Then I went to the wall that I shared with the room where Finley had put Monroe. I put my ear to the wall.
Silence.
I knocked on the wall.
More silence.
I called softly, “Hey!” Anyone standing near the door to the room would hear me but I called anyway. “Monroe!”
After a few seconds, Monroe’s voice answered through the wall, “What?”
“If you’re locked in a room in this building with just a chair, how do you get out?” I said.
“Is this a fucking riddle?”
“You know this building better than I do. How do you get out?”
“You don’t, you stupid fuck.”
“I’m getting out,” I said.
He said nothing to that.
“Monroe?” I called.
Silence.
I went back to pacing.
When I got tired of pacing, I sat in the chair.
When I got tired of sitting in the chair, I stood, picked up the chair, swung it as hard as I could, and released it. It flew across the room and hit the wall by the door. Two of the chair legs punched through the drywall.
A moment later, a key unlocked the door and Finley stepped inside again. He still held the gun. Color had mostly returned to his face and he was standing straighter than before. He looked at me. He looked at the chair sticking out of the wall. He went to the chair and yanked it. Pieces of drywall fell to the carpet and the chair came free. One of the legs had poked through the outside wall and light shined through from the hallway.
Finley shook his head like he was disgusted with me, carried the chair out of the room, and locked the door.
I paced some more, then stretched out on the floor and looked at the crack on the ceiling. If Finley would give me sandpaper, some brushes, and a can of paint, I could fix it.
I closed my eyes, opened them again.
The crack still reached across the ceiling. I was still locked in the room.
I stayed like that for a long time. It felt like days and weeks. I sometimes looked at my watch. It said 5:58. Then it said 6:10. Later it said 6:40.
That meant Lucinda was probably in the building, climbing the stairs.
Then my watch said 6:50. That meant Johnson and his crew probably had Lucinda in their hands or would soon. There wasn’t a thing I could do to help her.
At 6:55 a key rattled in the lock.
I stood and moved to the door, ready to fight my way out-to do anything I needed to do to get to Lucinda.
The door swung open.
Finley wasn’t there with his gun. The gang leader Rafael stood in the doorway. He grinned and said, “Hola.”
I looked at him, confused. “What are you-?”
He stepped into the room. “He called,” he said, sticking a thumb over his shoulder.
Raj stepped in behind him.
I shook my head, confused. “What are you doing?”
He looked nervous. “Trying to save your ass-and my own.”
“Are you with Monroe, or Johnson and Finley?”
“I’m with myself,” he said and stepped back into the hall. Rafael and I followed.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Raj looked down the hall toward the stairs to The Spa Club. “There’s not time.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
He looked furious. “Don’t be an asshole. Finley told me he’d figured out Monroe was making a power play and told me to come along when he nailed him. If I hadn’t, he’d have locked me up with you. He’ll be right back-you’ve got to get out of here.”
I shook my head. “I need to check the stairwell. My partner’s supposed to be there.”
“It’s too late. You’ve got to leave.”
“Not without Lucinda.”
“Jesus! I’ll check for her myself,” he said and yelled at Rafael, “Get him the hell out of here.”
That would need to be good enough. Rafael and I headed for the exit door.
As we reached it, a voice came from the other end of the hall. “Hey!”
It was Finley. He held his pistol so he could shoot us in the back.
“Keep going,” Raj yelled at me and Rafael. He stepped toward Finley. “It’s all right, Peter-”
“Stop!” Finley yelled.
Rafael and I kept going.
Finley fired his gun. A deafening blast filled the hall and a bullet slammed into the steel plating on the exit door. I reached for the door handle, pushed, and looked over my shoulder. In the hazy light, Raj was running toward Finley. He ran the way people run toward a bad accident. Not that they can do anything to stop what already has happened or the blood that will pour. Not that they really know why they’re running. Finley watched him come, his pistol level, his lips tight, his jaw square.
Finley shot again. The blast ripped through the hallway.
Raj flew backward. He landed on his back, his eyes wide, his chest bloody.
Rafael shoved me through the door.
I tried to stop. “Get Raj!”
Rafael kept pushing. “He’s dead!”
Raj was dead. Of course he was. You don’t take a bullet in the chest from a.40-caliber Glock and live. You don’t stare at a hallway ceiling with wide unblinking eyes if you’re still feeling pain.
“Shit!” I yelled. Another shot from Finley’s gun slammed into the closing door.
We were in a gray lobby by a service elevator. Two Mexican kids held the elevator door open. They were sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing black T-shirts and low-rider jeans. One of them had on a black baseball cap with a silver star on it. He grinned at Rafael and me with a gold-capped front tooth. “What’s up?” he said, like we were meeting on a street corner.
The kids moved aside to let us into the elevator and one punched the button for the ground floor. Finley burst into the lobby as the elevator doors closed.
TWENTY-SIX
WHEN THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened again, Rafael’s friends stepped out, looked left and right, and signaled for us to follow. We ran across the lobby and out the front door. A gray BMW sedan and a jacked-up Chevy Silverado pickup stood at the curb, engines running.
Rafael’s friends climbed into the pickup.
Rafael knocked fists with the valet. “Gracias,” he said.
“Far as I know, you’re not here,” the doorman said. “I didn’t see you coming and I don’t see you going.”
“’Course you don’t,” said Rafael, and he slipped a roll of bills into the doorman’s hand.
I said nothing. Pointing out the video camera that fed everything we were doing to the Spa Club monitor room seemed like bad manners.
We got into the BMW and the doorman waved at me. “Have a good night, Mr. Kozmarski-and drive safely.”
The kid at the wheel of the pickup punched the accelerator. The tires spun and screeched and the truck leapt forward. It shot down the driveway, tilted onto the street, and disappeared to the south.
“Fucking clowns,” Rafael said. He shifted into Drive and we rode down the driveway and pulled into the street.
We went south to Oak Street, across to Lake Shore Drive, and south again. The evening traffic had thinned and Rafael weaved steadily around slower cars. To the east, a green light glowed on a breakwater wall a quarter mile off the beach. After the green light, there was nothing but darkness.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“My part of town. Johnson can’t get you there.”
I considered that. “Thanks, but I’ll do it alone. You can drop me downtown.”
“You got a car?” he said.
“No,” I admitted.
“A gun?”
“No.”
“Cops are looking for you at your office and your house. Johnson’s crew is definitely hunting for you. What’re you going to do with no car, no gun, and no place to sleep?”
I thought about that for awhile. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go to your part of town.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Right,” he said. Then he stepped on the accelerator.