The Bloomsday Dead Read Free Page A

man behind me. I could see in the reflection of the mirrored dresser that he was pointing a 9mm at my head. Slightly redundant since the man sitting on the sofa held a pump-action shotgun. They were both dressed in shiny gangster-fabulous suits. They spoke Spanish with northern accents. Colombian, I would have guessed, but that just might be prejudice on my part.
    “You are Michael Forsythe?” asked the one with the 9mm.
    “No, amigo,” I said. “Don’t know who that is.”
    “You are Michael Forsythe,” he said again, but this time it wasn’t a question.
    The one with the shotgun motioned for me to put my hands up and the other one frisked my upper body, removing my obvious gun, my binoculars and wallet. They looked at the photo on my ID.
    “It’s him,” Shotgun said.
    The two men backed away from me. I stood with my hands over my head for a moment.
    “Ok, what do we do now?” I wondered.
    “We wait.”
    One of the gunmen sat down on the sofa while the other motioned me into the center of the room.
    “Kneel on the floor with your hands over your head,” Shotgun said, flashing a crooked smile in my direction.
    “Are you going to kill me?” I asked.
    “Quite possibly,” the one with the shotgun said, which, if nothing else, was an interesting answer. Not an imminent threat of death anyway.
    “Well, I hate to spoil your little plans and I know you guys don’t like surprises, so you should know that if I don’t call the front desk and tell them I cleaned up that disturbance on the fiftieth floor they are going to send a couple of guys up here looking for me.”
    The two men glanced at one other and conferred in low tones. Nine-millimeter brought me the phone.
    “Call them. Let them know you are going to bed and do not wish to be disturbed,” he said.
    I took the phone.
    “Of course, if you say anything to warn them or anything we do not like we will kill you immediately. Those are our instructions,” Shotgun added.
    “Shoot first, eh?” I said.
    “Yes.”
    I picked up the phone, dialed the front desk and got through to Tinco.
    “Tinco. I took care of the problem on the fiftieth. Tell Hector that he can go home, I don’t want to go bird-watching this morning, I already saw an eagle. Got that? Ok, I’m going to go to bed.”
    I hung up the phone and looked at the two men. They seemed satisfied. If Hector hadn’t left, he’d be up here in five minutes. Eagle was the call sign for major security alert.
    I stood for a moment and the men motioned me to kneel again. All the tiredness had left me now and I was ready to raise holy hell if I got the chance. But the men were cautious. Keeping themselves well away from a sudden spin kick or a roll and punch. By the time I was halfway through either of those moves, I’d be dead. I scanned them. Skinny, young, but not that young. Experienced looking. This was not their first hit. Both in their late twenties or early thirties. The one with the shotgun was slightly older, slightly yellower, his hair greased back over a bald spot. Both had an odd burn mark above their knuckles. Some kind of gangster tattoo. I’d seen similar ones before. They were representing. Unlikely they were freelance. Unlikely they were amateurs.
    “How long do we wait?” I asked, but before either could answer, the younger one’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open and put it to his ear.
    “It’s him,” he said in English. “It’s definitely him. What do you want us to do?”
    The person on the phone said something. The two men stood, leveled their weapons. I closed my eyes expecting instant death, but then opened them again—if death was coming I wanted to meet it headon. And besides, I had a little ace in the hole that those two goons didn’t know about. Maybe take one of the bastards with me. That arrogant son of a bitch with the shotgun, perhaps.
    But they weren’t killing me, they were adjusting themselves. The client wanted to speak to me first. The man with the 9mm