Over the hypnotic twanging of Eastern instruments, Percy's muffled voice called, "Hurry, tee ruk."
Walker slipped through the curtain, the beads rattling soothingly. Percy remained on his stomach, naked, his face sunk to the ears in the crescent headrest. Acupuncture needles of various lengths stood up from his back like spines. When he shifted, they rippled like the coat of an animal. The needles' placement grew denser at the base of his back, a few even straying to the ruddy hump of his ass. An incense cone teased a string of spicy smoke into the air. Percy's clothes, neatly folded, were on the silk cushion of a rattan chair, a walkie-talkie and a Colt. 45 pinning them down.
Walker circled the table and Percy moaned, anticipating pleasure. Gray hairs were scattered across the mass of his shoulders. "Whaddaya say you free me from those needles so I can turn over?"
"Not just yet," Walker said.
Percy lurched up, and Walker struck him across the face, feeling the bones of his knuckles connect with the hard ledge of Percy's jaw like the skin between them was bedsheet-thin. Percy flew off the table and hammered into the wall, crying out as the needles dug into him and snapped off, the broken heads pinging on the floor. He reared up, but Walker hit him again, fist to sternum, sending him reeling back into an embroidered silk hanging. The whimper that rose from Percy seemed to be leaking out around the penetrating steel. As he deflated, he keeled forward, leaving bloody streaks on the wall, the heads of sunken needles stubbling his lower back. His jaw hung off kilter. It made him look quizzical.
"You set up the contract," Walker said.
"No." The word, blurred to Down syndrome proportion by the unhinged jaw, forced a crimson bubble at Percy's lips.
"That's not what Ted Sands told me."
Percy was hard to understand. "Within a week you'll be dead or getting your ass rented in prison." He tried to move, but his back brushed the wall and his legs straightened like he'd been electrocuted.
Walker withdrew his revolver and held it at his side. "Your wife is alive in the next room. Unconscious, but still alive."
Slid low so the wall forced his head forward into a painful nod, Percy registered the threat, his pupils straining upward.
"Who'd you hire?" Walker waited a moment, then aimed at Percy's head.
"The Piper."
"What's his real name?"
"I don't know. No one knows. You don't get more with these guys."
"Who paid him? Who paid the Piper?"
Percy's laugh was a moist wheeze. "Witty."
Walker put a boot on his chest. A needle broke against the floor.
Percy howled, his chin awash in blood. "Who the fuck you think paid him?"
"Was it the old man? Was he in on it?"
A dark grimace. "The old man is in on everything."
The radio on the rattan chair burst to life. "Base One to Big Brother. Mr. Kagan wants to see you."
Percy looked up from his painful slump, breaths rattling in his chest. Walker shifted his weight forward onto his boot. Percy's face contorted, and popping sounds came out of his mouth. Walker pressed down once, hard, 190 pounds of fuck you, and there was a terminal crackle and a shudder of flesh, and then there weren't any more popping sounds.
"Big Brother? Big Brother come in?"
Walker picked up the walkie-talkie, thumbing the side button as he headed for the door. "Be right there."
The security guard hunched over the chessboard. His partner leaned back on the metal folding chair, releasing an impatient sigh that carried up the staircase curve to the ceiling and echoed back, a ghostly whisper. An ancient housekeeper bused their empty glasses, muttering Polish to herself and adjusting her box-pleated maid's cap.
The guard's radio chimed, and he pulled it from his belt, keeping his eyes on the board. "Base One."
"Rook to A-five."
"What?"
"Rook to A-five. Or he's got your queen cornered."
The guard released the button and stood, his blazer rasping against the chair. He and his partner shifted their anxious gazes around the night-shrouded windows. They were about to break for the intercom system when the mail slot lid clanked open and a grenade scuttled across the floor, spinning to a halt at their feet. They sprinted for cover, getting no more than a few steps when an explosion, originating across the room from the grenade, bounced the foundation. Pebbles of ballistic glass rained across the floorboards.
A muzzle blazed from outside, and the first guard grabbed his thigh and collapsed. Walker stepped through the manhole-size breach in the window, cutting through the airborne particles and wisps of smoke. The second guard popped up from behind an upholstered bench by the parlor threshold, and Walker shot off a good chunk of his gun hand. The man screamed and collapsed out of view, his pistol clattering off into a corner. The housekeeper stood on sturdy white-stockinged legs, her mouth ajar, her cap blown off by the explosion.
Walker crouched over the grenade, its pin still intact, and calmly pocketed it.
In the various rooms around him, the intercoms came to life, slightly out of sync. A robust voice-probably Dean Kagan's: "To the safe room. Now."
The first guard scraped on the floor, moaning and gripping his leg with both hands. He barely took note when Walker claimed his still-holstered pistol. The other guard had crawled behind the chesterfield when Walker caught up to him. He'd located a slab of his hand and was trying to press it back into place. His uniform sleeve was matted to the elbow. Walker picked up the fallen handgun and turned for the foyer but paused above the cowering man, straight-arming the Redhawk so the sights aligned on his forehead.
Walker nodded at the wound. "That enough to keep you occupied?"
A vehement nod.
Walker lowered his gun and headed for the stairs. The housekeeper still had not moved. As he passed, he picked up her cap and handed it to her. She took it with unsteady hands. "Where's the safe room?" he asked quietly.
With a trembling finger, she pointed through the north wall.
Walker coasted up the stairs and reached the landing. One of the four facing doors swung inward-someone had spotted him and withdrawn. He charged through the door to its left, flying silently through an empty bedroom, an adjoining chamber, another bedroom. A rustle behind the bathroom door. A flash of light hair through the hinges.
Chase.
Walker flattened against the wall and waited.
A highball glass lay on its side on the master suite's floor, ice cubes nesting in the plush deep-pile; someone had retreated in a hurry. The space seemed too wide to be a bedroom, but the California king, stranded on a plain of carpet, said otherwise. Walker moved around the corner to the enormous dressing suite. A hardened-steel fire door had lowered over the walk-in closet's doorway, sealing it like a vault.
Walker knocked the wall. Impressive. Judging from the sound, at least five inches of steel lay beneath the coat of paint. Too thick for the explosives distributed through his various cargo pockets. He could blast down and in through the roof, but he wouldn't have the time.
He glanced at the mounted security camera on the safe room's outer wall, then dragged over a vanity chair and stood on it. A few tugs loosened the camera on its housing. From his thigh pocket, he removed a digital camera with a fiber-optic minicam cable wrapped around it. He fed the cable into the wiring assembly behind the security camera. Using the image on the screen, he guided the peeper through the pencil-thin conduit between the outgoing video and audio lines and the power cable. It traveled about two feet before threading through the O-ring seal and poking out into the safe room on the other end, giving him a fish-eye view of the interior.