by inmates with shivs. But fire a gun and mayhem would follow. Guns are noisy, and a prominent businessman murdered in the midst of gunfire on the sidewalk would draw attention. Without a major distraction to give him a chance for escape, opening fire on a public street was his last option.

Chow Ying stood behind the crowd control barrier on the sidewalk and thought about other concerns. Men are more difficult to kill. They fight more, cause a bigger scene, take longer to die. He didn’t take any particular pleasure in killing women, but he had to admit they were easier to hunt, easier to kill. Taking out two men, one of who could identify him on sight, was going to be difficult. If he killed just one, the other would be suspicious. Two deaths in the same office over the span of a week would have everyone jumpy. Including the D.C. Police. Chow Ying needed to get them together. He was working through several scenarios in his head, all of them ending with a dash to the airport for the next plane out. With ten thousand in cash, he had enough money to run. Not far or long, but enough to get a head start.

The Spy Museum was a field day. He laid his fifteen bucks on the counter, got his ticket, and entered the new museum as giddy as a schoolboy. He breezed by the cryptology section and the biographies and busts of the most infamous names in the history of espionage. Agents, double agents, and triple agents. Heroes and traitors. He absorbed every word of the Israeli, Chinese, and Russian espionage sections. When Chow Ying entered the room named “Assassins and Tools of the Trade,” he slowed to a snail’s pace. He didn’t want to miss a thing.

Chapter 25

Kate curled up on the canopy bed and took turns outlining the flowers on the wallpaper with her finger and staring out the window of her old bedroom in the Sorrentino mansion. It had been four days since Jake had walked out of a known topless joint with a stripper in each arm. For Kate, the image was still as fresh as the wound. But love, passion, and the loss of both made four days seem like four months. Her cell phone now rang every hour on the hour, down from the fifteen-minute intervals Jake called at the first day after his untimely exit. She kept the black Motorola within reach, and at one o’clock she checked the incoming call number on the small display screen. Jake had stopped leaving messages when her voice-mail became full, but he knew she was checking the phone display. All he needed was one chance to explain himself, to lay on a little charm. He had the truth on his side. He had apologized to the answering machine for acts not done, for causing images of dastardly deeds. In his heart, Jake didn’t believe he was wrong, but he knew if he wanted to see Kate again, he would at least have to admit that he wasn’t entirely right. It was a compromise, the key to relationships. Or so he heard. More flowers, chocolate, and a little poetry were all on deck as backup.

Kate was planning to mope around for a week and participate in a little shopping therapy with her mother on her father’s credit. Staying at her parents’s didn’t affect her daily routine—riding ambulances out of the McLean Gardens station as an EMT four days a week, studying her medical books over coffee in the morning just to keep sharp. Three months was a long time for the soon-to-be-fourth-year medical student to retain the name and disposition of every muscle, bone, tendon, symptom, and illness she had memorized over the last three years. Her drive was remarkable, given the need not to have one at all. Riding ambulances, reviewing old medical books, and hanging out with Jake had been her plan for the summer. There was just something about him that she liked. It was everything.

James “Jimmy” Sorrentino was in the business of breaking impasses. The go-between, mediator, arbiter, and problem-solver. Real estate, construction, and waste removal were still his bread and butter, measurable businesses that kept him legitimate. They certainly looked better on the tax forms to the IRS than “self-employed problem-solver.”

Jimmy Sorrentino had been around the block and had the mental and physical scars to prove it. But like Sampson and Superman, he did have a weakness. And for the tough guy from Providence, Rhode Island, the chink in his armor came in the form of a five-foot-five beautiful brunette named Katherine Elizabeth, his only child, and more importantly, his only daughter. Seventy hours ago Kate had once again taken up residence at the Sorrentino house, spending most of the day moping and shedding the occasional tear. Neither of these bothered Jimmy. But the combination of mother and daughter was like a flame and an open gas valve. His daughter’s presence emboldened his wife, turning her from upper-crust housewife into professional nag. He couldn’t reach for a drink, or smoke his thirty-dollar cigars without someone telling him that he was killing himself.

Mr. Sorrentino gave Kate until the weekend to straighten herself out. She was twenty-six, not a teenager, and he had bought her a condo two years ago in the name of peace and quiet. He would be damned if Kate was going to live at his house again, energizing his wife to run her nails down his psychological chalkboard, and pay thirty-five hundred dollars a month for a condo to boot.