March 25, 2008
The boat sliced through the water—a sleek go-fast with a deep-V hull for the chop—the man piloting it scanning the horizon for suspicious vessels, while Kestrel remained seated trying to stay out of the spray. Their destination was a yacht anchored a mile offshore: UAE-flagged, he noted, to dodge U.S. registry eyes. As they neared, he guessed the length at two hundred feet, with a helipad amidships and a pool aft that screamed old money. Before boarding, he patted the RF detector he kept in his breast pocket. With a discreet vibration, the bug sweeper would alert him to the slightest whiff of eavesdropping.
On board, a steward led him to a nautical-themed conference room, where he was greeted by his client: a well-preserved figure in his early eighties—a man immediately recognizable as the former Secretary of State, Charles Wainwright.
“Robert Kestrel.” They shook hands. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“Mr. Secretary.”
“Please, no need for formalities. When you leave government service, you leave the titles behind. Call me Charles. All the best people do.”
“Alright, Charles. Call me Robert or Bob—both are fine with me.”
“Have a seat, Robert, please.” Placing the leather folio he carried with him, he sat right across the long teak table from two other gentlemen, while his client sat at the head to his right. “My days at State are ancient history—Nixon era, if you can believe it. Today, I’m a fixer for old allies, the kind who don’t like headlines. Now, before we begin, can I offer you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”
“Coffee is good. Black.”
“Antonio, coffee for the gentleman.” The steward delivered a steaming mug from a Nespresso rig.
After taking a sip, he asked, “Out of curiosity, how much does one of these babies go for?”
“Oh… about a hundred million,” his client replied.
“The legal profession has its perks.”
“It has its rewards, but this Leviathan isn’t mine. The owner is a client—the man you’re working for, in fact.”
“I see. And who may that be?”
“Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Okay.”
“Let me introduce you to the mayor of our fair city and the chief of police.” He looked at the men across from him.
“Manage to bag yourself a decent buck, Kestrel? I do a little hunting myself,” the mayor inquired, half-seriously.
“Tagged a fourteen-point bull elk up in Montana—not bagged like some trophy hunter’s prize. Pro bono work for the Fish and Wildlife Service, my little contribution to Greenpeace,” he answered, smiling.
“I’ve been told you’re already familiar with the case,” said the chief of police. “Care to elaborate?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he responded, sliding his mug to the side. The two city officials looked miffed. “When you hire someone in my trade, you don’t want to know how the sausage is made. Trust me.” He focused his gaze on the former Secretary of State.
“Respectfully, Charles, since I spun up Talon Solutions, it’s been kingdoms like the Saudis for VIP details, corps like Exxon for pipeline intel in the Gulf, and the occasional Uncle Sam cutout when Congress gets squeamish. They want the problem to vanish—quietly, like those Blackwater headaches in Baghdad last year—but without the fallout. So, don’t ask any questions, and I won’t tell any lies. I promise you, I will solve your problem. Having said that, my services come with a price. My fee? Starts at seven figures, wired to the Caymans before I hit the ground running. I am not cheap.”
“Look around you, Robert. Money isn’t the issue. And I’m pretty familiar with your track record. Through the grapevine, I’ve only heard good things.” Charles glanced at the two men seated across from him. “As far as my client is concerned, what matters is that we have the best talent for the job.” The mayor and the chief nodded in agreement, expressing their desire for him to come on board.
He slid his leather folio to the center of the table. “NDA’s ironclad—your standard boilerplate, plus a mutual destruction clause. Sign, and this meet-and-greet never happened.”
October 2, 2007
Six months earlier…
With a different roof over his head and a new environment to adjust to, sleep was difficult. But when he finally fell into slumber, it was deep and filled with dreams. Waking up, he felt more rested than he had in weeks—a refreshing change for his overall well-being.
He rummaged through the fridge and cupboards, finding enough food to cobble together a meal. He poured a can of beans into a frying pan, cracked two eggs into the mix, and then devoured the entire meal with crackers. It wasn’t the most lavish breakfast, but as he sipped coffee from a chipped mug etched with the hotel’s imperial crest, he felt a sense of triumph. He wondered if the last guy to do so had felt the same.
His first task of the morning was to find the manager’s office. Inside, a mahogany partner desk dominated the room. The drawers were all locked, but he—finding the keys—opened each one in sequence, until he reached the end of his quest: a pearl-handled Colt .45 and a box of equally aged ammunition. Despite the need for maintenance, he couldn’t resist the allure of the piece, savoring its sensual grip. Deciding against carrying the pistol with him, he put it back and slid the drawer shut.
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A few steps down the hall, beyond a frosted glass door, he wandered into the well-ordered space of the maintenance room—a handyman’s utopia. Every tool conceivable filled the racks: some old and weathered, others shiny and new. There was also a fridge, a microwave, and a wall-mounted push-button phone. Picking it up, he held it to his ear, expecting dead silence. Instead, he heard the odd, distant hum of a dial tone.
Next to the beige phone, more artifacts from this time capsule caught his eye: a pin-up of Vanessa Williams, her spectacular tits and perfect body sullied with cryptic notes—nonsensical words and numerology, the crazed musings, he guessed, of the previous caretaker.
Beguiling as it had appeared at first sight, the lobby in daylight evoked the opposite impression. A dust residue covered everything—the intricate Cherokee Red brick arches and geometric friezes, choked with grime. Because of a broken casement window high above the mezzanine, pigeons had taken up residence. As charming as they might seem in a park, indoors, they were pestilence incarnate and had to be wiped out. A quick call on the landline to Legrand—rattling off the pigeon plague and that freshly cracked window—and a day and a half later, he was flat on his back with a high-powered pellet rifle, picking them off one after another.
Having dropped more than a few dozen, he was down to two lovebirds: one gray male and one white female. The male was squarely in his crosshairs. The caretaker took a deep breath, exhaled, squeezed the trigger—and WHACK! The pellet hit the pigeon precisely in the neck, sending it plummeting like a stone while its mate fluttered in terror. Resisting the urge to take a shot in mid-flight, he waited for the bird to settle. When it did—roosting with its head bobbing stupidly—he aimed and squeezed again. It plunged to the marble floor, lying there motionless amid the rest of the flock. He sat up. The fun stuff was over; now the real work would begin.
After twenty years of neglect, the next challenge was to remove as much grime and dust as possible from the lobby and hallways—a Herculean task. Still, according to Emile, everything required to complete the labor was at his disposal. And as he quickly discovered, his boss wasn’t exaggerating. In the garage waited a brand-new scissor lift, and beside it—tucked away in a closet—a set of extendable aluminum poles with detachable brushes. For extra firepower, he found an electric blower in the tool room.
Before the dusting, however, the floors needed to be prepped. After moving the tables, sofas, and chairs off the carpets, he used a cart designed for the task to load the rolled-up rugs and haul them to the garage. There, after laying down a protective cover fashioned from old cardboard boxes, he stacked the rolls on the loading bay floor. The entire process couldn’t be rushed; the carpets and furniture—down to the smallest Tiffany lamp with its fragile glass shade—were each worth more than an average laborer’s annual salary. Treating every item like a museum piece was a time suck, but after a week, all the rugs were off the floors, and the work above could begin.
That evening, vexed by insomnia, he took it upon himself to explore. Stumbling into the manager’s office, he found a dusty binder perched atop a filing cabinet. Curiously labeled The Caretaker’s Bible, it offered detailed instructions on the Imperial’s infrastructure. The binder also included floor plans and a map, which he used to navigate the sub-basement. Unclear where the lights were—or if any existed—he meandered with a flashlight until he entered the Storage Room.
Once the home of a distillery, a faint bourbon scent lingered in the air. He imagined how it might have looked back in the era of Al Capone: a brightly lit space, with workers and dollies moving cases of whiskey in and out. In its present manifestation, it was a melancholy niche where the unwanted ended up—not worn and damaged enough to be tossed out or given away, but kept under lock and key, never to be seen. And in that regard, he found them far more relatable.
Moving through the narrow aisles, the caretaker aimed his flashlight into the enclosures, hoping to find something useful. Upon searching, he noted that the older storage units were constructed from wood, featuring proper walls and doors latticed with faded geometric motifs—including a four-inch gap at the floor to facilitate airflow. The newer ones, however, were cheaply constructed from simple aluminum mesh; they looked more like cages.
Yet something in one caught his eye: a vintage gem. Hidden in the corner, obscured by boxes and other miscellaneous junk, sat a pristine 1930s oak drafting table. The Weber—with its cast-iron legs, robust frame, and fully adjustable tilting board—whispered to him like an irresistible talisman. He wished to claim it almost immediately. A solid lock on the cage door, however, frustrated that desire. After fiddling around for thirty minutes, trying every key in his possession, he called it quits.
He swept the beam once more across the cages—wood and mesh alike—then turned to leave.
The drafting table could wait. More urgently, the caretaker’s sleeplessness was fading, and the notion of passing out suddenly terrified him. So much so that, in an effort to hurry, after rounding a few corners in the dark, he ran head-on into something cold and unforgiving. Crouched and touching his stinging forehead, he pointed his flashlight.
In the angled light, a vicious hook swung pendulum-like from a chain. Cursing, the caretaker reached up in anger and stopped its motion. With the source of his pain demystified, he considered the curved steel in its full context. Aiming the flashlight all around, he wondered why in the Devil’s name someone would hang a block and tackle in this dank, dark spot—likely a remnant from the ’30s freight lifts. What purpose did it serve now, other than to hurt desperate fools like him?
His flashlight beam swept the walls in one final pass. Deep-jagged Mesoamerican carvings leapt out—angular serpents coiling into feathered skulls, geometric eyes glaring back—relics the last Heritage Society retrofit had never quite managed to plaster over.
More accustomed to his surroundings, the caretaker felt even better upon awakening the next day. The carpet cleaners were pros, sending not only an oversized trailer but also a small crew, making short work of the rug pickup. With the rugs crossed off the list, he raided the linen room and covered the furniture in sheets. Next, he had to get the scissor lift in place—a trick, since he’d never run a Skyjack before. Yet with a bit of practice and patience—and without driving the damn thing over the loading bay edge and killing himself—he maneuvered the machine into the service elevator and onto the main floor.
With the equipment secured in the basket, he raised the lift to its maximum height. Then, with an aluminum pole fully extended, he wiped down the ceiling—big mistake. Dust rained down, causing him to choke and hack. Back on the floor, after taking a literal breather, he attacked the dusting once more, this time wearing safety glasses and a dust mask. The results were instantaneous and satisfying, but short-lived. Elevated and boxed in, he was forced to put down his pole and stop every few minutes to reposition the machine—a process that proved time-consuming. But after a while, a rhythm set in.
A day and a half later, the most challenging part was done, and he was on to the walls. Once past a certain point, when the blower could be used, the work came easier. The noisy little machine blasted dust away wherever it lay. Even the caked-in crap embedded in the carvings was hardly a problem. By the end of one shift, all the dust and mire of yore now lay on the Carrara marble floor, to be swept away into oblivion.
Beta Version Reminder: This remains a beta draft, so I genuinely welcome your honest feedback, specifically on this chapter. Did the dual timelines and contrast between the slick 2008 yacht meeting and the gritty 2007 caretaker workflow work well for you? How did the descriptive details land (the hotel restoration sequences, the atmosphere, Kestrel’s voice)? Any parts that felt too slow, too fast, confusing, or especially effective? Favorite moments, character impressions, suggestions for tightening, or anything else that stood out? Positive notes are wonderful motivators, too!
Bonus Open Question: What’s your biggest question or theory right now? (The real client? The hotel’s secrets? Kestrel’s past?) Feel free to reply below — I read every comment!
Which area should I focus on improving most?
