None of it got anywhere near Bishop.
His empire was crumbling, but he still had enough money to hire actual loyalty from some of his super soldiers.
Which brings us to why I’m not drinking cold beer and watching the Orioles spank the Phillies.
When Mr. Church called me he said, “Myron Bishop wants to come in.”
“’Come in’ as in…?”
“He wants us to protect him.”
If I’d been drinking coffee I’d have snorted it out of my nose. “I saw a t-shirt with a bull’s-eye on it. Can we just mail that to him with a nice card saying ‘have a nice and very short life’?”
“Tempting as that is, Captain,” said Church, “the State Department would like some quality time with Bishop.”
“Wait, he wants to confess?”
“In a very limited way. He claims that he has become aware of some improprieties in his foreign holdings, has become alarmed by them, and wishes to bring them to the attention of the appropriate authorities and cooperate in every way possible.”
“It must hurt your mouth to repeat that.”
“I’ll take an aspirin later.”
“What’s the play?”
“Unclear. Bishop is difficult to trust under any circumstances. However, even someone like him must feel the pressure of being under constant threat of assassination. He can’t go out, he can’t date, his social life has become nonexistent.”
“And I feel so bad for him, too. I may cry.”
“Try to rein in your emotions long enough to pick him up.”
“How far ‘in’ does he want to come? Are we putting him in WITSEC?”
“No. He doesn’t trust the Marshal’s service to protect him.”
“Fair enough. Most of them would want to shoot him.”
“He requested you.”
“Me as is in the DMS or me as in—?”
“You personally.”
“Not sure I like the sound of that. When we met at that café, I pretty much told him I thought he was dog shit on my shoe. Words to that effect.”
“Ah.”
“I also threatened to tie him to a chair and wire a car battery to his nutsack.”
“Well…I don’t think he’s entranced by your charm,” said Church.
“Then—?”
“He considers you a professional.”
“I am.”
“You didn’t try to arrest him. You didn’t actually use violence on him.”
“I insulted him.”
“Irrelevant. He’s in biotech, so he’s used to that. He said that you didn’t try to provoke him into any action that would have allowed you to use force on him.”
“Wasn’t that kind of moment.” Which was true in its way. I’d heard he had a bad temper, so I was deliberately rude in hopes he’d swing on me. He didn’t, so the whole thing stayed in low gear.
“You could have turned it into one,” said Church. “It was probably the only time when someone could have. You chose not to. He said it was very professional. It engendered a degree of trust. Now he wants to come in and talk to us and there aren’t many people left whom he trusts.”
“So I lose a day at Camden Yards for a dickhead everyone wants to see in a body bag. How did I get so lucky?”
“Perhaps you were too charming for your own good.”
“Cute. So what do I do with him once I have him? We putting him in a hotel under guard or do you want me to take him to the safe house in Elkton?”
“Did you ever finish the repairs on the holding cell at the Warehouse? The one where the toilet backed up?”
“No. The plumber comes in next Monday and….”
“Put him there,” he said.
He disconnected without further comment.
Chap. 5
I considered the way Frick and Frack flanked me on the elevator. I was in the center of the car, they were fanned to either side, quarter-turned toward me. Both had their jackets unbuttoned, which meant they were carrying. If they were both right handed, the guy to my right — Frack — was going to have to reach into his jacket toward me, which meant I could jam him back against the wall and keep the piece in its holster. Frick would have to reach across his chest away from me, because his piece would be hanging under his left armpit, the barrel facing away. If it came to a watershed moment, I’d bodyblock Frick and kick Frack’s kneecap off.
I generally don’t rehearse this sort of thing, preferring the fluidity of spontaneous reaction. But these guys were not top tier. I doubted they were graduates of a super-soldier program. More like meat in off-the-rack suits.
They didn’t make a play, so we didn’t need to explore the extent of their health plan.
Fair enough.
Maybe this would go by the numbers.
The car stopped and the doors opened and my assessment of the day changed.
Myron Bishop was right there, waiting directly outside. He was well dressed in a five-thousand-dollar suit and a million-dollar smile. There were four very, very large men behind him. They were smiling too.
Myron Bishop said, “Fuck you.”
And he jabbed me in the throat with a stun gun.
Chap. 6
So, there I was.
Buck naked.
Duct-taped to a chair.
I was never completely unconscious, though Bishop and — I think — both Frick and Frack kept juicing me with the stun guns.
Stun guns fucking hurt.
I twitched and jerked and pissed myself and screamed.
They laughed their asses off.
Despite the constant shocks, I didn’t make it easy for them. I strained my muscles, fought them, made them earn it.
One of the big goons with Bishop took my rapid-release knife and cut my clothes off. Except for my Orioles shirt. He pulled that off and set it carefully aside. Everything else was slashed to ribbons. He even looped my socks over the knife and cut them in half. While I can appreciate attention to detail, that seemed somewhere between petty and psychotic.
I hadn’t been wearing my earbud because this didn’t seem like that kind of situation. The bad call was entirely my own. No radio, no backup.
Had one of my guys done something as rookie as this, I’d have fried him.
There’s a lesson about hubris in all this. Balls.
The big goon with my knife was one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen. His face was lumpy and distorted, his nose flat and crooked, his eyes buried in little pits of gristle. And damn if he didn’t stink. Worst body odor I’ve ever smelled, and I’ve been to the great apes exhibit at the zoo. When he turned away to unload my weapon and place it on the table, I saw that his thighs and buttocks were unnaturally lumpy and huge. Not sure whether this was a bad side effect of the super-soldier formula or the wrong kind of manic weight training. Or whether he was simply a freak.
The other two goons were merely big. Six-five, six-six. Muscles upon muscles. No mercy at all in their eyes.
While all this was happening, Myron Bishop sat on the edge of a desk, swinging one foot and listening to a smooth jazz station. Kenny G or some shit.
He finally waved the goon squad back. He sent Frick and Frack down in the elevator.
“Nobody comes up until I say so,” he told them. “That means no calls, no nothing.”
They grunted like obedient dogs and disappeared.
Bishop pushed off from the desk and strolled toward me. “You know, I’ve seen every James Bond movie. I have them all on DVD. Great stuff.”
“Yeah? Who’s your favorite Bond?”
“Not my point,” he said. “In the movies there’s always this scene where the bad guy captures Bond, ties him to some kind of device….”
“Like the laser table in Goldfinger,” I said, trying to stretch this out.