Free Last to Fold by David Duffy Page A

perfect New York City car.
    I tossed the bags in back and headed for the Holland Tunnel, where it was still rush hour. I wanted to arrive early, get the lay of the land. The dashboard clock read 8:33 when I left. At 9:02, I pulled into the Sheraton’s parking lot. I found a space near the entrance and sat in the dusk. It felt a little like the old days, when I’d been stationed here before—meeting an agent when exposure for either of us had dire consequences. This time, though, I hadn’t chosen the venue, and the dire consequences would all fall on me.
    I watched the parking lot in the failing light. If I were doing this, I’d have a man in the lot, two in the lobby, and two upstairs, in the room next door or, better, across the hall, all connected with earphone radios. Their first concern would be the money, their second, me. No reason for them to do anything so long as I followed instructions. Which I fully intended to do. Up to a point.
    At 9:42, a car drove in, its headlights sweeping across the Valdez and the front of the hotel. It parked on the other side of the entrance. A man in a rumpled sports coat got out and unloaded a wheeler suitcase from the trunk. It was red. Shit. Nothing I could do. I held my breath as he pulled it to the front door. He stopped in the lighted entranceway to search his pockets. It took forever before he found what he was looking for—his cell phone. I almost got out and yelled at him to keep moving, but nobody attacked him. Nobody came out to greet him. From what I could see, there was nobody to pay him any attention whatsoever. He finally continued inside. The parking lot returned to emptiness. I waited several more minutes before exhaling slowly. They knew who they were waiting for.
    At 9:55, I slid a SIG Pro 9 mm handgun, a compact, double-action autoloader with a polymer frame and a ten-round magazine, into the backpack with the bills, working it down almost to the bottom. I don’t like guns. The result of having them pointed at me in my youth. I don’t carry one as a rule, but I wasn’t sure what I was in for tonight, so better safe than sorry. I figured the guy at the door, if there was a guy at the door, would search me and make sure the backpack contained the money, but he was unlikely to dump it out in the parking lot. Or so I hoped.
    I locked the car, hoisted the backpack, and walked toward the entrance. The bright lights of the covered doorway cast everything around it in shadow. No doorman, no bellhop, no other guests, just a big, empty, well-lighted space. To walk into that, like the guy with the suitcase, was to present a target a blind man couldn’t miss from a quarter mile away. I stopped fifteen feet short, still in the shadows. Growing up in a Marxist bureaucracy teaches many things, and one of them is patience. I could stand there all night if need be. I was disobeying instructions, but if they meant me harm, I might get a half second of warning. I waited, stock-still, one eye on the door, peripheral vision searching the parking lot for any sign of movement among the cars.
    Newark is known as a tough town, but it’s not Moscow. Nobody shot me from the shadows. After two long minutes, a man in a dark-colored shirt pushed his way out the door and straight in my direction.
    “Back to car,” he said without breaking stride.
    He followed me to the Valdez. When we got there, he had a gun in his hand.
    “Bag on car. Hands on car.” Ukrainian accent.
    I put the backpack on the hood and my hands on the roof. He ran his free hand over my arms, legs, and torso. He opened the backpack, looked inside, shook it once, pulled out a pack of bills, fanned it, and replaced it. The one flaw in my plan was that he’d try to accompany me upstairs, but he put the backpack on the car, walked around to the other side, and said, “Go. Three twelve.”
    I took the money and walked to the hotel without looking back.
    The lobby was empty, but the cocktail lounge, on an open, raised