by Tom Straw
“What? I don’t. What question?” His eyes flashed wide to the side. He wanted to move, but he knew better. And, in case he didn’t, the Russian dug the gunsight deeper into the flesh of his neck.
“Don’t you bullshit me. You know what I want to know.”
“This is crazy, I told you, they never said. I have no idea. Please.”
“Last chance. One, two . . .”
“Holy . . .” muttered Cody. Macie squinted and turned away.
“Bam!” shouted the visitor. Driven by instinct, Mir backpedaled clumsily, sense abandoned, trying to outrun the bullet that never came. “Bam!” What’s funny once is funny twice, and the gunman cackled as Mir’s feet got tangled in the droop of the bedspread and he stumbled rearward, the back of his silver tracksuit racing at the camera. He slammed into the air conditioner with a crash that thundered the inside of the surveillance van and made Wild flinch. The camera flew off its perch showing them a tilt-a-whirl blur of the hotel room before it landed on the rug, listing and facing the wall.
Wild and Cody had lost their view but still had audio, so now their surveillance became a twisted podcast of This American Life. The Russian’s laugh decayed into a cough, and, even after he settled, there came an “Oh, man . . .” followed by a renewed chuckle. “Wish I had a picture of your face, Fabby.”
“Scared the crap out of me.”
“Here, give me your hand. On three. One, two—”
A sea-lion groan from Fabio. “Man, I think I dislocated my elbow.”
“Next time, maybe you’ll let me light up.” They heard that laugh and the cough again. “You OK?”
Mir said he was but his heart wasn’t in it. The game had gotten too rough. Then the camera jerked and moved as Cody’s d-CON trap got picked up and replaced on top of the AC unit, albeit upside-down and badly aimed, cutting off half the room now. “What’s that?” asked Luchik from outside the frame.
Cody whispered the “uh-oh” Macie was feeling.
“Rat trap,” said Fabio, moving away to the nightstand to toss back the rest of his Blue Ribbon.
“Since when are you the hotel maid?”
“No biggie. Guy who put it in was some retard. Don’t want him to get in trouble.” Mir worked his sore arm.
The voice from across the room took a different tone. All amusement was gone. “When was this? I thought you just got here.”
“I dunno exactly. Maintenance guy came by after you called. So that’s . . . what? ’Bout five minutes before you.”
“Maintenance? In this shit hole? At night?” The Russian entered the frame, approaching the camera with his head tilted forward, peering at the unit as he drew closer. The d-CON trap rose to his face. He found the lens port and put the hole to his eye until it completely filled their screen. “Fuck me,” he said. Then the video turned vertigo-swirly again as the box sailed through the air. It hit the wall across the room and dropped, this time wedging in some dark place on the floor.
Cody got to his feet. “Made.”
C H A P T E R • 13
* * *
Following some well-rehearsed mental checklist, Cody quickly snapped three toggle switches and twisted a fat dial clockwise until it clicked. The hum of servo motors filled the van as the side cams winged-in and the RF snorkel lowered. He tossed his keys to Wild and said, “Fire it up,” then popped the rear door and vaulted out. She hesitated. This day had gone nowhere Macie had been in her life. And now the night had become even more volatile. How far should she take it? The last clack-clack of the antenna mast telescoping into place left her with only the silence of the acoustically deadened van and her thoughts. Bouncing the keys once in her palm, Wild decided she could at least start the engine for him.
Cody darted up to the driver’s side door just as she opened it. “Never mind, I got it,” he said, sounding hurried, for sure, but controlled. “You’re shotgun.” He took the keys from her and turned it over before his ass settled in the seat. Macie was still pulling the passenger door closed behind her while the van lurched from the curb.
“Our man was already downstairs and on the fly when I got out. See him ahead?”
“No.”
“Not on foot. Up there. He’s in the same car from last night.”
Three cars ahead, the white sedan passed a skinny kid humping his halal cart up Chrystie Street. “Got it.” The post-dinner flow out of Chinatown locked their subject in the middle of a convoy, same as them. “Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. But you gotta know he’s got his head on a swivel, looking for something.”
Like maybe a van? she thought, but decided it best not to say, being new at this. “Mind if I ask what the plan is?”
“We keep a loose tail,” he said without a blink. They inched along for half a block when the white car jerked a sudden right, climbing up over the curb. People scattered. The sedan’s shocks settled, and the Russian floored it across the pedestrian pathway into Sara Roosevelt Park. “New plan,” said Cody.
Cody sounded his horn twice and flashed his brights to clear foot traffic as he rode up a service driveway and followed at a slightly slower speed. Not much on swearing, Macie groaned another curse. “You OK?” he asked.
“My whole life in this city, I’ve never actually driven on a sidewalk.”
“Shit. He’s busting a move.” Cody pointed to the taillights ahead. The car had crossed the narrow strip of greenbelt and was making a left to go north—the wrong way on a one-way street.
“This guy’s crazy,” she hollered. Wild’s heart sank a little bit at the thought that they were about to lose him. Then, just as crazily, Cody made a left to follow him. “Ummmm?” she said.
“Relax, we have the easy part. As long as I stay in his wake, he’s the tip of the spear, doing all the clearing.” Oncoming cars were blasting horns and swerving to the side to avoid head-ons. Unruffled, Cody worked the wheel easily and drew closer. “He’s put a plate on that since last night. Probably stolen, but memorize it.” He made an abrupt slalom dodge of a motorcycle and said, “Got it yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Call 911. Tell them there’s a drunk driver going the wrong way northbound on Forsyth near Grand. Give the color, make, and plate, then hang up.” He gave the directions as calmly as if sharing a recipe. “Use this.” He reached into his door pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “It’s a burner. Do not give your name.”
She did as instructed, even hanging up on the emergency operator, another first in a day with a spinning compass. Wild made a pact with herself not to gasp or say one more “Oh, God,” and to just hang on and trust Cody with the circus ride. They nearly sheared off a man’s car door, and he pegged his frozen yogurt at her side window as they blew past, leaving a pink smear. “I could be at my couples counseling now,” she said.
At Grand the white car lurched east, going with traffic at last. The driver hit the gas for a clear stretch until a trash truck blocking the way put him in a last-second turn up Allen Street. “Looks like he’s working his way to the Williamsburg Bridge.” Cody glanced at his dash. “Fine with me, I’ve got a full tank.”
Up ahead, a box truck made a sudden lane change for a right onto Delancey then brake checked for a couple pushing a stroller in the crosswalk. Tires squealed and the white sedan rear-ended the truck. With Cody closing in, their perp abandoned his car and raced off around the corner. Cody pulled into the driveway of a loading dock and hopped out. He must have heard Macie’s footfalls behind him because he chirped the lock on the van without turning.
Cody ran fast but so did Wild. He stopped, raised his arm across her as a caution barrier, then made a one-eyed peek around the front of a seafood restaurant on the corner. “We’re good,” he said, then bolted off. She caught up, pacing him again. Cody seemed to know exactly where he was going but it took Macie half a block before she could pick out the back of the balding head weaving through the night crowd filling the sidewalk on Delancey Street.
The man lo
oked back and must have spotted them, too, because he turned a hairpin off the curb and shoved a passing cyclist to the pavement. He fell onto her and the two struggled. Macie couldn’t tell if the cyclist was fighting him off or he was just tangled in the bike. Losing time as Cody and Wild closed the gap, he gave up on jacking the Cannondale and charged out into Delancey, nearly getting taken down by a beer truck. The Russian continued across the street, busting through the greenery of the center divider, and disappeared from view. Car horns marked him, though, as he played dodge ’em on the other side in the westbound lanes. Cody lofted both his arms to signal traffic and followed him with Macie keeping stride.
“Subway.” Again, the ex-cop’s eye put him way ahead of hers. Up the sidewalk, their target flicked a quick check back, making eye contact this time as he pushed through the crowd streaming up from the Essex Station. Wild and Cody picked up their speed, but, as they approached the head of the stairs, they heard shouts and a scream. A logjam of toppled bodies littered the steps beneath them. Their perp was gone but not before he had bowled over a half-dozen commuters.
It killed Macie not to give assistance, but when Cody pressed on, rapidly picking his way through the Lincoln Logs of arms and legs, she followed, with every “fucking asshole” a stinging lash to her heart. They heard the subway’s warning chimes and the recorded voice announcing, “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.” Racking up another lifetime first, she leaped the turnstile behind Cody and sprinted with him down to the platform where the doors had just closed on an M train. As it pulled out Cody tore off, keeping up with the last car, searching through the windows for a glimpse of their man among the departing passengers. When it gained speed and became just two red taillights disappearing into the grimy tunnel, he turned to her, thirty yards distant, and said it all with a headshake. But Wild was windmilling her arm, and he jogged back to join her.
“Whatcha got?” He was breathing rapidly, but still controlled. She indicated a trio of college students at the opposite end of the platform, acting like they just spotted the Yeti across the tracks. “Good eye,” he said, and they started toward them, picking up bits of their conversation on the way.
“You think we should call someone?” said one of the girls.
A guy in a straw fedora said, “Dude’s off his meds, or something.”
“Hi. Train Safety,” said Cody with authority. “You see a guy go that way?”
All three pointed across the rails where a curtain of beige tarps running the full length of the station hung like sooty bed sheets from a wire cable. There was one gap where the drapes had been parted. It was just the size of a man, and it was fluttering.
Cody descended the emergency rungs as if they were no more than a swimming pool ladder. Wild traced a wary side look for train headlights in the dark tunnel and followed. “Third rail,” he said pointing. She made an exaggerated step over it and they proceeded at a walk toward the gap. Cody held a shush finger to his lips then made a fast peek through the tarp opening then ducked back. He gave a nod and they both went inside.
He squatted behind a low concrete wall and drew her down beside him while he got his bearings, listening and looking off into the dingy gloom of the subway’s vast underworld. Wild maintained her silence but knew exactly where they were. This was the abandoned Williamsburg Bridge trolley station. She knew because her ex-fiancé had taken her to a fund-raising event for a group trying to convert this defunct subterranean acre into an underground park called the Low Line, their pun on the famous High Line. It had a long way to go. Sprawling before them in murky light, a ghost forest of rusty girders sprouted up from hundred-year-old cobblestones and a bayou of rain runoff. The water surfaces rippled, the ground shook, and soon a train pulled into the station behind them, filling the curtain with a Close Encounters glow, and illuminating enough graffiti tags to rival the Berlin Wall.
Camouflaged by the noise of the idling train, Cody put his lips to her ear and whispered, “Watch out for that light, it’ll make you a silhouette target.” Which made her think, and not for the first time, about that .44 magnum she saw getting waved around the flophouse.
She turned to his ear, feeling oddly comfortable with the intimacy of that. “You haven’t told me. What do we do if we catch him?”
“Stay behind me,” was all he said. The train pulled out, darkness fell once more, and she followed him into the sprawling urban underbelly. He walked patiently and expertly, stepping around pools of water, discarded aluminum cans, snapped battens from wooden pallets, and ramen containers—anything that could trip them or make a sound. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw twenty feet ahead of them a hulking structure like the conning tower of a submarine. Another train squealed into the station, spreading new light, and they ducked behind a steel column. From there both regarded the looming building, a stationmaster’s tower from the last century.
“I’ll clear it,” he whispered and then held a palm out signaling her to stay put. Cody used the din of the exiting train to cover the sound of his movement as he inched forward in a crouch to the metal stairs leading to the old station house. Barely making him out as he tiptoed up the steps, she waited, listening, casting paranoid looks behind her. A forever minute later she saw Cody’s form waving her ahead at the bottom of the stairs. Just feet away from him a giant rat, big as a bread loaf, scurried past, right where she was about to step. Macie kept her balance but set her foot down on a shard of broken glass. In that cavernous space, the crunch against the cobblestone might as well have been a firecracker. She froze. He crouched and yanked her down beside him. They squatted there, listening, searching the shadows.
The gunshot cracked like thunder. In a blink, Cody leaped on Macie, covering her with his body. The reverb was still rolling when he reached down near his foot and she saw something dark in his hand, then heard a snick as he chambered a round. They waited there like that, the weight of him shielding her until he gophered up. Cody extended his right hand, panning in tandem with wherever he looked.
In the far reaches came another bang, but not from a gun, more like a door. He followed the sound, gun at the ready as he proceeded, sweeping all sides and angles, alert for a trick. Cody reached the far wall of the ghost space, paused, then turned to call to her. But Wild was already there behind him.
An old emergency exit gaped wide open. The chain that had kept it sealed for more than sixty-five years dangled beside it, shot through with a .44 mag. Cody pressed against the wall beside the door jamb, holding his pistol in a double-handed grip. Macie put her back against the cold cement next to him and waited. After a few seconds, he squatted, picked up a chip of gravel, and tossed it into the opening. The stone bounced with echoing ticks. Cody listened, braced to return fire. Macie marked time with one long inhale/exhale.
An acre away, across the dank jungle of rusting beams and shattered bottles another M train rattled out of the station. The instant the tunnel swallowed the headlight, Cody again used the rail clatter as aural cover and spun through the doorway following the V of his arms behind his gun.
The underground fell again to silence.
Either a lot of time had passed or her breathing had become too rapid to clock it, and Macie’s freak escalated. What was going on? Unsure whether to wait, follow, or get the hell out of there, she chose the option that didn’t leave her all alone, and slipped through the doorway herself.
Inside was blackness and half a century of mildew. Macie focused her ears but could hear nothing and got no sense of the place or Cody’s whereabouts until the next M pulled in spilling weak light in the doorway. It was just enough for Wild to orient herself. She had entered a narrow brick stairwell of concrete steps that she traced upward to find that Cody had reached the landing above her without making a sound. In the feeble glow, she tiptoed up to meet him where he had crouched at the turn of the staircase. He rested a palm on her arm, to hold her back, she guessed. But when the train left the platform, Macie realized it was to keep tabs on
her in the dark.
How many flights did this zigzag upward? Since it had been an emergency exit at one time, it must have led to the street, or maybe an alley. Unless it had been forgotten over the years and bricked over, which meant the violent man with the scary handgun would need to reverse course and come their way. If so, Macie wondered who was cornered, him or them? And if they did come head to head, everything she had seen of this guy told her that he would not go quietly. As fear factors went, this was right up there. All it needed was bats.
Cody must have sensed her mounting tension and firmed his grip on her. Then, yards upshaft, came one scrape of a sole on grit. Cody removed his hand, and she envisioned it returning to cup the grip of his pistol.
Bam.
Another cannon blast, this time with a reflected burst of orange muzzle flash. Wild’s ears rang, then cleared to the sound of hard kicks against metal. One kick, then three more in rapid succession. Cody sprung up the blackened stairs calling, “Drop your weapon. Now.” Then another boom from the Anaconda and the smack of a metal door bouncing off brick.
Macie froze, unsure whether to bolt or stay. Then Cody whispered, “He’s gone.” His voice still lived in that measured zone of cop calm. In the darkness, she followed the scent of fresh air up the flight until she found Cody crouching beside the open exit door.
“Stay put,” he said. “You hear shots, haul ass the way we came.” He didn’t wait for her answer, but log rolled out on the ground into the alley. The ambient glow of the Lower East Side gave off enough light for her to watch him make his caution checks before he rose from behind a stack of discarded air conditioners and then disappeared from view. He returned a moment later, gave her the all clear, and she followed him, crabbing sideways in the tight squeeze between a pockmarked cinder-block wall and a demolition Dumpster, their only path to the street.
“You all right?” he asked. Macie nodded, completely devoid of conviction. “Good. Know what sucks? Now you’ll never know what would’ve happened if we’d caught him.” He chuckled, but as they walked back toward Delancey, she noticed he didn’t holster his gun and held it down at his thigh. Wild cast a wary glance over one shoulder then the other, haunted by the man who had brutally tried to kidnap her. He may have escaped, but, to Macie, this monster was anything but gone.
