He was no closer to finding this Equalizer wannabe.
* * *
McCall found Brahms the next morning seated on a bench in St. Catherine’s Park a block down from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His real name was Chaim Mendleman, but he’d been called Brahms because of his love—make that addiction—to the Maestro’s music since the age of six. He always reminded McCall of Jerry Stiller, the actor who played George Costanza’s dad on Seinfeld. Some mothers holding on to their baby carriages were conferring together on life’s secrets. A group of preteens were shooting hoops. People cut through the park to get to First Avenue.
Brahms didn’t look at McCall, but at his surroundings. “You know the layout of this park mimics the Santa Maria Minerva church in Rome where the remains of St. Catherine are buried? That flagpole represents the altar, the play areas are the pews, and even those elephant sprinklers are an adaptation of the sculpture in front of the Roman church.”
“I didn’t know that.”
McCall thought Brahms had aged twenty years in the last two months. His eyes had dark pouches under them, the lines cutting even deeper into his already craggy face. His gray hair stuck out in all directions. McCall doubted Brahms had ever seen a comb he liked. His voice was still vibrant and rich, but it felt like he was holding back a tide of emotions.
“How’s Hilda doing?”
“She has good days and bad days. Yesterday was a good day. Her eyes were bright and she had this mischievous smile on her face. She reminded me of that Princess cruise we took when the ship lost power in the Mediterranean for two days and all of us passengers bonded like we were on the Titanic, except we didn’t sink, and I was like the tour director signing people up for shuffleboard tournaments and swimming competitions and giving away prizes to couples who could prove they’d had sex in a very inappropriate place somewhere on the ship.” Brahms smiled at the memory. “Hilda and I won.”
“How is she today?”
“Not a good day so far. I was hoping she could come home at the end of the week, but her doctors say she’s going to need to stay at Sloan Kettering for another month. I’d be worried about the expense, except someone paid for all of her medical treatments. The check was signed W. Mays. You still think Willie Mays is the greatest baseball player of all time? I’d give that accolade to Ty Cobb. Sure, he was a mean SOB, but he only batted under .300 once in his career, and that was his first season, and he stole home base when he was forty-two! Hilda doesn’t know who signed the check, or she’d make me drag you into her hospital room for a big hug.”
“Did Mary tell you?”
“No. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your handwriting?”
“How is Mary?”
“I’ve promoted her to senior vice president of internal affairs at Manhattan Electronics.”
“Which means?”
“She’s looking after the store when I’m here.”
The store was an electronics shop on Lexington and Fifty-Second that could kindly be called Dickensian. McCall thought of Brahms’s twentysomething assistant, gorgeous and petite and sophisticated with a knockout figure in her distinctive dark Diane von Furstenberg tortoiseshell glasses. McCall and Brahms had discussed whether Mary would keep on her Diane von Furstenberg tortoiseshell glasses when making love. Brahms had given up the debate as too disturbing. McCall knew that Mary wore only her Diane von Furstenberg glasses when having sex, but he only knew that because she had told him so.
Brahms handed McCall something bulky, but not heavy, in a brown envelope.
“Here’s what you asked for. Do I want to know what you’re going to do with it?”
“Probably not.”
McCall put the envelope into his coat pocket.
“You heard anything about Mickey Kostmayer?” Brahms asked.
“I thought you didn’t like him.”
“He’s brash and reckless, but I was like that once. I know he went on some clandestine rescue mission. Either for The Company or freelance. There’s nothing on the spook network or Sam Kinney would have heard.”
“I can’t reach Kostmayer.”
“Did Granny go with him?”
“Yes.”
“Not the same as being with you, but close. Call Control. He’ll know what’s happened to them.”
McCall stood up. “I may just do that. Give Hilda my love.”
Brahms nodded and stared back into the park. But now he was far away. Maybe walking with his wife down a Manhattan street on the East Side, holding hands, content and happy with no words necessary.
CHAPTER 10
McCall liked Langan’s Irish Pub and Restaurant. He’d been to the Langan’s Brasserie in London many times. It had been opened in 1976 by Irish restaurateur Peter Langan, Chef Richard Shepherd, CBE, and Sir Michael Caine. McCall had made a phone call to Sir Michael, whom he’d once done a favor for, who was still a friend—Michael Caine made friends for life—and a day later Candy Annie was working as a waitress in the Langan’s on West Forty-Seventh just off Seventh Avenue and above Times Square. The interior was cosy: warm wood, a long bar, small tables. The alcove McCall sat in was surrounded by framed photos of celebrities, sports figures, and politicians. McCall noted a large picture of Michael Caine on one wall. Waitresses in black silk shirts with loosely knotted patterned ties, stylish black jeans, and white aprons were moving back and forth with accomplished ease. It didn’t take McCall long to spot Candy Annie. She had just dropped a plate of leaf spinach with a clatter and was on her hands and knees cleaning it up. Two other waitresses and a bartender were helping her, trying to soothe her nerves. They had this. Candy Annie grabbed two plates of food and carried them to a table where a young couple waited. She apologized for the delay and told them the spinach would be coming right up. She turned, saw McCall, and hurried over to him. She was both frustrated and exhilarated.
“How do these servers carry three plates? I tried to juggle the spinach in the crook of my arm. Total disaster. But the people are so nice! I’m loving it here.” McCall glanced down at her chest. “I’ve got my bra on! I swear! You can just see it through this black shirt.”
“I want you to take it off.”
That gave her pause. She lowered her voice and her eyes sparkled. “You want to take me up on my prior offer?”
“That would make my day, but, no. I want someone distracted. And I need you to do something you used to be very good at.”
She stared at him a moment, then she got it. “You mean like at Danil Gershon’s funeral?”
“Like that. I already cleared the time off with your boss. I’m an old friend of his boss.”
“When do we need to go?”
“Right now.”
* * *
The Garden Restaurant in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel on Fifty-Seventh Street had been turned into a buffet area for the stockbrokers’ meeting. The elegant space with its tall trees was packed with men and women in casual chic, all of them wearing plastic name badges on their lapels. Long buffet tables had been set out, replacing the usual tables for hotel guests and their friends, with every kind of hors d’oeuvres imaginable. Glasses of champagne and white wine were being handed out by waiters and waitresses passing among the crowd. McCall figured at some point the conference would transfer to the FIFTY7 ballroom, where there’d be slide shows featuring trading securities and hedge-fund data, and by then it would be impossible to get to Blake Cunningham. But at the Garden Restaurant the financial conference was just warming up.
McCall had surreptitiously swiped a badge from the table where you signed in and had slipped it to Candy Annie, who was wearing her Langan’s outfit, minus the tie and apron. And her bra. McCall had given her a package, which she’d slipped into the one item he’d bought for her new stockbroker role—a Michael Kors satchel bag in burgundy. He’d told her to be careful. She’d looked at him like Hey, pal, I used to do this for a living when I was sixteen in the Upworld—which didn’t make him feel any less uneasy. Sh
e’d winked at McCall and had then climbed up the left-hand staircase into the slightly raised restaurant level.
A lot of hugging and shaking hands and raucous conversation were going on. McCall had no trouble finding Blake Cunningham in the midst of it all. He was wearing a Calvin Klein khaki linen suit, white shirt, and a George Neale paisley tie. Blake probably had a hundred different expensive outfits that he rotated, but McCall was certain Blake always had one accessory with him.
His Fendi 411 aviator sunglasses.
They hung on the front of Blake’s shirt. He was standing with some Morgan Stanley colleagues near one of the buffet tables. McCall watched Candy Annie threading her way through the tightly packed crowd as if she were in a hurry. She turned to edge her way past one of the waiters with a tray of champagne, and McCall got a good front view. Candy Annie’s black silk shirt from Langan’s was sheer, but to add to the desired effect she had unbuttoned three buttons. Her cleavage had already turned a few heads—both men’s and women’s.
Blake Cunningham turned toward her,
Candy Annie looked behind her, tripped over the shoes of one of Blake’s companions, and hit Blake with unexpected force. She clutched at Blake’s shirt for balance, inadvertently pulling off his Fendi 411 aviator sunglasses as both of them hit the floor. Candy Annie was cursing and sputtering apologies. Blake was laughing. And looking right down her open shirt at her breasts. She grabbed his fallen sunglasses as he helped her back up to her feet. She handed him his sunglasses and apologized some more.
But the Fendi 411 aviator sunglasses weren’t the ones that had dropped to the floor. They were the ones that Brahms had made up for McCall with a tiny tracking device concealed in one of the frames. It was as good a bait and switch as the one McCall had seen her perform at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn at Danil Gershon’s funeral, when she’d switched Boris Kirov’s lighter for one with a tracking device.
Candy Annie started to move away, but Blake caught her arm. McCall couldn’t hear what he was saying in the overall ambience, but it was something like Let me get you a glass of champagne. He looked at her lapel badge. I see you’re with Charles Schwab. But Candy Annie kept up the charade of having to find someone and moved past Blake. He grinned at his colleagues. McCall lip-read his next remark: Did you see the rack on that babe?
Then McCall suddenly moved over to the right-hand stairs leading up to the Garden Restaurant. A figure was standing amid the crowd watching the corporate movers and shakers. She was dressed in designer jeans, a blue blouse, and a short brown leather Dior jacket. She had a black leather Giorgio Armani mini-shoulder-bag over her shoulder. Her hair was no longer auburn, but a light brown. But there was no mistaking her face.
McCall took hold of her arm.
The woman who’d posed as Laura Masden froze.
“We need to talk,” McCall said softly.
He waited until he saw Candy Annie walk out the front entrance of the Four Seasons, buttoning up her black waitress shirt, mission accomplished. Then McCall shoved the young woman out of a side entrance. They walked up Fifty-Seventh Street in silence, past Fendi and Dior and Chanel, then turned onto Fifth Avenue. McCall wasn’t holding her arm any longer, but he didn’t think she’d bolt.
She seemed almost relieved to see him again. “My name is Tara Langley. I’m a private detective in Minneapolis. Laura Masden lives in New Brighton, a nice slice of the American dream about six miles outside the city. She came to me distraught with worry about her daughter Emily, who’d dropped out of her Media Arts classes at the Art Institute in New York. Emily hadn’t answered her cell phone in ten days.”
“Why didn’t her mother come here herself?”
“Bipolar. It took her two days just to get up the courage to find me in the big city. Her husband is an archaeologist, away on some Inca dig site in Peru, and Laura hasn’t even contacted him yet to let him know their daughter is missing. So I came to the Big Apple and liaised with a slick PI firm here. I’m used to working alone with a thermos of Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Frappuccino and my Glock 27 Gen4. They worked hard, but they’re expensive, and once Laura Masden sent a picture of the postcard Emily supposedly sent from San Francisco, they thought she was a runaway. End of story. End of case.”
“But you didn’t believe that?”
“Something bothered me, so I tracked down the one lead I had, Emily’s stockbroker boyfriend, Blake Cunningham. I followed him around for three days. He didn’t lead me to Emily. He did screw three different blondes on three different nights. Nothing illegal in that, except that they were barely legal, and I wanted to go back to my hotel and take a shower just thinking about it.”
“So then you confronted Blake at his Morgan Stanley offices?”
“Yeah. Very meek and mild, Emily’s desperate mom. He got pissed off and threw me out.”
“Why did you call me?”
“I’d noticed your ad a couple of nights before on the internet. The Equalizer. How cool is that? Was there really a guy out there who could help people in trouble? Be still my heart. I needed backup if I was going to find out where that address was that Blake muttered into his iPhone.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth at the River Café?”
“I needed to know if you were for real and not some kind of weird Manhattan escort service. I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
“What makes you think you can now?”
“Gut feeling.”
“You gave an Academy Award–winning performance as the tearful Laura Masden.”
“Yeah, Meryl, eat your heart out. You walked into that mêlée at the rave party and I never saw you again. Or Emily. Tell me what happened.”
McCall told her, from the moment he pulled Emily away from Blake Cunningham, to her insisting that Tara was not her mother, to their quiet talk in the abandoned Mercury Theater, to her disappearance.
“Two dead guys lying outside a onetime porno theater,” Tara said, “and two guys badly beaten up inside. That’s a headline the New York Post would pounce on. Blake Cunningham must have some real clout to get that cleaned up.”
“Where have you been?”
“I went home. Cats to feed, bills to pay, a mom I needed to visit in her assisted-living facility. But I kept seeing Emily’s face on that dance floor. Pale and frightened and so lost. I may not have really been her mother, but it clutched at my heart.”
They’d reached the Grand Army Plaza Circle and crossed over to Central Park South.
“Are the hot dogs as good in New York as they say they are?”
McCall bought her one. She had everything on it and ate it as if she hadn’t eaten for a week. “That was a sweet bait and switch you had done on Blake,” she said between mouthfuls of hot dog. “Who’s the babe?”
“A friend who did me a favor. She has nothing to do with Emily Masden or Blake Cunningham.”
“Great-looking chick. I wanted to do her myself.”
McCall glanced sideways at Tara. She ate her hot dog without expression, but he thought he saw amusement in her eyes.
“I’m helping her out.”
“Equalizing the odds against her?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“I figure it was the sunglasses that got switched, but I couldn’t be sure. What’s in the new Fendi 411s?”
“A tracking device.”
“Wow. Cool.” She finished her hot dog and turned to him. “So what’s our next move?”
“We?”
All levity had left her eyes now. “You killed two men, maimed two others, and let our sweet, if fucked-up, young victim get kidnapped. I figure that doesn’t happen to you a lot. If ever. Are you going to equalize the odds for me?”
“I didn’t do a very good job at the Mercury Theater.”
She put a hand on his arm. It sent a jolt of electricity right through him. A sexual awakening he hadn’t felt in a long time. He looked at her face, no more Laura Masden tears, no hesitant speech. He hadn’t bothered
to look at her figure in the River Café that night. It rivaled Candy Annie’s for curves, with longer legs, and Tara gave new meaning to the term bedroom eyes.
“If you didn’t want to find Emily Masden,” she said, “you wouldn’t have tracked Blake to his financial convention or planted a bug on him. You must have the receiver.”
McCall took a receiver out of his pocket. It was about the size of a chewing-gum package. He handed it to her. “You can track him. I have a lunch date at the Russian Tea Room.”
“Sounds ritzy.”
“You carry cards with you?”
“I like the one with a machine gun on it and myself naked in silhouette, but I forgot to bring those. I have the plain old ones that say Tara Langley, Private Investigations.”
She took out a small silver case, removed a card, and handed it to McCall. He wrote on the back of it and handed it back to her. “This is my cell number. I’m pretty sure Blake will be at that conference at the Four Seasons all day.”
“Good. I can get wasted at the Ty Bar and listen to New Yorkers solve all the world’s problems. I’ll call you if Blake leaves and goes anywhere interesting. He’s into something, Mr. McCall. Something very serious.”
“That’s what Emily said. And you can call me Robert.”
He started to walk away down Central Park South.
“Does this mean we’re partners?” she called after him.
“If you have a problem, call me,” he said over his shoulder.
Tara sighed. “You could cause me all sorts of problems,” she murmured.
CHAPTER 11
Dr. Patrick Cross was bone tired. He’d been on duty since 4:00 a.m. He’d just finished giving his last patient, a thirteen-year-old boy who had contracted one of the four strains of the Ebola virus, Bundibugyo, an injection of immunoglobulin. The blood plasma proteins and antibodies in the gamma globulin would boost the boy’s immune system, but only temporarily. There was no vaccine. The boy had contracted the disease from hugging his mother. She had been dead two days later. Dwe, that was the boy’s name—Dr. Cross thought it meant “elephant” in Grebo—had become sick ten days after that. He was a big, strapping boy, or he had been. The disease was eating away at him like, well, a disease. This new outbreak in Liberia had come several months after the World Health Organization had declared Liberia, and the Monrovia area, Ebola-free. Dr. Cross had already completed one tour of duty with Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières, as it was known all over Africa and Europe, the year before. They had asked him to return. Usually the tour of duty was a minimum of nine months, but they’d agreed to his insistence on six months.
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