“This is justice!” the Equalizer said, his voice raised. “Equalizer justice!”
Robert McCall, sitting unnoticed at the end of the deli counter, stood up quickly. He grabbed the Equalizer’s head, slammed it against the Formica counter, stunning him, and wrenched the Glock 34 out of his hand.
Travis ran forward, his 9mm raised. One of the New Yorkers sitting in a booth stuck out his foot. Travis sprawled to the floor. His pistol skittered out of his hand to the cash-register desk. The brunette leaned down and scooped it up. The two men slid out of their booth and sat down on Travis’s back. They looked like they’d been linebackers for the New York Jets. There had to be 450 pounds on Travis’s back.
McCall put the bogus Equalizer’s fallen Glock 34 into his jacket pocket. He leaned down, still having one hand on the bogus Equalizer’s collar, and felt for Delroy’s pulse. “He’s breathing.” McCall looked over at the two burly New Yorkers who were sitting on Travis’s back. “You got him?”
“You kiddin’ us?” one of the men said. “Yeah, we got him!”
One of the guys at the deli counter said, “I just called the cops! They’re on their way!”
McCall picked up Delroy’s gun and tossed it onto the deli counter. He dragged the bogus Equalizer, who was wearing the same dark overcoat that McCall sometimes wore, to his feet. The Jewish woman’s son sat down at the booth beside his mother, taking her hands. She hugged him, sobbing.
She had all of her rings on her fingers.
McCall dragged the bogus Equalizer toward the front of the deli. The brunette at the cash register, who didn’t look fazed at all, said, “God bless you.”
One of the guys behind the deli counter said, “Is that really the Equalizer?”
“No, it’s not,” McCall said, and dragged the young man out into the street.
McCall hauled the bogus Equalizer along Allen Street, onto Orchard Street, then dragged him into an alleyway, where he finally let him go. The young man fell to his knees. He kept his backpack on. His eyes were angry and fearful.
Isaac looked up at McCall, his attitude defiant. He tried to get to his feet, but McCall kicked him back down to his knees.
“I should’ve put it together sooner.”
“I was working here tonight, man!” Isaac spit at McCall. “I was doing your job! I have to defend the people of New York! They need me!”
“They don’t even know that you exist. But you wanted that to change. You weren’t going to sleep in a corner of some alleyway like this one. You didn’t want to be in your spot. Isaac’s spot! You wanted respect. So you took the persona of the Equalizer because that appealed to you. A crime fighter who was shadowy and mysterious.”
“I was already a crime fighter!” Isaac shouted. “I was inspired by your ad in the newspaper. ‘Gotta problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer.’ I phoned you. I called myself Demolition Man. You hung up on me. You wanted all the glory for yourself. But that wasn’t going to fly, bro. ‘Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded.’ Isaiah forty-one:eleven.”
“What happened to you, Isaac?”
“Shit is what happened to me. You want the whole sob story?”
“Sure.”
“My mom died when she was in her forties. Throat cancer. My dad was a boozer. He liked to smack me around. I had two big brothers, Zachary and Caleb. I looked up to them. They took care of me.”
“But your brothers didn’t stop your dad from hitting you?”
“My brother Zach got taken out by the White Jaguars street gang in a drive-by shooting nine years ago. My brother Caleb took care of me the best he could, but he was attending law school and needed time to study. Didn’t matter. He got wasted in a convenience-store robbery last year. My old man threw me out of the house. So what? I didn’t need him. I wanted to be on my own. ‘Folly is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.’ Proverbs twenty-two:fifteen.”
“So you took to sleeping in the streets.”
“But I had a plan, man. There was corruption everywhere. People were suffering. ‘And they worshipped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’ Revelation thirteen:four. I could fight that beast! I knew what I had to do for the people of this city. There was a new sheriff in town. A younger one. But you didn’t like that, did you.”
“So when did you decide to eliminate me from the picture? Right after I started questioning you? You found out I lived at the Liberty Belle Hotel. You took a shot at me in my hotel suite. When that didn’t work out, you decided to hurt someone close to me. There was this one old guy, Sam Kinney, the manager of the hotel. He was a good friend. You’d observed that. You followed him. He was staying in an apartment down in the East Village. He’d only been there for just over a week.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Isaac got back to his feet, expecting McCall to knock him down again, but McCall didn’t.
“Old Sam was a target now. You’d kill him, but you’d make it look like an accident. Like he’d died in a devastating fire. Never mind there were other innocent tenants in the building who might have been hurt or killed.”
“You can’t prove that!”
“The police and the fire department have been all over that fire scene, collecting evidence. You dropped this on the floor of Sam’s bedroom before it went up in flames.” McCall took out the bracelet that Norman Rosemont had found and tossed it to Isaac. “You didn’t realize this had dropped from your wrist. Your fingerprints and DNA are on it. It ties you into the arson scene.”
Isaac’s demeanor changed. His voice was pleading now. “You can have all the glory. Just let me help you! Let me protect people!”
“Like you protected them in that grocery-store robbery where the cashier was killed? Like at the Madison Avenue robbery where you shot two thieves dead? The salesgirl in that store was also shot, but she pulled through, by the way. So did the two gang members you beat half to death when Megan Forrester fled out of that alleyway on the Lower East Side. I found one of Megan’s diamond earrings. I figure that you’ve got the other diamond earring in your backpack.”
“So there is always going to be some collateral damage. Look, Mr. McCall, I’ll work my neighborhood and you work yours. The Equalizer and Demolition Man! Between us we’ve got the streets of Manhattan covered, man!”
McCall looked at Isaac, his red-rimmed eyes crying and still pleading.
That’s when he came for McCall.
Isaac took the switchblade that he’d lifted from one of the gangbangers he’d beaten up and slashed at McCall. McCall easily disarmed him, putting an arm around his throat. Isaac writhed, but McCall applied pressure, and the Equalizer wannabe slumped unconscious into McCall’s arms.
Headlights washed the alleyway, and Jimmy’s silver 2009 Lexus pulled up. Jimmy got out and helped McCall carry Isaac to the car.
“I didn’t know how long you were going to be,” Jimmy said. “There are cops all over that deli.”
McCall lifted Isaac’s wallet out of his back pocket and opened the back door of the Lexus. He threw an unconscious Isaac into it and got inside beside him. Jimmy got into the driver’s seat and handed McCall a pair of handcuffs. McCall handcuffed Isaac’s hands behind his back.
“Where to?” Jimmy asked.
“Delivery to the Seventh Precinct. It’s on Broome Street.”
“You sure you don’t want to kill the bastard?”
“I would have if Sam Kinney had died in that fire.”
Jimmy pulled out of the alleyway onto Orchard Street. Behind him more cop cars, lights flashing, were pulling up outside the Manhattan Deli.
Jimmy pulled up to the Seventh Precinct building. He jumped out, engine running, and hauled Isaac out of the back of the Lexus. He was coming to. McCall took charge of him.
“Let’s not make a habit of this delivery service,” Jimmy said. “Sarah still wants to cook dinner for you one night.”
He slid back into the driver’s seat and drove off. McCall marched a groggy Isaac right through the station house, up a flight of stairs, and into the bull pen. He dragged him up to Detective Steve Lansing’s desk and dropped him into a chair. A couple of detectives jumped to their feet, but Lansing waved them off.
McCall pulled Isaac’s backpack to the floor and dropped his wallet onto Lansing’s desk. “Isaac Warnowski. Driver’s license and not much else. Except these.”
McCall turned Isaac’s wallet upside down and a bunch of his Equalizer cards spilled out. The NYC skyline was prominent with a figure silhouetted with a gun in his hand and the words JUSTICE IS HERE written in raised letters.
“Hey, that belongs to me, man!” Isaac cried. “This dude attacked me! I want to bring charges against him! He violated my civil rights!”
Lansing nodded at the heavyset, craggy detective McCall had seen before. “Take him to Interview Room Three and lock him in the cage.”
The detective hauled Isaac to his feet and propelled him out of the bull pen.
“This guy is a criminal!” Isaac shouted. “You should be locking him up, not me!”
The detective told Isaac to shut up and hustled him down the corridor. Lansing picked up one of Isaac’s cards. “So this is the wannabe Equalizer?”
“Homeless, living on the streets.” McCall reached into Isaac’s backpack and found a diamond earring. “This belonged to Megan Forrester, the victim that Isaac ‘saved’ from those two gang thugs. Isaac pocketed it, maybe as a souvenir. I found the other earring in the alleyway. I’ll return them to her.” McCall dropped Isaac’s gun onto Lansing’s desk. “This is Isaac’s Glock 34. You should get fingerprints and DNA from it that matches the shooter who foiled that Madison Avenue robbery. Two men dead, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Once Isaac had taken over the role of the Equalizer, he didn’t want anyone else claiming the glory. He found out that I’m living at the Liberty Belle Hotel on the West Side and took a shot at me. When he missed, he decided the best way to make me pay was to murder one of my friends, Sam Kinney, the manager at the hotel. Isaac torched an apartment building on Tenth Street in the East Village where Sam was temporarily living. All of the tenants got out safely. One of them picked up this bracelet from the floor of Sam’s bedroom.” McCall dropped Isaac’s bracelet onto Lansing’s desk. “You’ll find Isaac’s prints and DNA on it, which puts him at the scene of the arson fire. Isaac may have left prints and DNA on a kerosene can. You’ll have to talk to the Fire Department’s arson squad. Isaac foiled an attempted robbery at the Manhattan Deli tonight on Allen, just off Houston. He shot one of the thieves, but it was a shoulder wound. The second thief had two guys who weighed about four hundred and fifty pounds between them sitting on his back. He might be in worse shape.”
“I take it you were also at the diner?”
“I started following Isaac about four nights ago. I knew where his alleyway of preference was. He’d been tracking the thieves who hit the Manhattan Deli. I had to catch Isaac in the act of foiling one of these robberies.”
“Any other witnesses beside yourself in the diner who could ID Isaac?”
“About twenty.”
Lansing pulled a different card out of Isaac’s wallet. It showed a figure on a construction site leaping toward camera with the initials DM on his shirt and the words DEMOLITION MAN beneath.
“Demolition Man?”
“Isaac’s old persona.”
“What made him do it?”
“Mother died early of cancer, father was an abusive alcoholic. Two older brothers who got killed, one by that White Jaguars street gang, the other in a convenience-store robbery. Isaac was looking for an escape. He wanted to be a hero.”
“Like you?”
McCall ignored that.
Lansing sighed. “Sorry. Cheap shot.”
“Isaac thought if he helped people, he would find his way back into a real life. He’s psychotic and troubled. Keep him locked up.”
Detective Lansing nodded. “The ADA is going to want to question you.”
“Will it be Cassie Blake?”
“Probably.”
“She knows where to find me.”
McCall walked to the stairs.
Lansing followed him. “I may not condone your activities, but it’s kind of nice to know the Equalizer really is out there.” Lansing offered his hand, and McCall shook it. “Just don’t give me a reason to come after you, all right?”
McCall smiled and walked down the stairs and out of the precinct house.
CHAPTER 50
McCall took a seat at the bar in Langan’s Pub on West Forty-Seventh Street. It took five minutes for Candy Annie to come rushing up to him.
“Mr. McCall! I haven’t seen you forever! Did you hear what happened at the UN? Oh, my God! It was awful!”
“It could have been.”
“You know that your friend Mickey Kostmayer is back, right?”
“I heard.”
“I don’t know what kind of vacation he took, but he’s very gaunt! You’d have thought he had been living down under the Manhattan streets! But I’m bringing him some steak and kidney pies and some bangers and mash from here.”
“You haven’t tried to seduce him, have you, Annie?”
“Mr. McCall!” Candy Annie was shocked. “Of course not! You’re the only one I would do that with.” Then she grinned. “But he is kind of cute.”
“I brought you something.” McCall reached into his jacket pocket and took out the firefighter Barbie doll and handed it to Candy Annie. “I found this in a deserted village in Syria. It used to belong to a little girl who lived there.”
Candy Annie took the doll as if she’d just been given a special Christmas present. “I have no possessions. Just what I brought with me from the tunnels. I’ve never received a gift before.”
“Barbie is a little the worse for wear, and she needs a new left arm, but I figured you could get that for her. I thought you might like to have the doll. I think the little girl would have liked that.”
“She doesn’t want the doll anymore?”
“She had to leave it behind.”
“I’ll treasure it.” If anyone else had said that to him, McCall would have looked for the sarcasm. But not from Candy Annie. “Thank you.”
She slipped the Barbie into the pocket of her apron and rushed off again.
Two minutes later Helen Coleman entered the restaurant and slid onto a barstool beside McCall.
The bartender came over.
“I just want some water.”
The bartender brought her a glass of water and moved off again.
“I can’t stay long,” Helen said. “I have to meet with the attorney general about Tom. Also some Homeland Security officials.”
“Is your job at the UN in jeopardy?”
“No. They believe me that I had absolutely nothing to do with Tom’s treason.”
She took the small bottle of her meds from her Tory Burch bag, shook out a pill, and took it with a swallow of water.
“Fucking pills. Language, sorry. Josh was always picking me up on swearing.”
“Go on,” McCall said gently.
But Helen couldn’t go on. She looked down at the bar, then finally raised her eyes to McCall’s face. “You tried to tell me the truth. I didn’t believe you. So many innocent people would have been killed by Tom’s craven cowardice. Including his own mother. How do I reconcile that to myself?”
“You don’t. You just have to deal with it.”
“Your colleague Mr. Kostmayer could have killed Tom, but he chose not to.”
“He made a split-second decision. It was the right one.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do now for Tom. Except deal with the guilt.”
“Lean on your daughter, Rebecca. She loves you very much.”
Helen nodded, still looking at him. “If I have to call on you again for help, will you b
e there for me?”
“Yes.”
Tears were in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “Because that’s what the Equalizer does, isn’t it? Evens the odds against you.”
Helen Coleman slid off the barstool, kissed McCall gently on the cheek, then walked out of the restaurant. He watched her disappear into the crowd on Forty-Seventh Street.
No matter how he played it out in his mind, McCall knew he’d failed Helen and her sons.
* * *
When McCall walked into Dolls nightclub, three FBI agents were manhandling the DJ, Abusaid, from his spot spinning records. Another federal officer was packing up Abusaid’s laptop computer. McCall had made a discreet phone call to the FBI before he arrived. Melody was watching all this, looking gorgeous in her shimmering blue dress. Another DJ quickly sat in so the loud music didn’t miss a decibel.
Melody looked at McCall. “I told you Abuse’s sexual preferences were for young girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen. I talked to one of the FBI officers. He said they found child pornography on his laptop for dozens of illicit sites. Truly disgusting. I guess they’ve been watching him since the nightclub changed hands. Good riddance.”
“You left a message for me?”
Melody took McCall’s hands in hers. “I never got the chance to thank you for saving my life with Blake Cunningham.”
“You could have said that on the phone.”
“Not the way I wanted to say it.” Melody actually blushed. “I’m finished early tonight. I could meet you at your place, wherever that is.”
McCall was a little taken aback. He remembered when Andel, his angel, had stood in the shadows of his room at the Hotel Leonardo in Prague after he’d barely survived the fight with Jovan Durković. She had looked at him in the same way. With lust, gentleness, and concern. McCall had never seen her again. Not that he couldn’t have flown to Prague to find her, but he wouldn’t do that. Her memory was ephemeral, like a dream. McCall kept two beautiful women close to his heart. Elena Petrov, a Company agent, had died in Control’s arms on a mission. Serena Johanssen, also a Company agent, had been killed by Jovan Durković before McCall had killed him. There’d been sexual tension between McCall and Tara Langley, but McCall had known that wasn’t going to come to anything substantial. When he had put Tara on the flight back to Minneapolis with Emily Masden, he knew he’d never see her again.
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