Marked Man (13 page)

When the song ended Jordan felt the rush dissipating. An egotistical disk jockey’s voice piped in through the speakers and to Jordan’s ears it sounded like Freddy Krueger’s fingernails scratching right through a chalkboard after the music. Jordan turned the dial, in search of an equally inspiring song to keep this glorious feeling going, whatever it was. Just when he found an upbeat tune on the vintage rock station Jordan heard a wailing siren growing from behind him.

Panic splashed over Jordan’s body. It felt eerily similar to the plunge he’d taken into the East River in detective
Bollier’s Taurus. The feeling was glacially cold but burning at the same time. Jordan’s eyes darted to the speedometer and then widened in horror as he realized he was driving at least 20 miles an hour over the speed limit.

Another far more disturbing realization came to Jordan then. He was high. The white powder under
Polzin’s bed, whatever it was had gotten into his nose and by extension his bloodstream. This explained his ridiculous decision to jump off the balcony, and the euphoria that accompanied the crescendos of the White Stripes song. Worst of all this also explained the sudden and debilitating paranoia. Jordan was driving an unregistered motor vehicle at a dangerous speed with a kilo of drugs under his seat. Jordan eased his foot off the accelerator gradually and studied his face in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, and flecks of white powder were clinging to his beard. Quickly, Jordan brushed out as much of it as he could. Some of it got on his pants and he had to get rid of that as well.

By the time the CR-V came to a complete stop on the side of the road Jordan had swept all the powder off, but he couldn’t shake the horror. While he waited for the police officer to get out of the car Jordan pulled the .45 out of his waistband and put it under his leg.
He turned the radio off.

Mortifying thoughts passed through Jordan’s mind, each growing scarier in succession than the one that came before. What if the cop gave him a speeding ticket? What if he asked him to get out of the car? What if he gave him a
Breathalyzer test and it gave him away? What if he found the kilo under the seat? What if he found the recently fired gun hidden under his leg? What if he was one of the dirty cops that Bollier had talked about that were on Shirokov’s payroll? If the Russians had sent this uniform after him he was essentially a hit man with a perfectly legal license to use deadly force.

Jordan squeezed the handle of the Jericho and whispered a quick prayer that he would not have to use it. He did not want to kill a cop under any circumstances. However, if he was arrested it would immediately blow the cover off of his
vigilante operation, and worse still, the Russians would get word and his family and friends would be put at risk again. Languishing in a jail cell for a double homicide and possession with intent to distribute he would be powerless to save them. How many dozens of lives would be lost? All on account of this one cop who had to pull him over for speeding. It was a possibility that had never occurred to him, but Jordan was not going to kill a police officer.

Not unless he had too.

The cop approached from the side and knocked on the window, a flashlight in hand. Jordan dutifully rolled down the window and smiled up at him.

“Good evening officer. How can I help you?”

“License n’ registration.”

“Sure thing.”

Jordan’s right hand relaxed it’s vice grip on the firearm and reached out to the glove compartment. Special Agent Clemons had taken care of all of this. The insurance was all paid for, the driver’s license completely legitimate. There should be no issues. Jordan handed his identification and insurance information and the cop shined his light over the documents.

“Mister Wallac
e. Do you know why I stopped ya?”

“Yes sir, I was speeding.”

“That’s correct. Do ya know how fast ya were going?”

“No sir I couldn’t say exactly.”

“Around 75 miles per hour by my clock. Have ya been drinkin tonight Mr. Wallace?”

“No sir, well. I had a glass of wine with dinner but that’s all.”

The NYPD officer smelled like aftershave. His accent sounded like he was from Queens and he looked tired like he was near the end of what had been a long shift. Jordan toes were clenched so tightly inside his boots that they would be blistered in the morning. With every ounce of his willpower, Jordan fought the urge to whip out the Jericho and empty it into the officer’s chest and then drive away at the speed of sound.

“Any reason in particular why ya in such a hurry?”

“Just trying to get home is all, it’s been a long day.”

Jordan did his best to sound nonchalant, blue collar, like someone he imagined that the officer could relate too.
Whatever you do just
please don’t ask me to get out of the car. Please don’t ask me to get out of the car.
Please don’t ask me to get out of the car.
For a while this phrase repeated itself in his head, as urgent as any plea he made to God in a foxhole while in the green berets. If he had to shoot this cop to escape something as stupid as a speeding ticket so that he could go out into the world and shoot more people his conscience would never let him hear the end of it.

The radio on the officer’s hip bleeped and a dispatcher’s voice came through.

“All units we have reports of multiple shots fired at the Kronenberg Motel. All available units please respond.”

“Copy that.” The cop answered.

“Well Mr. Wallace, it looks like tonight is your lucky night. Ordinarily I would paper the shit outta ya for going that fast butcha gonna get off with a warning. Now I want ya to drive straight home and take it easy on that heavy foot, alright?”

Eagerly Jordan nodded and let out a breath he had been holding for half a minute.

“Yes sir thank you.”

The officer gave him back his fake driver’s license and insurance and walked away. After the squad car made a U-turn and drove back in the direction of the motel Jordan sat in the car with his eyes closed for a long time. Nearly every part of him was shaking. He sniffed and wiped away at a tear that had been threatening to form on his eyelid. Jordan turned the radio back on but the music went in one ear and out the other, he couldn’t hear and he couldn’t think. All he was capable of doing was looking up helplessly at the few stars that were visible through the drifting steam and light pollution and think thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Chapter Nine

Detective Morris Castillo raised the yellow crime scene tape and stepped into the motel room. One of the forensics specialists was putting out little placards next to each round he discovered in the carpet. He was up to fourteen already.

Under the springs the dead pimp Mikhail Polzin had been shot through the sternum several times by a very powerful weapon at close range. The girl in the corner had only taken one, but in the worst possible place. Castillo remembered from the academy that the stomach was the absolute most painful area to take a bullet. Luckily for the girl it also struck an artery so she bled to death before going through too much suffering.

By the looks of it some 24 kilos of heroin had been hidden under the mattress. A regular uniformed officer with a thick Queens accent was picking at one of the packages.

“Say Detective. Ya wanna take a look at this?”

Castillo moved through the room, feeling like he was floating. The Russians were going to go completely ballistic if they lost this much product. Standing over the cop, Castillo answered him.

“Yeah? What is it?”

The cop pointed to a blank space between two of the bricks in the third row. Going slow so as to make absolutely certain, Castillo counted them up.

“Twenty three kilos.”

“Ya think maybe one of them went missing?”

“Well that’s fucking slick, officer. It won’t be long before you make detective.”

Officer Queens muttered a comeback under his breath that Castillo couldn’t make out. He let it go.

Feeling light headed, Castillo wandered back outside to share a smoke with his partner Detective Casings. He lit a cigarette and held in the smoke as long as his lungs would tolerate. The smooth wash of the nicotine rush allowed Castillo to think clearly again. This was very bad. Someone had talked. This was only the preliminary delivery. Whoever was responsible for hitting Polzin knew too much already, if they also knew about what was coming in at the docks…

“Let me ask you something Casings.”

His partner blew a puff of smoke out into the breeze and waited for the question.

“What kind of person hits a dealer and then leaves
almost all the product behind? Why take just one kilo?”

Not surprisingly Casings admitted that he did not know.

Once the bodies had been loaded onto gurneys and taken away, the detectives cleared the crime scene, banishing forensics and everyone else so that they could begin the investigation in proper. Casings retrieved a set of three gym bags, which they filled up with the packages of heroin and then stuffed into the trunk of Castillo’s car.

…

On Sunday morning Bollier visited Jordan’s lair on the fourteenth flour of a condo on 116
th
overlooking Morningside Park. She and Agent Clemons both had keys as part of the arrangement. She found Jordan shirtless, doing bench presses with a pair of gloves on in a chilly room with all the windows cracked open.

“How do you not have a shirt on? It’s freezing.”

Jordan finished his reps and hooked the bar back into place.

“It’s invigorating.”

“I brought some of that protein shake stuff you asked for.”

“Great thanks, I have something I need to show you.”

Bollier let Jordan lead her into his bedroom. He climbed up a step ladder and then pushed aside a panel on the ceiling then reached in and took out a packet and tossed it to her.

“What’s this?”

“You tell me.”

Bollier slit the package open with a nail file and examined the chalky white powder.
Although narcotics were not her forte she knew enough to recognize heroin when she saw it. She stared at Jordan.

“Where did you get this?”

Jordan recounted the story about his gun battle at the motel with Polzin. He left out the part about later on when he almost shot a perfectly innocent police officer. Several times as he was telling the tale Bollier looked like she wanted to drink his blood but she let Jordan talk. When he was through she squeezed at the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes shut tight.

“How many of these did you say there were?”

“Had to be 20, 25 at least. I didn’t exactly have time to count them individually. Why? Is that a lot?”

“Jesus Christ. Is that a lot? You stumbled on several
million with-an-m dollars-worth of dope, Mr. Ross. That’s a number and then six little zeroes behind it. Just one of these, this is a kilo, by the way… just one of these kilos is worth a hundred thousand dollars easily, and that’s if it’s total crap. If the purity is high it could be fifty percent more, maybe higher.”

The packet on his kitchen counter was lying open inconspicuously. Jordan poked at the wrapping and tried to imagine what one hundred thousand dollars in cash would look like, and if it would even fit into a package that size.

“So this is bad.”

“Well, yes it’s bad. But it’s good that you found it. I don’t know. Jesus Christ I don’t know, did you have to shoot the guy? You couldn’t have… water-boarded him or something and
made him tell you where he got it?”

“
I told you already. He pulled a gun the second I came into the room. It was purely a me-or-him kind of a situation. Plus I didn’t even find the stuff until after he was dead.”

Bollier was frustrated but she knew better than to criticize Jordan’s methods in the heat of the moment.

“Alright. Alright I get it.”

“So what do we do about this?”

“I’m going to have it analyzed. Find out how pure it is, maybe where it came from. With luck maybe we can pull a print too. You didn’t touch it with your bare hands did you?”

“Give me a little credit detective.”

“Ok. Sorry. It’s just that this case is just spiraling out of control. It keeps getting bigger and bigger. Think about it. When the NYPD makes a huge drug bust you always see the brass go out in front of the evening news cameras with the drugs on the table and they make a big deal of it. But the police find a pimp and a prostitute dead in a seedy motel room in a two million dollar pile of opiates and there’s not even a blurb on the radio? It makes no sense. None of this makes any sense if things are operating the way they should be.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means one of two things, neither of them is good. Either someone higher up in the department is trying to keep a lid on this, or someone is suppressing evidence. Maybe worse, maybe it’s both. It means I can’t even bring this to a department lab because I have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. I’m going to have to take it to Clemons.”

Jordan Ross felt a shiver crawling up the base of his spine. It settled into his shoulders and goose bumps popped up all over his ripped physique.

“Are you frightened by the implications, detective?”

Steadily, detective Bollier met Jordan’s gaze. Her irises were green with solar flares of gold.

“Yes I am.”

“Me too.”

…

Detective
Morris Castillo was spending his Sunday afternoon the same way he always did, slouching in a bar stool in the dive bar on Barry Street. Two high definition screens were set up behind the bar. On the one side the Jets were on and the Knicks were on the other. Castillo had placed bets with his bookie on both, and because the universe operated by a relentless, meticulous kind of cruelty both were losing.

Draining down the last dregs of a pint of hoppy pale ale, Castillo raised his hand and called for another. The bartender was screwing a rag around the bottom of an
empty glass sopping up the water stains and making new ones. Because she did not immediately jump to respond to his request, Castillo pounded his glass on the bar and lifted the glass up.

“
Another!’

“Yeah
yeah.”

As the tap opened and poured a thick amber liquid for him a skinny man in a fedora and a gray sports jacket slid onto the bar stool immediately to his right. Out of the corner of his eye Castillo watched him reach into his jacket, pull out a packet of cigarettes and light one. Smoking had been banned in New York bars back in 2003, but the dive bar on Barry Street never bothered enforcing the law and as a result had grown a loyal cadre of customers. It was one of the reasons that Castillo liked the place.

The bartender put the pale ale in front of Castillo and took some of the money that he’d laid out a while back. Castillo never counted it, he just laid all the cash he had out when he arrived and drank until it was gone or he got cut off.

Next to him the man ordered a vodka martini and blew smoke at the Knicks game.

“Why no zone?” He asked, craning his neck up at the television.

Castillo swiveled his stool around to face the thin man with the fedora, which was now resting on the bar next to the man’s packet of cigarettes.

“What’d you say?”

“Zone. Why do not they play zone defense? Always they are beat one on one, and still no zone.”

As if on queue, the screen showed a slow motion replay of the Knicks’ point guard getting beat off of the dribble by his man and committing a silly foul that failed to stop his man from scoring. The Madison Square Garden crowd rained boos and in some cases popcorn down onto the court. It was late in the game and the outcome was already decided.

Although Castillo enjoyed watching the game he understood none of the subtleties, the fine details. He was attracted primarily by the wide variety of betting lines that basketball offered. Which team would score more in the first quarter? Which player? How many turnovers in the game? How many fouls? Which player would be ejected first? The possibilities were limitless.

“Beats me.”

Castillo took a gulp of the fresh pint of ale and let out a deep breath of air. Using his girth, he angled the stool back so that he could take a look at the Jets game, just in time to watch them fumble on second and goal.
The skinny man had produced a small spiral notebook from his pocket. He licked his thumb and flipped the pages back until he reached the appropriate one.

“So detective, the Jets makes for 15, plus ten more for the Knicks. Will you be paying in cash or credit today?
Heh. Heh heh.”

“There’s still time left!” Castillo shouted and rubbed his features into a mask of self-pity.

“Yes. That I can see. We can wait of course. Miracles have been known to happen.”

Losing $25,000 in a single day would have put Castillo in a suicidal state of mind several years back, but his income and his habit had both bloated to the point that it was no more than a moderate disappointment. There was still time left but both games were in the fourth quarter. Realistically there was no hope of recouping any of that sum but the Russian bookies never paid out until the final buzzer sounded and so neither would he.

Castillo drank his beer and watched the final minutes of the Jets debacle. When the coaches and the players began ambling off the field towards the locker room Castillo sighed and slid an envelope across the bar towards the skinny man. He counted the money in front of him.

“Good. This appears to be in order. And now this other business.”

Face flushed, Castillo pushed himself up from the stool and slung his coat on. He grabbed a handful of peanuts from a basket on the bar then placed a coaster over the brim of his pint.

“It’s out in my car.”

The fedora was back in its proper place atop the skinny man’s scalp. He did not look amused.

“You kept… in your car?”

“Relax. Nobody’s breaking into a cop car.”

Castillo chewed the peanuts while he talked. He led the Russian bookie out into the sunlight, which was blinding bright and made Castillo squint until his face looked like a pug’s. Just up the block his silver BMW with the NYPD plates was parked. Castillo walked up and looked around the street, then turned the key in the trunk and yanked it open.

Three gym bags were crowded in around the spare tire and a couple of bottles of blue antifreeze. The skinny man nodded and addressed him.

“Now this man, the mystery man who shot Mikhail, before you should arrest him Vladimir would very much like to speak with him in private.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Castillo carefu
lly removed one of the gym bags and handed it over to the skinny man. Total the three of them had to weigh around fifty pounds.

“They’re heavy. You need any help?”

Tipping his fedora, the skinny man replied that he did not. Castillo shrugged and gave him the other two. Despite his slight frame the man walked off up the sidewalk with no problem, showing no strain. At the end of the block a black SUV pulled over to the curb. The man got in and it sped away. Castillo returned to his barstool, lifted the coaster from his drink and asked the bartender for the remote so that he could put on the Nets game.

…

Katz’s Delicatessen on East Houston boasted the best corned-beef sandwiches in the city, or so Special Agent Clemons had heard. It was also spacious, brightly lit, and constantly thrumming with customers. This made it the ideal space for the three conspirators to meet in public. With all of the people and noise around it would be next to impossible for anyone to overhear their conversation. Tails could be lost in the crowd as the three of them went their separate ways.