He sat down on the ledge where Karen had been headed, took a sip of latte through the little hole. He unwrapped his sandwich and bit into it. At her table, Megan started to talk to Karen in earnest. Karen turned once and looked over her shoulder. Saw Jeff Carlson sitting on the ledge eating his sandwich, looking out across the concourse, taking no notice of her whatsoever.
Now she was sorry she hadn’t just stood her ground and kicked him in the balls.
* * *
The hour between 4:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. at Bentleys was always quiet. Busboys were still clearing up two big tables. Only one booth at the big windows was occupied, by Karen Armstrong and her friends. McCall saw they were the usual suspects, including a young woman he hadn’t seen before, a little hefty, auburn ringlets framing a pretty face. He carried the tray of drinks over to them. He noted that Karen was a little more animated than usual. Her voice had a kind of suppressed anger in it.
“… and when we left, I could feel his eyes burning holes in my back. Actually, they were burning holes right through my ass.”
“He looked like Ted Bundy,” the redhead said. “Real handsome, laid-back, you know, a super-nice guy, like one of those Mormon missionaries who knock on your door with a Bible in one hand and their dick in the other.”
“And then I remembered that I’d seen him before,” Karen said. “Not just in the sandwich shop. He’d been in the lobby of 221 Monday night. He’d been looking at the directory like he was trying to find someone. I thought, ‘That dude’s pretty cute.’ I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that’s what I thought. And then when I was walking home from the subway last night, I felt kind of weird. Like I was being followed. I turned around, but no one was there. I mean, I didn’t see him, but I couldn’t shake that feeling. I’ve got my doorman Harry, but he looks like he’s been standing outside that apartment building since horses pulled milk carts down Broadway. I don’t think he’d be much protection.”
“Here’s the protection you need,” Megan said, and opened her purse. She rummaged through it and exposed a subcompact Glock 29.
Karen’s eyes went wide. “Wow. Do you have a permit for that?”
“Oh, yeah. My dad’s a cop. He got the paperwork through for me in seventy-two hours.”
McCall reached the booth, but they were so intent on their conversation that no one even looked up. One of Karen’s other colleagues, McCall thought her name was Susan, a sweet, mousy girl with bright blue eyes behind amber glasses, opened her purse.
“I carry mace with me,” she said.
“Carrying mace means you’ve got to get right up close to an attacker,” another of the group said. McCall thought her name was Candace. She was tall and willowy and tossed her brunette bangs out of her eyes a lot. McCall thought it might be easier to trim them. “You’ve got to spray it right in his face.”
“A Glock semiautomatic is the way to go,” Megan insisted.
“Only if you know how to use it,” McCall said.
Now they all looked up.
“Oh, hey, Bobby, you didn’t need to bring over the drinks yourself. I’d have gone up to the bar,” Karen said.
“Not a problem.”
He started setting out the various cocktails.
“I know how to fire it,” Megan said a little defensively. “My dad’s a police officer. He’s taken me to the firing range in Brooklyn lots of times.”
“Maybe I should get a gun,” Karen said.
McCall set a Sex-on-the-Beach down in front of Megan. “When you need to pull out that Glock 29, where do you aim and how many shots do you fire? Three or four hits to the thoracic cavity? Or do you aim for the cranio-ocular cavity? Are you cross dominant? Did you learn to shoot with your dominant hand?”
“Uh, sure, I’m right-handed.”
“Do you keep both eyes open all the time? Or do you close your nondominant eye, turn your head slightly, and use your dominant eye?”
Megan was clearly flustered. “I would keep both eyes open if I was being attacked. I’d aim for the asshole’s head.”
“It would be better to aim at his chest. Bigger target.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Karen said. “Do you carry a gun, Bobby?”
“Carry one? No. I’ve fired a few of them over the years. If you want to buy a gun for personal protection, you need to know how to use it. I could teach you.”
“I’ll be fine. Thanks, anyway.”
Karen looked at her friends and almost rolled her eyes.
As if he could help her.
“If you’re worried about a stalker, go to the police,” McCall said.
“And tell them what?” Karen scoffed. “That a hunky dude’s been noticing me? Especially when I wear short skirts and keep my shirt unbuttoned? That I saw him in the lobby of my building one night? That he returned my wallet to me one lunchtime after I’d dropped it? That he asked me out for a coffee? Oh, sure, I’m bound to get round-the-clock police protection. He hasn’t made a single threatening move. It’s just his manner, the tone of his voice. He’s a creep. I’ll deal with him.”
McCall knew when he was being dismissed.
“Just be careful,” he said.
His attention was elsewhere.
He’d seen her come into Bentleys and sit down in the first booth after the hostess station. She didn’t look into the restaurant or out through the window at the street. She just looked straight ahead. He’d only spoken to her twice, when she’d come in with her mother, and she hadn’t answered him. In fact, he’d never heard her say a single word. He thought she was probably autistic, maybe borderline Asperger’s. She was dressed in jeans, a dark burgundy shirt, a gray Windbreaker. Her hair was jet black and tumbled over her shoulders, giving her a wild, gypsy look. Her eyes were liquid dark. The kind lovers in romance novels want to fall into. Her hands were slender and she held them clasped on the table. He guessed she was probably seventeen. There was a fragility to her that was at once attractive and disturbing. But there was a serenity, too. She lived in her own world. McCall wasn’t sure she was happy there. And right now, those gorgeous eyes were moist with threatening tears. He noticed her hands trembled slightly.
He walked back to the bar and set down the empty tray. Andrew Ladd, the other bartender, a young aspiring playwright, was taking clean glasses out of the dishwasher, drying them, and setting them up into the slots above the bar.
“Can you take over the orders, Laddie?” McCall asked.
He smiled. “Sure. I don’t think the rush is going to stampede me.”
McCall walked to the first booth and sat down opposite the teenage girl. She looked at him. Looked right through him. He thought she could see the real man beneath—dangerous, restless, isolated—not Bobby Maclain.
“How are you, Natalya?” he asked, gently.
She just nodded. It wasn’t an answer to the question, but at least her hands stopped trembling.
“Does your mom know where you are?”
She nodded.
“You’re meeting her here?”
She shrugged.
“You want something to drink? How about a Diet Coke?”
She nodded.
He started to slide out of the booth when she suddenly reached out and gripped his hands. Tightly. Her eyes were pleading.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
She just stared at him.
“A problem with your mom?”
She nodded.
“Between the two of you?”
She shook her head.
“Someone your mom knows. A boyfriend?”
She shook her head violently. Telling McCall there was no boyfriend.
“Someone she works with?”
She nodded. She continued to stare at him. As if willing him to read her mind. He didn’t know if she couldn’t speak, or wouldn’t speak. There was nothing wrong with her hearing.
“I’ll get you that Coke.”
She let go of his hands. He slid out of the booth. H
e hadn’t talked much to her mother. Just to get their drinks orders, tell them a server would be right over, ask how they were enjoying living in New York City. He knew they were from the old Soviet Union. He’d heard Katia talking on her cell phone in Russian. The thought stopped him halfway to the bar. Not Russian. Chechen. McCall could speak fluent Russian and understood some isolated Chechen phrases.
He wasn’t big on coincidence. He’d been living and working in this New York neighborhood for almost a year. He knew a lot of people, but none of them well. He’d never got to know anyone well. The neighborhood gang were acquaintances, and yet they felt like an extended family. Katia had a vibrant personality that was infectious to be with. It just made you smile. But there was also a sadness that sometimes wrapped itself around her. He’d always thought it had to do with her daughter. But recently he’d witnessed the Chechen influence in the neighborhood.
Had that darkness touched Katia and her daughter?
McCall ducked under the bar hatch. Laddie handed him a clean glass. McCall picked up the beverage gun and pushed the Diet Coke button. He cased the restaurant as it cascaded into the glass. Karen and her friends had their heads together in their booth, probably plotting the stalker’s demise. McCall looked over at the first booth beside the hostess station. Natalya was writing something on the back of a cocktail menu shaped like a vintage British Bentley. Through the window McCall saw Katia striding down the street toward the restaurant.
McCall ducked down under the bar hatch and carried the Diet Coke to Natalya’s booth. He got there at the same time Katia moved through the front doors. The Bentleys hostess, a slim, Asian girl named Sherry, who looked like a little doll come to life, had just come on duty. She smiled at Katia, recognizing her as a regular customer, and picked up a menu. Katia shook her head and walked past the station. McCall set the glass of Diet Coke in front of Natalya.
Katia reached the booth. Her level of tension was high.
“Hello, Bobby. How long has she been here?”
“Just a few minutes. You weren’t meeting her here?”
“No. I’d taken a walk. When I got back to our apartment she was gone. But there are only a couple of other places she goes to. The Public Library. Washington Square Park.” She reached over, touching her daughter’s arm. “Natalya, we have to go home before I go to work.”
Natalya shook her head. Katia sighed, sliding into the booth beside her, causing the teenager to move across. Katia spoke quietly to her daughter, her back to McCall. He could not hear the soft, urgent words, but their tone was implicit. She had to do what she was told. Natalya was frightened. McCall stood there for a long moment, not wanting to leave.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Katia turned and glanced up at him, not quite scathingly, but the look said it all. You’re a bartender at Bentleys Bar & Grill, how can you help me? A flash of light caught McCall’s attention. He glanced down at her hands. They were turning a small silver square over and over. A matchbook. He caught the name Dolls on it in raised silver.
“Thank you,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do.” Then, more to herself: “There’s nothing anyone can do.”
Through the window McCall saw a black Lexus pull up to the curb outside Bentleys. A young dark-haired man in a three-piece business suit with an ostentatious gold watch chain got out of the driver’s side. McCall had seen him before. One of the young Chechen enforcers who’d had a jovial dinner at Luigi’s and rousted old Moses in the antiques store the next morning. Katia turned back to her daughter and gripped her arm more tightly. Spoke to her in low Chechen. The tears that had been threatening Natalya’s beautiful face spilled down her cheeks. She nodded. Mother and daughter climbed out of the booth. Katia dug into her coat pocket and came out with some dollar bills.
“Coke’s on the house,” McCall said.
“Thank you.”
They turned toward the front doors. McCall gently caught Katia’s arm.
“Katia…”
“Please, I have to go.”
They walked out of the restaurant. McCall changed position so he’d have a better view of who might be in the back of the Lexus. He heard Katia call the driver “Kuzbec.” The young Chechen opened the back door for them, politely, deferentially. McCall saw, for the briefest moment, Bakar Daudov’s face in the gloom of the backseat. Then he was blocked by the two women getting in and Kuzbec slammed the door shut. He got back behind the wheel and pulled out into the traffic, unleashing a cascade of irritated horns.
McCall went back to the booth and picked up Natalya’s glass of Diet Coke. She hadn’t touched it. He picked up the Bentleys cocktail menu that lay on its own on top of the table. He turned it over.
On the back was written: Please help my mom.
CHAPTER 10
That afternoon hour at Bentleys had been the calm before the storm. The night had been crazy and the restaurant was still packed at 11:00 P.M. Just when McCall thought he might be able to slip out, Chase Granger and four of his Realtor buddies hit the bar, boisterous and well libated—Bentleys had not been their first stop of the evening. They slid onto five bar stools, four of them just vacated by two couples. McCall finished mixing drinks for his favorite server, Amanda, goth, punk, tattoos, safety pins on her eyebrows and lips, who had pink hair tonight, but you never knew what color it would be when she came in to work. She looked at McCall with blatant bedroom eyes and mouthed: “I love you.” It was a nightly ritual. McCall smiled benignly. Chase grinned, fishing his iPhone out of his coat pocket.
“Hey, Bobby! Looks like you’ve got a hot date on your hands tonight! These are some of my friends from work. You got Tim here, Peter, that’s Marcus next to him, and Kyle on the end. Guys, this is my main man! Bartender Bobby! Tequila shots, Bobby, just set ’em up on the bar.”
McCall started pouring tequila into shot glasses. Chase got up from his bar stool, aiming his iPhone. “Okay, guys, crowd together or I won’t get you all in.” He took a picture, checked the LED screen. “That’s terrible! You all look constipated! One more. Grab those tequila glasses and look like you’re having a blast!”
They picked up their glasses as McCall poured the last shot and raised them in a toast. Chase took the picture and checked the LED screen again.
“That’s the one!”
He sat back down, pocketing the iPhone, picked up his shot of tequila, and knocked it back. McCall walked away, pulling his black apron, the signature of Bentleys, over his head. Andrew Ladd had just set the last glass of Sam Adams onto a tray for Gina, who whisked it away.
“Can you handle this?” McCall asked. “I need to get out of here. I’ll try and be back before midnight.”
“That’s okay, I’ll close up,” Laddie said. “Leave me the keys.”
McCall grabbed his jacket, handed Andrew a ring of keys, and ducked under the bar hatch. He glanced once at the crowded bar stools. Chase Granger and his new pals were laughing at something. They paid no attention to him. McCall passed the hostess station. Sherry smiled.
“Escaping the madness, Bobby?”
“Laddie’s going to close up.”
“Sure. Good night.”
She looked after him a little wistfully.
McCall caught one reflection as he walked through the front doors.
At the bar, Chase Granger craned his neck to see McCall walk out of the restaurant. He fished his iPhone out of his coat pocket, while the laughter continued around him, and hit some buttons.
* * *
In his darkened Company office, Control’s iPhone vibrated on his desk. He was the only person allowed to have a working cell phone in the building. He’d been studying the partial blueprint of tunnels—or whatever the hell they were—on his laptop screen. They’d been run through myriad databases. So far, nothing. He picked up the iPhone. Then he slowly sat back. On the LED screen were four young men sitting at a bar in a restaurant, holding up shot glasses filled to the brim. Looked like tequila. They were grinning for the
camera, but he wasn’t interested in them. They’d been hired for the night. It was who was behind them that Control wanted to see. The bartender was a little out-of-focus, but his face was unmistakable.
Robert McCall.
Control nodded. The smallest of smiles touched his lips. “A bartender. Who else would you tell your troubles to?”
* * *
McCall descended the stairs of the MTA Canal Street subway station onto the virtually deserted platform. He’d looked Dolls nightclub up on the Internet and found it was three subway stops from Bentleys on Houston Street. He’d just missed a train. So had a young woman in her twenties a little farther down the platform. She was blond, wearing a backpack, smoking a cigarette, which was against the law on New York transit platforms, but no MTA worker was rushing forward to make her stub it out. She was the only other person on the platform. She looked over her shoulder at McCall and started to walk quickly away from him. More people emerged onto the platform and she relaxed a little. But there had been a real flicker of alarm in the young girl’s eyes. Alone on a deserted subway platform with an older man she did not know. Who might have meant her harm.
The small piece of urban paranoia resonated with McCall.
Dolls nightclub was on a corner in a building that had once been a karate studio. The motif of silver dolls cascaded over the entrance doors. There were long, bright windows, but silvered over, so you couldn’t see in. There was a line of people waiting to get in, mostly young. A hefty teenage thug in black stood at the door, playing God, deciding who got to enter the hallowed halls and who didn’t. McCall pushed gently to the front of the line. The bouncer looked at him. Started to open his mouth to tell him to get the hell to the back of the line, but something in McCall’s eyes stopped him. He stood to one side. His accent was thick Bronx.
“You’re good to go in.”
McCall nodded and entered the nightclub.
There were small silver tables nestled around a very large dance floor, where a silver ball hung down from the ceiling, spiraling kaleidoscopic colors. The floor was packed with couples dancing, most of them doing their own thing, oblivious to whatever moves their partners might be making. You’d have to be the width of a playing card to slide between them. There was a big silver bar to the right, three deep at it, all of the bar stools taken. McCall noted an eclectic mix at the bar, a smattering of the twenties crowd, but mainly over-thirty stockbrokers, attorneys, political assistants and campaign managers, advertisers, some actresses looking to get noticed. Working at Bentleys had given him a good eye for recognizing the usual suspects. Near the bar a young DJ, all in black, with a shock of dark hair, spun the records and added his own remix to them. The reverb was enough to knock you off your feet.
The Equalizer Page 10
