The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  Do something. Please.

  Big Gertie stepped up behind McCall and patted him down. He knew how to do it. J.T. looked around the living room. His eyes fell on the big bronze Mark Newman sculpture.

  “Nice piece. What is it? A naked bitch walkin’ her big fish?”

  “It’s an eel,” McCall said, fighting for breath.

  “An’ lookin’ at that gets your dick hard? You’re a weird motherfucker.”

  Big Gertie stepped back.

  “Clean,” he said.

  He sounded pleased.

  “Course he is,” J.T. said. “He a law-abiding citizen who jus don’ know when he should have walked on.” He looked at McCall. “See, thing about playing the hero—you gotta pick your battles. This here whore, she ain’t worth your spit. She a dumb cunt who’s gonna meet her maker tonight. As for you, Mr. Bartender, Bobby baby…”

  He pulled the gun out of his waistband and aimed it at McCall again.

  “I could shoot you. But that be too quick, too merciful. We go’an show you a world of pain, brother. Like you never knew existed. Then, when you on your knees, beggin’ us to finish you off, tha’s when the show really starts. You gonna see us fuck this whore real good, me up her ass, Big Gertie with his big cock in her mouth. Sydney over there, he kinda shy, he jus’ likes to watch. Then we might have some fun with the handle of that mop you got in the kitchen. Grease it up a little with some butter.”

  “Get out of here right now,” McCall said softly. “And I’ll let it go.”

  J.T. stared at him like he’d lost his mind. His voice lowered to a whisper, as if he didn’t want anyone but McCall to hear. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere, motherfucker. I’m gonna let you watch while I slit this bitch’s throat.”

  He put the .357 Magnum back into his belt, stubbed out the cigarette in the big glass ashtray on one of the bookshelves, reached behind him, and picked up a slim, sharp paring knife, holding it between his thumbs and index fingers. He’d taken it from McCall’s kitchen. McCall recognized the pearl handle. Part of a set of five. He thought about the kitchen. He could get past Sydney with no problem, but he’d have his back to the room and J.T. would grab the big gun before he could take two steps to the microwave. He thought about the Sig Sauer 227 clipped under the bedside table. The bedroom door was ajar, but the room was too far away. He’d never make it. He wondered if the three thugs had already found his small arsenal, but he didn’t think so. Both the Smith & Wesson 500 revolver and the Sig Sauer 227 would be out on display. It hadn’t occurred to them to search the apartment for guns. What would a bartender be doing with concealed weapons?

  “Time for us to go to work on our little girl here,” J.T. said.

  He said it with a smile.

  McCall became very still. His world telescoped down to just the areas of interest that he needed. When he moved it was with such fluidity, such economy, that he didn’t appear to be moving at all. He was standing helpless in front of the three thugs one moment.

  And then he wasn’t.

  McCall picked up the glass bowl of M&M’s and threw them up into J.T.’s eyes, startling him. Smashed the bowl down onto the coffee table, shattering it, slammed the long jagged edge into J.T.’s throat before he could move a muscle. Blood gushed out of the carotid artery.

  McCall picked up the Frisbee from the armchair and threw it with deadly accuracy at Sydney, catching him in the throat. The little man gagged, dropping the length of chain, falling to his knees.

  McCall pulled out the Sherlock Holmes Volume I from the bottom shelf of the bookcase as he felt Big Gertie bearing down on him. He grabbed the ornate dagger bookmark out of a page in the Hound of the Baskervilles, turned and stabbed it through Big Gertie’s left eye. He went down to his knees, dropping the baseball bat. McCall caught the bat before it hit the floor and smashed it into Big Gertie’s head, taking out a hefty slice of his brains.

  McCall leaped over the couch, picking up the headphones beside the laptop on the coffee table, wrapped the cords around Sydney’s scrawny neck, and slammed a knee into his back, forcing him farther to the floor. Wrenched back on his neck until Sydney’s violent writhing ceased. McCall let him go. He slid down to the floor and didn’t move.

  McCall took in a deep breath and let it out.

  Remained very still for another long moment.

  He dropped the headphones back onto the coffee table beside the stacked DVDs. He picked up the Frisbee and tossed it back to its spot on the easy chair. He pulled the dagger bookmark out of Big Gertie’s eye. He didn’t bother with the smashed bowl or the spilled M&M’s. He had other bowls in the kitchen and those M&M’s were a little on the stale side anyway.

  Then he looked at the terrified young woman on the couch. She was not moving. She was barely breathing. She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just seen. Or what she had barely seen.

  He picked up the paring knife from the floor, sat on the couch, and gently tore the piece of duct tape from the girl’s mouth. She gasped in air. He raised the paring knife and she cowered away from him. Still gently, he cut the duct tape binding her ankles, then the wrists bound behind her back, careful not to cut her skin. She rubbed her wrists together, shivering now, not trembling.

  “Are they dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t check their pulses.”

  “They’re dead. Where are your clothes?”

  “Big Gertie stripped me and took them in there.”

  She pointed at the bedroom. McCall rose, moved into the bedroom, and saw her clothes, which consisted of panties, jeans, a Boston Red Sox T-shirt, sandals, tossed onto his bed. He walked into the bathroom, examined the side of his head. Big Gertie’s aim had been minimal. He’d just taken a good swing. It had glanced off the side of McCall’s head. If the big man had been a little closer to the top of his head, McCall would be brain-dead now.

  He soaked a washcloth and wiped off the dried blood, particularly around his left eye. The gash was deep. He opened the medicine cabinet, took out some iodine, poured it onto a cotton ball he took from a jar, and pressed it against the wound. It stung like hell. Then he walked back into the bedroom.

  He peeled off the cotton ball and looked in the mirror. The blood was congealing. It looked ugly, but he’d had worse. He tossed the cotton ball into a wastebasket, picked up Margaret’s clothes from his bed, and walked back into the living room.

  Margaret was sitting up now, bare feet on the floor, staring down at J.T., whose blood still gushed out of his severed carotid artery.

  “He always treated me like shit.”

  “Not anymore.”

  McCall dropped her clothes onto the couch, her sandals in front of it. She put on her panties, pulled the Boston Red Sox T-shirt over her head. She slipped on the jeans and stood up, zipping them up. She slid her feet into the sandals and looked at him.

  “That fat fuck did a number on you. That gash looks terrible.”

  “It’s fine.”

  He took her arm.

  “They know where I live,” she said fearfully.

  “They don’t know anything anymore. At least, not about this life.”

  “J.T.’s got other friends.”

  “What do you have at home you can’t live without?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing much.”

  “Good. You’re not going home.”

  “I don’t know if I can walk so good. They beat me up. It’s hard to breathe.”

  “I’ll support you.”

  “Do we have to go right now? Maybe we could wait a few minutes? Not in here—with them. Maybe in your kitchen?”

  “I don’t know if they had any backup. I don’t know if J.T.—that’s his name?” She nodded. “If he was going to call someone when it was all over. To get rid of our bodies. They weren’t going to do that themselves.”

  “What are you going to do about their bodies?”

  “I’ll clean up later. You need to trust me, Margaret. I’m going to take you
somewhere safe. Where no one from J.T.’s world will find you. All right?”

  She nodded. Suddenly reached up a hand and touched his face. He winced.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “The way you moved. What you did to them. It was awesome.”

  “It was necessary.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I want to stay with you,” she whispered.

  “You’ve got a family somewhere who misses you.”

  “They could give a fuck.”

  “You might be surprised. It’s cold outside. I’ll get you a coat.”

  She nodded and he disappeared into the bedroom. She didn’t look at the three bodies around her. She just clenched her hands into fists and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Natalya sat at one of the abandoned chess tables in a corner of Washington Square Park. During the day and the early evenings they were always full of intense men and women who played as if the eyes of the world were on them. But not this late. There were no chess pieces on any of the tables. She wondered where they went at night. Packed away somewhere, to be unpacked the next day for friends and strangers to do battle. She liked the idea of chess, staying several moves ahead of your opponent. She could play, and play well, but no one knew that. No one had ever bothered to test her IQ. She was pretty sure it was fairly high, but it didn’t matter. It was just another secret locked into her secluded world.

  She looked at the Washington Square Arch, silhouetted against the night sky. Somehow she always found it comforting. Her gateway to her new life. There were two statues of George Washington in alcoves, one as a soldier, the other as America’s first president. She thought of a British comedy magician she’d once seen with her mother in a nightclub in Moscow. She remembered his name was Nick Lewin and he’d been very funny. He’d said of George Washington: “A British soldier, went AWOL, did very well for himself.” Her mother had had to explain to her that AWOL meant “Absent Without Leave,” and then had patiently explained what “Absent Without Leave” meant, as if she was still a child of eight. But that was all right. It was her mother’s gentle way. Natalya remembered the magician had taken a ring of hers, the one her mother had given her with the crest of a dragon on it, and he had linked her ring with one of his own. Amazing!

  She looked over at the statue of Garibaldi in the square. She didn’t know who he was—some Italian soldier. The big fountain was off. There was no one in the square, just a few passersby who crossed quickly through it. It felt very different this late at night. Like a moonlit oasis in the center of the great canyons. She loved it during the daylight hours. She would walk from school right to Washington Square Park and find a good spot on one of the benches. The fountain would be pluming water high into the sky, with rainbows dancing through the spray. When the tourists were thronging the square, it had a carnival atmosphere. She remembered one afternoon, about a month after she and her mother had arrived in New York—before the terrible thing that had happened to her—she’d been watching a street performer. He’d been riding on a unicycle, expertly maneuvering the one-wheel bike through the crowd. He’d stopped at the bench right in front of her and motioned to her to “hop on!” She’d shaken her head, but he’d grabbed her hand, and he’d been kind, and he’d assured her he would not let her fall off. She had climbed up onto his shoulders, and he’d held her in place with his hands and unicycled them all over the square, much to the delight of the tourists and the New Yorkers who’d applauded. He had cycled her back to her bench and when she’d climbed off she remembered she was laughing.

  She didn’t do that anymore.

  She shouldn’t have been sitting in her square so late, but she’d felt restless in their tiny apartment. Her mother didn’t usually get home until 3:00 A.M., and she had told her it might be closer to 4:00 A.M. tonight. Something had changed at the club for her. Natalya didn’t know what it was. Her mother was disturbed by it, but God forbid she should share anything important with her daughter. She wanted to protect her, Natalya understood that—but she hadn’t protected her, had she? Anyway, she didn’t want to be protected. She wanted to be included in her mother’s thoughts and fears and dreams. But she wasn’t. She was shut into her own world.

  He approached the chess tables from behind her. He was always quiet when he moved, but she was in her own world. She did not even sense his presence. He glanced around the square. It was completely deserted at this moment.

  He took the polythene baggie out of his overcoat pocket, unzipped it, and removed the moist cloth. Its smell was pungent, and that snapped her head around, but it was too late. He grabbed the back of her head with his left hand and thrust the chloroformed cloth over her nose and mouth. She struggled violently for perhaps four seconds, then slumped unconscious onto the chess table. Rachid appeared beside him. He picked the girl up and heaved her onto his shoulder. He ran out of the square, carrying her to where Salam waited in the Lexus on West Fourth Street with the engine running.

  Bakar Daudov took in a deep breath of night air. Too bad that Katia had forced him into taking this extreme a measure. But it should be effective.

  If not, he’d kill her daughter.

  CHAPTER 12

  The cabdriver who picked them up on Greene Street should have been appearing nightly at Gotham’s Comedy Club on West Twenty-third. He told them jokes all the way up Broadway. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the street, but McCall wished he’d keep his eyes on the road instead of looking in the mirror to see if they were loving the routine. McCall held on to Margaret’s hand tightly. She was wearing one of his overcoats and a Mets baseball cap pulled down low on her forehead. He’d bought a Mets cap because he liked underdogs. The Yankees didn’t need his patronage. The cap cast a shadow on her face. The bruises from the beating J.T. had given her were still evident.

  “You’re not a New Yorker,” the cabbie was saying, with an accent that said he was, born and bred. “Father and daughter, I’m guessing, right? Where ya from?”

  McCall looked at the girl.

  “Golden Valley, outside Minneapolis. Maple Grove really, near Medicine Lake.”

  “Where’s Minneapolis again?” the cabbie asked.

  “Minnesota.”

  “Yeah, right. I never been farther than Brooklyn. Okay, so a tourist, just like you guys, he’s tryin’ to find the Empire State Building. He stops a New Yorker on the street and asks him the way. He stops another New Yorker a couple of blocks down and asks him the way. Finally he stops a guy on East Forty-fourth and says: ‘Can you tell me the way to the Empire State Building, or should I just go fuck myself?’”

  McCall smiled, but it didn’t matter, because the cabbie was laughing so hard at his own joke he wouldn’t have noticed. Beside him, Margaret wasn’t listening. She looked out the window at the drizzling rain, the skyscrapers shining through it, a few heavier drops spattering against the glass pane. McCall looked out. He could see the magnificent Lincoln Center on their left. Then the cabbie pulled off Broadway onto West Sixty-sixth Street.

  “It’s just up here on the right,” McCall said.

  “Oh, yeah, I know where it is,” the cabbie said.

  He pulled up in front of a twenty-story building that had the tarnished elegance of another era clinging to it. The facade had once been bright white, but now it was a dirty beige. The gilt was dull and fragments of stone were chipped off everywhere. The hotel sign had a picture of the Liberty Bell, with its distinctive crack, which McCall thought had become appropriate. The slim neon said: LIBERTY BELLE HOTEL. The neon was new. He remembered the sign being hand-painted in a flowing script. He’d liked that better. The cabbie shut off the meter and McCall leaned forward to pay him. The cabbie was shaking his head, looking up at the crumbling facade.

  “I can take you to a hotel on Amsterdam and Eighty-eighth, not expensive, marble floors, doorman in white gloves, the whole nine.”

  “This has
always been my favorite hotel. It was once the place to stay in New York City.”

  “Yeah, maybe when the Dodgers moved out of Ebbets Field.”

  Margaret got out of the taxi. The cabbie turned around.

  “She is your daughter, right?”

  “She might as well be,” McCall said, paying him. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Have a good night.”

  McCall climbed out after Margaret. The cab pulled away into the sparse traffic. McCall swept the street, not that he expected to find enemies. Old habits. There was virtually no one out walking this late in the rain. He took Margaret’s arm and they moved through the glass doors of the Liberty Belle Hotel.

  The lobby also held echoes of a glorious past, whispering in the corners where heavy armchairs sat, their cushions sagging. There were big ornate couches, in similar need of repair. There were watercolors of New York on the walls, but they’d faded over time, as if they were slowly receding out of their frames. There were a lot of tall plants that looked healthier than the two old people who sat on one of the couches, holding hands. They were talking softly to each other, their words muted. There was a musty smell, like wood smoke and mothballs. A staircase swept up to the second floor. The whole lobby looked like it had been soaked off a furniture calendar, circa 1940. But the woodwork gleamed as if it was polished regularly and the Persian carpets didn’t look as if Aladdin had dropped them off.