knew it wasn’t because of being stuck with taking the woman. Farrel had gotten out of the car and was going around to the passenger side. “This just got messy.”
He was right. Farrel and the woman were going inside the restaurant, a place called Mama Guadaloupe’s. Extracting two people from a car on the street was one thing. Getting them out of a crowded restaurant, when at least one of them had the potential of putting up a helluva fight, was another.
“I’ll take a black syringe with me,” he said. Doping the bastard was the best bet. The trick would be getting him out of the restaurant before he collapsed. He and Rock could always bring Farrel around once they got him to Lancaster’s suite at the Kashmir Club.
Rock pulled to a stop two cars behind the GTO, and they both got out of the Jeep. As they passed the Pontiac, Rock bent down and slashed the tires—standard operating procedure.
Inside the restaurant, he and Rock found a place at the end of the bar, ordered a couple of beers, and started looking around. It didn’t take long to spot their targets, even in the crowd. The pair was getting settled into a table, the woman sliding out of her coat and hanging it on the chair, the hostess still chatting them up and handing them their menus. For dining purposes, their location sucked. For what King had in mind, it was perfect. The table was back by the kitchen, where everybody and their dog was swinging by, toting food out and dirty dishes in.
“Hot damn,” Rock said.
King concurred. The woman was a stunner, like a fashion model, the way she was dressed, all sexed up in a short-short gold dress and hot little black boots, her hair so long and dark, so silky shiny. And her face. Christ. He’d laid a woman like her once in Dallas, a girl too rich and beautiful for her own good who’d just wanted a walk on the wild side.
He’d given it to her.
“I think we’ll just mosey over there, Rock, and let Farrel see that you’ve got a gun on the woman. My guess is that he’ll want to go real peaceful-like. Come on.”
He stood up, and he and Rock started across the room. It didn’t take Farrel long to spot them, either, and as soon as he did, King lifted the right side of his hoodie, just enough to give Farrel a glimpse of his .45. Next to him, Rock let his hand graze the outside of his shirt, letting his pistol print for a brief second, with the added gesture of pointing at the woman.
Farrel would get the picture real quick—any sign of a fight, and the girl was a goner. Rock’s first shot was for her.
Cretins, Monk thought, watching King and Rock weave their way across the restaurant dining room, flashing weapons and telegraphing threats against the woman with Conroy Farrel. He could see it all through the front window, feel it all, and he’d have expected better of men working for Randolph Lancaster.
They had what he wanted more than anything, and they didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve their position in Lancaster’s life.
It made him sick in his heart.
Threats were for weaklings. If he’d wanted the woman dead, he’d have killed her. One good backhand would take her head off, damn near literally. There’d be none of this mincing around with guns.
Mama Guadaloupe’s—he glanced up at the sign, squinting even behind his sunglasses. It was no accident that he’d found Farrel here. Monk knew everything about Farrel and his former life in Denver as J. T. Chronopolous, all the places he’d liked to hang out, the houses and apartments where he’d lived before moving into 738 Steele Street. Monk knew where he’d gone to school and what recruiting office he’d gone to when he’d enlisted in the Marines. He knew some of the women he’d been with and where they were now. He knew what cars J.T. had owned and a few that he’d stolen, and he knew Mama Guadaloupe’s had been his favorite restaurant, a home away from home. J.T. had been a legend here, and Monk had mapped out a route of J.T.’s most important places, putting his reconnaissance plan together while he’d still been in Bangkok, spreading his maps and schedules and data across Dr. Patterson’s desk while chewing on the good doctor’s bones.
He’d tasted like chicken.
Monk wasn’t a cannibal. He was a survivor, an animal