The Wake-Up Read Free Page B

further interest in him.
    Practiced boredom was a specialty of the shop. They had even used it on him, sending some weary desk jockey with fine gray hair to sit on his bed in the plastic surgeon’s recovery room, the man plucking at the bedsheet while he told Thorpe that his services were no longer required. All that surveillance, and you didn’t ID the main player, Frank. How do you think that makes us look? The desk jockey yawned. I won’t even mention the mess at the safe house. Thorpe had beckoned the man closer, said he couldn’t hear him, but the desk jockey kept his distance, tossed Thorpe an envelope stuffed with cash.
    The woman whom Thorpe had mistaken for Kimberly walked slowly past, checking her flight ticket, looking lost. It wasn’t the first time Thorpe had seen Kimberly since she had been killed. He saw her running along the beach, he saw her waiting in line at the new John Woo movie, and once, in the produce department at Ralph’s, he had seen her trying to select a ripe cantaloupe. He knew it wasn’t really her. The photos taken at the safe house were proof enough. He knew it wasn’t her, but he always made sure anyway.
    Thorpe still didn’t know how the Engineer had pulled it off. He had observed Lazurus and his crew for months. Lazurus was a thug, violent and obscene and heavily guarded; the few phone intercepts had caught him raging, giving orders to subordinates who were desperate to please, fearful of his wrath. Lazurus might have thought he was the boss, but the man running the operation was the Engineer; that soft, pink technocrat, the faintly ridiculous Engineer with his puppy love and awkward manners. Lazurus was just an unwitting stand-in, another patsy who never knew what hit him. If it hadn’t been for the carnage at the safe house, Thorpe would have applauded the charade.
    Some poor bastard pushed a baby stroller down the concourse, one kid in the stroller crying, another one slung against his chest, sleeping. Dear old Dad was sweating in droopy jeans and a stained polo shirt, thinning hair plastered across his scalp, and looking happier than he had any right to. It always amazed Thorpe. Where did that happiness come from?
    No kids for Thorpe. No friends or family, either. He didn’t even have an ex-wife to bitch about, to call in the middle of the night, drunk and lonely, talking about the good times that neither of them remembered. He didn’t have anyone. Kimberly was the closest he had come, and she was dead. Fourteen years in uniform, the last ten in Delta Force, sent on missions he couldn’t talk about, and then came the shop, with its secret mental compartments. Thorpe was the neighbor you called at 4:00 a.m. when your car broke down in the middle of nowhere, the one who would come and get you, and not tell you to check your oil once in awhile. Then one day his apartment would be empty and he would be gone, with no forwarding address. Sudden departures and no emotional entanglements were part of the appeal of the job, an essential part of the pay package. The shop gave him an excuse to be who he really was. It was a lousy trade-off.
    Angry at himself, angry at the Engineer, angry at the sun and moon and stars, Thorpe finished the coffee in a quick swallow, then headed toward the escalator. Maybe the kid by the luggage carousel had mango slices for sale. Thorpe jiggled the empty cardboard cup as he walked, listening to the sugar cubes rattle around like blind dice.
    A businessman in a blue suit walked rapidly down the escalator, elbowed Thorpe aside without a word, and kept moving. Thorpe forced himself to stay put. In his present mood, once he started, he might not be able to stop. He watched the businessman’s crocodile briefcase swinging as the man plowed down the escalator, a real hard charger.
    The kid was still by the door, at his post. He held out the tray, called to the businessman. Without breaking stride, the businessman smacked away the kid’s tray with his