The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  She shook her head, her small hands clenching into fists of anger and frustration—at herself. “I usually do. I always do. But I just wanted to get out of that club tonight. I wanted to get home to my baby.”

  “And when you got to your apartment, she wasn’t there.”

  “No.”

  “Did she leave a note?”

  “No.”

  “Was there any sign of forced entry? Any kind of a struggle?”

  Now the tears came. Katia shook her head, biting down on her lip hard enough to make it bleed.

  “Is this like Natalya?” McCall asked. “To go out at night when you’re at the club?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. She doesn’t … she doesn’t speak, as I’m sure you’re aware. She doesn’t communicate well. But that’s all I could think of. That she’d felt restless or trapped in the apartment, or something frightened her.”

  “She wouldn’t have walked to Dolls? Maybe she was there, but none of your friends saw her.”

  “She hates that place.”

  “So you went to Washington Square Park, and she wasn’t there.” Katia shook her head. “Where does she like to sit in the square?”

  “On the benches. I looked at every one of them, to see if there was a note or … a handkerchief, a glove, something of hers, but there was nothing.”

  She was beginning to hyperventilate, and this time McCall took both of her hands. “Nice and easy,” he said gently. “Deep breaths. What makes you think that Kirov’s enforcer kidnapped her?”

  “He talked to me last night. About the dancing and … sleeping with some of the customers. He didn’t put it like that, didn’t come right out and say it. They want little bits of information that might be useful to Kirov. Blackmail, like you said. When I refused, Bakar asked about Natalya. He said they hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks at the club. That he missed her.”

  “You took that as a threat?”

  “Yes, but no one listening would have.”

  “So that’s why you started dancing tonight.”

  “I told him that was all I would do. I told him it didn’t matter who he had invited to put their hands on me. I would not allow it. I would call the police.”

  “When did you have that conversation with him?”

  “Ten o’clock. About an hour before you came to the club.” She forced back the tears. “This was stupid of me to involve you. You’re a bartender. I don’t know what you said to Mr. Gardiner to make him change his mind, but Bakar Daudov cannot be intimidated.”

  “You’d be surprised. He won’t harm Natalya because he wants a cause and effect. You do exactly as you’re told, and your daughter will be returned to you. But it won’t be right away. He’ll let you spend a sleepless night worrying about her. Call the hospitals, Bellevue first. Just to make sure. He’ll expect you to do that. He’ll check that you did. Then, if they have no record of her, call Daudov. Do you know how to reach him?”

  “Yes, all of the girls have his office number at the club.”

  “Will he still be there?”

  “He rarely leaves before four in the morning.”

  “Call him. Don’t even mention Natalya. Tell him you want to talk to him. You’ll meet him tomorrow at Bentleys at 4:30 P.M. It’s pretty quiet at that time. Wait for him in that same first booth by the window where Natalya was today. Don’t look at me when you come in. The other bartender will bring you drinks. When Daudov sits down, tell him you know he took Natalya and ask him again what he wants you to do.”

  “I know what he wants.”

  “Make him repeat it. Make it look as if you’re trying to reason with him.”

  “I’m not going to do that. I’m going to tell him I’ll do anything he wants, fuck anyone he wants, betray anyone he wants, as long as he’ll bring my daughter back to me.”

  “Fine, tell him that. Just keep talking to him as long as you can. When your meeting is over, he’ll just get up and walk away. He’ll want to make sure you’re going to keep your promise. He’ll have someone lined up at the club for you. Maybe not tomorrow night. He’ll make you sweat it a couple of days. Once he sees that you’re going to be a good girl, once you’ve taken your first trip up to a room on the second floor, then he’ll bring Natalya home. But that’s not going to happen.”

  Fear leaped into Katia’s eyes. “Why not?”

  “Because she’ll already be home.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “You don’t have to. You can call the police. They’ll go to Dolls and interrogate Daudov. He’ll tell them he knows nothing about your daughter’s disappearance and there’ll be no evidence that he does. But do exactly what I tell you and I promise to bring Natalya home safe and unharmed.”

  “I did not believe even Daudov would risk such an act. To kidnap my daughter.”

  McCall picked up on it immediately. “Why not?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to say anything more. She looked across at him with determination in her eyes now. Tears gone.

  “I’ll do what you ask.”

  “After you’ve called Daudov, call me to let me know what was said. Don’t worry about Natalya tonight. They’ll keep her safe. It’s in their interest to do so.”

  “You don’t understand,” Katia said, and her voice was soft again. “Natalya is special. She is fragile. She lives in a world not even I can enter.”

  “Has she always been like this?”

  “Not as bad as she is now. When we got to New York…”

  She let the sentence trail off.

  “What happened?”

  She stood up. “I’ll call you,” she said, and walked away from the table and out of Veselka. Through the window, McCall watched her figure become shrouded in the curtain of rain and then disappear.

  * * *

  This time when McCall opened his apartment door he knew someone was inside waiting for him. From the door there was a very short hallway that led into the living-room area. A misty Turner painting of London in the rain hung there over a tall table on McCall’s left where he’d throw mail if he ever got any. To his right was an entrance to the narrow kitchen.

  The apartment was in shadows. McCall closed the door silently behind him. He edged toward the kitchen. From this angle, whoever was in the living room could not see him, nor could he see who it was—if anyone was there. There was no movement or sound. It was just the instincts McCall should have had when J.T. and company were lying in wait for him. He wished fervently now that he’d taken the Sig Sauer 227 with him when he’d left the apartment with Margaret. He hadn’t thought he’d need it. Not to go to the Liberty Belle Hotel. After all, he’d left his would-be killers on his living-room floor.

  McCall padded into the kitchen. Pale moonlight shone through the window. He opened the microwave.

  It was empty.

  “I like the Smith and Wesson 500 revolver in the microwave,” a raised voice said. “It’s a nice touch. But I didn’t want you to think I was a thief and shoot me with it.”

  McCall walked out of the kitchen through the archway into the living room.

  Mickey Kostmayer sat on the couch waiting for him. The Smith & Wesson 500 revolver was on the coffee table along with a new glass bowl filled with M&M’s. The annotated Sherlock Holmes book was back in its place on the bookshelves. The dagger bookmark was lying on a lower shelf. There was no blood or shreds of skin on it. All of the broken glass had been swept up. All of the blood had been wiped off the hardwood floor.

  The bodies of J.T., Big Gertie, and Sydney were gone.

  Kostmayer was sipping a brandy in the shadows. He hadn’t turned on any lights. He’d opened the blinds a little and dissected moonlight drifted in. He was looking at the bronze sculpture.

  “Is that sea nymph walking her big fish?”

  “It’s an eel,” McCall said. “A Mark Newman bronze sculpture that cost more than the rent on this apartment for a year.”

  “I was never much into art.
I helped myself to a glass of your Louis Royer Force 53 VSOP. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I keep it specially for intruders. You cleaned up.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want you to come home to a messy place.”

  “Full cleanup?”

  “Oh, yeah. Those thugs were never here. No one will ever find them.”

  “Do you need to know why I killed them?”

  “Not really. You have a way of pissing people off and sometimes they’re very dangerous folks. You get hurt?”

  Almost unconsciously McCall touched the side of his head where Gertie had hit him with the baseball bat.

  “Not badly.”

  “Were they waiting in here for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you get so careless, McCall?”

  McCall sighed, sitting in the big leather armchair opposite the couch. “I’m a little rusty. How did you find me?”

  “I’ve known you were in this apartment for about six months. I just never did anything about it.”

  “Control doesn’t know?”

  “No. But he knows where you work.”

  McCall nodded. “Chase Granger. Subtlety is not his long suit. He tried following me from the 21 Club, but I lost him.”

  “But he did get a picture of you on his iPhone that he sent to Control.”

  McCall nodded again. “So what’s Control going to do about it?”

  Kostmayer shrugged. “I don’t know. Come and see you. Try and persuade you to come in from the cold.”

  “It isn’t cold in this neighborhood, Mickey. The sun shines brightly and the people are warm and friendly.”

  “Yeah, I could see that from the weapons the Three Stooges had on them,” Kostmayer agreed wryly. “You stopped a lady of the night from having the crap beat out of her and word spread on the street. That was just the kind of intel Control had been waiting to hear. Something out of the ordinary happening in a local neighborhood.”

  “He knew I was in New York City?”

  “He guessed that’s where you’d gone to ground.”

  “And how did you find me before anyone else?”

  “I have my ways, McCall. You know that.”

  He swirled the brandy around in the glass, staring at it.

  “Something changed for you,” McCall said. “That’s why you came here tonight.”

  “Good thing I did. You needed my help.”

  “I’d have cleaned up. What is it?”

  McCall already felt a very cold chill creeping through his body. It was as if he knew the answer, but he’d been waiting for someone else to voice it aloud.

  “Elena’s dead,” Kostmayer said.

  The words clung in the shadows. McCall let the pain sink in. It was like a sickness, permeating every part of his body.

  “When?”

  “Two nights ago.”

  “Where?”

  “In some kind of a Disaster Park outside Moscow. Never seen anything like it. A wrecked train, crashed airplane, a downed helicopter caught up in power lines. Russian Disneyland. The sniper was up in the helicopter.”

  “Who was her local Control in the field?”

  There was another long pause as Kostmayer swirled the brandy around in his glass.

  “Drink it or put it down,” McCall said.

  Kostmayer took another swallow.

  “It was Control. He wanted to run her himself. I’d tell you he feels badly about what happened, but with Control you never know. Cologne in his veins. She died in his arms.”

  McCall got up, walked to where the small wet bar was set up, took the VSOP brandy bottle, and poured himself a glass. He took a raw, burning swallow.

  “If Control were here he’d tell you she made the ultimate sacrifice for her country,” Kostmayer said, and regretted it.

  “You should leave.”

  Kostmayer finished his brandy. He stood up, picked up the Smith & Wesson 500 revolver, and walked into the kitchen. He put his brandy glass in the dishwasher and the revolver into the microwave. When he walked back into the living room, McCall had finished his brandy, but had not moved.

  “I was there in Moscow,” Kostmayer said quietly. “I let the bastard get away.”

  “I’m sure you did everything you could.”

  “It wasn’t enough.”

  “Sometimes it’s not.”

  Kostmayer walked to the short hallway leading to the front door.

  “Where is Brahms these days?” McCall asked, not looking at him.

  “Still in the Big Apple. Running an electronics store in midtown, Lexington and Fifty-second. If you see him, give him my regards.”

  “He doesn’t like you.”

  “He’s good at disguising his feelings,” Kostmayer said wryly. “Like you.”

  He opened the apartment door.

  “It’s good to see you, Mickey,” McCall said.

  Kostmayer nodded. “Call me if you need me. You know my cell number.”

  He closed the apartment door behind him.

  McCall stood in the velvet darkness, memories assailing him again, but this time only of Elena Petrov. The two of them running through a market in Istanbul … on a sailboat off the Serbian coast, near Split, drinking wine … Elena laughing at him, which she did a lot … her clothes falling to the floor, her slim body glowing in the moonlight coming through windows of hotel rooms and small apartments and a villa in Villefranche-sur-Mer in the South of France where they’d once stayed for three weeks. Her arms and legs wrapping around him, the ragged scars on her perfect body, her sweet kisses, her ironic barbs, she was delicate but oh so tough, so smart, and yet very vulnerable. He had always been frightened for her safety, since that night in Serbia at the hotel where she’d told him he shouldn’t smoke and then had stood naked and pointed a gun at his back. He’d left her that morning. He’d left her a lot of mornings. But they’d always, somehow, found each other again. And then too much time passed. Too much heartache and silence. He’d wanted to see her again. But he’d kept putting it off. He had resigned. He didn’t want even the most fragile spider’s thread to encircle him and trap him back into his old way of life. But he’d been going to call her private cell number. When the time was right.

  And now that time was gone.

  McCall closed his eyes. He felt hot tears behind the lids, but they didn’t fall.

  They never did.

  * * *

  Kuzbec sat in the dimness of the small attic bedroom, right beside the door, and watched her sleep. It was fitful. Disturbed. But for a prison, she could have done worse. Single bed, firm mattress, nice furnishings, deep-pile carpet, blinds at the rain-lashed window. Her dark hair lay splayed out on the pillow around her angelic face. She looked a lot like her mother, but Katia did not have her inner beauty. There was something … he didn’t know the right English word for it … luminous about the girl’s skin, the luster of her hair, the glowing depths of her dark eyes.

  The bedroom door opened and Bakar Daudov entered.

  “Did she eat anything?”

  “No,” Kuzbec said. “She refused. She was hysterical. I had to hold her down with Salam and give her a sedative.”

  Daudov looked at him, alarmed. “You injected her?”

  “Salam did. He was a medical student at the Pskov Central Oblast Hospital in Moscow. When she quieted down, I offered her pajamas, but she refused. She just got into the bed and pulled the cover over her. She was asleep in thirty seconds.”

  “And she hasn’t moved?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If she has to go to the bathroom, you accompany her. If she needs water, bring her a drink. Make her eat food. I do not want her malnourished.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kuzbec wondered how many women Bakar Daudov had seduced in this gothic house near the river. Right here in this very room. Probably dozens, and most of them against their will. Daudov walked over and looked down at the teenage girl. Kuzbec knew he would not touch Natalya. Even Daudov would
not dare to take such a risk. The thought of it made Kuzbec smile to himself. No, the deadly killer would not dare, but he had.

  Everyone believed Natalya’s attacker on a dark New York street had been a member of some street gang. She had been in the wrong neighborhood, after all. The police were convinced it was a random rape and mugging. No one knew he had followed the girl. Had taken advantage of her disorientation. She had never seen his face. She had not described her attacker. She had said nothing at all.

  Kuzbec remembered how her hair had smelled. Olive oil shampoo. Her skin had been soft. He had intended to strip her naked, but that didn’t happen. He’d only had time to throw her to the ground, pull down her jeans, enter her from behind, violate her, and hit her in the face. Then he’d escaped into the night. Two weeks later, when she’d come into the club with her mother, she’d looked right at him without a flicker of recognition. She didn’t know.

  No one knew.

  Daudov turned away from the bed and walked out of the room without speaking again to him. A key turned in the lock. Kuzbec also had a key in his pocket. The young man cursed his boss. Lucky the arrogant prick had the friendship of Borislav Kirov, or he might find a stiletto knife in his heart one night while he slept.

  Kuzbec looked back at the girl. It would be so easy for him to take her. But the consequences would be dire. He could not blame an attack on some faceless intruder who had overpowered him. The place was like a fortress. Daudov had a private security force. No one could get in.

  So he watched Natalya sleep with his own little secret close to his heart. There might be another time. He could wait. He would be patient. And if her mother continued to defy them, Bakar Daudov would give the order to dispose of Natalya.

  Kuzbec would have his chance then.

  CHAPTER 14

  Manhattan Electronics was nestled between a dry cleaners and a Subway restaurant on Lexington Avenue just south of Fifty-second Street. McCall was not surprised to hear Brahms blasting from speakers when he walked into the store. It was small and jammed with electronic equipment, some of which looked as if it had been there since Bill Gates was tinkering in his garage. There were also Macs and the latest PCs and iPads and what looked like props from all seven Star Wars movies, only junkier, strewn on counters and piled up in corners. There was a long glass counter with newer stuff on display beneath it.