Killer Move - Michael Marshall [99]
On the other side was a narrow staircase, turning sharply to the right. I followed her up, but abruptly stopped halfway when I saw her reach into the back of her jeans and pull a handgun out from under her shirt. Something happened to her posture, too, becoming looser, rangier, as if readying for sudden decisive action. I let her go up the last set of stairs by herself.
She got to the top, where the wall stopped, making space for a half-height divide in expensive-looking wood. She turned, looking into a space I couldn’t see, holding the gun low in her hand where it couldn’t be seen by whoever was on the top floor. She glanced down at me, gave an upward nod, and disappeared from view.
I went up the remaining steps, wondering if it wouldn’t be better to turn around, go find my car, and drive back to the house to grab anything that seemed necessary to starting a new life somewhere else.
But I didn’t want a new life. I wanted my old one back.
That meant I could not run.
At the top I stuck my head cautiously up over the divide. I saw a big open space that ran the length and width of the building. A handful of couches, shabby chic, angled for discretion. A few dining tables with pert little chairs. A couple of big skylights made it light and airy. Artfully battered floorboards, paintings that were well above the usual local standard. At the back was a waitress station, to one side a discreet dumbwaiter.
The fabled upper dining room, I guess. And at the far end, three people I recognized. The Thompsons and Peter Grant—my boss.
They turned to look at me as if I were a low-echelon waiter bringing an undesired check.
Peter Grant watched me walk up. A week ago it might have seemed cool, encountering my boss in this locale. The guy who would have found it so felt like a previous incarnation of me, however, one long dead and unevolved for the present circumstances.
“Sir,” I said.
His gaze was cool and unreadable. Not unfriendly, exactly. But not friendly, either.
“I still think this is a bad idea,” he said, not to me, and then left. Nobody said anything to cover the sound of his feet going down the wooden stairs.
Meanwhile the woman I’d come with took up a position on the side of the room. Her feet were planted apart, her hands together at her waist. Her gun had gone back to where it had come from, but I didn’t think it would take her long to retrieve it should the need arise.
“What does he look like?” Tony asked me.
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb,” Marie said. “I agree with Peter. I don’t think this conversation should be taking place. Rise to the occasion or we’ll kick you out right now.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“What does he look like?” Tony asked again. He appeared to have ignored the entire exchange.
“Assuming you mean the guy who hauled me out of The Breakers, he’s . . . just a guy. Dark hair with touches of gray. When I saw him he was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Early, midfifties. But I don’t know.”
“He’s fifty-three,” Tony said absently.
“You know him.”
“Yes, we did.”
“He appears to feel more warmly about you guys. He actually seemed very keen to renew your acquaintance.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He showed me a picture.”
“A picture?” Marie’s beady eyes were on me through a drifting cloud of smoke. The cigarette looked like it was held in a large bird’s claw, but I noticed for the first time just how thin the wrist supporting it was.
I nodded through the big window. “Outside