Dead End Deal (16 page)

“But a serious guy?” Jon asked, surprised at a tinge of jealousy. Where did that come from?

She leaned left to make eye contact with him between the seat backs. “I am sorry about Emily.” Jon noticed she had almost no accent, probably from having spent so much time in the States.

“Thank you.”

He caught the same scent she wore in Seattle. It triggered memories of her working next to him, all the stolen little glances at the curve of her neck, the concentration furrows across her brow, wisps of black hair she repeatedly swept behind an ear . . .

During college and residency years he’d been involved with a consecutive string of women, none of the relationships lasting more than eight or nine months. The reason for the breakups segregated roughly into two bins: she wasn’t what he was looking for, or she interpreted the long hours he needed for studying as delegating her to a runner-up status in his list of priorities, so she dumped him. And the ones in the second group had been correct. In a way. Good grades—the caliber required to succeed in the extremely competitive environment—didn’t come easily for him, so work did trump relationships. But at a price. Because fourteen years later, after finally graduating residency, at a time in his career when he could finally could stop studying his ass off, he had become jaded and cynical, believing that women were attracted to him now only because of the status and earning power neurosurgery brought. So he gave up looking for a permanent relationship, opting instead for a comfortable single life of superficial relationships that satisfied the basic need for sex and companionship.

Then, two years ago Emily Miller changed his life. By the end of their first date he was smitten. Within weeks they were seeing each other exclusively, then became engaged. And for the first time in his single man career, he’d found a woman he would be happy marrying. A drunk in a Toyota Tundra blew a red light and T-boned her Corolla. Leaving her dead on arrival at Harborview Trauma Center.

Jin-Woo turned right into a narrow alley, drove a half block, and stopped beside a glass office building with a Japanese restaurant on the first floor. A smiling valet opened Jon’s door and said something in Korean. A greeting, most likely, so Jon stepped out and nodded. Yeonhee joined him.

“Not there, here.” Jin-Woo motioned them to a second, inconspicuous glass door to the left of the restaurant.

I
N SHADOWS AT THE
far edge of the small parking lot, Feist dismounted, engaged the stand, and exchanged his helmet for a New York Yankees baseball cap. Staying in the shadows of a brick wall, he watched Ritter, the unidentified woman, and the doctor walk from the car to a door. The taxi following Ritter stopped further down the alley and cut its headlights. The Avenger slipped out and waited for the cab to leave before moving into the shadowy corner of the parking lot.

Feist unwrapped a cigar, clipped the end, and began to chew it, his mind sorting through various options.

A
FTER KICKING OFF THEIR
shoes in a small lobby, Yeonhee, Jin-Woo, and Jon took a flight of stairs to the second floor, where a Korean hostess in a slinky maroon dress met them. She bowed and exchanged a few words with Jin-Woo before leading them along a narrow hall to a sliding
shoji
screen. With another bow, she opened the screens, exposing a small private
tatami
mat room with an Asian-style dining table in the center. After Jin-Woo took the head of the table, he motioned Jon to sit on his left and Yeonhee on his right.

As soon as they sat, a waiter placed a large bottle of beer in front of Jin-Woo, who promptly filled Jon’s glass. Then Yeonhee poured his, before filling her own. Jin-Woo raised his glass, said, “
Kanpai
!” using the Japanese toast. “To a successful project.”

“
Kanpai
!” They clinked glasses and sipped.

Immediately, various small dishes of kimchi and other food Jon didn’t recognize began arriving. Jon realized he was starved and started in. How long had it been since he really enjoyed a meal?

Talk turned to the clinical trial and the time crunch they faced. The first task of the morning would be for Jin-Woo to escort Jon to Security for an ID card. Once that was finished, Jon would begin by multiplying the stem cells that would become neurons once implanted into the patients’ brains. Laboratory stem cell cultures require twenty-four hour a day attention, especially if they are to become neurons. The cultures must be kept sterile, and because they are being grown without a normal blood supply, they need to be maintained in a 95 percent oxygen environment, which makes transporting them difficult. Making matters worse is contact inhibition, a phenomenon that stops cells from growing if they touch each other. To prevent this, clumps of cells need to be gently broken apart by sucking them into a pipette and then releasing them back into the growth medium.

All this was running through Jon’s head when Jin-Woo’s cell phone rang. He excused himself from the room, leaving Jon and Yeonhee in awkward silence. Finally, Jon asked, “This guy of yours, tell me about him.”

She blushed and lowered her eyes to the slice of kimchi held between the tips of her chopsticks, then slowly replaced it in her rice bowl, set down her chopsticks, and folded her hands in her lap. “This is a problem, you see . . . he is an executive with Hyundai. He is what my girlfriends call a ‘good catch.’ He wants to marry me but I don’t know . . .”

“You love him?”

She immediately shook her head, paused, looked him in the eye. “How about you? Have you found someone or is this still too soon after Emily?”

Why did the question embarrass him? He stalled by exchanging his chopsticks for a sip of beer. “Wayne keeps encouraging me to start going out again, says I need to put that part of my life back together, but I don’t know . . . there’s this neighbor . . . I know she’s interested . . .” He looked at the bowl in his hand, replaced it on the table, “I asked her out but with what’s going on, I haven’t had a chance yet.”

He glanced at the door, looking to see if Jin-Woo was headed back in. When he didn’t see him he said, “May I ask you something?”

She blushed and nodded. “You may. And I may choose to not answer.”

“Do you and Jin-Woo,” with a nod toward the door, “have something going?”

With a dismissive laugh her blush vanished. Again, she looked him in the eye. “I’m sure people wonder because we work so closely together, but no.”

“Did you? When you were in Seattle?”

She sighed, dropped her eyes, and after a moment shook her head. “No. It was hard at the time because I was lonely and didn’t know anyone in Seattle and it was difficult for me speaking English all the time. With him I could speak Korean, which was a relief. But I really didn’t want to get involved with my boss. And I know he has girlfriends. A lot of Korean men are like that. It is accepted behavior. But I can’t accept that.”

Jon decided to change the subject. “Your fiancé. . . . tell me more about him.”

She picked up her glass of beer and sipped, taking more time than needed. “His name is Jung-Kyo, so you can call him that if you prefer. I don’t know if I’m going to marry him or not. If I do, it would help provide for my mother. She lives in the town I grew up in, Kyonggi-Do, a city south of Seoul.”

“So your father, is he not around?”

Yeonhee gave a bitter laugh. “He moved out when I was thirteen . . . to live with a younger woman. He and my mom never really divorced and he never assumed financial responsibility for us. It’s always been up to my mother to support us. She does people’s laundry for money.”

Seemed like everything he asked became uncomfortable. He tried for something less emotional while still wanting to learn more about her. “Us? You have brothers or sisters?”

“I have an older brother, but he can’t really help out because he has severe psychiatric problems. He’s calm one moment and then can be enraged the next. It makes it so no one will hire him. I have a younger sister, but she married when she was sixteen and is a baby machine—four children. It’s hard for her and her husband to provide for their own needs.

“I wanted to stay at home and help Mom, but two weeks after I graduated high school my brother went crazy and came after me with a butcher knife.” She shivered and paused to rub her upper arm. “I made it to the bathroom and locked myself in. The police came and took him away for a few days, but Mom would never press charges because he’s okay when it’s just the two of them.”

Yeonhee got a distant look in her eyes. “I realized I couldn’t stay at home any longer, so I came to Seoul to live with a girlfriend. I was lucky, found a job as a lab assistant. It paid enough money for me to start university. I still send money to my mom every month.”

“Have you ever asked your father to help out?”

She looked him in the eye. “I will never communicate with him. Never. Two weeks ago my sister called. My father’s in hospital. Liver cancer, she said. He’s going to die within two or three months. He’s my father and I know I should go see him, but I just can’t do it. Not after what he did to us.”

Jon decided to change the subject. “When we finish this project—”

The door slid back open and Jin-Woo stepped in. “Sorry. That was the hospital. I had to take the call.” He settled down on his cushion. “Where were we?”

22

A
T THE FAR END
of the parking lot, Nigel Feist chewed slowly and deliberately on an unlit Maduro torpedo when Ritter exited the restaurant, followed by the doctor and the girl. Quickly, Nigel dropped the cigar into his pocket for later.

Rather than pay attention to Ritter and his friends climbing into the Hyundai, Feist watched the other bloke. There he was, still cloaked in shadows. Then Nigel was moving, heading straight toward him, hand pulling the guitar string from his pocket, both ends twisted into loops around wooden pegs, the perfect weapon to sneak past TSA inspectors to assemble on site. Feist slipped between two cars, coming up fast behind the Avenger, then looping the garrote around his neck while buckling the man’s knees, he dropped him down behind another car. The man struggled but everything happened so fast, he never had a chance. Nigel crushed his windpipe before he could even make a sound. Nigel held tight, fighting the struggling Avenger, keeping him back on his heels while his fingers clawed at the wire he couldn’t loosen. Nigel listened for the crunch of gravel that would warn him of anyone approaching as he patiently waited for his victim’s brain to die. Finally, the man became motionless but Feist kept the wire taut for three more minutes. He wanted to make sure he didn’t leave this guy alive. While he held on he listened to traffic and the random sounds of a densely populated city. Finally, he removed the wire, quickly rewound it, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

Nigel found an unlocked car farther down the alley, opened the back door, dragged the victim over, and slid him onto the seat. He fished out the dead man’s wallet and angled it in the dim street light for a better view.

Aw fuckin’ Christ. A fucking FBI agent
. He just offed an agent of the fucking US of A. Stunned, frozen in place, his mind raced through ramifications.
Fucking think!

Witnesses.
Any witness hanging around? Carefully he scanned the surrounding office buildings and was relieved to see most windows dark. But on second thought, for someone to see him down here in the shadows, their interior lights would have to be off, so blacked out windows didn’t mean shit. Someone could be calling the coppers this very second.
Christ, don’t just stand here
.

Heart pounding, Nigel slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door.
Fuck!

If the car belonged to a restaurant patron, the valet would have probably slipped the key above the visor. Ran his finger along the edge and sure enough, found it. He paused to think through his next move. Killing was not a part of the job he fancied. Hated it, in fact. But occasionally it was necessary to achieve what he was being paid for. But only after methodical planning. With this one he’d been forced to ignore this rule. First, Raymore’s senseless execution of Lippmann. Now this. Navigating a sea of bad luck was what he was doing. Made every damn move on this job riskier, testing the boundaries of good fortune, putting him at high risk of exposure. Killing a fucking federal agent could be an absolute game-changer. Certainly it could bring a shitload of grief down on him. He needed to do something quickly, but very carefully. This fucking job was spiraling out of control.

Hold on! Think
.
What the hell was this bloke doing here?
Didn’t seem likely the FBI would assign an agent to
protect
Ritter. More likely they’d use Ritter as bait for an Avenger. That had to be it. Meaning his murder could be made to look like . . .

Nigel scanned the immediate surroundings one more time, concentrating on anything that could incriminate him. He saw nothing, thought about it one more time, just to be sure. No, nothing.

He glanced around, thinking,
anything else to worry about?
Certainly didn’t see anyone who might be a witness, but couldn’t tell about the surrounding buildings. He’d waited in the alley long enough to be confident it was deserted except for the valet who spent most his time inside the restaurant. He popped the car trunk, wrestled the FBI agent into it, then was on a main street driving to no place in particular, just racking up miles between him and the alley. Four blocks later he tossed the shredded cigar out the window.

Sweating still, heart pounding, he tried to suck saliva into his mouth. No go. Dry as the Gibson Desert. Killed a fucking FBI agent, he did. There was an upside to it, he thought. A stroke of luck, spotting him, for if he hadn’t, no telling what might’ve happened.

Time to quit, mate. Time to leave the business while you’re ahead.
Fuck Stillman’s money.

Neither political nor religious, Nigel worked only for the money, taking any client who would pay. As a child, his family had struggled financially, leaving him to believe you best estimated a person’s wealth by the location of their house. The wealthy built on the hilltops with panoramic views. The poor rented in flood plains with a view only of the neighbors’ loo.