“Hey there, Anton, you need a ride?” It was Liam, one of the Madigan brothers, the pretty one with the smart mouth. “You’ll get in trouble walking the streets in your dressing gown.”
Now the other door was opening, and it was Josh, the Israeli, a tough-looking Sephardic who worked for Rebbe Stone. He was holding a gun. “You look tired,” he said. “Puffing like you’re going to have a heart attack. Better ride with us.”
Anton stopped. Liam came up beside him. “It’s the smoking,” he told Josh. “I’m telling you. It’s a killer, right Anton?”
Anton held his arms up. “Money,” he said. “Lots of it. And the dope business too. I can tell you all about it.”
“Excellent,” Liam said. “We can’t wait to hear. But we have to talk on the way. We’re late.”
“Late?” Anton asked, feeling the hope drain from his body.
“It’s a surprise party,” Josh told him. “And you’re the guest of honor. All your friends are waiting.”
Joe and Yelena remained completely still, holding their breath. The fogged-over glass door to the steam room opened and enough light streamed in from behind for them to see it was the two goons from the hall, armed with a pistol and a bat. Then the door swung shut and the steam swallowed them. The men looked around, peering into the thick fog, failing to see the ghosts just in front of them.
“Let’s go,” one said. “I’m dying in here.” They turned to go. Simultaneously, Joe and Yelena moved. They crept silently forward, emerging from the clouds. As the thug with the bat glanced right, he saw Yelena’s blade, appearing as if from nowhere, slice across his friend’s throat, releasing a ribbon of blood. He started, but it was too late. Joe’s arm was snaking out around his own neck and Joe’s blade found his throat too, cutting the jugular. He staggered forward, blood spraying, and fell. Then a bullet shattered the glass door.
Joe jumped back as the bullet cut through the clouds of steam and cracked the tile wall. Yelena dropped to the floor and felt for the goon’s fallen gun. As the gunman approached, stepping into the doorframe, Joe saw it was Baxter and tossed the bat. That distracted him long enough for Yelena to raise the gun and fire, chasing him back. Yelena went into the hall after him, firing again as he took cover around a corner. A statue of Cupid had been shattered; now headless, it looked more like a real ruin than the cheap plaster copy it was.
“This way,” she called back at Joe, who came after her, crossing the glass that now covered the steam room floor from the broken door. He felt it cutting into his feet, but there was no time for that now. Crouching low, he followed Yelena, who fired another shot to keep Baxter back and led Joe down the hall into the next room.
These were the massage booths. A long, low-ceilinged room, dimly lit and divided by curtains hung on crisscrossing cords, with a massage table in each nook. Yelena and Joe moved through quickly and quietly, brushing the curtains aside, she with the gun poised in one hand and the knife in the other, he with his knife hand cocked back and ready. Then, in a corner, there he was: Nikolai, laid out on a table, his back red and scored, while a big bald Russian in a tiny speedo worked over him with a leafy birch branch. He paused when he saw them, holding the branch aloft.
“You—back,” Yelena said. He raised his hands and stepped back. Nikolai rolled over, squinting his eyes. “And you, pig,” she told him, “wake up. I want you to see the bullet coming.”
Nikolai blinked at her. “Ah,” he said. “Yelena. I was hoping we’d meet.”
Just then, from the corner of his eye, Joe saw the shape of Baxter’s gun pushing against the curtain to his left. He grabbed the muzzle, forcing it aside as it fired, the bullet tearing through the curtain, whizzing past, and tearing the curtain beyond, leaving two smoking burn holes in the fabric. During that moment’s distraction, the big Russian tossed the branch at Yelena and snatched up a knife. As he raised his arm to throw it, Yelena fired: the first bullet went through his knife hand, and the next two went through his heart. Then her gun clicked. Empty. She turned to the empty table and the rustling curtains. Nikolai was gone.
“Go,” Joe said as he wrestled Baxter through the curtain, keeping him wrapped tight. His pistol went off twice more, burning more holes in the curtain. Then he heard Baxter’s gun also hit an empty chamber. Holding Baxter in a hug, Joe reached high and brought his knife down in a sweeping arc, stabbing through the curtain. He felt him slump, as blood began to seep through the fabric, and let him drop.
Joe went after Yelena, out through the back of the room to the hallway, but stopped when he saw Dirk and Trey go by, calling to each other, “She went down here.” He waited for them to pass and then followed, down the stone steps. He could see that he was leaving bloody footprints, but it didn’t matter: he was the pursuer now, not the pursued. He didn’t need to hide.
Yelena entered the pool room. This was a large space, farther underground, and it felt cool and quiet, as if further from the city. A swimming pool filled its center like a blue window, sending reflected ripples across the ceiling, also painted blue. Beside it was a big Jacuzzi, a tiled circle in which the water churned and foamed. There was a bar, a mural along the long wall depicting a waterfall tumbling from forested cliffs into an ocean where a ship sailed to an island with a castle, where a poorly painted king and queen stood on a tower waving, their faces and hands pink smudges. There were tables and chairs and lounges, all empty.
From behind the bar came Nikolai, hefting a machete. He was wearing trunks and a gold cross but had no tattoos; he was not a criminal. He smiled as she came around the pool to face him, holding her blade.
“Do your American friends know what your tattoos mean, Lenochka? Or do these dumb hipsters just think it’s cool? A fashion trend like theirs? You don’t have to even hide them here in New York.”
“I never hide them,” she answered, moving closer.
“And what about your boy, Joe? Does he know that they mark you as trash? A whore and a thief? Scum born to scum in a sewer? The child of a junkie whore and God knows who? Some drunk who couldn’t afford better.”
Yelena smiled. “He knows. That’s why he likes me.” She waved the blade point at him. “But you don’t need any tattoos do you? The mark of the pig is right there on your face for all to see. Now I’m going to carve it into your hide.”
Nikolai laughed. “I’m sure you’d love to try.” He shrugged. “But are you good enough? Remember, I taught you everything you know.”
Now Yelena laughed. “You taught me to dress and fix my hair. To be polite. To eat caviar and to lie in five languages. But to fight? I was born into that, like you said. I inherit it from my whore mother. And now I’m going to kill you in her name. Whatever it was.”
And she charged toward him.
When Joe came into the pool room, he saw Trey and Dirk, backs turned, in silence. Dirk’s skull was buzzed close; Trey’s long ponytail hung down. They were watching Yelena and Nikolai, across the pool, dueling. Well matched, they thrust and parried, dodged and darted, as tightly-focused and oblivious to their audience as any pair of champion dancers. Joe came up fast and kicked Trey, sending him into the Jacuzzi. Then, before Dirk could react, he drove his knife between his shoulder blades. Trey was fast, though, and strong, and he came up quick, grabbing Joe by the ankle. Joe lost his balance and fell into the whirlpool with Trey, his knife still in Dirk’s back as he too plunged into the churning water, dyeing it red as he bled out.
When Joe felt his chin hit the bottom of the shallow pool, banging it hard, he pushed out with his arms, trying to propel himself back up. But he was too far under, and as Trey locked his grip on his legs, standing over him and forcing his head beneath the water, he had no choice but to struggle like a snake, arching his back, fighting to get his head up and breathe. He broke the surface just long enough to glimpse Yelena and Nikolai, clutched together now, each holding the other’s knife arm, each raising a blade, topple together into the pool. Then he was under again, with the whirlpool swirling around
him and the massage jet pummeling his face. Trey had the leverage, his own legs planted so that he was standing in the water, clenching Joe’s legs with all his considerable upper body strength. Joe struggled and kicked, his head remained below the surface, and he knew it was only a matter of time. A couple minutes. The length of a breath.
Instead of fighting to rise up, toward the air, Joe went down, thrusting himself deeper into the water. Trey kept his grip, his clench was tight around Joe’s ankles, but Joe managed to reach Dirk’s body, to grasp his dead hand and pull it closer. As his vision clouded and he felt himself about to pass out, or just as bad, breathe in a lungful of water, Joe drew the knife from Dirk’s back and then curled lower, swimming between Trey’s legs. He sawed across both his ankles, severing the tendons.
Trey let go. As his legs gave out, he dropped Joe and Joe somersaulted away. His feet touched bottom and he stood, gasping for air. Trey collapsed, sitting in the water as his useless legs folded, and Joe grabbed his right hand and cut the cord in his wrist too, squirting more blood into the already crimson whirlpool, which now seemed to boil like a cauldron. Limping on his bloody feet and still catching his breath, Joe hobbled up the steps and felt Trey grab him. His one good hand, his left, still with some strength in it, was holding Joe’s ankle. Joe looked down to see Trey, grunting with effort, trying to come after him. A look of confusion came over him as he realized his body would no longer obey. Joe had cut his strings, severing the tendons in both feet and one hand. He sprawled back onto the lip of the Jacuzzi like a broken marionette, staring up at Joe. He nodded. Joe nodded back. Then he shut his eyes, in surrender, as Joe leaned over and sank the blade into his heart.
That was when Joe realized: Yelena was nowhere in sight. She and Nikolai were both gone. He stood and saw that the pool was rippling, stirred from below, and that a cloud of red was blooming across the blue skin. He held his breath. Then the surface broke and a body floated up. It was Nikolai with a knife in his back. A second later, Yelena emerged, rising from the water like a siren, or a nightmare, one of those avenging furies who haunt men’s dreams. She came up the steps, back straight, head up, eyes forward, a newborn goddess, blood spreading in her wake.
PART V
38
“HOLY SHIT,” JUNO SAID, when he saw Yelena and Joe come limping out of the bathhouse. Cash put the car in gear, honking once lightly to let them know he was there. Joe was in ridiculous clown-like bath trunks, like something a retired Jimmy Buffet fan would wear, and had what looked like bloody rags tied around his feet. Yelena was wrapped in a robe, and so seemed slightly less conspicuous, until she was close enough for Juno to realize she was more or less covered in blood.
Cash braked in front of them and Juno rushed to open the back door. “Damn, Yelena . . .” he said.
“Don’t worry, Juno. It’s not my blood.”
“Hospital,” Joe said. “Make a left on the next street.”
Cash looked in the rearview as he hit the gas. “What’s wrong? Who’s hurt?”
“She is,” Joe said. “A burn. She needs first aid fast.”
“So do you,” she said. “Your feet.”
“She’s got a point,” Juno said. “You look like you been in Valley Forge with George Washington. I mean from the knees down. Knees up you look cool.”
“I’ve got glass in my feet. It hurts like hell, but it can wait. And I can pick it out myself. That burn is for real and needs professional attention. Quickly.”
Yelena sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay Dr. Joe. If you say so.”
“Thank you,” Joe said, and smiled. Yelena smiled too. In the rearview, Cash noticed that she laid her hand over his.
“ER’s coming up on the right,” he said he drove down the narrow street. “You planning to escort her in or what?”
Joe looked down at his outfit. Juno was right, he looked like a mess. They’d throw a net on him. “Hey what size shoes do you guys wear?”
It was tough but Joe managed not to limp. He was in his shorts, Cash’s clean white T-shirt, and Juno’s very expensive new sneakers, with his hair smoothed back. He didn’t look much worse than a lot of the tourists who’d wandered into the ER. With one arm around Yelena, he went up to the counter and called to a woman in scrubs.
“Excuse me, please, you’ve got to help her.”
Distracted, the woman regarded them over her glasses as she looked up from her desk. “Now calm down sir, I . . . oh my God.” She goggled at Yelena, then reached and pressed a button. “Assistance! Now,” she called into an intercom. Her eyes ranged over Yelena. “Miss, where is the bleeding coming from?”
“I think that stopped,” Joe said. “But she’s been burned.” He pulled down the robe and revealed the raw and suppurating burn on her shoulder. He squeezed Yelena, who responded by beginning to wail loudly. “She’s hysterical,” he added. “It’s the pain.”
Two medics rushed over and took gentle hold of Yelena. The nurse turned to Joe, hand on keyboard. “What’s her name sir? Is she your wife? Girlfriend?”
“No. I don’t know her. I don’t even think she speaks English. There was an accident at the spa. So I just brought her in.”
“At the spa?”
Meanwhile the medics eased Yelena into a wheelchair, talking to her the whole time. She cried and yelled at them in Russian.
“Calm down, we’re here to help you. What’s your name?”
“Do you have ID? Do you have insurance?”
The nurse who was talking to Joe persisted, as Yelena was wheeled away. “I’m still going to need some info from you sir, for the file.”
“Sure,” Joe said, rubbing his forehead. “But can I get some water first? I feel a little faint myself. This was really scary.”
“Right away,” the nurse said, anxious not to have another intake. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
She fetched a paper cup of water and came back, searching the seating area, but he was gone.
When Victoria got to the banya and saw a young woman fleeing, followed by some other customers, a few still in their bathing suits, she realized she was late to the dance. And when she spotted first one and then two cars, each with two men in it, sitting and watching, she decided to stay and watch herself, moving to a discreet spot at the corner. And when Anton, the Russian mob boss, came running out, looking like he’d just seen a ghost, and the two men in the front car grabbed him up, she grinned. It looked like someone else besides her was on cleanup duty for a change. She was not surprised to see that it was Joe and Yelena who came out shortly after and got in the other car, looking ragged and bloody. And when no one else chased after them, she knew what that meant too: everyone else was dead.
Impressed, she watched as the car passed by, then followed after it. It was a tight space down here, at the bottom of the island, and the crowded ER was just a few short blocks away. So she waited for Joe and Yelena to enter, and the others to drive off, and then wandered in, picked up a discarded newspaper, and sat down with everyone else to wait. She wanted to see what happened next.
By the time Donna could ask where Toomey was, he was gone. In the first minutes after the gunshot, while chaos reigned, they had tried to lock down the area, but the crowd was too big and the perimeter too wide, to search everything and everyone for one suspect. Plus, the description of the suspect—white, blonde, twenties—and the fact that she had fired just one shot at a tourist visiting the site, made it feel like some personal drama or random insanity, not a serious, organized terror attack. They put out an APB and had all the cops at all the checkpoints watching, but the rest of the event was allowed to go on. While a medic bandaged her wound—it was a mere grazing—Donna called Blaze, who was mortified and pissed but alive and well except for a brutal hangover. She went on the hunt for the shooter herself, walking the perimeter, searching the crowd, squatting in the van with the facial recognition boys. Nothing. Then Tom found her and made her sit still while she was extensively debriefed, and re-debriefed, and filled out
a report. She said she wanted to question Toomey, and Tom told her that he’d given a statement and gone home.
Well, all she had to do was get on the laptop and dig a little for that statement of his to start melting away: Yes, Toomey was a vet, like he said, and he was in the Special Forces. But he was never wounded, as far as she could see. And his last known employment was indeed as a “consultant.” For Wildwater. She bolted down a dinner of takeout beans and rice and plantains and café con leche from the Cuban place that was about to close—she hadn’t eaten all day—and then she called Fusco.
“Hey,” he said. “Where the hell you been? You’re missing everything.”
“I’ve been getting shot at and saving America, asshole,” she said, realizing that she was actually happy to hear his voice. “What about you?”
“Shot at?” Fusco asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “By who?”
“By a Wildwater employee as it happens. What do you think of that?”
“I think you better get your ass down here to the bathhouse. The one by the Stock Exchange.”
“Why?”
“Because almost everybody else who works for Wildwater is floating around here dead. We’re still fishing them out.”
So she walked over. Tom had ordered her to get her wound looked at. It was nothing, but he wanted everything covered, so she said she’d go to the ER, then put an FBI windbreaker on over her torn shirt and walked to the bathhouse address, which was practically on the way. It wasn’t hard to find: NYPD was out in force, with the block taped off and the whole circus set up. She waved her badge and a tech handed her booties and a zip up suit. Then on the way downstairs, she saw Parks, who was wearing a suit too, plus a hairnet and rubber boots.
“What is there—kryptonite down there?” Donna asked him.
“You’re gonna need it, believe me,” he said. “One stiff’s ponytail got caught in a drain and the whole place backed up with bloody water. It’s like a horror movie.”
Against the Law Page 25