“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I believe in you, too.”
She smiled. “Obviously. Now, are you taking off? One of us should, and I was hoping to watch the movie.”
chapter
eight
DOX
Dox stood under a gray drizzle at the apex of Freeway Park, observing the weird concrete labyrinth below. It was hard to know what to make of it. He’d been to most of the great city parks of the world—Lumpini in Bangkok, Güell in Barcelona, Beihai in Beijing. Not to mention your more local candidates like Central in New York and Golden Gate in San Francisco. But this one . . . Well, it was sui generis, as the lawyers liked to say, you’d have to give it that. He wondered what was behind the design—a crazy architect, thinking what the world needed most was a Brutalist version of Angkor Wat or the stepwells of India? Maybe. The problem was, two great tastes didn’t always taste great together. He liked sriracha plenty and he loved durian, too, but he wouldn’t pour the one on the other.
But he’d told Kanezaki that, based on the intel, he had a feeling the park would be the place to look for this hombre Manus, and so here he was.
It was a strange job for a sniper. Hell, it was a strange job for any respectable killer for hire. More a humanitarian mission than the kind of reach-out-and-touch-someone engagement Kanezaki ordinarily had in mind.
Of course, that didn’t mean the job was free of Kanezaki’s signature manipulations. The man just couldn’t help himself. Though somehow, the fact that Dox knew what he was up to, and that Kanezaki knew Dox knew, tended to make the habit tolerable.
The way Kanezaki had initially pitched it, for example, when he’d reached Dox on the satellite phone in Bali two days earlier. He’d said, “I have something that needs looking into in Seattle. Livia would be right for it, but I thought you’d want to know first.”
Thought you’d want to know. True enough, of course, but it obscured the larger story, which was that there was no way Dox would allow Labee to face danger if he could face it himself. Labee, Livia’s real name, which she’d told him when he told her his was Carl. He loved the sound of it. Loved saying it, even to himself. And he loved that only he got to call her that.
“That’s very courteous of you,” Dox had told him, half-annoyed, half-grateful.
“In fairness,” Kanezaki said, “I was instructed to retain you for the job.”
“Instructed? By who?”
“DCI Rispel.”
That threw him. When the hell had he become a plaything for people as high up as Rispel? And why would Kanezaki even consider Labee for something like this?
“Should I be honored?”
Kanezaki chuckled. “I doubt it. It’s clear to me Rispel’s primary concern, with effectiveness as a given, is disposability.”
“At least my effectiveness is a given. For a minute there, you had me worried.”
“She pitched the job as retaliation. But that’s bullshit. Someone brought in a contractor to make a run at a government official. They want to use you to cut the thread.”
“Assassinate the assassin?”
“That’s how it looks to me.”
“Classic. But I wouldn’t even consider it.”
“I’ve always admired your ethics.”
“It’s not ethics, son. It’s professional courtesy. With maybe a little concern for karma thrown in. Who’s this official, anyway?”
“An assistant US Attorney named Alondra Diaz.”
“Pretty name.”