“Oh!” He was awestruck. Goddamn it, this radio program was turning me into some sort of urban legend. “Sir, a group of Maranzano’s thugs just raided a clothing store, and they have hostages.”
“That doesn’t seem that big of a deal. Why the blockade?”
“Look up and see who owns the shop.”
Great, just what I wanted to hear.
The street on either side of the shop was blocked off. A total of nine cruisers sealed the area off from the rest of the city. The shop was busted, with broken glass everywhere and a body or two shot up with holes lying just outside the front door. Between all the cop cars, soldiers stood in the middle of the street, wielding advanced Frag Rifles and wearing heavy body armour printed with a logo on the shoulder and back: the letter G surrounded by a ring of eighteen dots and one single dot above the ring. The Gould Corporation.
“They must have robbed a shop owned by Gould’s boys,” I relayed to Allen. “This is going to turn into a bloodbath real quick. If we even look like we’re thinking about jumping over these cars, we’re getting shot.”
“Why not send the girl over?” Allen suggested. “I doubt she’d have a problem dealing with hostages the way she does mobsters.”
I turned to it. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You know very well.”
“You’re as helpful as a hole in the head,” I said, more to myself.
I looked up. There was no way into the alley behind this shop unless we wanted to cross down to the nearest perpendicular road. That would leave a large gap of time during which anything could happen. The rooftops? The nearest building had a fire escape at the front and was only two stories tall; the bottom was a shop, the top a living space, just like Jaeger’s place in SoHo.
We walked back to the car. Simone was waiting impatiently, rifle in hand, wearing a padded black suit. She had goggles hanging from her neck, a bandana wrapped under her chin and around her scalp, and her hair was stuffed down into the neck of her collar.
“Allen, get up to the rooftops, cross to the building in question, and find a way inside. Keep a low profile.” I looked at Simone. “You, too. Another way.”
“You want me to run around up there at this time of night?” Simone asked dryly.
“I imagine you’ve done worse,” I said. She shrugged. “I’m taking the long way. We need to hit them from two different angles. But whatever you do, keep Maranzano’s boys in your sights, and don’t get spotted.”
“And Gould’s?” asked Simone.
“That goes without saying, but I think they’re less interested in us and more interested in getting this place cleared out.”
I knew Allen didn’t want to follow my orders. Even Simone looked uncomfortable.
“Can you keep me from getting caught when the dust settles?” she asked.
“I can try.”
“Can you also keep your partner from putting me in the dirt?”
I peered at Allen, who was staring daggers at me. “I can try,” I repeated.
“All right.”
I made my way east, looking for the nearest alleyway, leaving Allen and Simone to tighten the noose their own ways. I hoped they wouldn’t make any corpses before I got into position.
My poor health and my stitches let themselves be known during my journey. In the five minutes I spent circling the block, my run turned into a limp jog. Jesus, when I get to prison, I’m going to work on my cardio. I used to run for miles through the trenches and after perps. Now I was a sack of potatoes.
The back of the shop was ruined: the door was blasted off its hinges and the open entranceway was now blocked by a rickety shelving unit. That must have been how Maranzano’s boys had gotten inside, and they’d covered their exits well. No doubt moving that shelf would create some serious noise and make me easy pickings.
I approached the entrance and looked through the shelves into the storeroom. It was a small area for storing maintenance tools and whatnot, only a few square feet in size. The room terminated in an archway leading into the main backroom, which connected to the storefront via a now busted wooden door about thirty feet ahead. There was an iron safe in one of the corners of this smaller area. It had been blown open and the contents cleaned out.
Near the door leading to the storefront sat six hostages, bound at the wrists and pushed together in one corner. The Bruno looking after them was holding a Thompson. The other mobsters were at the front of the shop, making sure Gould’s boys didn’t get too trigger happy and try to flush them out.
The distance between me and the guard was more than thirty feet. Getting past this shelf and killing him quietly would give me more leeway than shooting him, but I wasn’t sure that was possible. Where the hell were Allen and Simone? They should be inside by now.
Fuck it. Time to get messy again. I pulled the hammer back, the click inaudible to the hitman due to the noise in the storefront. The gunshot was difficult to ignore, though. The hostages screamed, and several Frag Rifle flechettes flew through the wall, confusing Brunos and hostages alike in the midst of the standoff.
I threw down the shelf to get inside and ran through the small room into the main storage area. I dropped my guard for only a moment, but I should have known there would be more than one person looking after the hostages. I caught a glimpse of the baseball bat just before it slammed into my forehead. I sailed backward, landing on my back. My Diamondback fell from my grasp. When my crossed eyes righted themselves, they were looking at the business end of a Colt.
I was getting sloppy. I wasn’t thinking. No wonder the Eye said I was a liability. I’d be dead within the week.
Turned out the upstairs area was connected to the store by a set of stairs conveniently located at the back of this storeroom; Allen busted through, Browning handgun pointed at the guy with his gun to my head.
“NYPD, you’re under —”
It was cut off by another hitman from the storefront running in and clobbering it in the head with brass knuckles. Allen slammed into the wall, stripped of its weaponry. The hitman kept beating it in the head, leaving dents as it tried to defend itself. My blood boiled. No one fucks with my partner.
I grabbed the gun that was still in my face, pushing it up as the trigger was pulled. A hot casing hit my fingers, and the slide pushed forward to load a second round, jamming due to the chamber being busier than it should have been. Yanking the gun from the Bruno’s hand, I received a punch in the head as a result. An attempt to get up led to a second punch, leaving me spinning where I lay.
Well, shit, didn’t expect my life to end quite like this. I didn’t even get a montage.
The man above me suddenly screamed. When my vision steadied itself again, I saw him against the nearest wall, clutching his throat where a chef’s knife was protruding. The guy pummelling Allen was dispatched similarly as a black-clad figure inserted a fluting knife into his spine, paralyzing and killing him. Simone had left her rifle upstairs in favour of a set of kitchen knives she must have grabbed from a block. She was down two blades, but she had a few more to play with in her left hand.
Three men ran into the storeroom from the far door, surveyed the carnage, and rushed us. Automatic fire sprayed from one mobster holding a Thompson. His friends stayed behind him as bullets peppered the ground toward Simone.
I remembered from chasing her back on 81st Street that she was fast. Now, I couldn’t even follow the blur as she rolled and came up inches from the gunman. A boning knife entered his eye socket and after a few seconds of screaming, he went silent and limp. The other two mobsters were dispatched next, one taking a cleaver to the calf and a bread knife to the throat, blood spraying across the wall, and the other forced to the ground when the same bread knife was plunged into his neck.
“Holy shit,” was all I managed to say.
I turned sharply as an unaccounted-for mobster came around the corner from the storefront and put a gun to the back of Simone’s head.
“Drop the knife,
bitch!” he screamed.
“Drop the gun and you might live,” she responded.
“Are you dumb? Drop the knife, you got —”
I grabbed the pistol I’d jammed, pulling back the slide to clear out the chamber and firing at him. The bullets didn’t hit him, but the supressing fire pulled his focus away from Simone. She spun around, grabbed his pistol with her right hand, and forced both it and its wielder to the ground. He was stuck looking into her eyes. Her last weapon was a paring knife.
“Men are all the same. In one ear” — she finished the job by jabbing the blade into the side of his head — “and out the other.”
His screams subsided moments later as he bled out on top of his dead friends.
Allen and I were in shock over what we’d just witnessed. My skin was crawling from the last kill. Simone was ruthless, she was terrifying. She was worse than I was. Allen looked sick. It had seen me dispatch people with guns before, but this was something else.
I pushed myself up and helped Allen. Its head was severely damaged; some of the plates on the left side of its face were unable to move, making it look like it had experienced a stroke. We recovered our weapons before approaching Simone — slowly.
The hostages were still screaming. Allen freed them and told them to get out through the back door. All six were happy to follow orders and run. Then the three of us were alone. Simone hadn’t moved after the final kill. She was still kneeling there, panting, unwilling to look at us.
“You good?” I asked.
“I hate this feeling, this adrenalin. It makes me feel like conflict is the only place I can exist without losing my mind.” She stood up finally, recomposed. “You know that feeling, too?”
I did, Lord knows I did, every time I pulled my gun out. That was how I’d been able to stay sane working for the Eye for so long. But now wasn’t the time to be dissecting ourselves.
“Answer me, Roche.”
“Can we just …” I gestured to the back door. “Get your shit and run. Gould’s boys will be here any second.”
She grunted and pushed past me, knocking me off balance by hitting my shoulder with hers. Allen and I looked at one another. I wasn’t so sure letting her go had been a good idea.
Maybe she — like me — should have been left chained to that fridge.
I walked out of the storefront with my hands up. Gould’s boys nearly shot me, but, thankfully, the cops recognized me. They defused the situation as the task force from the Plate swept the store. The police swept in next, clearing the area, finding the hostages in the alley, and questioning them. They told investigators that a woman in black had butchered the men with knives. When they asked me, I told the investigators that I had used the knives, and the hostages might have been confused in the moment. I was so glad when they bought it.
Allen and I went back to the car once they let us go. Simone was waiting at the mouth of an alleyway nearby. Allen was careful to keep its distance, and even I was nervous being within five feet of her.
“You never answered my question,” she began.
“Simone …”
“Do you know that feeling?”
“I used to. I used to know it all the goddamn time. I felt like I had focus when I was fighting. I felt composed or at peace or at least able to drown out that sinking feeling I always have,” I said. “But all I feel now is an apathetic numbness to it all. To combat and the Mob and the FBI, to everything. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
She pulled back slightly; she could tell she’d struck a nerve.
“I’m tired, Simone. I’m trying to get out of this game of Mob politics because I’m not what I used to be. I’ve been going through the motions so I don’t get a bullet in the head, so my friends don’t get their fingers chopped off or their homes blown apart. I’m surviving. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve been doing ever since I sold my soul to the Eye. I’m trying to keep people alive … or at least, I was.”
She let a silence hang in the air. Not long, but long enough for me to check my breathing and calm myself.
“I don’t trust you,” she said.
“I know. I don’t trust me, either.” I laughed, trying to alleviate the tension. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Half of me agrees with you, the other half agrees with Allen. But that’s why you need to do something about this. No matter how badly I want to change things, I can’t do anything with the Eye watching over me.”
“So I’m on my own?”
“I didn’t say that. We just have to be smart about this. We can’t leave a power vacuum like the one I created to get the Eye where she is now. If we do, someone worse might pop up. Another Five Families? Who knows what the result would be?”
“Let’s get there first. This time, one in the hand is not better than two in the bush.”
We’d have to see. We’d have to rip up the Iron Hands first, and that would be a crusade all its own.
“And if I’m set to hunt you down while you go about dismantling two cartels? What then?” I asked.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” she said with a smile.
She departed down the alleyway soon after, letting Allen and me return to the Talbot. Its eyes never left the mouth of the alley. The moment we got inside, I drove as fast as I could from the scene, wanting to distance us from everything that had occurred.
“You’ve let her go free to destroy this city and condemned yourself to a lifetime in prison,” Allen said after a lengthy silence.
“Like I said, she can do more than we can.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that we have no idea what kind of destruction this will cause.”
“Allen …”
“And where will I go?” It turned to me, its voice wavering. “What’ll I do when you’re locked up? You’re the only thing keeping me away from a shredder, as Greaves so eloquently put it.”
“Al, there are other —”
“There is no one else, Elias!” It looked like it might cry, if it could. “This goes beyond her actions destabilizing the peace — this is about you. Without you, I’m a Blue-eye working for a precinct already under the microscope. I won’t last long.”
I couldn’t look it in the eye. “I’m sorry. That’s how things are, Al. That’s how they have to be. I’ll deal with it.”
It turned its body to look out the window, a gesture to show me that it was pissed.
“Let’s get that face of yours fixed,” I said.
“I’m fine.”
“Then at least be there when Greaves puts me in cuffs. Will you do that?”
Allen sighed, taking a few agonizing seconds to decide, then it nodded. “Yeah.”
CHAPTER 26
ALLEN REFUSED TO GET ITS FACE FIXED, no matter what I said or did. It asked to be dropped off at home until the deadline. I obliged, but felt gross about it. There was a rift between us, and I wasn’t sure if I could ever fix it.
Even so, the time alone gave me space to reflect, to really consider my options. I’m fucked if I run, fucked if I go to the slammer, fucked if I rejoin the Iron Hands. But now this city was truly out of my hands, if it had ever really been in them before. Well, if I was going out, I should make amends while I could.
I drove to Central Park and once more walked to the Bow Bridge. It was about five in the morning. The sun hadn’t yet reached the horizon, and the darkness made Central Park foreboding and dangerous. I could see the homeless folk, desperate and violent, and they could see me. They knew not to get close.
Once more, silence descended. She always was quick.
“Elias.”
“Darling.”
“You can turn around.”
I did so, seeing only her silhouette in the darkness. The lights around the bridge had been snuffed out, allowing her to be here without a veil. She held a cigar, as was her habit.
“Changed your mind?” she asked.
“Something like that. I’ve had a day or so to reflect. A lot has happened. I’ve
been … lying to myself.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll never be free from what I was or what I’ve done. I can’t hide what I am. All these names — Nightcaller, Iron Hand — they’re just different words to describe the same shit, but I’m none of them anymore. I’m in this life for good, so I might as well be here for the right reason. I’m not the same enforcer you hired four years ago.”
“But will you continue to be my Iron Hand?” she asked, sounding confused.
“No,” I said. “I’m not your Iron Hand. I don’t know what I am or what I want to be. Give me some time to take stock of things, to really decide what it is that I am to you, to everyone in this city. I’m done fighting for the wrong reasons.”
The Eye threw her cigar on the ground and stamped on it. “Interesting. Do you think this sudden change of heart will save you from the FBI?”
“No, but you will.”
“How’s that?”
“I need that security footage from when I broke into the Metropolitan. I have a feeling I wasn’t the only one caught on camera.”
“We retrieved that soon after I saved your sorry ass. And you are correct, the girl was seen alongside you.”
Blind spots, my ass. “I thought as much. Broadcast that to my place at the right time. You’ll know when. I’m sure you still have a few bugs in there.” I couldn’t see her smiling, but I knew she was.
“You have a plan? Been a while since I’ve seen you with a plan.”
I scowled. “If my plan doesn’t work … don’t touch Allen. Ever. That is my only other demand.”
“You mean request.”
“No. Demand.”
She snickered. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Elias, but I do believe you are a different man.”
“You’re goddamn right.”
“I still can’t decide — are you a liability or an asset?”
“I’ll get back to you on that. Don’t take it as a formal resignation yet, but give me a week.”
She hesitated for a moment. “You’ll be back.”
I turned and walked away, not looking back behind me.
Midnight Page 27
