Free Mortal Faults by Michael Prescott Page A

that I’ll regret getting involved,” she said briskly. “Fax the report, but don’t bother arranging a pickup at LAX. I’ll catch a cab.”
    She ended the call before he could say anything more, then buzzed her assistant.
    “Cancel my appointments for the next two days. I’m going out of town.”

 
     
     
    9
     
    The Brayton Hotel had been put up in 1927 and recently renovated at cost of thirty million dollars. The establishment was not so much a hotel as a palace, an opulent monument in the heart of the city. Vaulted ceilings hung over the Spanish Renaissance lobby. Fine carpets absorbed the footsteps of liveried bellmen. The clamor of traffic and people on the streets outside was muted, safely relegated to another world, another century.
    Jack Reynolds loved the Brayton. He loved any place that whispered of wealth and status. Whispered was the right word. It did no good to shout about these things. To shout would be vulgar. Men of real power did not shout. They didn’t have to. The same was true of buildings. The Brayton was old money, not nouveau riche. It had no need to prove itself.
    He was different from the hotel in that way. He’d been proving himself all his life.
    Reynolds entered the rendezvous court, which had once been a library and still offered the hushed atmosphere appropriate to a bookish sanctuary. At a small table in an out-of-the-way corner he ordered black coffee. His security people weren’t with him, but across the room he saw Kip Stenzel reading the latest
Newsweek
. Stenzel had outfitted him with a radio transmitter the size of the deck of cards, and Reynolds now reached into his pocket and switched it on, saying quietly, “Testing.”
    At the far table, Stenzel discreetly tapped his earlobe. He was receiving.
    It never hurt to have a second pair of ears at a meeting. And Stenzel could be trusted to keep quiet about whatever Abby Sinclair had learned.
    The coffee arrived. Reynolds took a sip and leaned back in his chair. As always when he found himself in a place like this, he couldn’t resist the inrush of contrasting memories from his boyhood. The gray sludge that leaked from the tap in the kitchen sink, which the landlord refused to repair—and now the porcelain mug of Kona coffee, imported from Hawaii and fresh ground in the kitchen. The blare of jungle music from car stereos—and now the Chopin etude playing on hidden speakers. The stink of urine in the stairwell—and now the hint of cinnamon from a scented candle in his table’s centerpiece.
    Those were superficial differences. What really mattered was the change in atmosphere, of the very air around him. Growing up, he had been hardly able to breathe—and not only because of the waves of body odor rising from the bums who slept on the stairs, or the stifling confines of the bedroom he shared with two younger brothers. Even in the open air, his lungs had been tight, frozen. He’d been choking, suffocating, every breath constricted by furious despair. At some point in his childhood he heard the expression “trapped in poverty,” and he knew immediately that it named his predicament. He was trapped in the barrio. No exit. No hope.
    There were three great turning points in his life. The first came at age ten, when he was ambushed after school by a trio of Mexicans. They were older and bigger than he was, and they took turns pummeling him, pounding him in the face and belly. He could still see the blur of their fists, taste his own sweat, feel the burn of nausea with each new smack in the gut.
    But he wouldn’t go down. He took the punishment without surrender. Once or twice he fell on one knee, but always he was back on his feet in time to accept the next blow, and the next.
    Two of his attackers backed off, exhausted, leaving only the ringleader still throwing punches and screaming, “Cry!” His broad Aztec face was twisted in fury, his mouth dangling loops of spittle. “Cry, asshole! Lemme see you cry!”
    Jack did not