The Equalizer (12 page)

“Do we have a time frame?”

“Not yet.”

“Too bad we don't have McCall. He and Berezovsky have a history.”

“I want McCall back.”

“He's going to stay off the grid.”

Control got up and walked to the dark window. There was no moonlight. He looked out at the rain sweeping across the sparkling highway and the parkway. The branches of the trees were black shapes bending in the wind.

“My daughter Lindsay will be twenty-four in June. That's four years younger than Elena. Lindsay's working for the French embassy here in D.C. As far as anyone knows, her old man works in some low-level government bureaucratic office, plays a lot of golf, and drinks forty-year-old Strathisla single malt whiskey at the Capitol Grill. But what if there's intel out there that linked her to a spymaster? How could I sleep at night knowing I had put her life in danger?”

“McCall's been estranged from his family for years. No one knows they even exist.”

Control took out his iPhone, hit a couple of buttons, and tossed it to Kostmayer. On the LED screen was a photograph of a man sitting at the 21 Club with an attractive blonde in her mid-forties. The man had his back to the camera.

“That was taken on a smartphone at the 21 Club in New York City tonight. You can't see the man's face from this angle. The woman he's sitting with is an ADA named Cassandra Blake. She's McCall's ex-wife.”

“So she's having cocktails with her new husband.”

“Her husband is a criminal attorney named Tom Blake who's deposing a wise guy informant in Philadelphia. Comes home at the weekend.”

“Okay, it's a colleague from work.”

“Or it's Robert McCall.”

“Reaching out for what he's lost all these years? I don't see McCall doing that.”

“You don't know what he'd do or wouldn't do. You think you got close to McCall? Think again. No one does. I want you to fly to New York tomorrow morning. If he's starting to reach out to people, I don't want him finding out about Elena Petrov from someone else. You gave her your word.”

“He's not involved in this life any longer.”

Control turned from the window. “You don't walk away. The past is never over. It harmonizes with the present. It becomes part of your future.”

“So he finds out. From me or from someone else. There's nothing he can do about it.”

“This is Robert McCall.”

There was silence, then Kostmayer nodded.

“Okay.”

“If we have found McCall, I want
you
to reach out to him. Bring him in from the cold. Before he goes after this assassin, or the killer sets up his sniper rifle on a roof overlooking McCall's New York apartment. Wherever the hell that is.”

“Why would the shooter go after McCall?”

“Elena Petrov had a relationship with him. Berezovsky ties up loose ends. And he knows what McCall is capable of.”

Kostmayer nodded and walked to the door.

“And Mickey…”

Kostmayer opened the door, turning back. It was late, only a couple of analysts working in their cubicles outside Control's office. It felt hushed and expectant. Like when you smell thunder in the air, but the storm hasn't hit yet.

“Tell him I'm very sorry she died in my arms,” Control said, and sat back down at his desk, staring at the labyrinth of tunnels or passageways that led nowhere.

Kostmayer gently closed the door.

 

CHAPTER 9

Carlson caught up with her just outside the Earl of Sandwich shop. Four skyscrapers hemmed in the big concourse. Office workers poured out of the entrances. Sun bathed the marble columns and tiled walkways. The torrential rain of the night before was forgotten. The temperature was probably in the low sixties, but men were sitting with their coats folded beside them and most of the women were bare armed and letting their cleavage show. The office workers sat at white wrought-iron tables, or on benches and ledges that closed off rectangles of very green grass. She was wearing a green blouse, a darker green miniskirt, nice shoes, a tweed jacket that looked expensive. She had a Louis Vuitton Monogram Raspail PM handbag over her shoulder. Way out of her price range. Carlson figured it for a knockoff she probably got in Chinatown. In the Earl of Sandwich she had ordered a three-cheese melt, house-smoked ham, and grated Parmesan on toasted whole wheat. He already had his turkey club with avocado, horseradish, and lettuce on Vienna toast. She had a Starbucks Double Wall Ceramic Traveler of coffee in one hand. She was heading for a ledge along one of the strips of grass that was unoccupied.

He hustled to catch up with her.

“Hey, there!” he called.

Karen Armstrong turned, a little startled.

What she saw was a good-looking guy in his late twenties, probably six-one, powerfully built, a guy who worked out. He had long unruly brown hair. His eyes were brown and he had an easy smile. He jogged up to her.

“I didn't want to lose you in the crowd! You dropped this in the sandwich shop.”

He held up her wallet in one hand, balancing his wrapped turkey club and cup of latte in the other. Reflexively she looked into her bag, saw it was gone.

“Oh, my God! Thank you! You're a lifesaver!”

She took the wallet from him, rifled through the credit cards in their slots—all there—saw some folded bills were still in place.

“If I was going to rob you, I wouldn't be handing your wallet back to you,” he said, still smiling.

“No, of course not! Just a reflex action.”

“That's all right, Karen,” he said. “I'd have checked it, too.”

She almost put the wallet back into her bag, then decided to slip it into the pocket of her coat instead.

“How do you know my name?”

“From your driver's license. The wallet fell open on the floor. I saw it when I picked it up.”

“Oh, if I'd had to cancel all of those credit cards and spend five hours waiting at the DMV for a new license I'd have gone out of my mind! Thanks so much.”

He held out a hand, still juggling his lunch and a plastic cup of coffee in the other.

“Jeff Carlson.”

They shook hands.

“You work in one of these buildings, right? I've seen you in the sandwich shop before. You're pretty hard to miss.”

She smiled at the compliment. “Yeah, I work at 221, right there.” She pointed at the glass monolith behind them. “Well, thanks again.”

She headed on toward the spot on the ledge. He fell into step beside her.

“What's it like, being a paralegal?”

That stopped her.

“How would you know that?”

“It's not too tough a guess. Mostly attorneys in that building. I don't figure you for a lawyer yet, too young, but you're not a secretary—I'm sorry, they're
assistants
now, I need to be more politically correct—so I thought ‘paralegal.'”

“Well, it's a good guess.”

She started again for her spot, but he kept pace with her.

“Mind if I join you? The tables look pretty full.”

“Actually, I'm not in the mood to talk to strangers. I'm sorry, I don't want to sound rude, after you just proved to me I should continue to believe in New Yorkers having honesty and integrity—”

“Oh, I'm not a New Yorker. Born and bred in Milwaukee. I've only been in the city for a couple of months. I'm working on a construction site. That high-rise condo they're building over on Fourteenth and Lex? Just signed on. Hey! There's a table right over there, see where that big fat guy's waddling away? He should lay off the pizza and get a house-smoked ham like you. Maybe not a lot healthier, but better than pepperoni.”

Now the alarm signals were going off in her head.

“You know what my sandwich is?”

“I heard you order. It's usually the same every day, although yesterday you had that glazed buffalo chicken breast with ranch salad and sweet onions. How was that?”

Completely unnerved now, Karen turned away.

“Thanks again, Jeff.”

She started to walk faster. Carlson stayed beside her, effortlessly, still smiling, like they were really getting on famously together.

“Come on, Karen, lighten up a bit. I could've just walked off with your wallet.”

Ahead, Karen spotted a heavyset girl, in her mid-twenties, auburn hair in ringlets, in a business suit, sitting down at a recently vacated table. She changed course.

“Hey, Megan!” she called.

The redhead turned, smiled, and waved her over. Karen stopped, turning to Carlson.

“That's a friend of mine from work. She's going through some tough stuff right now. Boyfriend trouble. I know she wants to talk to me about it. Thanks again, about the wallet.”

“Sure.”

Karen strode off toward the table where her colleague waited.

“Don't let Peter Jamison give you a tough time!” he called. “I hear he's a terrific criminal attorney, but a real prick.”

She didn't slow her pace. She thought,
He knows the name of my boss! He knew I was a paralegal. He knew my name before he ever picked up my wallet! If he really did just pick it up!
In that instant she knew he had lifted it out of her bag in order to hand it magnanimously back to her.

Now she was really pissed off.

He watched her sit down at the table with her friend Megan. They started to talk immediately. He wondered if the redhead—who was pretty attractive, too, breasts not as big as Karen's, but a dynamite ass, he'd noticed that before she sat down—would look in his direction. He hoped so. It would mean he was the very first thing that Karen had told her. But she didn't even glance up at him. Maybe Karen had cautioned her not to.

It didn't matter. He could find her outside here any lunchtime. He'd looked into her eyes and saw the spark of interest. More than that. Lust. They all tried to hide it; it was an instinctive reaction, they couldn't help it. He knew women looked at his eyes first, then down at his crotch to see how big the swell was. Never failed. Karen hadn't disappointed him.

He sat down on the ledge where Karen had been headed, took a sip of latte through the little hole. He unwrapped his sandwich and bit into it. At her table, Megan started to talk to Karen in earnest. Karen turned once and looked over her shoulder. Saw Jeff Carlson sitting on the ledge eating his sandwich, looking out across the concourse, taking no notice of her whatsoever.

Now she was sorry she hadn't just stood her ground and kicked him in the balls.

*   *   *

The hour between 4:00
P.M.
and 5:00
P.M.
at Bentleys was always quiet. Busboys were still clearing up two big tables. Only one booth at the big windows was occupied, by Karen Armstrong and her friends. McCall saw they were the usual suspects, including a young woman he hadn't seen before, a little hefty, auburn ringlets framing a pretty face. He carried the tray of drinks over to them. He noted that Karen was a little more animated than usual. Her voice had a kind of suppressed anger in it.

“… and when we left, I could feel his eyes burning holes in my back. Actually, they were burning holes right through my ass.”

“He looked like Ted Bundy,” the redhead said. “Real handsome, laid-back, you know, a super-nice guy, like one of those Mormon missionaries who knock on your door with a Bible in one hand and their dick in the other.”

“And then I remembered that I'd seen him before,” Karen said. “Not just in the sandwich shop. He'd been in the lobby of 221 Monday night. He'd been looking at the directory like he was trying to find someone. I thought, ‘That dude's pretty cute.' I can't believe I'm saying this, but that's what I thought. And then when I was walking home from the subway last night, I felt kind of weird. Like I was being followed. I turned around, but no one was there. I mean, I didn't see him, but I couldn't shake that feeling. I've got my doorman Harry, but he looks like he's been standing outside that apartment building since horses pulled milk carts down Broadway. I don't think he'd be much protection.”

“Here's the protection you need,” Megan said, and opened her purse. She rummaged through it and exposed a subcompact Glock 29.

Karen's eyes went wide. “Wow. Do you have a permit for that?”

“Oh, yeah. My dad's a cop. He got the paperwork through for me in seventy-two hours.”

McCall reached the booth, but they were so intent on their conversation that no one even looked up. One of Karen's other colleagues, McCall thought her name was Susan, a sweet, mousy girl with bright blue eyes behind amber glasses, opened her purse.

“I carry mace with me,” she said.

“Carrying mace means you've got to get right up close to an attacker,” another of the group said. McCall thought her name was Candace. She was tall and willowy and tossed her brunette bangs out of her eyes a lot. McCall thought it might be easier to trim them. “You've got to spray it right in his face.”

“A Glock semiautomatic is the way to go,” Megan insisted.

“Only if you know how to use it,” McCall said.

Now they all looked up.

“Oh, hey, Bobby, you didn't need to bring over the drinks yourself. I'd have gone up to the bar,” Karen said.

“Not a problem.”

He started setting out the various cocktails.

“I know how to fire it,” Megan said a little defensively. “My dad's a police officer. He's taken me to the firing range in Brooklyn lots of times.”

“Maybe I should get a gun,” Karen said.

McCall set a Sex-on-the-Beach down in front of Megan. “When you need to pull out that Glock 29, where do you aim and how many shots do you fire? Three or four hits to the thoracic cavity? Or do you aim for the cranio-ocular cavity? Are you cross dominant? Did you learn to shoot with your dominant hand?”

“Uh, sure, I'm right-handed.”