Stay

by Victor Gischler

  He circled behind the bar and saw the bartender curled on the floor, both hands clapped tightly over one eye, bright red blood oozing through the fingers. He was struggling to decide if he should climb back to his feet again or just lie there, and the result was a pathetic squirming that wasn’t accomplishing anything.

  “You blinded me.”

  “Stay down there,” David told him.

  He picked up the shotgun and broke the breach, removed the spent shells and tossed them aside. He searched behind the bar and found a cubby with a box of twelve-gauge double aught. He reloaded and shoved a handful of loose shells into his pocket. He pointed the shotgun down at the trembling man. The bartender’s one good eye went wide.

  “Dante Payne.”

  “I don’t know,” the bartender said.

  “Try again.”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know,” said the bartender. “I’ve never even met him. I’ve never seen him in here. You think he comes slumming around here? He doesn’t have to do that. Why should he?”

  “This is his place,” David said. “He owns it.”

  “Sure. He’s got lots of places. He has other people run them. We never see him.”

  “Who do you answer to?”

  “Marco Jakes.”

  “Is he upstairs?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s up there?”

  “Just Gina.”

  David slammed the butt of the shotgun into the bartender’s gut. The man yelled and gagged, coughed up a mouthful of bile that dripped over his lips and made a little puddle on the floor next to his head. He sucked ragged for breath, spit more bile onto the floor.

  “Jesus,” he croaked.

  “Who else?” David asked.

  “Nobody. I’m telling you, just Gina. That’s all.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Like a hostess,” the bartender explained. “But there’s no party tonight.”

  “You tell me who else is up there or you get both barrels,” David told him.

  “Christ, just Gina. I swear.”

  David stuffed a rag in the bartender’s mouth. Then he ripped an apron in half and bound his wrist and ankles.

  He grabbed the shotgun again and went back around to the front of the bar. He gave the others a kick as he passed them, but they were all still out cold.

  He went to the door marked PRIVATE, paused and listened, gripping the twelve gauge tightly. He didn’t hear anything, but anyone upstairs would have heard the racket when the bartender had cut loose with the shotgun earlier. David wasn’t going to catch anyone by surprise, but it couldn’t be helped. He had to go up there. He hadn’t come all this way and knocked the hell out of five men not to have a look.

  He pushed open the door. Narrow stairs leading up, dimly lit by a single bulb hanging from a wire. It cast fuzzy yellow light. David climbed. The stairs creaked. There was a similar unremarkable door at the top, and again he paused to listen.

  Nothing.

  He took hold of the knob, turned it slowly and quietly. Inhale, hold it a second, exhale.

  David swung the door open and rushed inside. He swept the shotgun in a wide arc, searching for a target, but nothing moved.

  Upstairs was a different world from downstairs. David moved cautiously across thick white carpeting. The foyer was spacious, modern, and mirrored. The place smelled good, clean with a hint of vanilla. It looked like the same decorator from the lobby of Payne’s building on the Upper West Side had taken a hand here.

  Maybe Payne liked entrances bright with clean lines, like some kind of architectural sorbet to cleanse the palate before going into the rest of the living area. A hallway led right. The left side opened into a mirrored living room. Low white leather couches. A modern-art glass chandelier hung down from the ceiling casting glittering clean light over the room.

  There were two more doors leading in different directions from the living room. David moved slowly keeping the shotgun in front of—

  Movement.

  He turned and fired at the movement, but it was a reflection in one of the wall mirrors. The shotgun blasted the mirror. Instinct kicked in, and David dove for the floor as the pop pop pop of a small automatic pistol echoed in the room. He rolled, fired blindly with the other barrel of the shotgun. The chandelier exploded in glass and sparks.

  You’re shooting at shadows, idiot. Identify the target. Don’t fire wildly. Come on, man, you know how to do this.

  He came up to one knee, one of his automatics in his hand like magic. He took a bead, but only glimpsed a wisp of thin cloth disappearing through the doorway across the room like an errant carnival banner in the wind.

  David leaped up and chased after her.

  She turned on him just as he caught up with her in the hallway. She tried to bring her gun around to have at him again, a little silver automatic, a .22 or .25 caliber, David thought.

  If she’d fired from the hip, she might have had him, but she stretched her arm out, trying to shove the pistol in his face, and David’s hand closed over hers, pushing the gun away and squeezing hard.

  A sharp crack and another pop of gunfire that gouged the wall plaster. She yelped pain and dropped the pistol.

  David grabbed her by the wrist, and she tried to twist away.

  He shoved his pistol under her chin. “Stop it. Hold still.”

  She obeyed but stabbed at him with her eyes. David took a good look at her now. Tall and lean, body graceful and athletic. The silky thing she wore was long and laced up the middle. The fabric was light and clung to her. Muscles toned. Pilates maybe. Dark hair glossy and mussed. Lips so red and full that even her sneer looked good.

  “You must be Gina.”

  She said nothing. Glared.

  “I’m going to let you go,” David said. “Don’t do anything rash or I’ll lay my pistol across your nose. You understand?”

  Her glare didn’t waver, but she nodded curtly.

  “Step back.”

  She obeyed.

  He bent, keeping his eyes on her, and retrieved the little silver pistol. He started to put it in the pocket of his Windbreaker and realized the Turk’s Airweight revolver was still in there, so he switched sides and put it in the other pocket. He’d have a nice little collection by the end of the night.

  If he made it that far.

  Gina cradled one arm against her chest.

  David said, “You’re hurt.”

  “You broke my pinkie finger.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She smiled contempt. “I’m sure you feel terrible.”

  “You were shooting at me.”

  “You shot at me first.”

  David considered that. There was a big difference between having an edge and being on edge. “Fair enough. If it matters, I wasn’t looking for you. I was looking for Dante Payne. He owns the place, right?” First you make them answer a question you know the answer to. That starts them talking.

  Gina crossed her arms and went stone-faced.

  David returned the hard stare. “You’ve got nine more fingers.”

  “You’d enjoy it, I suppose.”

  “No, but I need answers to questions,” David told her. “And I’m in a hurry.”

  “It’s Dante’s place. He lets me stay here. Part of my compensation. But he doesn’t come here. I never see him.”

  “Then what’s the place for?”

  “People he wants me to entertain,” Gina said. “Men.”

  “What kind of men?”

  “Important men,” she said. “Men Dante wants to impress or influence. They come here for … entertainment.”

  “You handle that yourself?”

  “Occasionally,” Gina said. “Mostly I coordinate. Find out what the men like, bring in the girls, supervise everything.”

  “Which men specifically?”

  “We don’t have to stand in the hall like this,” she said. “We can have a seat. I can fix you a drink or—”

  “Which men?”
he repeated firmly.

  “All kinds. Councilmen. Zoning commissioners. A congressman from upstate. Too many to remember all the names.”

  “And you organize everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “There must be a list,” David said. “A log of the men who come and go.”

  She hesitated, her mouth going tight.

  “That’s what I thought.” David took her by the elbow, not too gently but not hard enough to bruise, and guided her down the hallway. “Show me.”

  She jerked her arm away. “Fine.”

  She led him past a couple of bedrooms to a spacious office at the end of the hall. Bookshelves, chairs, a desk with a computer on top. A sideboard with a crystal decanter of random booze and a few tumblers. Bland modern art on the walls.

  Gina went to one of the paintings and pried at the corner of the frame. The painting swung out revealing a small wall safe. Her thin fingers danced over the dial, working the combination. When finished, she turned the lever. There was a muted metallic clunk, and the safe door swung open. She started to reach inside.

  David lifted his pistol. “Don’t.”

  She backed away from the safe.

  David glanced inside. No gun. He pulled out a leather-bound ledger. Underneath were other documents and a few bundles of cash. He left them.

  He motioned Gina to one of the chairs with his pistol. She sat.

  David circled behind the desk and sat on the other side. He opened the ledger and began scanning the pages. The entries were carefully written in a woman’s neat penmanship. Names. The time and date of their visits. Contact information. Margin notes such as plays rough or foot fetish. In the wrong hands, the ledger could ruin hundreds of lives.

  “Why don’t you keep these records on the computer?”

  Gina shrugged. “They told me to keep track. This is how I did it.”

  “What about the footage? Digital?”

  Gina said nothing.

  David’s eye came up from the ledger to hers.

  “Somebody else handles that,” Gina said. “The cameras are hidden in the bedrooms. They record to a server somewhere. I don’t have any sort of tech skills. I don’t mess with it.”

  On a whim, David scanned the pages, searching. He found Bert’s name, two entries about a week ago. Another entry three weeks before that.

  This was taking too long. He stood, tucked the book under his arm. “I’m taking this.”

  A nervous smile flickered across Gina’s face. She was trying now. No angry glare. “Well, that’s bad news for me then. Marco won’t like that.”

  “I’m thirsty,” David told her. “Fix me a drink.”

  The smile faded before it really got started. She turned her head to look at the sideboard then looked back at David. “Sure.”

  She stood, went to the sideboard, her back to David. She reached for the decanter, uncorked it. She was a smart girl and moved slowly, some instinct telling her what was coming.

  David raised the pistol and pointed it at the back of her head.

  “I suppose I can just tell Marco that I refused to open the safe, and that’s when you broke my finger.” She tried to force a laugh, but her breath caught and it came out like a croak. She poured the drink, the lip of the decanter rattling against the rim of the tumbler as her hand shook. “You know, I wouldn’t say anything. I wouldn’t tell them about you.”

  Training. Protocols. He knew what to do with a loose end, knew that leaving her alive would just make trouble for him down the line. If David left without taking care of her, Gina’s courage would come back, and she’d be on the phone in two minutes.

  He lowered the pistol.

  Gina waited, the tumbler in her hand, back muscles tight with anticipation.

  “There’s a lot of money in that safe,” David said.

  She turned slowly to face him, confusion on her face but a glimmer of hope, too.

  “You could get far away with that much money.”

  “Yeah.” A sigh rushed out of her, and she wiped her eyes. “Right. I could do that, sure. I won’t even pack. I’ll just go.” She looked down at the tumbler in her hands, came forward and held it out for him.

  “You drink it,” David said. “You need it.”

  He turned and left her there. He glanced at the unconscious men on the way out. More loose ends. He left them, too.

  He went outside and climbed back into the Dodge.

  The Army had been correct in its assessment. David had lost his edge.

  And he couldn’t quite feel sorry about it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Yousef stood in the luxurious kitchen and watched the coffeemaker drip. He found the rich aroma of the outrageously expensive Kopi Luwak coffee tantalizing and yet also slightly disappointing. At three hundred and fifty dollars a pound, Yousef had been expecting … what? An orgasm?

  It occurred to him that perhaps Dante Payne had so much money that he had to constantly think of new and inventive ways to spend it.

  Yousef still thought it wasteful, and considered the coffee again with vague disapproval.

  Payne stood behind him, cursing and glaring into a gleaming steel refrigerator the size of a bank vault.

  “I wish I’d known we were coming here,” Payne lamented. “I would have alerted the staff. I can’t remember the last time I prepared my own meal.”

  “A bad idea,” Yousef said. “Servants talk. The fewer who know you’re here, the better.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Payne had ordered men in to clean up the blood and bodies in his west side building and had retreated to a penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side. His men were in the lobby. More men in the stairwells. Still more men in the hallway by the elevator. If Sparrow tried to get at Payne here, it would get very noisy very quickly.

  But first Sparrow would have to know Payne was here, a fact they weren’t advertising.

  Yousef watched the coffee drip.

  Payne took a jar of Greek olives from the refrigerator and frowned at it. “Shouldn’t you be out killing people? It’s why I’m paying you.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For him to show himself.”

  “He killed two men the last time he showed himself,” Payne said.

  “I could roam the streets of Manhattan shouting his name if you prefer.”

  Payne slammed the refrigerator door closed. “This is ridiculous. All of my money, my power and influence. And I can’t step foot out of this penthouse because of one man. He should be afraid of me. Not the other way around. I feel like a prisoner in a cell.”

  “A very nice cell. You should relax,” Yousef said. “I will take care of everything. Trust me. Have patience.”

  “Have patience, he says. Relax.”

  The coffeemaker hissed and puffed. “The coffee is finished. Do you want a cup?” Yousef asked.

  “No, I do not want a fucking cup of—”

  “Sorry to interrupt, boss.” One of Payne’s flunkies had walked into the kitchen. “But Marco called. He heard from Gina. There’s been trouble at Jerry’s.”

  “Who the fuck is Gina?”

  “That cooze that runs the love nest over the bar,” the flunky reported. “Says some guy came in and kicked the shit out of the boys downstairs and forced her to open the safe. Got away with the book.”

  “Son of a bitch! What the fuck was he doing at Jerry’s?”

  The flunky shrugged.

  “It’s your building,” Yousef said. “He was looking for you.”

  “It’s not common knowledge I own that building.”

  “No,” Yousef said. “But it is uncommon knowledge, and it is an uncommon man who hunts you. He was with the government. Maybe still is. Someone is helping him. He knows your haunts.”

  “Then he knows about this penthouse.”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “He could come here next.”

  “A distinct possibility.”

&nb
sp; Payne grimaced. “Well, then, that’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Yousef corrected. “That’s good.” He took a mug from the cupboard above the coffeemaker and filled it. “Now we can take control of the situation.”

  “I’d like to hear exactly how you’re going to do that,” Payne said.

  “Only too happy to explain,” Yousef said. “First, I’m going to need one of your credit cards.”

  * * *

  After stopping to use the restroom and to buy an energy drink, David was back behind the wheel of the Dodge, on his way to the next place on Charlie’s list, a penthouse on the Upper East Side.

  “Major, you there?” Charlie buzzed in his ear.

  “You don’t have to call me Major, Charlie.”

  “I like it,” Charlie said. “Like old times.”

  Yeah. Old times.

  “I hope you’re calling with good news,” David said. “Did you break through the security on the flash drive?”

  “Not yet. But I got a hit on the Net. A place not on the list I gave you.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Payne owns a luxury yacht,” Charlie said. “A hundred sixty feet, all the amenities. You got a pen? I’ll tell you the marina and the best way to get there.”

  “Just tell me. I’ll remember.”

  Charlie told him.

  “And we think this is a good bet?”

  “Dante Payne just used his American Express card at the marina to buy an amount of diesel fuel that more or less matches the tank capacity of his yacht,” Charlie explained. “Twenty-two minutes before that, he used the same card to purchase three hundred and fifty-eight bucks worth of groceries at a market two blocks from the marina entrance.”

  “Sounds like somebody is going on holiday.”

  “With that much food and fuel he can make circles around Ellis Island for a week and we’d never find him,” Charlie said.

  “But you did find him.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “But you better get there before they shove off.”

  “On it. Back at you later.”

  David turned the Dodge around and headed downtown.

  Something buzzed in his pocket, and he checked his smartphone. A text from Amy.

  You okay?

  David felt a strong urge to apologize. She shouldn’t be stuck there all alone. He shouldn’t have had to send his kids away. Why hadn’t he fixed everything yet? He wanted to say that he loved her and that he’d do better. He texted: