Dirty Work

57

The meeting in the presidential suite was just breaking up, when an FBI agent walked quickly into the room and whispered something in the director’s ear.

The director’s eyebrows went up. “You cannot be serious,” he said.

“I am perfectly serious,” the man replied.

The director turned to Carpenter. “Your man, Mason, has just been found dead in the elevator, shot twice.”

Carpenter stood up; she wasn’t sure why. Before she could say anything, her cell phone rang. Automatically, she answered it. “Yes?”

“It’s Stone. Dino and I have just arrived at the Waldorf. We’d like to meet with you and the director.”

“Stone, she’s in the hotel.”

“Who’s in the hotel?”

“La Biche. She just shot Mason in the elevator.”

“Don’t leave the suite, and tell the director not to, as well. I’ll call you back.” He broke the connection.

“What is it?” Dino asked, as they walked up the steps from the drive-through under the hotel, headed for the Tower elevators.

“Marie-Thérèse is in the building,” Stone replied. “She’s just killed Mason in an elevator.”

Dino ran back to his car and retrieved a handheld radio. “This is Bacchetti,” he said into it. “La Biche is at the Waldorf. Pull everybody off the Brits’ offices and get them over here. Call hotel security, too, and get every available patrol car to the hotel. I want every woman alone stopped and ID’ed, then held if there’s the slightest suspicion.”

Marie-Thérèse waited impatiently for an elevator to stop, but none did. Then she realized what had happened. She had been on an express elevator to the Towers, one that stopped only because she had pressed the emergency button. The elevator to this floor was not an express, but stopped at any floor that had requested it, and at this hour of the day, it was receiving many requests. She had planned to reach the lobby while there was a commotion over the discovery of Mason’s body, before anyone had time to begin searching for his killer, but now her time was running out while she waited for an elevator. And at this moment, the security guard on the Tower floor was giving her description to her hunters. She looked around for an exit, a stairway, and found it. The door was plainly marked, sixteenth floor. If she took the elevator, someone would very likely be waiting at the bottom. How long would it take her to walk down sixteen flights of stairs?

She looked in the other direction and saw an open door, with linens and supplies stacked inside. She ran down the hallway into the closet and closed the door behind her. She found a maid’s dress, freshly laundered, on a shelf, and quickly got into it, buttoned it closed over her suit. She rolled up her pant legs, so that they disappeared under the skirt, and she found a maid’s cap and put it on. Then she heard a key in the lock, and the door opened.

A maid stood in the hallway beside a cart laden with supplies. Before she could speak, Marie-Thérèse asked, “Excuse me, where is the service elevator? I’m lost.”

“Down there,” the woman said, “but you’ll need a key.” Then she realized that something wasn’t right. “What are you doing in here? I don’t know you.”

Marie-Thérèse grasped her wrist and yanked her into the closet. She hit her sharply on the back of the neck with the heel of her hand, and the woman collapsed in a heap. Marie-Thérèse searched her for her keys and found them in a pocket. She left the closet, closing the door behind her, and began pushing the maid’s cart toward the service elevator, placing her handbag in the cart’s hamper. As she walked, she grabbed a towel and wiped her face vigorously, removing her makeup.

Stone called Carpenter’s cell phone again.

“Yes?”

“Dino and I are at the Tower elevators, and hotel security has it roped off. If she comes down in one of the other elevators, we’ll stop her.”

“Good.”

“Now, you’re going to have to organize a search of every floor between you and the ground, knocking on every door and checking out every woman who even vaguely fits her description.”

“The FBI is already working on that,” she said.

“Dino has called his people off your offices and is bringing them here, but if Marie-Thérèse has already made the ground floor, they’re going to be too late to stop her. Our only chance is if she’s still somewhere upstairs.”

“We have a new description,” Carpenter said. “She’s wearing a pantsuit, color undetermined, and she has short blond hair and is carrying a large handbag.”

“Got it,” Stone said. “Call me with any news.” He hung up. “She’s now got short blond hair,” he said to Dino, “and she’s wearing a pantsuit.”

Marie-Thérèse found the elevator key, slipped it into the lock, and turned it. She looked up at the floor lights. The car was three floors above her and headed down. After a long moment, the door opened, and she pushed the cart aboard. She looked at the buttons on the control panel and discovered that the hotel had a basement and two subbasements. She inserted her key and pressed the basement button. The doors closed, and the car started down.

To her alarm, it stopped again almost immediately, and the doors opened. A busboy pushed a room-service cart aboard, but her cart was between him and the control panel. “Push SB-one for me, will you?” he asked.

She inserted her key again and pressed the button. The elevator began moving down again.

“Man, this day is a bitch,” the busboy said in Spanish-tinted English. “I got half a dozen carts to get downstairs, and somebody’s stopping me every two seconds.”

“Why are they stopping you?” she asked, alarmed.

“They’re looking for somebody upstairs,” he said, “some woman. That’s all I know. Security is all over the place, and there’s lots of other guys I don’t know, guys in suits.”

“I’m new here,” she said. “What’s in subbasements one and two?”

“Kitchen on SB-one, laundry on SB-two,” the man said. “Hey, I buy you a cup of coffee sometime in the lounge, okay?”

“Sure,” Marie-Thérèse said. She was starting to sweat under the two layers of clothing. And she was frightened.