Chapter 45

He got home at three in the morning in a borrowed cashmere coat. Maybe he should have simply been pleased that the members of his party were alive, unhurt—he was glad about that—but he wasn’t really happy with the way things had gone. It had been a hash from almost every point of view. He hadn’t done his job. His job was to stick with the boy. That was it. Not to go in for his partner and not even to go in for Finnigan.

As for California leaving his protectee out back alone, oh man, that was about as far down unprofessional as you could get. At least Eric had left Aki with P. J. Of course, he didn’t know if P. J. had turned into a kidnapper and felon since leaving the Army, which might have been the case. Thank God, it hadn’t been.

And Finnigan, the poor fool, didn’t know that either of them had done anything wrong. From the singer’s point of view, they had saved him and his son. California had even tried to recover the guitar, which Finnigan would probably get back anyway once all that supposed gunsmoke cleared.

Eric came in the house and was greeted by Hiroshi. He petted the dog almost fondly. While the animal still made him nervous and he watched the creature carefully for signs that he was being too aggressive with David, Eric had begun to trust him somewhat, to think of him as protection for Kathryn, David, and Keisha, rather than a threat. He turned on the radio in his room at a low volume. They’d still had a hostage situation at Pamela’s when his group had left the scene and he wondered what the outcome was.

Compounding California’s and his lack of professionalism that night was the fact that he had also endangered his undercover investigation of Morgan. This shootout at Pamela’s was going to be headline news for the next day or two at least. Eric had given a false name to the cops on the scene and had asked Aki and Finnigan to back him up, but he was nervous that his real name would come out. If it did, and if Morgan came back into town while the news was still circulating, Eric hoped the Brit wouldn’t connect his Eric Ryder with the Eric Ryder who was a bodyguard for Finnigan.

Finnigan. What a character! After heaving on the tires of the limo and stumbling into the back seat, he had lightened up considerably on the way back to the hotel. “This is a million-dollar ticket,” Finnigan enthused. “Lots of publicity. Interviews on Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition. But no scandal, just tons of coverage. Doing Pamela’s was a great idea, Jack. That’s one for you.”

“There’s at least the doorman shot and another two-, three-hundred people facing three pissed-off gunmen,” Eric reminded Aki’s father. Finnigan resented the interruption of his runaway fantasy of repeated bouts of ego gratification and cash infusion. “I know that,” he said. “Don’t think I’m not upset.”

The radio reported a siege in a nightclub in Manhattan, then broke for a commercial. That meant they would get back to the story in a minute or two. The house phone rang. Piss. It must be California calling about something. Who else would call at this hour and wake up David and Katie? But why not call his cell? He sprinted into the living room and picked up the phone. “Hi,” he said. “What happened?”

“Kind of you to ask, but nothing much happened at all. We arrived back in the U.S. last night—this morning, really—and I thought I would give you a buzz right about now.” It was Morgan. Calling at after three a.m.—not a good sign. In fact, a threatening one. Did he know that Eric had just arrived home? Or was he trying to awaken him in order to give him a nightmarish kind of frisson?

“Oh, I thought it was my broker,” said Eric. “This seems to be the moment to get out of the market, if the Fed will raise interest rates.” He wondered what he was talking about.

“Eurodollars,” suggested Morgan. “Put the bulk of your money in Eurodollars and a couple hundred thousand in an emerging markets fund.” Yeah, right, a couple hundred thousand.

“So you’re back,” said Eric, trying to appear pleased and not suddenly chilled.

“Do you have something I might want?” Morgan sounded bloody cheerful.

“All right,” agreed Eric. “I do. Let’s complete our business Friday night then. Obviously, neither one of us is going to get any sleep tonight.”

“I don’t sleep much anyway,” Morgan reassured him. “I’ll expect you at the Pierre at seven. That’s where we’re staying on this trip. Call me from downstairs. Don’t worry. I have plenty of cash on hand, but you’d better bring something a little more interesting this time.”

“Yes,” said Eric. “I have what you want.”

By the time he got back to the radio in the bedroom, the news segment was over. They were giving a business report. In fact, the Federal Reserve was expected to push up rates and the market was jittery. Eric must be psychic. He fell asleep listening for the information about Pamela’s to come on again. That changed into a paranoid fantasy that the whole mess had been about getting Eric Ryder off of a certain investigation. Immodest of him maybe, but the technology the brokers were after, he knew, was worth mucho millions in eventual revenue.

He dropped by Westlake at a little after ten, said hi to those in his immediate work area, and sat in his cubicle with his feet propped up on his desk. Chet rolled his chair out into the aisle and faced his neighbor. “What is it this time?” Chet asked, in a spirit of ‘how far can he go?’

“I didn’t get to sleep until three-thirty.” Eric groaned. “No use in my even getting started, either. I have a doctor’s appointment in the city this afternoon.” He smiled. “But don’t worry. I’m on the job, thinking deep thoughts.” He took the top off the coffee he had brought and unfurled the newspaper.

“Exclusive Club Besieged, Doorman, Bystanders Die” read a story on the bottom of the front page. “Shots rang out last night amid the glitter of Pamela’s, one of New York’s hottest night spots, and by four in the morning, five people, including two of the gunmen who had come to rob the club’s wealthy patrons, had died in the carnage.

“Around nine-thirty last night, five robbers forced their way into the popular late-night music spot on Varrick Street in Greenwich Village, shooting and killing James Avery, 27, the club’s bouncer and door attendant.”

Eric skimmed the page. The third paragraph down mentioned Finnigan as having been the headliner last night, but not a word was said about the singer’s son or his bodyguards. Eric turned to the jump page in the Metro section. The reporter seemed to feel that police had shot the two bad guys during their rush on the club. That was just as well.

The two club-goers who had been killed in the melee weren’t named, pending notification of their families. Just another urban tragedy. You read something like it every day. The only difference this time was, Eric had been there.

“Nice coat,” Chet complemented Eric, nodding at Finnigan’s cashmere loaner draped over Eric’s computer.

“Oh,” said Eric. “I checked my coat at a restaurant last night and got this one back by mistake. I ought to keep it, but I’m a pretty straight-arrow guy. I’m returning it later.”

He was at Midtown South by four. The feds and Steinberg wanted to drill him on his role. “You’re prepping me?” he asked. “I invented this character.”

Special Agent Sally Klein insisted on placing the bodywire herself. She taped him with moleskin in the same manner that the NYPD surveillance guy had. She put foam rubber around the antenna. “Don’t fold your arms over this,” she instructed him. Eric yawned. He felt as if he had been plowing away at this and everything else for days. He had.

A cop walked in and watched them with curiosity for a minute or two from the doorway, then came over. “You’re the guy who was at Pamela’s last night,” he observed. Eric acknowledged it. Steinberg made a face that said, ‘I should have figured.’

“The cops downtown want to interview you,” the officer pointed out.

“I know,” agreed Eric. “And I want to get my coat that I left at the club. But in the meantime, I’m hung up with this other thing.”

The cop looked at Steinberg and Klein as if he wanted to ask what the other thing was, but he didn’t. “They want to know who shot the two bad guys in there,” said the cop, instead. “Because right now it looks as if we rushed the place with hostages inside and that’s against departmental policy. We’re getting a lot of shit.”

“Yeah.” Eric nodded. “I heard.” He smiled helpfully. “I’ll be by. It’s a brown tweed coat, sort of an antique. Don’t let anyone take it.”

The officer left. “You’re a pisser,” Steinberg told him. “You killed those two guys?” Steinberg and Klein were studying Eric.

“Aw, lighten up people,” Eric said. He turned to Klein. “This wire isn’t going to burn me, is it?” he asked.