Avenue of Thieves

by Sean Black

“Someone spilled something in the corridor, that’s all. Go back to sleep.”

  Ty tensed as the elevator at the far end of the corridor opened. The other private security operator ran out. Ty’s hand closed around his SIG.

  Right now he wasn’t prepared to trust anyone.

  “What the hell’s going on?” yelled the guy, rushing to the storeroom.

  He skidded to a halt, almost losing his footing as he hit the blood. His face went pale.

  “Get on comms,” barked Ty. “Get security up here and take up your post down there until they get here.”

  The guy ignored him, rushing past the nurse and into the storeroom to take a look at his buddy. Ty seethed quietly. Their primary task was to make sure Anastasia remained safe. That included shielding her, as much as possible, from the gory details of whatever had just happened. Everything else came second.

  A few seconds later the guy reappeared. His clothes were covered with blood.

  Ty stared him down as he walked along the corridor.

  “It doesn’t make sense. I just saw him like an hour ago.”

  “You see anyone else?” asked Ty.

  “No.”

  Ty lowered his voice. He fixed his gaze on him. “Good. Now go do your job and secure that end of the corridor until we have backup. Your buddy in there is gone and nothing’s going to change that so follow my orders. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  24

  Two hours later

  NYPD patrol officers were posted at either end of the corridor, securing the scene. A team from the Crime Scene Unit, part of the force’s Forensics Investigations Division, moved back and forth from the storeroom, collecting evidence.

  Outside the room containing Anastasia Semenov, Ty stood guard in front of the door, arms crossed. The patrol cops had asked him to move, only to be met with a snarl. They had swiftly backed off, then contradicted themselves, telling him he shouldn’t leave until he had provided a statement.

  Lock threaded his way through the melee with Dimitri and Elizabeth Semenov, a frosty detente having seemingly been arrived at since they had taken the call about the latest horrific development.

  Ty opened the door for them and stepped aside. Elizabeth pushed past her husband and into the room, where a nurse was busy doing a routine check on Anastasia. Dimitri shot Lock and Ty an apologetic look and followed his wife inside.

  “How’s the kid?” Lock asked his partner.

  “She figured out pretty quickly something was up, so I told her there had been an accident, but I stayed light on details. Made sure she knew it was nothing for her to worry about.”

  “You hear anything?” asked Lock.

  “No, that’s the weirdest part. I was in here with Anastasia, the door was closed, but I’d have thought I’d hear something. First thing I knew was when the nurse opened the door to that storeroom. This is some twisted shit, Ryan.”

  “The cops are saying it’s a suicide.”

  Ty looked incredulous. “Say what? Come on, dude.”

  Lock shrugged and looked at Ty with a that’s-all-I-know expression. “They checked the cameras. No one saw him go into the storeroom, but they picked him up getting into the elevator and he was on his own. No one came up after him, apart from medical staff, and their stories all seem to be checking out.”

  “And what about before?” asked Ty.

  “They’re still checking, but it doesn’t look like anyone was roaming the corridors up on this floor who shouldn’t have been here,” said Lock. “I guess someone could have been already in there, waiting―it’s a big enough space that they could have concealed themselves―but the position of everything else is suggesting he killed himself.”

  “How many bodyguards you know who’ve offed themselves?”

  Lock started to answer before Ty cut him off.

  “On the job. We both know plenty who’ve eaten a gun when they’ve been back home sitting with their demons.”

  “On the job? I can’t think of any,” said Lock. “But that doesn’t mean anything. The guy saw his buddies drown. He waits until you take over, gets some fresh air, makes his decision, comes back in, holes up in there and does it as quietly as he can.”

  “How is shooting yourself in the head quiet?”

  “Noise suppressor on the gun. Plus they’re saying he had a pillow between the hot end and his head. Smallish caliber. That door closed. This door closed. Not surprising you didn’t hear anything.”

  “I don’t buy it,” said Ty. “Model gets tossed out of a window and now a bodyguard kills himself, all in under twenty-four hours.”

  “I’m not saying I do either, but that’s how it’s looking. They’ll have a better idea when they’ve done the autopsy. That should give them the angle, how close it was, all that good stuff.”

  A fifty-something guy with white hair, wearing a gray suit, walked up to them. He flashed his shield and introduced himself as an NYPD detective. “I just need to take a quick statement from the kid.”

  Lock put his hand on Ty’s arm, a pre-emptive gesture intended to damp down what he guessed would be his partner’s reaction. It didn’t work.

  “She didn’t see anything,” said Ty. “She was in the room the whole time, door closed.”

  “Maybe he said something to her, then. Either way I need to speak with her.”

  Lock stepped between the cop and Ty. He could feel Ty’s rage building. “She’s a pretty sick little girl, we don’t want to do anything that might upset her. I’m sure you understand that, Detective.”

  “I have to speak with everyone who was here. I can get a female officer to do it, if that makes you guys feel any better.”

  Ty stared at the cop. “The answer is no, unless her parents say otherwise, which I very much doubt they will.”

  The cop went to move past Ty. “I’ll ask them.”

  Ty’s arm shot out, almost clothes-lining the detective’s neck in the process. “We’ll ask them.”

  Lock ducked under and into the room as Ty death-stared the cop. He reappeared less than five seconds later.

  “It’s a no,” said Lock.

  “You didn’t have time to ask anyone anything,” the cop protested.

  Ty took a half-step in. His chest was against the smaller man’s head. He glowered down at him. “We’re done here,” said Ty. “Conversation is over.”

  The detective stepped back, returning Ty’s glare before about-turning and heading back down the corridor.

  “We’re going to have to decide what we do,” said Lock.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I spoke with the Semenovs on the way down here.”

  “Bet that was a fun car ride,” said Ty.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Lock. “Anyway, they think she can continue her treatment at home. They only kept her here because it was more of a controlled environment and they didn’t want her seeing the circus outside the family home.”

  “And now not so much.”

  “Exactly,” said Lock. “The physicians say she can return home if she has private nursing, which isn’t an issue. She can come back in as and when required.”

  Ty nodded. “Kid would probably be happier at home. In her own bedroom.”

  “That was what I was thinking.”

  “Plus, what is it you always say about hospitals?”

  “People die in them,” said Lock.

  “No kidding,” said Ty, looking back down the corridor to the storeroom. “So when we thinking about moving her?”

  “Let’s wait until they’re done here,” said Lock. “You want to supervise the transfer?”

  “Well, I’m not letting any of these clowns do it.”

  25

  Dimitri’s PA, Madeline, laid out the papers in front of Lock. They were standing in the kitchen, which seemed to have become an informal hub in the house as everyone hunkered down, waiting for the next unwelcome development.

  “This is the purchase order for the sedans,” she told Lock. “And this i
s the shortlist that was drawn up prior to the purchase decision being made.”

  Lock picked up the shortlist document. It was six pages in total. There was a cover sheet, one page for each of the recommended vehicles, of which there had been four, and a final summary page.

  “Mr. Semenov made the final decision on the purchase.”

  Marveling at the detail involved, Lock flicked through the details of the four possible contenders. “That’s great, thank you.”

  “Will there be anything else?”

  “I want to talk to you about rerunning background checks. I want the report on everyone who works directly for Mr. Semenov, and I’ll need to know when the report was conducted. But first I’ll take a look at this.”

  “Of course, I’ll get on that. I’ll just be through in the office if you need anything else,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, calling her back. “Who drew up this shortlist?”

  “I did. I mean, I wrote it up. Mr. McLennan gave me the names of the vehicles that might be most suitable.”

  He settled in at the kitchen table, pulling out his phone so he could run his own search of the vehicle details. He was looking for one thing in particular.

  A call came in from Ty.

  “What’s the situation?” Lock asked.

  “Corridor’s clear, body’s out, she’s going to be moved to an ambulance. Should be with you in about twenty-five. The equipment set up in her bedroom?”

  “Nursing-agency people are here getting it done.”

  Being around the ultra-wealthy, Lock was still amazed, not by the houses and cars and other obvious symbols of money, but by how quickly they could solve everyday problems with the wave of dollar bills.

  Dimitri had handed off his daughter’s care to staff and in no time they had secured not only private nursing and medical support but all the equipment to go with it. This was the real power of money, the ability to solve almost instantly issues that regular people struggled with.

  Lock didn’t harbor any resentment about it. Not when a child was involved. But it did make him wonder about how the world was set up when kids died every day from a lack of clean water.

  “What about outside?” said Ty.

  “It’s a mess. Let me know when you’re in transit and I’ll deal with any sidewalk static.”

  “Roger that.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “I don’t know. She’s kind of quiet. She knows something’s up, but no one’s told her exactly what happened yet. I’d like to keep it that way for now, but that’s her parents’ call. Tell you one thing, though, the kid’s a trouper, man.”

  “That’s good,” said Lock.

  The call over, he went back to checking the vehicle details. Out of the four possible vehicles, three of them, including the Cadillac that had been selected, were classified as Level 2 when it came to driver assistance technology. That meant they were all potentially hackable to the point where control could be taken over from the driver.

  None of the other two had any known security flaws, but then neither had the Cadillacs before they had been remotely piloted off the bridge. That left one other manufacturer and model on the list, the BMW 7 series, which had Level 1 driver assistance technology.

  Lock looked at the prices to see if that gave any clues. The BMW would have been more expensive, but the difference was relatively marginal, especially given Dimitri’s net worth.

  Maybe it was just a matter of personal preference. He would ask him.

  Lock got up, grabbed a mug and poured some coffee from the Krups machine on the counter. Next to the Turkish coffee it tasted weak, but he needed the caffeine jolt.

  Once they had Anastasia safely inside, Dimitri wanted Lock to accompany him to his offices. He and Ty had come in as consultants: slowly but surely they were being pulled into more direct roles.

  The sooner he could help source a replacement security team, the better. One thing had become abundantly clear to Lock over the past twenty-four hours. If Dimitri and his family were going to make it out of this unscathed, they needed to get off defense and onto offense. Easier said than done. Especially with how fast new problems were coming at them. But, as far as Lock saw it, offense wasn’t just their best shot, it might be their only shot.

  26

  Ty sat in the passenger seat of the car behind the ambulance that contained Anastasia. One hand was on the butt of his SIG, the other rested on the door handle, ready for a fast debus from the vehicle.

  Traffic along Fifth Avenue was heavy. The NYPD had declined a request for a patrol car to accompany the transfer. After the last twenty-four hours their attitude toward the Semenov family had cooled.

  Shifting nervously in his seat, Ty scanned the traffic and people on the sidewalks. Nothing jumped out at him. He doubted they would encounter any problems. Attacking an ambulance carrying a sick kid in the middle of Manhattan, with people all around, didn’t strike him as all that likely.

  Then again, he wouldn’t have imagined that a bodyguard would hole up in a store cupboard and shoot himself in the head. Or that someone would launch a model from a hotel window for no other reason than to mess with a billionaire.

  Traffic slowed, even though the light up ahead was green. A few seconds later it came to a complete halt.

  Ty popped the door open and hopped out. He walked through traffic, staying tight to the edge of the ambulance.

  Up ahead, what looked like a minor fender-bender had escalated. Both drivers were out of their cars, screaming at each other while behind them other drivers honked their horns to get them to move. It was about as New York a scene as you could get, neither man wanting to back down.

  Still scanning the surrounding area, and wary that it could always be what was known in the close protection trade as a ‘come-on’, Ty jogged over to them.

  “Hey, assholes, I got a sick kid in that ambulance. Now get back in your vehicles and pull over to the side if you want to continue this.”

  One started to say something. Ty cut him off with a look. Wisely, the guy thought better of it.

  As they got into their cars, Ty jogged back to the ambulance. He tapped on the driver’s door. The driver lowered his window. “What’s the matter?” Ty said. “You don’t have a siren fitted to this thing?”

  “We’re only supposed to use it if it’s an emergency,” explained the driver.

  “Listen, this kid’s family are under threat. That counts as an emergency in my book.”

  “Okay, okay,” said the driver. “Tell you what, if the traffic gets snarled again by a couple of assholes, I’ll blast it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ty got back into the car and called Lock to give him their ETA.

  The ambulance rolled onto the block. Ty hung his head out of the car’s passenger window and cursed under his breath as he saw that the NYPD had withdrawn the barriers at the end of the block, allowing traffic and pedestrians to flow freely. Now, rather than being contained at the end of the block, the media were camped directly outside the townhouse. Ty told his driver to pull over at the curb. He jumped out, jogging alongside the ambulance.

  Lock was outside, standing at the top of the steps with McLennan and another member of the residential security team. When McLennan didn’t move, Lock came down the steps and began speaking to the press of media.

  No doubt he was explaining the situation. No doubt, thought Ty, the reporters would ignore him to get their shot for the news that night. He only hoped that they had persuaded the Semenovs to stay inside while they brought Anastasia from the ambulance into the house. Dimitri or Elizabeth appearing would be like throwing chum into shark-infested waters.

  The ambulance was four hundred yards from the steps. Lock had them facing him, keeping their eyes in the other direction. Then the front door opened, and the reporters’ heads went on a swivel as Elizabeth Semenov appeared. A couple of reporters rushed the steps, only for McLennan, Lock, and the other security guy to push them back.

/>   Ty knew he had to act quickly. He picked up his pace, running so that he was in line with the front cab of the ambulance. He signaled for the driver to lower the window.

  “What’s up?” he asked Ty.

  “You have some earplugs back there, some cotton wool, anything you can put in the kid’s ears?”

  “What?”

  Ty repeated his question.

  “Yeah, we’ll have something. I don’t know about earplugs, but we have cotton wool for sure. Why?”

  “I’m going to need you to use that siren, that’s why.”

  “The siren? We’re almost there, bro.”

  Ty took up position at the rear of the ambulance as it stopped at the curb. Lock was at the bottom of the steps, doing his best, along with McLennan, to establish some kind of reporter-free space.

  A couple of patrol cops had reluctantly joined the melee. They stood between the media and Elizabeth Semenov, who was ignoring Lock’s repeated request to go back inside her home. Lock had no idea if she was just so eager to see her daughter that she couldn’t wait an additional few minutes, or whether this display of parental concern was for the cameras. If he’d had to guess he would have gone with the latter.

  The back doors of the ambulance opened. As they began to move the gurney, Ty saw that Anastasia was wearing a spare EMT headset they must have found in back.

  They lowered, then pushed the gurney out before re-extending the trolley mechanism. Ty walked in front of them, clearing the way to the bottom of the steps.

  Elizabeth rushed to be at her daughter’s side, Anastasia looked scared by the press of people. Ty made sure she could see him. He took up position on the other side from Elizabeth, who held her daughter’s hand.

  Looking up, Ty signaled for the driver to hit the siren as the reporters began to pepper Elizabeth with questions.

  “Were you aware that your husband was having an affair with Ruta?”

  “Is it true that you’ve hired a divorce attorney?

  Lying on the gurney, the headset tucked over her ears, the siren wailing loudly enough to wake the dead, Anastasia Semenov heard none of them.