At nine minutes to six, my radio squawked, and I heard the call I'd been waiting for.
"One-four-four-one, air-conditioning not working," the dispatcher said. "Can maintenance get up there and check the thermostat, please? VIP room."
"Janet? Les. I can handle that," came the response. "Be about fifteen minutes."
"Thanks, Les."
I used my cell phone to call Panno. "Here's what I need you to do-"
"Wait," he said.
"There's no time to wait. I need this done, and I need it done now," I said. "You have to get to a house phone, you have to call the switchboard, the operator, and you have to tell them that you're in fourteen-forty-one, and that you just called down about the thermostat in the room. You need to tell them that it's working again, that you don't need anyone to come up, that they can cancel the call. Do you understand?"
"He's got guards with him."
I stopped halfway to the door of the locker room. "How many?"
"Three. I think they're all Gorman-North. Killer has a plan for getting one of them down here, but I don't know about the other two."
"Use the house phone, then call me back," I said, and hung up, and waited for my Motorola to speak once more. It seemed like it took a very long time before it did.
"Les, honey, you there?"
"I'm on my way up there now, Janet, tell them to hold their horses."
"No, they just called down to say it's working again, you don't have to bother."
"No kidding? Okay, then, I'm taking my break."
"You enjoy your dinner, hon."
My phone rang.
"Done," Panno said. "We've got one of them off the room now; your wife made a point of asking some questions about a certain guest at the front desk, and she was insistent enough to make them nervous. This guy's down here, talking to the manager."
"Where is she?"
"She's outside, but you've got two either in or on the room. I don't know how you're going to manage that."
"Don't worry about it," I told him. "I'll call you when it's done."
"Good lu-"
I hung up before he could finish, took my toolbox, and headed for the service elevator.
It was as I stepped out onto the fourteenth floor that two of the things I'd missed struck me at once. The first was that fourteen-forty-one could, conceivably, not be the room Jason Earle was in; Alena had disconnected the thermostats in two of the rooms, and he could only be in one of them. I was quite possibly headed to the wrong place.
The second thing was more irrational, and struck me just as I was able to confirm that I, at least, was headed to the right room. Panno said the guards were Gorman-North. That Earle had brought guards at all worried me, and that there were only three of them confused me. If there had been more, I'd have believed he'd been tipped to our attempt at Georgetown, and was building protection around himself. But only three, I didn't know what to make of that, if it was only for show or for ego or for something else entirely. If it was a trap then it wasn't enough muscle. If it was for his protection it wasn't enough coverage.
So what the hell was it?
I came out of the service corridor and into the carpeted hallway to see two men standing post perhaps fifty feet away. They saw me as I emerged, and both turned to watch my approach, and I raised my free hand in greeting, trudging towards them. They didn't wave back, but one of the two knocked on the door they were guarding, then stuck his head in, most likely to announce my arrival.
"Sorry," I said as I drew closer. "Sorry, it's been crazy this evening, I got up here as soon as I could."
"Can I look in your toolbox, please, sir?" the larger and older of the two asked me.
"Yeah, sure." I handed it over to him. He set it down on the floor and opened it, began rifling through the contents.
The other guard, perhaps six or seven years younger than his partner, was looking at me closely. I met his eyes and he looked away, checking down the hallway. He hadn't liked the eye contact, which had been the point of doing it.
His partner closed the box and handed it back to me, saying, "There you go."
Then he opened the door, and held it until I had stepped fully into Jason Earle's suite, before letting it fall closed behind me.