Vegas Moon

41.

The driver Lou hired is very good.

Seconds later, he’s got us through the gate, racing toward my private jet. Ten minutes after that, I’m on board. I want to call Callie, have her turn on the TV and let me know what’s happening. But I can’t use my cell phone to do it, since I don’t trust Lou or Darwin not to hone in on my signal with a surface to air missile. For this reason I only use my cell on planes when we’re above 20,000 feet. As the engines start firing, I try calling Callie using the onboard flight phone, but amazingly, her phone is still dark.

I think about calling Gwen, but decide against it. I don’t know what the TV announcers are saying, or if I’ve been videoed on someone’s cell phone. I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong opinion about me. I mean, the right opinion. I also don’t want to tip Lucky off to our relationship until I’m there to protect her. I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to hit her, but why give him the chance to consider it?

I call Lou.

“You made the news,” he says.

“Me?”

“They’re looking for Connor Payne. He’s a person of interest in the airport attack.”

“What’re they saying?”

“That he’s a foreign agent who breached security. Had phony papers that gave him top-level security clearance.”

“What’s the government say?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Typical.”

“What happened?” Lou says.

“What are they reporting?”

“Three people dead, twenty-three wounded.”

“Wounded?”

“Stampede. Apparently a bomb went off. People freaked.”

“Anyone seriously injured?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Thank God for that. Hang on a sec.”

The co-pilot turns to me and motions me to end the call.

“We’re taking off,” I say. “Call you later.”

When we pass 20,000 feet, I put the battery back in my cell phone and see that Callie has called me twice, and Darwin has called five times. My phone buzzes. I check the caller ID. Make that six times.

“Where are you?” he snaps.

“Airborn.”

“You never made contact with the limo driver. Why?”

“He knew them.”

He pauses. “How do you know?”

“Several reasons. In addition to those, he had a gun in his pocket. I don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Really?”

“He was one of ours.”

“Ours?”

Uh oh.

I ask, “Have you heard from him?”

“No, asshole. You killed him, remember?”

“Who told you?”

“Marshalls service. What do you mean he knew them?”

“When he recognized one of them, he put his right hand in his pocket, where his gun was. Then he raised the sign with his left hand.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You weren’t there. Trust me, he knew them.”

He pauses.

“I thought he might. That’s why we put him there.”

“Excuse me?”

“I wanted to see how you’d handle it. Figured you’d kill him if he deserved to die.”

“You had me assassinate one of our guys?”

“I didn’t make you pull the trigger. Why did you, by the way? And how did you know M was dressed like a woman?”

“The driver knew the accomplice, but not M. The accomplice knew M and the driver. I figured if I shot the driver suddenly, without sound or warning, the accomplice would instinctively turn to look at M. I was right. He looked directly at the woman in front of me. Couldn’t take his eyes off her. Looked nowhere else. It had to be M.”

“So you shot her.”

“Him.”

“What if you’d been wrong?”

“I’d feel terrible.”

“But you’d get over it.”

“I never get over it. But I move along.”

Darwin pauses a long time before speaking. At no time does he thank me for a job well done, or congratulate me, or say anything to make me feel wanted, needed, or appreciated. Doesn’t even give me the reassurance he isn’t plotting to kill me. When he speaks, he’s curt.

“I’ll call you when I need you,” he says.

And that’s that.

Take off to landing is eighty-three minutes, according to the on-board display panel. I spend most of it talking to Lou. I probe him about Darwin, to see if he’s got an opinion about what happened. He says all the right things, but who knows what he, or Darwin, or both of them might be up to. I tell him to send twenty grand to the nervous kid who made the bomb, and add it to my bill.

“We were lucky to find him on such short notice,” Lou says.

“Keep him on the payroll. The kid knows his bombs. What’s his name?”

“Joe Penny.”

“Good kid,” I say.

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

We hang up and I think about what Darwin asked. How would I feel if I’d shot an innocent woman in the back? Thinking about it now, I can’t imagine I took a chance like that. But at the time, when I was in the moment, it seemed obvious.

And maybe that’s the real difference between a hit man and an assassin.