The Chessman

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  Cady’s first inclination was to run like a madman in the opposite direction. His second inclination was to double-time it out onto the roof and throw himself into the middle of an unknown O.K. Corral scenario. Both inclinations could prove fatal, for someone. Cady and Westlow hugged the wall, Glock and Beretta aimed at the doorway as they climbed the cement steps. They held their breath as they slunk up the final flight, embraced the doorframe, and peeked out at the drama unfolding on the roof.

  Six paces outside the doorway stood Rudy Ciolino. Opposite Ciolino stood the bald man from the pictures. Cady put two and two together as he pegged Drake Hartzell, financial wizard and felon extraordinaire, on his knees before the two thugs, Yankees cap askew, with a thick line of blood slipping down a recently malformed nose. Lucy Hartzell stood next to her father, quaking in her high-heeled shoes.

  “Nobody move a goddamn inch!” Cady yelled in his no-shit tone, stepping out from the doorway, his Glock leveled at Ciolino’s torso.

  Ciolino and St. Nick glared at the figure who’d materialized out of nowhere, now threatening to spoil their party.

  Cady noted the mess in the helicopter. “You two, on the ground right now! Hands on your heads!”

  Ciolino had made three calls for help, but there were only the Hartzells and the two unarmed men in front of him. Where were Fiorella’s other men? Where the hell was the shooter? Neither man showed any indication of obeying Cady’s command. Ciolino’s eyes shot to Cady’s left. Drake Hartzell leapt to his feet. And in a flash Cady knew exactly where the shooter had been positioned, hugging the shadows of the outer wall…and in his periphery, Cady glimpsed death.

  Westlow had seen Cady step forward, shot out a hand to pull him back but was too late. He remained inside the doorframe, gun centered on the monster called St. Nick. He was the main threat to be removed if the two men continued to ignore Agent Cady’s commands. He heard movement first, and then saw the flash of an arm as an unseen third man stepped from the outside wall, pistol pointing into Cady’s ear. Westlow leapt forward, his own gun flying upward as though fencing with a short blade; he nudged the third man’s pistol up a sneeze before it exploded.

  Westlow latched onto the pistol barrel with his free hand, twisting it up and backwards, breaking the shooter’s grip. Westlow moved left, sweeping the Beretta with him, planning to put four into the third man, when a blow from nowhere smashed into his ribcage right as the shooter’s gun popped free in his hand. Westlow tossed the pistol behind him into the stairwell and brought the Beretta full to his left. A stitch jabbed into his side and caused him to gasp.

  Then he and Cady fired simultaneously as the shooter—a tall man dressed in black—darted around the corner of the access building. They heard receding footsteps as the tall man escaped to the south side of the rooftop. Westlow gritted his teeth against the twinge in his left side, shot Cady a look, and took off after the tall man, chasing him into the darkness.

  Drake Hartzell had dropped to his knees after being clubbed across the face by a horribly irate St. Nick. A precursor of things to come, no doubt. Shards of pain spread across both temples and he feared a broken nose. Hartzell was stunned to look up and witness a stranger emerging from the rooftop doorway, his gun centered on the Coordinator, commanding him and the ape man to get on the ground. Hartzell also saw the tall man emerge from the shadows at the side of the building, his pistol aimed at their would-be savior.

  That was all he needed. Hartzell sprang to his feet in an instant and had Lucy by the hand, pulling her away from the fray, away from certain death. They both ran fast and hard cross the flat-top roof, Lucy kicking both heels off on the fly, in a frenzied exodus to the north side of the high rise.

  Cady’s heart was in his throat, a deafening ring inside his head. He swept the Glock back as Westlow took off after the tall man. He’d seen Hartzell and the girl make tracks as his eardrum burst. But now the bald man had turned, taking off after the Hartzells.

  “Stop!” Cady screamed—or thought he’d screamed, as he couldn’t hear a goddamned thing besides the incessant ringing. He put one into the air but the bald man was out of range and lost in the gloom.

  Ciolino made a move, his arm shooting inside his jacket. Cady was on him immediately, smashing the barrel of the Glock against the man’s ear, splitting it open and taking all fight out of Ciolino as he slammed him down hard on the roof tarmac. He had Ciolino flex-cuffed, hands behind his back, in seconds. Cady dragged him to the far side of the JetRanger, into the darkness opposite the doorway, and popped another flex-cuff to tether Ciolino’s bound hands to a leg of the helicopter. He found Ciolino’s Heckler & Koch Parabellum holstered under his suit jacket and was glad he’d pistol-whipped the son of a bitch. He shoved the 9mm into the back of his belt.

  As a parting thought, in order to make rescue an extra thorny task, Cady grabbed Ciolino’s suit jacket by the front lapels and wrenched it over Ciolino’s shoulders and as far down as possible, cementing the man’s torso in place. Ciolino mouthed off the entire time. Cady couldn’t hear word one screamed in his direction, but he didn’t need to read lips to understand the man’s intent.

  Then Cady took off on a sprint northward, after the Hartzells—and after the bald man.

  Chapter 45

  There was nowhere left to run.

  Hartzell glanced over the three-foot safety wall that kept maintenance workers from an accidental misstep and a seventy-flight plunge to an unforgiving walkway below. A wave of vertigo splashed through him and Hartzell jerked back. He and Lucy had skirted a metal shed housing electrical equipment, bolted past a briar patch of satellite disks with the odd antenna tossed in the mix, dodged a minefield of round pipes that jutted up indiscriminately from the flat top of the roof itself, and now stood—barring both of them miraculously sprouting a pair of wings—at journey’s end.

  Hartzell had heard three shots ring out in rapid succession. Likely from the same gun. He got an inkling that it didn’t bode well for them.

  In the moonlight they watched as the bulky shadow steadily advancing toward them turned into the beast they knew as St. Nick. They didn’t need the moonlight to recognize the crooked smile of a psychopath.

  Hartzell stepped in front of Lucy, brought his fists up in front of himself in a classic boxer stance, and then danced out to slay the beast. St. Nick showed no inclination to defend himself, but marched onward, full-speed ahead. Hartzell prayed for a glass jaw and threw all his weight behind a roundhouse aimed at the bald man’s chin. Nick tipped his head at the last second and Hartzell’s blow crashed against an iron cheekbone. Then Nick was on him. A shocking headbutt to the brow dropped Hartzell like a sack of wet cement. Hartzell groped blindly at Nick’s feet, trying to slow the big man down, keep the bastard away from Lucy, give her another chance to flee, but he failed miserably and the caveman paused only long enough to give Hartzell a breath-stealing jab in the guts with the metal toe of his work boot.

  Lucy raced diagonally, but St. Nick read her movements like a billboard and had her by the throat in an instant. He lifted her high into the air with his right hand, turned, and began walking back to the skyscraper’s edge.

  “You were fucking warned, Hartzell!” St. Nick screamed at the night as Lucy gasped for air, her legs kicking at the emptiness beneath her. “And goddammit—we were fucking serious!”

  Cady’s lungs were aflame from the mad dash across the roof when he caught sight of Hartzell laid out on the deck with the bald slab of granite carrying Lucy in a choke hold toward the side of the building, his intention crystal clear: to send the girl into orbit. Cady dropped into overdrive, came in hard and slammed into Fiorella’s enforcer hockey-style, his shoulder knocking into ribs on the left side of the big man’s spine, spinning the giant around and forcing him to release the girl. St. Nick tossed Lucy to the ground hard and then focused his full attention on the federal agent.

  Cady swept the Glock upward but St. Nick latched onto his gun hand, effortlessly shoving it sideways, wra
pping his bratwurst-sized fingers around Cady’s right hand—his crippled hand—and crushing it into the 9mm. Cady swiped an elbow into the bald man’s chin. The blow did nothing. He squeezed the trigger, hoping that would free him from the ever-tightening vice grip. Two shots rang out. St. Nick barely blinked. Cady withered to his knees in excruciating pain and realized his hearing had returned as he heard the bones in his hand begin to snap. Cady knew he’d never reach the Heckler & Koch in the back of his waistband, so he shot a south paw upward, hammering his fist into the big man’s testicles—finding the creature’s Achilles’ heel.

  St. Nick released Cady’s broken wing and dropped a hand between his legs, but thundered down his own right fist across Cady’s eye and cheekbone. Feeling as if he’d been hit by a meteor shower, Cady found himself on his back, stunned like a bird that had ricocheted off a window, gazing philosophically up at this leviathan that clung to his nuts like a kid holding candy, a look of murderous rage smeared across his reddening face.

  And as if the situation couldn’t get more surreal, Cady noted, a shadow suddenly flew over him.

  Air crept back into Hartzell’s lungs as he watched the stranger from the rooftop doorway—the man who was miraculously not dead—crash into St. Nick, freeing Lucy. He got to his feet as the stranger sunk to his knees before the living steroid. Hartzell nearly cheered as their rescuer pounded the cold-blooded bastard smack between the legs. His heart sank as he watched St. Nick club the man with his free hand, hatred engraved across the behemoth’s brow, his back now against the ledge…his back now against the ledge.

  Hartzell leapt over the man who had saved Lucy’s life, pushing St. Nick backward with all his might, pushing him over the edge. Fiorella’s enforcer’s attention had been focused on his balls, first and foremost, and then the man spread-eagled before him, so Hartzell’s sneak attack began to pay dividends as Nick stumbled backward against the short wall. But the big man had lightning speed even as he lost his battle with equilibrium. A right hand snaked out and clenched Hartzell’s left forearm to stop himself before he plummeted into the void.

  Lucy—God bless his beautiful daughter—joined the fray. With a rush of adrenaline the girl performed a masterful stroke, attacking St. Nick’s legs while Hartzell’s continued shoving and the big man’s momentum forced him backward. Lucy cupped the back of his ankles, and like raising a wheelbarrow filled with blocks, she pulled up for all she was worth, and lifted and flung Nick’s legs over the side of the ledge in a flurry of pure adrenaline.

  St. Nick’s eyes were now the size of saucers, but he clung to Hartzell’s forearm and pawed at the ledge top with his other hand. And slowly the monster began to pull himself back up. Hartzell shot forward and down against the short wall, trying to keep the giant off balance. He rained blows on the bald man’s free hand, which clutched the ledge urgently. Lucy suddenly appeared on Hartzell’s left side, her face stretching down as she opened her mouth as wide as possible and sunk her teeth deep into St. Nick’s wrist where he gripped her father’s arm. Her jaw squeezed tighter and Hartzell saw blood begin to flow. The killer’s mouth opened into an ever-widening ring to match his saucer eyes as he relinquished his grip on Hartzell’s forearm.

  Everything hung in the air for an endless moment, but Nick’s other palm on the ledge wasn’t nearly enough to save him. A second later the threat was over. The mob enforcer screeched bloody murder all the way down the side of the high rise—until the sidewalk far below cut him short.

  Hartzell and Lucy slid down to the rooftop, backs against the ledge wall. Combat weary. Excited to be alive.

  Chapter 46

  Some Chessman he had turned out to be.

  Jesus, Marly, Westlow thought, I’m traipsing along the pinnacle of a Manhattan skyscraper, nearly a thousand feet above street level, in hot pursuit of a professional hit man from Chicago—the man I’m positive is my own copycat—while wearing a white muscle shirt, which means—even though this absurd get-up makes me look like the anti-Jake Westlow—that for the task at hand, I’m lit up like a Christmas tree. What a fustercluck this is turning out to be, huh, Marly? You can stop your giggling at any time now.

  But Westlow had one last arrow in his quiver. A final move that would keep him from eating prison chow for a decade before a lethal injection worked its way down the pike. Turned out he wouldn’t have to break into a room on much lower floor and go out the window. No, something much easier had presented itself, and Westlow only hoped he wouldn’t have to go through Agent Cady. He’d already hurt the man enough. His very last chess move was simplicity itself. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw it sitting there on the helipad. Westlow knew how to fly that bird.

  And all he had to do was survive the task at hand. If not for Hartzell’s daughter being snared in this deadly mix, he’d have FedExed Agent Cady all of the materials from the discovery phase of his investigation. Of course, speaking of Agent Cady, he did owe the man a hand. Literally.

  Westlow ignored the throbbing in his side. The son of a bitch in black had been savvy enough to break one of Westlow’s ribs once he realized he was on the losing end in the dispute over his handgun. The tall man hadn’t panicked, not in the least. Like a snake he’d struck a blow to keep Westlow from getting off a shot and bringing tonight’s extracurricular activities to a resounding halt.

  The silhouette darting thirty yards ahead of him made for an all-but-impossible shot. By the time Westlow took the proper stance and aimed, the tall man would be further along in the murkiness of the night—out of range. The tall man cut right in front of some type of air-handling unit sheathed in metal. Westlow paused long enough to place three shots through the tin to usher the killer onward, give the tall man no time to regroup, and keep on offense. Westlow made a wide arc around the rectangular unit, slowly, in case the killer pulled another gun from his arsenal. The front of the housing unit was grated shut, no escape there. Westlow crouched down to limit himself as a target and swept the Beretta left to right and back again, searching the shadows.

  Thin air.

  The southeastern corner of the high rise lay before him. Two short walls converged as one. The hair rising on his neck, Westlow checked his back. Between him and the building side were two industrial turbine ventilators, each nearing four feet in height and wide as a box spring. A dozen or so circular pipes shot up from the roof, but nothing even the puniest of anorexics could take cover behind. He looked left and spotted some kind of facility shed off to the west. No way the tall man had made tracks for that destination without Westlow hearing him. He crouched still and listened. The tall man is either keeping this housing unit between us like bad Vaudeville or he’s hunkered down behind one of the industrial ventilators. If he’s playing possum, he likely has another gun and is waiting for me to saunter into view.

  Westlow cut sideways, used his left hand to vault up onto the housing unit he’d recently put three holes in, rolled across it, flattened out, and peered over the corner edge, left and right.

  More thin air.

  Westlow jumped off the unit, made a hell of a ruckus as he jogged in place, Beretta aimed in the direction of the two turbine ventilators. Nothing. He put a bullet through the center of each one.

  More nothing.

  The son of a bitch has nerves of steel or he’s not there, Westlow thought. He crept wide, toward the building side, knowing he’d have to clear out the industrial turbine ventilators like spider holes on Iwo Jima before he could move on. Westlow concentrated on the moonlit shadows as he curved around the first one, looking for any indeterminate shapes or sizes indicating someone lying in wait.

  A thought pierced Westlow’s mind. If pursued, do the unexpected. He thought about his escape route from Dennis Swann’s north-side apartment up to the roof back in Richmond. If a guy had remarkable upper-body strength and a pair of rubber-soled shoes, it wouldn’t take much more effort than climbing rope in gym class. He could hang over the side of Hartzell’s tower, focus on anything and everything
but the view down, wait a minute or two for the threat to pass by, flip quietly back over and then attack from the flank—from prey to predator in a single instant.

  Oh shit!

  Westlow twisted about-face. What seemed a flapping of raven wings was upon him. The tall man flung sideways as Westlow aimed the Beretta, a straight-edge razor slicing down through Westlow’s forearm, cutting deep. The 9mm fell to the rooftop. Westlow lashed out with his left palm, throwing the tall man off balance, buying Westlow a moment as the shadowy figure realigned himself for the kill. Westlow leaned back on his left side, and then snapped a sidekick at the tall man’s kneecap, hoping to hobble the stealthy fucker. It missed his knee but the heel of Westlow’s cowboy boot caught the tall man’s fibula, enough to smart and put him momentarily on defense.

  Westlow knew he’d been tagged bad, blood flowing freely down his right arm, and knew that time was not his ally. He couldn’t imagine the tall man being one to follow the Marquess of Queens-berry rules on this rooftop, spot him a minute to tourniquet up before they continued. In a knife fight it was best to get in close, make it hard for the opponent to maneuver, so Westlow went in like Mohammed Ali, quick uppercuts connecting with air. The tall man feigned and swiveled, somehow knowing each of Westlow’s swings ahead of time. Westlow backed up, breathing deep, and the tall man flashed forward. Westlow’s right leg went up to block and the tall man’s knife flashed again, cutting through jeans, skin, and nicking Westlow’s own fibula.

  Westlow bounced back to the building corner, fists in front of him, a game face hiding the fact that his rib was broken, that his forearm was gushing blood, that his right leg felt as though it had been gnawed by a pit bull. Westlow stared into the killer’s face, the tall man’s features sinewy and focused, narrow eyes radiating an intensity seen in athletes at the top of their game, an ice-pick nose, thin lips bent in a smirk. A lethal Ichabod Crane, the tall man was going to carve Westlow up like a prize turkey at Thanksgiving dinner and love every second of it. The tall man was playing matador to Westlow’s bull—and he knew that Westlow knew it.