Hook and Shoot Page 9

  I felt better already. “Everything is fine.”

  “This is when I start to pray. Where are you?”

  “I’m with Eddie.”

  “That one.” She snapped out some Portuguese. It didn’t sound like praying. “When his mouth opens it’s a lie. Leave now. Go back to Gil.”

  “I’d like to.”

  “So? Are your legs not real? Are they painted on? Go.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It’s always that simple.” She talked rapid-fire to someone away from the phone. Incredulous needs no translator.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Jairo says you’re stupid to help Eddie after everything. He wants to smack some sense into you.”

  “Tell him no thank you.”

  After the shootout at Chops’s, Jairo had vowed to pull Eddie’s ribs out. One of the reasons Marcela and I had hustled him and his brothers onto a plane to Brazil.

  If Marcela came to Vegas, I’d worry about her.

  If Jairo came, I’d worry about everybody.

  “What does he have you doing?”

  I told her all of it, except the dead bodies. No need to indict either of us on an open line.

  She said, “If I come up there to kick his face, would you stop me?”

  “After a hundred or so. But please don’t.”

  “I hate these people. They look at you and see a tool—a hammer or a wall.”

  “Are walls tools in Brazil?”

  “After I finish with Eddie, I kick you for a while.”

  The line hummed until I said, “I miss you.”

  “Come see me.”

  “I will.”

  “Now.”

  “Soon.”

  “You sound like your head is down.”

  I lifted it, saw Burch staring at me from the foyer, covered in sweat and holding a fresh suit on a hanger. “I have to go. I’ll call you.”

  “This hurts my stomach.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I put the phone away.

  Burch stared for a few more seconds, then walked into the kitchen. I heard him go through the doorway in there, probably on his way to the security room. The cameras had evidence of him shooting a man three times and preparing the body for disposal. He had some erasing to do.

  I looked at the black cube table and wondered how much I’d give to have that button implanted.

  CHAPTER 11

  I rode in the limo’s front seat with Burch. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t leave me in the back with Eddie and Vanessa. I might convince her to hold Eddie while I checked his damaged throat from the inside. I offered to drive so Burch could ride in back, but he declined. Must have pictured me crashing the limo onto the runway at McCarran and diving out, hijacking a plane to Brazil, and never coming back.

  I made a note to research British clairvoyance. “Where are we going?”

  “Isolation doesn’t seem to be working. Time to try the opposite.” He got off 215 onto Flamingo Road, headed for the Strip.

  “So now they get to kill bystanders too. This is a good plan.”

  “They made a play; we adapt. Sitting there until midnight would be suicide.”

  “Hey, I mentioned the midnight thing before you shot that guy. He didn’t seem bothered by the breach of etiquette.”

  “I heard him.”

  “So you could have jumped out of the bushes sooner, distracted him while I gave him a chair massage.”

  “That’s right,” Burch said.

  “You didn’t have to shoot him. But if you heard all of what he said, my guess is you wanted to.”

  “Goes without saying. Everybody I’ve ever shot, I wanted to. Better now? Good. He was a probe, a scout. Looked to me like he got bored and started wandering around. No discipline. So the full assault, whatever that entails, hasn’t started yet.”

  “Midnight.”

  “Or before, possibly after.”

  “Anytime, then.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  We hit the overpass above 15 and dropped between Caesars Palace and the Bellagio, two sentinels welcoming us to Vegas proper. I made sure my wallet was still in my pocket.

  “So the photo, the deadline, that was all bullshit.”

  “Wouldn’t say that. I think the offer was good for you at one point. Not anymore.”

  “And it never was for you.”

  He gave a tight smile. “You heard the man before I gave him head vents. They want me almost as bad as Eddie. Probably included me in the note so you’d think I’m an idiot for staying, push you toward abandoning us.”

  Smart bastards.

  Burch cut across the Strip and turned right on a narrow service road that ran behind the casinos. He wove through employee parking lots and loading areas, and I wasn’t sure where we were until we crawled over a speed bump into the walled service lot behind the Golden Pantheon Casino, home of Warrior events. Eddie had part ownership of the hotel and casino looming above us, all columns and arches, scenery and statues worked into the facade. They were much bigger than Eddie’s personal collection and wore formal Roman garb. They waved and beckoned and didn’t hold any weapons that I could see.

  It was a different access point than the one Jairo and I had blown through, both of us stinking like Tezo’s pit, right before the Burbank fight. I could see where I’d dropped Eddie off that night. Marcela had been in the truck with me. I locked onto the scene, her looking out the window, then those little eyebrows going together when she saw my face was bleeding again.

  Burch aimed the limo at a metal garage door and the scene slid away.

  I let it go before it tore me right down the middle.

  Burch hit a button on the dash panel. The metal door rolled up. He eased the limo into an empty underground parking garage that was big enough for a few stretch vehicles to turn around but small enough to feel exclusive.

  He parked like an asshole. “You carry everything. I need my hands free.”

  The elevator had a numbered security keypad and two other buttons: Casino Floor and Penthouse.

  Burch punched in a code and hit Penthouse. I stood closest to the doors, loaded with rolling luggage, laptop bags, my clothes and shoes in a plastic shopping bag, and a hard plastic case the size of a table that felt like it had floor magnets inside, pulling my arm out of its socket. Eddie and Vanessa were behind me and all the freight. If the doors opened and somebody sprayed me with a machine gun, the two of them might hear it.

  I couldn’t tell the elevator had moved, but the doors parted and we were in the penthouse suite of the casino hotel. Solid slabs of black marble pulled light into the walls and floor of the circular foyer, which had matching white curved sofas facing each other on the sides.

  I lugged everything into a huge square room that looked like a villa courtyard. The floor was black marble tile with small white mosaics spaced evenly wall to wall, each one the shape of a different type of knot. White marble columns ran along the walls and supported a balcony that wrapped around the room. I could see the tops of doors up there. Above that the ceiling was domed glass. Despite the late afternoon sunlight pouring in, the room was almost cold.

  Burch pointed at the elevator. “That’s the only access point. We control the elevator from up here, so unless they have an air force we’re safe.”

  I checked everyone’s face: no incredulity. “I’m the only one? Why didn’t you just come here to begin with?”

  “My ass isn’t the only thing on the line here,” Eddie said. “I gotta save face too. I show up at my own hotel needing a room, people talk.”

  “If anyone asks,” Burch said, “renovations are being done on his living room and master suite.”

  I looked at Eddie. “You should make that a reality. Your bedroom is fucked up.”

  “Stay here.” Burch pulled his gun and walked through an arched opening in the far right corner. The soft soles on his shoes made no noise.

  I set the hard plastic case down. It echoed.


  Vanessa and I stood there looking around and Eddie poked at his phone until Vanessa said, “This is really nice.”

  “Be nicer if somebody else was paying to stay here,” Eddie said.

  “How pricey is it? Is that tacky?”

  “A bit. It’s eight grand a night. Burch called ahead, had the staff kick out a party of twelve. So not only are they not paying for this, they got comped for whatever rooms they’re in now, plus dinner and who knows what else.”

  “Getting killed used to be free,” I said.

  Eddie went back to the phone.

  Burch walked out of a matching archway on the left toward a set of wide marble stairs in the middle of the far wall. He climbed them diagonally to a landing, cut in front of a bronze fountain, and disappeared behind a thick column. A second later he popped out on the balcony, walked around opening doors and ducking in and out of rooms. Eventually he stopped and leaned on the thick marble railing. “All clear. Leave my case there. You can put everything else away.”

  I started dropping bags.

  “Careful,” Eddie said. “Jesus, here.” He grabbed one of the rolling suitcases from me and handed it to Vanessa, then pointed at the archway on the left. “Through there, the master suite. You can’t miss it.”

  Eddie headed for the one on the right, told me, “Bring everything else.” He held his phone aloft. “I’m putting a meeting together for tonight. We’re gonna lock in the deal with Lou, get you and Zombi in the cage for Elite.”

  I followed with the bags and cases and had to walk under Burch, who was on his phone.

  “Dorian, I need an ETA on those suits. Our boy hasn’t taken the first one off yet. It’s starting to smell like a bog.”

  I trailed Eddie through the archway, thinking that if things got any better I’d have to set my head on fire.

  Eddie set up shop in the penthouse’s full conference room—desk with dual monitors, a blocky copier/ scanner/fax machine, and an oval table with eight high-backed chairs pushed under it. The table had some kind of electronics hub in the middle with a multiline phone and a projector pointed at a screen on the long wall. The windows opposite the door faced the Strip.

  The only piece of Roman-themed decor was a stone plaque above a table piled with hotel stationery:

  Verba volant, scripta manent.

  Spoken words fly away, written words remain.

  Eddie was busy opening laptops and spreading papers on the conference table. I headed for the door.

  “Have a seat,” Eddie said.

  “You signing my contract?”

  “Will you relax with that? No, just keep me company.”

  “I’ll send Vanessa in.”

  “She’s getting dinner together. Sit down.” He was hunched over, the top of his blue faux hawk pointing at me.

  I glared at it on my way to the far end of the table, dropped into a chair, and watched him and his papers get closer. He’d pull from one pile and add to another or make a new one. I looked at the paint to see if it was more interesting. A push.

  Eddie straightened up. “There.” Whatever he saw in the paper chaos, it made him happy. He sat down, checked something on a laptop, grunted. He leaned back in the chair and spun around to look at me. “I had to hire a new marketing department because of you.”

  “No, that was because of Benjamin.” Benjamin Walsh had been Warrior’s head of marketing as well as twisted in with Tezo and Kendall. He hadn’t done well when Jairo and I pulled him and Eddie into a locked room for answers.

  “Regardless, I have to keep an eye on all this shit now because the new people don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” He rubbed his throat through the turtleneck, glanced down and plucked at the front of it. “I look like my Stanford business econ professor.”

  And then I’m supposed to say, “Oh, you went to Stanford?”

  Fuck him and fuck college.

  “Tell me about Zombi,” I said.

  “I already told you. Catch wrestler, kind of a shoot fighter. Gold medal judoka, backed by the Yakuza. Probably chews bones for fun. What else?”

  “You got any video?”

  “What for?”

  “There’s this thing called a game plan. Some call it strategy, but that’s a Stanford word.”

  “Please. Gil has you thinking you actually use a strategy? Is he watching the same fights as me?”

  “He had a good seat for the Burbank fight. Seems like that worked.”

  “You know what you did to Burbank?”

  “Kicked him in the face.”

  “That was the nail in the coffin. Before that, when you finally settled down and fought your way. What did you do?”

  “I avoided the takedown best I could, stayed away from—”

  “Stop. You’re reciting Gil. This ain’t a press conference. What did you do to Burbank? You fought like your fucking life depended on it. You tried to kill him.”

  I shifted, couldn’t get comfortable. It wasn’t the chair. “Kendall had Marcela.”

  “And that made you desperate. It didn’t make you fight like you did. Like you do, like some wolf with a fresh moose carcass, and here comes the next alpha. Don’t you know this?”

  I stared out the windows.

  Eddie said, “Don’t tell me you’re ashamed of it. It works. You take a guy like Burbank and fight him so hard he goes into survival mode, throws his game plan out of the building. I’ve kept tabs on him since your fight. He’s slow, thinking too much. His trainers don’t know what’s wrong. I do, but I ain’t telling. You broke him. That’s what you do. You keep it up, I’ll start calling you Social Security. The reason motherfuckers retire.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Bullshit you’re sorry. You love it. Sitting here, maybe it scares you how much you love it. You can’t look at it straight on. A lawful way to be what you are when what you are is outlawed. So you can tell your mom—if you have one—you’re sorry and wear your citizen camouflage, but I know better. All this is just holding your breath, waiting to go again. In the cage, man. That’s where you breathe.”

  I did a slow spin in the chair, checked out the ceiling.

  Eddie said, “I took psychology at Stanford too.”

  “So if I go through your company breaking all your toys, you’ll be happy?”

  “Whoa. You knocked Burbank off his game for a couple months so far. Let’s not crown you Jesus the Hun just yet. How many fighters you seen saying they can’t be broken, they’ll never give up, then they go out and get shattered? Nobody breaks until they do. All you are is a guy who hasn’t met his hammer yet.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Yeah? What fight?”

  “It wasn’t in a cage.” I got up and walked out.

  Eddie didn’t say anything.

  Stanford education.

  Vanessa found me sitting in the foyer by the elevator and handed me a plate of grilled chicken over a bed of fresh greens and fruit, a thin dark glaze drizzled over all of it.

  I made a silent preemptive apology to my suit and the white couch and dug in.

  Vanessa hovered. “Burch is watching TV if you don’t want to sit here by yourself.”

  “I’m fine. You should go.”

  Her eyebrows went up. She spun on one bare foot toward the fake courtyard.

  “No, I mean the elevator. You should go somewhere safe.”

  “Oh. I was like, okay, that was rude.”

  “I’ll tell Eddie and Burch I made you leave. Might save your job if Eddie makes it through this.”

  She sat on the couch across from me. “Burch told me I’m safest here with him. And you, I figure, but he didn’t say that part.” She pushed her palms into the couch, put one foot on top of the other, curled her toes.

  I ate a piece of fruit that was new to me. It was good. “When you aren’t with Burch, how often do guys with swords get shot and dumped into a pool?”

  “None so far.”

  “Well then. My opinion, whatever it’s w
orth, is he wants you around because you’re one more person to put between him and them when they break through the door.”

  She eyed the elevator. “So let’s go. Both of us.”

  “If Eddie had signed that contract, you’d already have a postcard from me. Someplace nice. Maybe a bomb shelter in Nebraska. Now I’m sitting here wondering if it’s worth risking my neck to keep him alive just so he can own me.”

  “It’s not. Being owned never is.”

  I gave her a closer look. “How did you and Eddie meet?”

  Vanessa stood. “You need something to drink.”

  She got to the opening into the courtyard and slid to a stop to avoid a collision with Burch. Eddie was behind him, a laptop bag bulging with papers hanging off his shoulder.

  “On your feet, soldier,” Burch said. He had a new gun, a stubby black MP5 with an integral suppressor hanging from a rig across his chest. It looked pretty light; that hard plastic case must have plenty more to offer.

  “What for?”

  “I said so.”

  Eddie said, “We’re meeting Lou.”

  Vanessa ducked around them and was gone.

  I carried my plate to the elevator. “Why doesn’t he come here?”

  “Negotiations 101,” Eddie said. “He wants neutral territory, even though the goddamn deal is done.”

  Burch nodded at my plate. “Leave it. Need your hands free.”

  The plate was still half full and my stomach was still three-quarters empty. I started packing chicken into my mouth.

  Burch yanked the plate out of my hand and spun it into the courtyard. The plate shattered. Chicken and greens and fruit and the delicious glaze scattered over the floor. Eddie pursed his lips and hustled his phone out so he could stare at it. Burch punched the elevator button and the doors opened. Eddie tiptoed on board.

  Burch watched me chew. “All finished?”

  “You ever fought in an elevator before? It’s more fun than it sounds.”

  Burch split time watching me and the elevator doors on the way down.

  “I was just teasing,” I said. “Next time I hit you, I’m not gonna warn you first. So relax.”

  The meeting was at an RV dealership north of the city near a cluster of golf courses and suburbia, nearly an hour in the limo while Burch pulled fancy counter-pursuit maneuvers and Eddie jabbered on the phone to his people about what they had to do once the Elite deal was final.