Killed in Action

by Michael Sloan

  At least, that’s what he told himself.

  “Where’s your apartment located?”

  She gave him the address, a building on Tenth Street just below Tompkins Square Park. McCall assured her he would get there as soon as he could and pushed through the doors of the hotel. When he’d first walked into the tarnished elegance of the Liberty Belle Hotel, it had been deserted. Kostmayer had called it a mausoleum. And it did have the feel of an old movie set in which Clark Gable or Spencer Tracy would have stepped out of the old cage elevator—replaced now with a modern one—to find Jean Harlow or Katharine Hepburn waiting for them on one of the ornate couches. McCall glanced at the New York watercolors on the walls and thought they’d faded a little more into misty obscurity. But the woodwork still gleamed, along with the brass fixtures, and McCall decided that Sam Kinney must have the Turkish carpet cleaned daily.

  Today the lobby was hopping. Two girls were behind the reception counter dealing with guests. He knew one of them, a petite brunette named Chloe, midtwenties, efficient, always smiling, except when she’d been running alongside the EMTs’ gurney when Sam Kinney had been oozing blood from a bullet wound in his shoulder and his right eye had been hanging out of its socket. The other girl was a tall, languid blonde named Lisa, or so it said on her rectangular silver name badge. Both of them wore the uniform of the Liberty Belle Hotel: gray slacks, pale blue shirts, and blue blazers. A crowd of people were waiting to check in, looking tired; probably from Europe, a long flight after one or two connections. A South American couple in their fifties were seated, poring over a map of Manhattan. A younger couple with British accents were jubilantly showing some New York friends tickets they’d scored for Phantom of the Opera. A bellman in his forties, Vinnie, as Irish as a Killarney sunset, was pushing a brass luggage cart from the elevator toward the front doors. He acknowledged McCall with a wave.

  McCall liked it when the lobby had energy and life.

  He hadn’t seen her yet.

  But Sam Kinney had seen him. The old spy—probably in his seventies, McCall had decided, but he could have been anywhere between sixty and death—came around the reception counter. He shuffled a little, but McCall was never sure how much of that was real and how much of it was an act he liked to put on. He also wore the Liberty Belle Hotel uniform. He no longer wore a patch over his right eye, but it had an odd sheen to it where it had been damaged. He had about 30 percent vision in it now. A reward for trying to stop a Chechen assassination group from killing McCall.

  Sam gripped McCall’s arm and demanded, “Where have you been?”

  “I meant to leave you a note with all of my appointments for the day, Sam, but you’re so busy I didn’t want to distract you from your guests.”

  “Sure, crack wise, I like looking out for you.”

  “No one looks out for me, Sam. What’s on your mind?”

  “You got a visitor. She’s standing over there by the big palm. Gotta water that. It’s starting to look as limp as my dick.”

  “I’ll treasure that imagery all day.”

  McCall found the woman Sam Kinney was indicating. She was seated in an overstuffed armchair, dressed in a gray business suit, a lilac shirt, expensive shoes but with low heels, carrying a thin leather briefcase with her initials CB on it. She’d changed it from CM. She looked to be in her late thirties, even though McCall knew she was ten years older than that. Her blond hair was cut short. Her green eyes could be laughing or like chips of glittering ice. Right now, it was the latter. She looked sleek and sophisticated and gorgeous.

  But then, McCall’s ex-wife had always looked good to him.

  Cassie Blake took out her iPhone, looking at the time, impatient. She hadn’t seen McCall yet.

  “Better go talk to her before she calls the cops,” Sam advised, “and has you dragged out of here. That might look bad to my hotel guests.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “Just that she had to see you. I know she’s some kind of a hotshot lawyer.”

  “She’s an assistant district attorney for New York.”

  “Maybe it’s for leaving a trail of dead men across the city. Which I’m grateful for. Or I wouldn’t be standing here. You seen Brahms lately?”

  “No.”

  “They moved Hilda from the Cancer Care Center at Boston Medical back to Sloan Kettering here in the city. Brahms says she’s doing much better, but I didn’t like the tone of his voice. You get to be an old spook, you know when someone is lying to you.” Sam nodded at Cassie, who was now talking on her iPhone. “Weren’t you married to her once?”

  McCall knew that Sam had known this all along, but just nodded.

  “How’d you let a babe like that slip through your fingers?”

  McCall didn’t answer and moved through the crowded lobby. She spotted him halfway across. She wrapped up her phone call and dropped the iPhone into the jacket pocket of her suit.

  “You need to come with me, Robert.” Cassie was clearly controlling her anger.

  “Is Scott all right?”

  “Scott’s fine. This isn’t about our son. Or us. There is no us anymore, but there used to be, and that’s the only reason I’m not dragging you down to the Seventh Precinct.” Then the terseness seeped out of her a little. “That and the fact you saved Scott’s life.” She looked around at the bustling lobby. “You really live here now?”

  “I had to give up my apartment.”

  “Can you come with me?”

  “Sure.”

  McCall followed his ex-wife out of the hotel. She stepped off the curb, put her fingers to her lips, and whistled. It would have shamed the doorman at the Plaza. A cab pulled over. McCall climbed into the back. Cassie said something to the cabbie and slid in beside him. She slammed the door and the cab took off.

  “So how’s your new job going?” Her voice had a sardonic edge.

  “What job would that be?”

  “Come on, Robert, I read The New York Times from cover to cover every morning, including the classified ads, and I’ve been known to surf the internet on occasion. ‘Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer.’ When did you get all cute and schmaltzy on me?”

  “Nothing romantic or precious about it. It’s a service. If you’re in trouble, you call me. I’ll see if I can help. How did you know it was me?”

  “The Equalizer. That’s the legend on that Peacemaker Cavalry Colt revolver you always wanted.”

  “The legend on it says Colt Frontier Six-Shooter.”

  “On the other side of the barrel. Something about ‘Don’t be afraid of any man, no matter what his size, when danger threatens, I will equalize’—or something like that. How much do you charge for this service of yours?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ve become independently wealthy in the last ten years?”

  “I don’t need to charge clients.”

  She shook her head. “Clients? You’ve got to be kidding me. Are you really buying into the hype you’ve created?”

  He ignored that. “Where are we going?”

  “Bellevue.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Seven people were clustered outside the intensive care unit. Two of them were uniformed NYPD officers. Two were Hispanic women, one in her late thirties, McCall judged, the other in her early forties, who held the hand of a five-year-old boy. Near them was a young blonde in her twenties with a canvas bag slung over her shoulder that had NYPD—CSI UNIT stenciled on it. She was waiting patiently. A man in his late thirties was talking quietly to the younger of the Hispanic women. He wore a dark suit with a thin red-striped tie, black shoes; all he needed was a trench coat. McCall knew at once he was a police detective. He had that capable, been-there-before attitude, but without the world-weary cynicism. He was tall, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, high cheekbones, deep-set gray eyes. He had a low, husky voice that McCall doubted got raised often.

  The younger Hispanic women glanced up as McCall and Cassie entered. Her voice c
ut through the murmured calm of the ward. “Is that him?”

  In the next instant she was flying at McCall, her long red nails aiming for his eyes. One of the uniformed officers grabbed her, holding her back.

  The detective stepped forward and caught her arm. “Mrs. Reyes, let me handle this.”

  “He tried to murder my boy!” she screamed. “He broke his nose and his cheekbone! God knows how many teeth he knocked out. Julio’s face is all caved in!”

  “I got this, Sofia,” the detective said. Then, more gently: “All right?”

  She tried to catch her breath, which was coming out it fitful gasps. She nodded. The uniformed officer let her go. McCall had not flinched.

  “You need to go to the waiting area,” the detective told her. “A nurse will come and find you as soon as there’s news on your son.”

  The uniformed officer guided Sofia Reyes down the ward.

  “I’ll go with her.” Cassie followed the mother and the cop down the ward. The older Hispanic woman, whose name was Anita Delgado, let go of her son’s hand and stepped forward. Her reaction was the polar opposite from Sofia Reyes’s: calm, low-key, and more intensely filled with pain.

  “You sprayed my son Alejandro in the eyes with Mace,” she said to McCall. “He’s blinded. He has a concussion and his right arm is broken in two places. What kind of an animal are you? You say you do this in the name of justice, Mr. Equalizer?”

  She had taken three steps right up to McCall.

  And spit in his face.

  The second uniform jumped forward, but she waved a hand at him.

  “I am going to be with Sofia.”

  McCall wiped the spittle from his cheek with a handkerchief. The Hispanic woman held out her hand and the five-year-old boy rushed over. The second uniform escorted them out of the ward.

  The detective pulled back his jacket, showing his blue CITY OF NEW YORK POLICE—DETECTIVE badge pinned to his belt, with the numeral 7 in gold beneath the shield.

  “Detective First Grade Steve Lansing, Seventh Precinct. And you’re Robert McCall. The Equalizer.” McCall didn’t respond. “You’ve been operating out there on the streets of our precinct for a few weeks. We didn’t know who you were, but we’d seen the card before. These aren’t the only gangbangers you’ve roughed up. But you almost killed these guys.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  Detective Lansing turned to the CSI. “Show him the card, Catelyn.”

  Catelyn pulled on skintight surgeon’s gloves, took out a small polyethylene bag from her canvas bag, removed a business card, and extended it. “Don’t touch it!”

  McCall looked at the gray card. He saw the graphic of the shadowy figure in the alleyway, dark and ominous, no recognizable features, standing in front of a Jaguar, a gun in hand, the New York City skyline behind him. The words JUSTICE IS HERE were above the graphic of the figure, and beneath it, THE EQUALIZER.

  “My colleague wants to take a sample of your DNA, Mr. McCall,” Detective Lansing said. “See if it matches the DNA on this card.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Then you have no objection to her doing a DNA swab? Right here and now?”

  “No.”

  The CSI tech unhooked the canvas bag from her shoulder, returned the gray card to its protective polyethylene bag, and took out a simple Q-tip. McCall opened his mouth and she swabbed his gums, then slid the Q-tip into a protective plastic sheath.

  “Thank you, Catelyn,” Detective Lansing said.

  The blonde nodded as she pulled off the gloves, repacked her bag, hoisted it over her shoulder, and walked away.

  “There’s a waiting room on the next floor where we can talk,” Lansing said.

  “I’d rather walk.”

  They moved down the ward and pushed through some double doors, which led out to a bank of elevators.

  “I deal with ADA Cassie Blake a lot. She was the one who came to me saying she believed this Equalizer was her ex-husband. When Julio and Alejandro were brought into the ER last night the attending physician found your card in Julio Reyes’s shirt pocket and called the Seventh Precinct.”

  “I don’t give out cards.”

  “But you do advertise as a vigilante known as the Equalizer?”

  “I help people when no one else will. That’s doesn’t mean I’m a vigilante.”

  “So you do everything by the book? You come across an illegal situation, you let the authorities handle it?”

  “Not exactly,” McCall murmured.

  “I don’t care how you justify your actions, as far as the NYPD and ADA Blake are concerned, you’re a civilian taking the law into his own hands. That’s against the law. Are we clear?”

  “Am I under arrest, Detective Lansing?”

  McCall and Lansing descended the concrete staircase, their voices echoing.

  “No. But don’t leave New York until we’re certain that both of these young men are going to make it out of ICU. We know you didn’t spray Mace into Alejandro’s eyes. That was the victim they were intending to rape, Megan Forrester. She gave her statement at the precinct last night and came here and ID’d both of her attackers.”

  They reached the first floor and pushed through a door into an antiseptic corridor. A male nurse in scrubs pushed a gurney past them in which a frail old man lay with an IV dripping life into his desiccated body.

  “Who are these young men?” McCall asked.

  “They belong to a street gang on the Lower East Side called the White Jaguars. Both of them are lower than pond scum. They would have raped and maybe killed Megan Forrester, except someone intervened. That Good Samaritan probably saved her life, but these two thugs were almost beaten to death. That isn’t going to happen again on my turf.”

  They reached the main lobby.

  “These hoodlums may be lowlifes, but they have rights,” Detective Lansing said. “You can’t violate them.” McCall waited. There’d be more. Lansing glanced away, sighed a little. “Look, sometimes I wish there was a guardian angel out there on the streets, helping us out. But I can’t condone it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “If your DNA test comes back negative, we’ll go on looking for this guy.”

  “He’ll stay in the shadows. You won’t find him.”

  “But you will?”

  “I have ways of working that the police can’t use. I don’t worry about rules.”

  “You just break them.”

  “I don’t break my rules.”

  Lansing took a card out of his jacket pocket and handed it to McCall. “You catch up with this Equalizer wannabe, call me at the precinct, or at my personal cell number on the back.”

  “If I find him, I’ll let you know.”

  “Will he still be breathing?”

  “Possibly.”

  McCall walked out of the hospital.

  Cassie Blake was waiting for him at the curb.

  “I don’t think you beat those two Latino boys half to death,” she said quietly. “It’s not your style. I called for an Uber car. I can drop you off at the Liberty Belle Hotel.”

  “I’m going somewhere else.”

  “Equalizer business?” McCall didn’t respond to the sarcasm. “Your new persona is going to get you arrested or killed.”

  A town car pulled up. Cassie got into the back without another word, and the cab took off into heavy traffic. McCall thought about the two youths attacking Megan Forrester. He would have stopped them from raping or killing her, but it would have been on his terms. He was going to find out who this vigilante was and stop him.

  Before more people got hurt in his name.

  * * *

  Helen Coleman stared at the gun.

  At least it wasn’t pointed at her.

  An attractive brunette in her early sixties, she appeared to have stopped aging at forty. Some laugh lines were around her hazel eyes, but they seemed to blend right in. Her hair was long and cascaded onto her shoulders. She never put it up. She thought it g
ave her a unkempt, carefree look, which worked well when dealing with diplomats from 193 member nations and government bureaucratic cretins. She was dressed in a Christian Dior fuchsia-pink textured wool blazer jacket and skirt. She had a spectacular figure, which she kept under wraps for the most part, in deference to her position. She worked for the under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and United Nations emergency relief coordinator. She cared passionately about the job. Which was good, because it was all-consuming. She had divorced her first husband almost thirty years before, and her second one ten years before. She had two sons and a daughter. She had a handful of good friends she didn’t see much. She was just too busy.

  She never ate at the UN cafeteria in the Secretariat Building, even though the views across the East River were spectacular. She liked sitting on a bench outside the visitors’ center with a boxed lunch she always made for herself before she left her beautiful colonial house on the banks of the Navesink River in Red Bank, New Jersey. It took just over an hour for her early-morning commuter train to pull into Penn Station in Manhattan, and she could be at her desk in the Secretariat Building by eight thirty. Today her sandwich was a tuna melt on rye, with a small green salad and an almonds and chocolate Balance energy bar. As usual, plenty of tourists were surging from the security entrance out onto the grounds. Helen liked being among them. They were the people she was trying to protect in the world.

  The gun stood on a raised pedestal: a giant Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver with the barrel tied into a knot and pointing up harmlessly at the sky. It had been created by the late Swedish sculptor Carl Fredrik Reuterswӓrd, inspired by the shooting death of his friend John Lennon. Luxembourg had offered it to the UN in 1988. Helen watched a tall Chinese teenager reach up and put his hand around the trigger of the sculpted weapon as if he could fire it. His friends took pictures on their smartphones.

  Perhaps its nonviolence message isn’t getting through to everyone, she thought wryly.

  She unwrapped her tuna melt. Her LG smartphone vibrated on her lap. For some reason she thought of the one Jay Leno joke she remembered from his Tonight Show days: “They did a recent survey and twenty-four percent of women said they would answer their cell phones during sex.” Pause. “The other seventy-six percent just kept it on vibrate.” Then, over the laughter: “Now, folks, folks…”