Mirage Man

by Trace Conger

  The bedroom door swung open and someone fired a barrage of shots inside the bedroom. The first round slammed into the metal suitcase sitting on the plush bed. The next two found their way into the wall, and the fourth and fifth rounds shattered the window I'd just opened.

  I returned fire from the floor behind the bed to push them back into the main room. My shots gave me a few seconds and I didn’t take them for granted. I slipped out the window onto the narrow ledge and grabbing the bottom of the window frame for balance, I crouched low, squatting, feeling the tension building in my legs. I had to get the angle right. Jump too soon and I’d never clear the distance. Jump too late and my body would be too flat to grab the balcony and stick the landing. After doing a few seconds of mental geometry, I released the window frame, let myself fall forward until I was satisfied I had the right angle, and sprang from the ledge, pushing off with the balls of my feet. My brain didn’t have time to process what I had done before gravity and momentum slammed me into the white, modern steel balcony railing attached to the building behind the hotel. I nearly lost my weapon upon impact but somehow was able to hang onto it. Pulling myself over the rail, I tumbled onto the floor, crashing into a ceramic flower pot.

  As a bullet ricocheted off the balcony floor cracking another flower pot, I dragged myself behind a ten-foot tall artificial palm tree. I raised my .45 to return fire, but my right hand was shaking too violently to aim. I must have crushed it against the balcony railing when I jumped, I just hadn't noticed it.

  Switching hands, I took aim and squeezed the trigger. The weapon clicked. My .45 held seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. I was spent.

  One of Victor's men was climbing out the window, steadying himself to make the same jump to the balcony. I plunged my shaking hand inside my jacket and yanked a spare magazine out. I ejected the empty magazine, slammed the new one into the weapon, chambered the round, and fired. The slug found whoever was climbing out of the hotel window. He reached for the windowsill but lost his grip. Tumbling out the window, he fell seven stories to the street below.

  Nash peered out the window and fired. The shot was true, and the slug exploded into my right thigh. There wasn't much pain, thanks to the adrenaline surge, and had it not been for the small splatter that sprayed from my thigh, I'm not sure I would have even realized I'd been hit.

  The bullet struck me in the middle of my thigh near the edge of my leg. It was a clean shot, straight through, several inches from my femoral artery. That shot wasn't a death sentence, but staying on this balcony was. Victor would have sent someone over to the apartment complex, and I couldn't risk getting caught in this choke point.

  Nash was aiming again when I returned fire. I'm not a solid shot with my left hand, but this one landed close, smashing into a brick just to the left of Nash's head. He reeled backward and disappeared into the bedroom.

  Turning to the sliding glass door behind me, I drove my boot heel into it with all the strength I had left. My leg throbbed with each blow. It took five kicks to shatter the door. I kept kicking until I'd opened up a hole large enough to crawl inside the apartment. Luckily, no one was home.

  Safely inside the apartment, I checked my thigh. Given the location of the gunshot, I wasn't bleeding enough to worry about it, but I still had to stop whatever was spilling out of my leg. On my way to the apartment's front door, I snatched a cloth placemat from the kitchen table, folded it diagonally, and tied it around the upper part of my thigh a few inches above the wound. The tourniquet made it difficult to walk, but I kept moving.

  Opening the apartment door, I stepped into the hallway and toward the elevator. I knew Victor was one man down but had no idea how many other men he had. If he knew what he was doing, he would have sent one man up to the sixth floor—I was one level below the bedroom of the Gramercy Park Hotel. He would have stashed another man or two in the apartment complex lobby to intercept me coming down the stairs or elevator. But only if he had the men.

  The last thing I needed was to get into a shoot-out in a narrow stairwell or the hotel lobby, so I had to find another way out.

  My solution came via the screeching sound of an electric drill. I followed the sound and turned the corner to another hallway. There, near the end of the hall, was a maintenance worker installing a wall sconce. He likely came up a maintenance elevator. Luxury apartments like this one don't want the maintenance staff mingling with the tenants, so they send them up separate elevators, which would require a passkey to access. The maintenance worker was my hall pass. Any maintenance elevator should also go to the basement, which isn't accessible via the guest elevators.

  I stashed the .45 back inside my jacket and limped toward him. He saw me coming, stopped his installation, and jumped off his ladder.

  "You okay, pal?"

  According to the embroidered patch on his blue coveralls, his name was Mike.

  "Mike, I need to get on the maintenance elevator."

  "From the looks of it, ya need to get to a doctor."

  "Look, there's some bad people coming up the main elevator. When they get here, they're going to gun us both down. The maintenance elevator is our only way out."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "We need to go!"

  "I'm gonna call the cops." He reached into his tool belt.

  "I am the cops. This is an undercover sting gone seriously wrong and we have to get out of here. Now!” I raised my bloody hands from my leg.

  His eyes widened at the sight of my crimson palms, and luckily, he didn't question my credentials.

  "Christ. Okay, let's go."

  He collapsed his folding ladder, tucked the drill under his arm, and hustled down the hallway. I struggled to keep up. We turned another corner and came to the maintenance elevator at the end of the hall. He pulled an ID attached to a zip line on his belt and held it in front of the sensor. The elevator motor whirred and I looked over my shoulder, waiting for Nash's men. About thirty seconds later the elevator opened without a ding and I followed him on.

  "Lobby?"

  "Basement," I said. "Lobby isn't safe."

  He pulled a walkie-talkie from his tool belt. "At least let me call security."

  I swatted his walkie-talkie away. "Calling them will make things worse. The people looking for me will leave once they see I'm gone. Calling security will just lead to a shoot-out. Your residents will be safer if you don't call."

  He thought for a moment and then slipped the walkie-talkie back into his tool belt.

  The elevator jolted to a stop and the door opened into the basement.

  "I need a back way out," I said.

  "Yeah, okay. Follow me."

  He ditched the ladder and drill and guided me through the basement. I stopped when we came to a storage shelf packed with painting supplies. I swiped several clean rags from a box on the lower shelf and pressed them against my leg. The placemat tourniquet had slowed the bleeding, but I was still a mess.

  When I was finished mopping up, I followed Mike to a pair of brown metal doors at the back of the basement. He turned the deadbolt and pushed them open. The sun warmed my face as I glanced around to get my bearings. I was standing in a loading dock area. About fifty feet away from the door were four industrial garbage bins with wide, flip-up lids.

  "Thanks the for help, Mike."

  "Yeah. You sure I can't call—"

  "One more question. Do the garbage trucks come today?"

  "No. Tomorrow."

  I nodded. "The NYPD thanks you, Mike. Now head back inside."

  He closed the doors as I limped to the garbage cans and wedged myself between the large metal bins and a retaining wall. I tightened the tourniquet on my leg, pressed a paint rag against the wound, and dialed the spare cell phone Zoe gave me.

  She answered three rings later.

  "What do you need now? I'm kind of busy mopping up your mess at my club."

  "Nicky's dead."

  "How?"

  "The sit-down was an ambush
. Spiro and Napoli were there, but so were Victor Tan and Eddie Nash."

  "Fuck."

  "They shot Nicky right in front me."

  "I'm sorry, Connor. How did they know you were coming?"

  "I don't know."

  "Maybe I do," said Zoe. "There was a bug on the phone."

  "Nicky said he called someone from your club—"

  "Not Nicky's phone. Yours."

  "What? That's not possible."

  "Well, I've got a smashed chip in my garbage can that says otherwise. According to Cricket, it was pretty sophisticated. It could track you and let someone access your microphone. I'd consider any conversations you've had compromised. Any idea who did it?"

  Whoever planted the device inside my phone would have needed to open it. The only time it was out of my sight was in Messner's office, when his secretary took it along with my weapon. And it was on her desk, not in the drawer with my .45, when I took it back.

  "I think I have an idea," I said.

  "Then you might want to plug that hole."

  I glanced down at my leg. "Speaking of holes, I need access to a doctor."

  "Then go to a clinic. I don't run a medical practice."

  "If I go to a clinic, they'll want to know about the bullet hole in my leg. And they'll inform the police. I'd like that not to happen."

  "You've been shot?"

  "It's not bad, but it'll get there if I don't get some help."

  She thought for a moment. "Where are you?"

  "Behind the dumpsters behind the Gramercy Park Hotel."

  "That's a fitting place for you. How serious is it? Can you wait twenty minutes or are you gonna bleed out?"

  "I can wait."

  "Alright. It'll take some time. Keep out of sight. Doc Dresden. Look for an HVAC repair van."

  "Got it. Thank you."

  "You owe me for this one, Connor."

  "Put it on my tab."

  "You're overdrawn."

  The van pulled up in front of the dumpster. The driver tapped the horn twice. I stood up and slipped out from behind the garbage bin and limped to the vehicle. The driver rolled down the passenger window.

  "Name?"

  "Connor."

  He motioned me in.

  "What day is it?" asked the driver.

  "Thursday. Why?"

  "Want to see if you're still lucid. Buckle up. It'll be a few minutes."

  Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into the Liberty Harbor RV Park right across the basin from Liberty State Park. Out the window, beyond the boats docked at the adjacent marina, I could see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

  The driver, who never introduced himself, helped me out of the van and into a gleaming black and gold RV. The walls of the RV were lined with all kinds of medical equipment, some I recognized and others I didn't. I had conjured up an image of a back-alley doctor with dull and rusted surgical tools operating out of some abandoned hellhole, but this RV was pristine, smelled like pine needles, and had better equipment than the VA Hospital in Boston.

  Dr. Dresden, a young man in a surgical mask, introduced himself and helped me onto a metal exam table at the back of the RV where the bed would usually have been. It was sterile and cold.

  "It's clean through," I said.

  He gave me an injection and things got cloudy. Dr. Dresden was talking to me, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. His slurred words turned to mumbles and then silence.

  I woke up on a sofa behind the driver's seat, my jeans on the floor in front of me. My right thigh was wrapped in what looked like cellophane, like some dinner leftover. I could see the wound through the clear dressing; there were no stitches. I grabbed my jeans from the floor and slowly slipped them on.

  The doctor was sanitizing the exam table in the back. "Are you a betting man, Connor?"

  "Not really, why?"

  "Because I'd guess you've used all your luck for a while. As far as gunshots go, they don't get any better than that. No significant tissue damage, no arterial hemorrhage, and minimal blood loss. Your systolic blood pressure is a little low, but the only thing I'd be worried about is infection given the time the wound was exposed."

  He approached and tossed a bottle into my lap.

  "Here's a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Take two every four hours for the next three days. If the wound starts to look like something you've left in the back of your refrigerator or if you experience any paralysis, get yourself to a hospital. I don't see repeats."

  He helped me off the sofa and I wobbled a bit.

  "I gave you an injection for the pain."

  "How long will that last?"

  "Hard to say. It's different for everyone. Could be a few days."

  "What about the dressing?"

  "You can remove it after ten days. Otherwise, don't touch it."

  "Thanks for the help.

  "You're welcome."

  I stepped out of the RV as the same van that dropped me off earlier pulled up and squealed to a stop. The driver ran to the back of the van and opened the rear doors. Dr. Dresden jumped out of the RV and looked at the bloody man in the back.

  "Want me to help you get him on board?" I asked.

  "No need," said Dr. Dresden. "He's dead."

  The driver slammed the doors closed and walked back to the cab.

  "You going back to the city?" I asked.

  "Yeah, why?"

  "I could use a ride."

  Forty minutes later the driver dropped me off at the Hotel Beacon. I had to assume Victor knew I was staying here, so I slipped in through the back alley in case his men were watching the front door. I wasn't going to stick around, but my next stop was a return visit to see Declan Porter, and I wasn't going to do that before reloading.

  24

  Headspace

  Declan Porter had lied to me. There was no way Victor Tan was making a play for Sontag's throne without Porter knowing something about it. I was going to get to the bottom of it, and then I was going to kill Victor and Nash. It was the only way to keep them from coming after me. The question was how. Killing Victor twenty-four hours ago was one thing, but now he was the official head of a criminal organization, at least according to Spiro and Napoli, and that meant he was protected. Any action against him would be met with swift and certain retribution. Getting close enough to put a bullet in him was one thing, but doing it in a way that didn't sign my own death warrant was something else entirely.

  Back at my hotel, I changed out of my bloody clothes and then ducked into the parking garage, where I reloaded my .45 and spare magazine with the ammo from my Jeep's glovebox. I also dropped an extra magazine in my pocket, just in case. I wasn't planning on being in another shoot-out, but I wanted to be better prepared should one arise.

  Up ahead in the parking garage, a car flashed its lights at me. It was a white BMW, not one I'd seen before. It flashed again, and I flashed back. I dragged the slide on my .45 back, loading a round into the chamber as the car rolled forward.

  The BMW stopped in front of me and Lyle Messner got out and walked to my driver window.

  "I heard about Nicky," he said.

  I grabbed his light-blue necktie, wrapped it around my fist and pulled his head down until his chin rested on the business end of the .45.

  "You set us up."

  "No, I didn't."

  "We walked into an ambush. How else did Victor Tan know we were going to be there? Unless you told him."

  "I didn't tell him. He must have cut a deal with Spiro and Napoli. They were all in it together. Spiro called me after it was done and said they are recognizing Victor as the new head of the organization and that I was to alert the rest of the clan."

  "Bullshit. You tapped my phone. You told Victor that Nicky and I were at Hoster Hall, and when we survived the ambush, you made sure he wouldn't survive the sit-down."

  "That's not what happened."

  I pushed the .45 into the soft part of his jaw. "You didn't tap my phone?"

  "Yes, I did, but no
t to set you up. I didn't know why you were back in New York, but I knew it wasn't good. I had Tabitha do it as a precaution. It had nothing to do with Nicky."

  "Why should I trust you?"

  "Connor, I tapped your phone when you first came to my office asking to see Sontag. Long before you had anything to do with Nicky."

  Messner was right about that. Tabitha tapped my phone before Sontag asked me to find Nicky, before I knew anything about the revolution in Sontag's organization.

  I loosened my grip on his tie. I wasn't convinced Messner was innocent in all this, but I also wasn't confident he was behind Nicky's assassination.

  "Why are you here?" I asked.

  "It's Joseph. He wants to see us."

  "About Nicky?"

  "That's right."

  "He already knows?"

  "I called him after I got the call from Spiro. I told him what they told me, that they decided to back another horse. It goes without saying that Sontag's not happy with the arrangement, but now he knows Victor was behind everything."

  "What does that have to do with me?"

  "I suspect he's going to ask you to kill Victor."

  "I was planning on doing that anyway. Does he have any idea how to do it so I don't go down with the ship? Sontag's protected by a few feet of concrete. I'm not."

  "Only one way to find out. Ask him."

  I'll be honest, the idea of sitting across the table from Joseph Sontag and owning the fact I couldn't keep his son alive was concerning, to say the least. I'd done everything I could to keep Nicky alive until we made that meeting, but I didn't know if I could convince Sontag of that.

  Still, I was in a mess with Victor and Nash, and if anyone could find a way out of my shithole situation, it was Sontag. He was the type of person who did his best thinking when his back was to a wall, and that's precisely where his back was now. Against a wall. Right next to mine. As much as I didn't want to be in the same room with him, he might be my only way out of this.

  "Alright. Get in." I unlocked the passenger door.

  "How about I drive?"

  "No way. Nash is still out there looking for me. If he tries to take me out on the highway, I want to be the one behind the wheel."