Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel(61)
“I have a box of disposable gloves in the car,” Ranger said. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“No way. You stay here. I’ll get the gloves.”
I returned with the gloves and stood back while Ranger unzipped the bag. I saw that the body was covered with lime, but even with a thick layer of lime it didn’t smell great. I inched my way out of the bedroom and across the living room to the front door. I mean, someone has to guard the door, right?
Ranger came out after a couple minutes, snapped his gloves off, and bagged them.
“Male. Partially decomposed, but I could see enough to guess that it’s Volkov,” he said. “The corpse is clearly missing a heart, so that’s one mystery solved.”
He pulled on new gloves and went room by room, opening drawers and looking in closets. He bagged the gloves with the first pair when he was done, and we left the house, closing the door behind us.
“No way to lock up,” he said. “There weren’t any keys in the house. No house keys and no car keys.”
“Vlatko wanted the van.”
“And the identity. If you don’t have a stooge to bring airborne poison into a building, you might come in as an HVAC tech. I’m sure Vlatko learned from Rangeman. He’ll be smarter if he attempts to use the polonium again.”
“Are you going to call this in to the police?”
“I’ll have someone make an anonymous call from a phone card. I don’t want to be involved.”
We walked the short distance to the Porsche, Ranger made a U-turn back to Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, and we headed for the beach.
“The trade show is at the Roland Atlantic Hotel,” Ranger said. “It gets a lot of the smaller conventions. There are seven hundred attending this one. Approximately half are from overseas. There’s a large bloc from Eastern Europe. I combed through the registration list and came up with several possible targets for Vlatko. He could also be here to take out someone who looks benign but is secretly an enemy of the state.”
“The eye patch puts him at a disadvantage,” I said. “There aren’t a lot of men walking around who look like they’re seventeen and only have one eye. I doubt the woman in the consulate would have remembered him if he hadn’t had the eye patch. Maybe you should be working with the police to find him.”
“If the police arrest him he’s inaccessible to me,” Ranger said, “and I don’t trust the system to permanently lock him away. It will be hard to tie him to the Rangeman incident, since the only witness is dead. If they catch him with the polonium he could be charged as a terrorist, especially if I testify against him. For obvious reasons, I’d prefer not to do that. I’d rather not have my black ops history made public. If they suspect him of murdering Volkov but can’t prove it, he’ll have his visa revoked and he’ll come back under a new identity to kill me and everyone associated with me.”
“So we’re on our own.”
“More or less. I have an FBI contact I trust. He’ll be working with me. And I have Rangeman.”
TWENTY-SIX
THE ROLAND ATLANTIC was toward the end of the vast Atlantic City boardwalk. It was an older hotel that had been expanded, given a fresh coat of badly applied stucco, and painted to resemble a birthday cake. The interior décor was also birthday cake with a splash of Easter basket.
Ranger parked in the ten-tier garage that was attached to the hotel by a pedestrian bridge on the third floor and a covered walkway going directly into the ground-floor casino. He called Jose and Rodriguez and told them to find him in the garage. Minutes later, they parked beside him. Jose and Rodriguez stayed in the garage, and Ranger and I took the elevator and entered the hotel directly into the casino. It was almost noon on a Monday, and the gaming area was packed. Most of the people were senior citizens. More women than men. The younger crowd would come out at night.
The noise from the slots was deafening, the flashing lights were seizure-inducing, and the amount of fat ass hanging over the chairs attached to the slot machines was horrifying. Because smoking was now prohibited, the overriding smell was that of whiskey slopped onto the Pepto-Bismol pink, Gulden’s mustard gold, and poison green carpet.
“Unzipping that body bag didn’t bother me,” Ranger said, “but I’m going to have nightmares over this casino.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Nothing special. I wanted to see the space.”
We moved from the slots to the tables, mentally cataloging exits, making note of the bars and dining areas. We took the escalator to the second-floor lobby. Check-in desk. Concierge station. More slots. Another bar. A restaurant advertising an all-day breakfast buffet and Bingo. The ballroom, conference meeting rooms, and a pedestrian bridge to the conference center were on the mezzanine level. The ballroom was empty of people but filled with round tables and chairs. It was set for a wedding party. White tablecloths with huge pink bows and pink and white artificial flower centerpieces, a two-foot riser with a long decorated table for the bridal party, a smaller round table next to the riser. The smaller table supported a massive wedding cake that was being cooled by a standing fan.
“This is so romantic,” I said to Ranger. “Does it give you ideas?”
He wrapped an arm around me, dragged me close against him, and kissed me on the forehead. “Yes, it gives me ideas, but not about marriage. Mostly about setting fire to this atrocity.”