The Detachment

the roof of the Wynn convention center, jostling for a more favorable position at the government teat.”
    “What’s Shorrock doing there?”
    “Nominally, he’s there to give the Saturday morning keynote. In fact, he’s there to be wooed by the boards of a half dozen contractors who are trying to lure him away from government service into a seven-figure advisory position. Access like Shorrock’s is worth more than a dozen lobbyists to these people. He’ll be getting the royal treatment all weekend.”
    “You know how hard it would be to be to get close enough and alone enough to make something like this look natural, in a casino?”
    “You’ll have some special tools. Go ahead, take a look in the case.”
    I opened it. Inside were two Primatene asthma inhalers, held in place with Velcro straps.
    “What are they?” I asked.
    “The one with the red top is aerosolized hydrogen cyanide, three thousand parts per million.”
    I whistled softly. Three thousand ppm is about what’s delivered in a gas chamber.
    “That’s right. You spray it in a man’s mouth, or even just in his face, and he will be dead in under thirty seconds. But it dissipates extremely rapidly, and is—”
    “Hard to detect, I know.”
    “Especially if you’re not specifically looking for it. You’ll want to hold your breath when you administer it and I’d advise that you not linger in the vicinity, either.”
    “Even so, three thousand ppm…”
    “Yeah, it’s dangerous stuff, true. But you see the vial with the blue top? That’s the antidote, in case you accidentally inhale some yourself.”
    “Hydroxocobalamin? Sodium thiosulfate?”
    “You know your compounds. It’s both—they work best together. There are also hydroxocobalamin ampules in there, labeled adrenaline for bee stings in case anyone goes looking, and syringes. If you decide to go the cyanide route, and obviously it’s up to you, I recommend you all dose yourselves beforehand, just in case.”
    “What else is in there?” I said, feeling myself getting sucked in, wondering why I wasn’t trying harder not to.
    “Everything you could reasonably need. Encrypted phones, miniature wireless audio and video, everything. You work with me, you don’t need to spend time in a military surplus store. This is state of the art.”
    Maybe so. It would still all need to be examined for tracking devices.
    I looked around the dining room. Waiters moved briskly from table to table, carrying trays of pastries and fresh-squeezed juice and omelets to order. The tourists munched on forkfuls of eggs Benedict, excited at how soon the Rodeo Drive boutiques would be opening for them. The movie industry types smiled vacuously as they did their deals, bleached teeth radiant against salon tans. Dox sat watchfully, still as a statue of Buddha.
    I’d need to test the spray before we went live. I might have tried it on Horton then and there and let him take his chances with the antidote, but it would have caused too much of a commotion. Well, I’d think of something. As for injecting myself with the contents of a syringe Horton or anyone else provided me, the chances of that were about zero. Anyway, I wouldn’t need to. There were commercial kits available.
    I realized that, even with myself, I was raising only practical concerns. And neatly addressing them.
    I asked myself what I was doing. I’d left Delilah because she wouldn’t get out of the life. But it seemed that, if anything, the problem wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in the life. The problem was, I wanted it too much. I was like a recovering alcoholic, and being with Delilah was making me want to drink.
    So what was the first thing I’d done after leaving her? It looked like I’d found myself a bar.
    I looked over at Dox. Just a prearranged signal, and he’d put a bullet in Horton’s head, then follow me out through the side entrance.
    The problem was, I didn’t know if that would be the end of trouble for me, or the beginning.
    Or maybe that was a rationalization. I didn’t know. Maybe Dox and Kanezaki were right about me.
    I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I’ve only ever had two clients I found out were lying to me,” I said. “You know what happened to them?”
    “I can imagine,” he said dryly.
    “When I do a deal, the client’s life is his collateral. You comfortable with that?”
    “It’s what I expected.”
    “No women or children. No non-principals. No