Coyne waited several beats like the son of a movie actor he was, his gaze moving from face to face—even to Cruncher’s ruined face—and then he said, “But this storm sewer opening outside the Disney Pavilion is
Coyne looked around the faces again, drawing it out.
“… and
Six of the seven other boys started babbling and jostling one another.
“They’ll never see us,” said Coyne. “We’ll shoot the Jap VIP from the sewer opening, just cut him down like a weed, and be gone before his security can turn around. We lock the iron panels behind us. By the time they get down into the sewers, we’re a mile away through the whatchamacallit—labyrinth—of those old storm sewers, already out on the streets and blending with the crowds. I even know where to dump the guns on the way so they’ll never be found.”
The babbling and jostling stopped and all eight boys just looked at one another. Even Cruncher quit mopping his bleeding mouth.
“Holy shit,” Val whispered at last. “It might work. Holy shit.”
“We’ll flash on this for years,” said Coyne.
“Holy shit,” repeated Val.
“Holy shit and amen,” Coyne said, blessing everyone with his fingers like he was the new pope who’d taken over for the dead one.
“
1.05
LoDo, Denver—Saturday, Sept. 11
Sato didn’t take the handcuffs off as he drove north to 20th Street and then east above I-25 again and down into the part of Denver called LoDo. Nick’s wrists were already torn and bloody; the jouncing of the heavy—obviously armored—turd-brown Honda electric tore more flesh off his wrists and made Nick grind his molars rather than cry out again.
He’d wanted to kill Sato before this. Now he vowed to torture the Jap before he killed him.
LoDo was the cute name developers back in the
Keigo Nakamura had died in a room on the third floor of a three-story building on Wazee Street, a long dark street with two-story whorehouses, saloons, and warehouses on one side and three-story warehouses, saloons, and whorehouses on the other side.
It was full light—or at least as light as it was going to get on this chilly, rainy September morning—when Sato parked the Honda at the curb outside the three-story building that looked exactly like all the other three-story buildings on the south side of Wazee Street. As the security chief came around to unlock the cuffs, Nick considered jumping Sato… then rejected the idea. He was too worn out by the night of flashing, the injections of T4B2T and TruTel, and from the sheer adrenaline of terror.
It would have to be another time.
Sato unlocked the cuffs and, seizing both of Nick’s bleeding wrists in one gigantic hand, pulled an aerosol can from his suit pocket.
Sato sprayed something cold onto Nick’s lacerated wrists. For a few seconds the pain was so terrible that Nick gasped loudly despite himself. Then… nothing. No pain at all. When Sato released his grip, Nick flexed his fingers. Everything worked fine and despite all the blood on his sweatshirt and the dash and windshield, the lacerations were superficial.
Sato grabbed Nick under the arm, lifted him out of the car, and plopped him down on the curb, steering him toward the old building. Shapes—sleeping flash addicts or winos, Nick assumed—stirred and stood in the dark entrance under the overhang.