Hard Kill (Jon Reznick Thriller Series Book 2)

by J. B. Turner

  At 2 p.m., after lunch and hours of playing in the park, Ford and the kids walked all the way home. They looked utterly exhausted, the girl on his back, the boy walking hand in hand with him.

  Reznick watched them head into the townhouse and then returned to the hotel, feeling this was going to be another wasted day. He took the opportunity to have a shower and drink a couple of bottles of still Voss from the minibar. Then he ordered room service: a club sandwich, fries, and a Coke.

  Feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, he took up his position by the window.

  The rest of the afternoon dragged as the traffic crawled along East 63rd Street. Limos, yellow cabs, Bentleys, garbage trucks. On the sidewalks, nannies and mothers and frazzled young fathers pushed their kids and babies around in strollers, headed toward the park, while liveried doormen stood under apartment awnings, shielding themselves from the fierce afternoon heat.

  At 5:55 p.m., with the far side of the street in shade, Ford appeared, carrying a small backpack.

  “OK, where you taking me now, doc?”

  Reznick took the stairs, and was heading out through the lobby in less than a minute. On Fifth Avenue, he stopped at a vendor cart and bought a hot dog, as Ford headed toward the park. Eating as he walked, Reznick entered the park and skirted the pond again, as he had done in the morning. Taking the exact same route, this time he observed Ford from more than two hundred yards back, as the park was quieter than earlier.

  Ford sat down on a park bench, backpack at his side, and watched model boats being raced by two kids. The sky was on fire, the tops of the trees tinged with gold and reds. The doctor stared as if transfixed. Maybe he was enjoying the tranquility of the scene. Then he glanced at his watch.

  Reznick took a seat on a fence, shielded by the leaves of the huge beech trees.

  Ford glanced at his watch again and opened up his bag. He pulled out a large camera, and in a very deliberate and professional manner, began to take pictures of the pond and Gapstow Bridge. Then he wrapped the camera strap around his wrist and walked a few yards, before snapping pictures again.

  Reznick had a good line of sight on Ford, but the doctor would find it nearly impossible to spot him, concealed as he was by the lush foliage and overhanging branches around the path.

  The minutes ticked by.

  Couples stood, arm in arm, on the bridge. Ford ambled onto it and leaned his camera on the stone side, facing due south, to take pictures of the Manhattan skyline. Then he shielded his eyes from the sun and pointed his camera due west.

  Ford looked at his watch again, and then toward the iconic skyline. Then he took out his cell phone and stared at it for a few moments.

  Was he picking up a message?

  He checked his watch yet again. Reznick also looked at his watch. Precisely 18:22. Ford lifted his camera as the sun glanced off the lens, and pointed it due south toward the Plaza. He lowered the camera before repeating the motion two more times in quick succession.

  On the surface, it looked like a keen photographer taking shots of Manhattan.

  Look deeper.

  Reznick was beginning to perceive Ford’s movements in a different light. Was it possible that this was a signal?

  Out of the corner of his eye, Reznick saw Ford head over the bridge. He hung back for a minute, checking for any sign of accomplices, shadows, or countersurveillance heading in Ford’s direction.

  Nothing.

  Reznick followed Ford deeper into the park. The doctor skirted Sheep Meadow, then exited at West 65th Street and flagged down a cab.

  Reznick did the same. “Stay with the cab four cars ahead,” he said as they headed downtown.

  The driver shrugged and glanced in the rearview mirror. “Who you following, man?”

  “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  The taxi in front crawled through the early-evening Manhattan traffic until it pulled up at Grand Central Station, Reznick’s cab drawing up slowly, a hundred yards back.

  Reznick paid the fare as Ford headed into the cavernous rail terminal. Thousands of commuters jostled as they headed for their trains, while hundreds more caught a bite to eat in the numerous restaurants or coffee shops. The place was heaving. Seething. Security blared over the speaker system, alerting commuters not to leave their bags unattended.

  Reznick lost sight of Ford for a few moments. He scanned his surroundings, and eventually caught sight of him climbing the stone stairs to the East Balcony, which housed an Apple Store, all glass and metal. There, scores of mostly affluent young people and New York professionals scoured the iPads, MacBook Pros, and shiny iPhones laid out on beautiful tables. He could almost see the love in their eyes as they held the devices.

  He pretended to play with an iPad Mini. He could hear Ford at another table behind him, asking a female staff member about iCloud specs. Eventually, Ford left and headed back down the stairs to the concourse.

  Reznick followed him out of the station and along East 42nd Street. Ford disappeared into the Capital Grille in the Chrysler Center, but Reznick walked on. Farther down the street, he stopped and took out his cell, pretending to make a call. He nodded as if listening, gave the occasional “Yup,” and let the crowds surge by him. He waited twenty minutes before he turned around and headed into the Grille.

  It had a clubby atmosphere—all dark mahogany, with red leather seats. A maître d’ approached, but Reznick indicated he wasn’t eating and was ushered to the bar, where he ordered a club soda. He looked around, and eventually saw Ford sitting alone at a booth. He was tucking into a steak, cornbread, and fries.

  Reznick glanced up at the TV, which was showing the Weather Channel, tracking a hurricane heading up from the Caribbean, due to hit the Carolinas in seventy-two hours.

  The man two chairs up from him was shaking his head. “It’s gonna be a big one,” he said. “Real nasty mother.”

  Reznick nodded as he sipped his drink and waited. He looked at Ford, and saw him paying for his meal with a credit card. The bespectacled waitress nodded politely as she swiped it and handed over a receipt.

  After his meal, Ford went to the washroom before leaving the Grille.

  Reznick finished his drink and went outside. He was just in time to see Ford climb into a cab and head uptown. Reznick caught a cab thirty seconds later, and managed to follow Ford all the way up Fifth Avenue, where the doctor got out at the glass-fronted Apple Store. Reznick waited a couple of minutes before he headed in.

  Downstairs, he watched as Ford checked out the latest iPhone, spending a quarter of an hour discussing the device with the assistant. Reznick wondered why he hadn’t bought the phone at Grand Central, but pushed those thoughts to one side as he observed Ford buying a brand-new phone before heading back to his friend’s townhouse.

  Back in his room at The Lowell, Reznick’s cell vibrated in his pocket. He checked the caller ID and saw it was Meyerstein.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  Reznick sighed. “Not much to give you.”

  “Any developments?”

  Reznick took the next few minutes to outline the comings and goings of Ford in New York.

  “Jon, I’ve got to be honest: all the analysis is pointing to the fact that this lead doesn’t amount to anything.”

  Reznick stared at the unrelenting Upper East Side traffic outside his window.

  Ten

  Reznick was floating in a river of darkness, unable to breathe. He sensed he was not alone. The sky was inky black. The smell of rotting garbage drifted over him. He tasted dust, then blood. A humid breeze was blowing, helping to cool the fever. The sound of screaming. Yells. More screams. Gunshots. Then sirens blaring.

  He bolted upright, heart pounding, and looked around. Semidarkness. He was still sitting beside the second-floor window of The Lowell, fully clothed, his cell phone ringing. He took a few moments to get his bearings, nightmares of Mogadishu still coursing through his brain.

  He must have blacked out with exhaustion.

 
Damn.

  Reznick picked up his phone, which showed it was 3:01 a.m.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s the night concierge, sir. You said if there was any movement from the townhouse up the street?”

  Reznick rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Ah . . . yeah, sure.” Reznick had given the guy two hundred dollars to give him a call if he saw anything, so he could get some shut-eye.

  “Well, there’s a cab outside just now. Pulled up a minute ago.”

  “Good man.”

  Reznick went over to the window, and watched as Ford emerged from the townhouse and slid into the backseat of the cab. It pulled away and headed in the direction of Fifth Avenue.

  Reznick bounded downstairs, thanking the concierge, who had already hailed him a passing taxi. He jumped in and followed Ford downtown, toward the East Village.

  Ford’s taxi pulled up outside the striped canopy of the Yaffa Cafe, and the doctor got out.

  Reznick said, “Keep going. Drop me off in a couple of blocks.”

  The driver nodded, and stopped outside Paul’s Da Burger Joint.

  Reznick handed over a fifty-dollar bill. “That cover it for you?”

  The driver grinned. “Damn right it does. Have a good night. And stay safe.”

  Reznick watched the cab turn onto Second Avenue before he headed back along St. Mark’s Place. He passed a neon-lit cocktail place, a drunk sitting on the sidewalk outside as people walked on by. Then past a half-empty bar, some girls laughing raucously inside, and Jules Bistro. A cop car crawled along First Avenue, giving him the eye, windows down. Up ahead, he saw the sign for Yaffa. A few people were sitting and eating on the patio, but Ford wasn’t one of them.

  Reznick headed inside the restaurant. Out the back, there was a garden bedecked in lights hanging from trees. All around, people were drinking and smoking. He hung back by the door, and finally saw Ford at the farthest point of the garden, sitting by himself, talking into his shiny new iPhone, coffee on the table.

  Reznick headed back inside and sat down alone at an animal-print booth. He ordered a double-shot Americano. A server brought it to his table within minutes.

  His line of sight was good, with a view of everyone entering and leaving the bar. He sipped his seriously strong coffee. It felt good as the caffeine kicked in. Reviving.

  He checked his watch—it was 3:42 a.m. He scanned the room, trying to appear disinterested. Everyone was very much in their groups and cliques, chatting, buzzing, and drinking.

  Reznick nursed his coffee and listened in on conversations: the price of a room on Avenue A, relationships with unsuitable boyfriends, nightmare bosses.

  He finished his drink and went to the washroom. A couple of minutes later, he peered through the doorway into the garden. Ford was reading a magazine, his phone on the table beside him.

  Reznick got back to his table and took out his wallet. He wondered if he should stay put, order another coffee, or if he should wait across the street for Ford to make a move. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ford walk through the bar and leave. Through the window veiled by Buddha beads and statues, he saw Ford walk east along St. Mark’s.

  Reznick left a twenty-dollar bill on the table, waited a few moments, and headed out onto the street. Up ahead, Ford crossed over to the other side of the road before turning right onto Avenue A.

  Reznick hung back. Satisfied he was out of sight, he pressed on past the bars and the metal-shuttered shop fronts scrawled with garish graffiti.

  As Ford crossed over Avenue A at Sidewalk Bar and headed down East 6th Street, Reznick wondered what the hell the doctor was doing in the middle of the night, heading deep into Alphabet City. The area didn’t seem like a natural haunt for a clean-cut, high-flying DC trauma surgeon.

  He felt wired as he walked deeper and deeper into the East Village. His senses were fully switched on.

  Ford crossed over at some lights on Avenue C. More residential. A vacant lot. More graffiti scrawled on buildings and trash cans. Then past a deli and across Avenue D. The Lillian Wald housing project towered over the east side of the street. But Ford turned right.

  Reznick crossed over to the opposite sidewalk and stole a glance at Ford, who had stopped outside a nondescript brick building with a black door. He pressed a buzzer and waited. The number above the door was 45–51. After a few moments, a woman opened the door, and hugged Ford before ushering him inside.

  Reznick kept moving, crossing back over Avenue D and turning down Avenue C into a filthy bodega. There he bought an energy drink, a couple of candy bars, a gray Yankees cap, and a loose-fitting black T-shirt. He ditched his own shirt in the shop’s trash can, pulled on the T-shirt, pulled the cap down low, and walked back to Avenue D.

  Same person, different look.

  He sat down on a bench in the shadow of one of the housing projects, in view of the brick building Ford had entered.

  Reznick drank the energy drink and ate the candy bars. He took out his cell and looked up the address on his phone—the Bowery Mission Transitional Center.

  Fuck. What was going on?

  He mulled on that as a couple of tough-looking Puerto Rican kids walked past with pit bulls on pieces of rope, both giving him the cold eye.

  “Yo faggot, what the fuck you looking at?” the smaller of the two said.

  Reznick stared them down.

  The kid and his friend tried to look tough for a moment, but they crossed over the street, pulling the snarling dogs behind them.

  Reznick hung around for thirty minutes, then decided to go for a stroll near the homeless center. The black door was firmly locked, but there were a couple of lights on in the first floor.

  He walked around the block and headed back down Avenue D, passing a panhandler huddled in a liquor store doorway under a pile of blankets. Farther north, the chimneys of the huge Con Edison plant billowed smoke into the pre-dawn air. He headed past the shelter and the sound of a loud TV from an open second-floor window.

  At the end of the block, he bought a New York Daily News from a newsstand that was just setting up, and crossed over at the lights. He sat down on a bench in front of the huge Jacob Riis housing project.

  He flicked through the paper as traffic picked up. Sidewalks were busier, early-morning workers on their way to the daily grind. A cop car cruised the main drag before edging up one of the adjoining streets. He heard the sound of metal shutters being opened.

  Out of the corner of his eye, the panhandler shuffled into sight, a bottle of Night Train in his hand. Reznick took a closer look. The man was dirty, with wild blue eyes and bleeding bare feet. He sat down at the end of the bench, humming a show tune, then turned to face Reznick.

  “Where you from?”

  Reznick sighed. The last thing he needed was to engage with some broken panhandler. But he knew that to ignore him would attract the ire of the man.

  “Just visiting friends nearby.”

  He pointed at Reznick. “There’s no such thing as friends. Not here. Not now. Not ever. Not in this goddamn fucking stinking city.”

  Reznick said nothing.

  The man glugged back some wine. “I don’t want to go on anymore. You ever feel like that?”

  Reznick nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  The man closed his eyes, bottle still clasped in his filthy hand.

  For the next two hours, as the panhandler slept on the bench, Reznick alternated between walking around the block and taking up different vantage points farther down the street. He was starting to wonder how long he’d be waiting when the black door of the homeless shelter opened and Ford emerged and headed north up Avenue D.

  Reznick waited a few moments before picking up Ford’s tail. The sidewalks were starting to get busier. He passed a street vendor selling raspberry slushies from his cart, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. On the corner, a cop leaned against his cruiser, watching the world go by. The place was coming to life.

  Ford crossed over Avenue B and headed past a nail salon
and down East 11th Street. He walked past a dozen men standing in line for a soup kitchen and disappeared inside. Reznick stole a glance at the building as he walked by on the opposite side of the street. The sign said Father’s Heart Ministry Center.

  He kept on moving until he reached a deli fifty yards farther down the street. A Puerto Rican flag fluttered from a second-floor window of the building opposite.

  Reznick bought a bottle of water. He took a few refreshing gulps, needing the hydration. Then he went outside and sat on the steps in front of the store.

  He stared at the line of poor bastards gathering for breakfast. Handed a ticket and ushered in by cheery young volunteers.

  His thoughts turned to Ford.

  Two hours at a homeless shelter, and now a soup kitchen. The guy was either Gandhi or this was an elaborate cover. But if it was a cover, what was the purpose? It seemed on the surface as if the good doctor was doing his bit. Giving something back.

  The thought depressed Reznick. It would mean that he was wasting his time, tailing a good guy.

  He drank the rest of the water, walked around the block, and parked himself on a bench outside the 11 B Express pizza restaurant on the corner of Avenue B, diagonally opposite the soup kitchen. Partially obscured from view by the leaves of a huge tree, Reznick flicked through his newspaper.

  He checked his watch. He walked around the block. He bought a coffee at the deli.

  Finally, just before 10 a.m., Ford emerged onto the sidewalk, talking into his cell phone. He walked up East 11th Street and caught a taxi at Avenue A.

  It was five minutes before Reznick got a cab, and he’d finally lost Ford.

  A short while later, in the cab heading back to Lenox Hill, his cell rang. He didn’t recognize the number.

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “It’s Meyerstein.”

  Reznick kept his voice low. “Any progress?”

  “Nothing so far, Jon. Look, I’m going to be straight with you. I’m very tempted to do what everyone is telling me to do and haul you out of New York.”