The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  “I don’t. What’s going on here?”

  “Have you been asked by Bakar Daudov or Mr. Kirov to do more than dance with the customers?”

  Melody took a step back, as if she’d been slapped. Her demeanor changed. She tried to find some righteous indignation, but it didn’t work too well.

  “I’m not a whore,” she spat out.

  “I know you’re not,” McCall said gently. “You might consider finding a new club to dance in.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then be careful,” he said. “Be aware.”

  She took in a breath and nodded. “I try to be. Most of the time it’s fine. Most of the customers just come to the club to dance.”

  “Try and keep it that way.”

  McCall walked through the cocktail tables and skirted the dance floor. He didn’t look at Daudov. He was pretty sure the enforcer did not recognize him from Bentleys. He had not once looked in the direction of the bar when he’d been sitting in the booth there with Katia.

  McCall reached the alcove.

  Kuzbec stepped right in front of him.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “I need to talk to Mr. Kirov.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “He’ll see me without one.”

  “Mr. Kirov is busy tonight. If you’ll leave your name with me…”

  “Next time you’re guarding a prisoner,” McCall said conversationally, “I’d take the ear pods out of your ears. Just a suggestion.”

  It took a couple of moments, then realization flared in Kuzbec’s eyes. He almost lunged for McCall. A voice from behind him said, “Bring him in, Kuzbec.”

  Kuzbec stopped, staring at McCall, humiliation in his eyes. His hands clenched into fists. Slowly he got himself under control. McCall gave him the time. The young Chechen stepped to one side and McCall walked through the archway into the alcove.

  It held only the one long table. There was white latticework all around it, like a gazebo, with vines and bougainvillea laced through it. The table would seat at least eight. It was set for an early dinner, but it hadn’t been served yet.

  Borislav Kirov sat at the center of the table. He was a compact, muscular man with dark brown hair. His eyes were brown and alert and highly intelligent. He had a close-cropped beard, a cleft chin, thin lips. He was in his forties, wearing a dark suit. McCall noticed his manicure was perfect. There was a whiff of cologne from him, something expensive. He regarded McCall with a kind of frankness that was both welcoming and wary.

  There were four other men at the table. One of them, at the end of the table on Kirov’s left, was dressed in what McCall had come to think of as Chechen black, but he was not from Chechnya. His features put him more into Serbia or Croatia. He was probably in his late thirties. He watched McCall approach with gray eyes that were as dead as a fish. He had powerful hands, which lay on the table in front of him. No rings of any kind. No suggestion of marital or other affiliations. Colorless. Just the kind of barracuda who would be circling the likes of Borislav Kirov.

  At the other end of the table was a guy who looked like he sold used cars in a suburb of Dallas. He wore a tan sport coat, a gaudy string tie, a black cowboy hat, no doubt alligator stitched cowboy boots hidden beneath the table. He was in the middle of an expansive story, his jeweled hand still waving vaguely in the air. He looked surprised by the interruption. Next to Kirov, on his right, was another young Chechen turk whom McCall had not seen before. On Kirov’s immediate left was a gaunt, ratty little man in a pinstriped suit who looked somehow haunted. As if he’d wandered into the alcove, sat down, and realized he was at a very dangerous table.

  McCall stopped in front of the table. He didn’t move. The next move was Kirov’s. Kirov nodded at the Slavonic type. The man got to his feet with a kind of liquid grace. He walked to McCall’s side and gestured with one hand. McCall leaned against the table and splayed his legs. The Slav frisked him expertly. When he was finished he looked at Kirov and shook his head and then returned to his seat and placed his hands, palms down, back on the table.

  McCall straightened, his eyes never leaving Borislav Kirov’s face.

  Kirov said, “You took something that belongs to me last night.”

  “The girl doesn’t belong to you,” McCall said. “Neither does her mother.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one.”

  “You acted alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a very sophisticated break-in,” Kirov said. “You used tranquilizer darts. Very effective.”

  “I used to work with big cats. Philadelphia zoo.”

  “They opened a big cat exhibit there, I believe.”

  “That was a while ago. In 2006. First Niagara Big Cat Falls. In addition to the big cats there were three snow leopards, three cougar kittens, and I brought in a jaguar cub. When the three Amur tiger cubs were born in 2007 I left.”

  “Taking with you some of the weaponry that was made available in your work.”

  “I was going to go on safari in Zimbabwe. It didn’t work out.”

  “I didn’t know Katia had such a special friend.”

  “I’m not special.”

  “You took out four of my colleagues. That makes you special.”

  “They weren’t expecting an attack. Here’s the deal, Mr. Kirov. Katia works in your club. She likes it here. She’s grateful for the job. She enjoyed being a cocktail waitress. But you want her to dance. She can do that. But that’s all she’s going to do for you.”

  Kirov had not moved since McCall had entered the alcove. Now he took out a package of Sobranie Russian cigarettes. It had SOBRANIE OF LONDON COCKTAIL 100’S on it. He took a distinctive silver lighter out of his pocket. McCall noted the initials BK on the bottom. He flicked the flame to the end of the cigarette, pocketed the lighter, blew out the smoke, and regarded McCall again with that frankness that almost bordered on cordiality.

  “You rescued this young woman on your own?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not even a backup?”

  McCall let that one go. Kostmayer had stayed in the car.

  “So, what are you, exactly?” Kirov asked. “Some kind of Don Quixote? Tilting at windmills?”

  McCall said nothing.

  Kirov leaned forward. Now any irony or amusement had left his eyes.

  “You risked your life. Katia must be very special to you.”

  “I’m just someone she knows.”

  “Her lover.”

  “No.”

  “A vigilante.”

  “If you want to call me that.”

  “It was a very dangerous thing you did. And very stupid.”

  “Maybe. But Natalya is somewhere safe right now. And so is Katia.”

  Kirov shrugged. “At some moment they’ll have to continue with their lives.”

  “That’s right. Tomorrow morning Natalya is going to go back to school. Tomorrow night Katia is going to come here to the club and put on one of those revealing, but very stylish, dresses and be charming and vivacious and dance with the customers. You’ve got other dancers you can coerce into after-hours activities.”

  “And you don’t care about them?”

  “I don’t know them. I know Katia. You’re going to leave her alone.”

  Finally the Dallas car salesman could stand it no longer. He was grinning.

  “Damn! This is fun.” He extended a beefy hand. “Samuel Clemens, sir. My ma was a big Mark Twain reader. Named her first boy Samuel. I’m working here with Mr. Kirov. He’s opening a new Dolls nightclub in Fort Worth and I’m gonna run it for him.”

  Okay, Fort Worth, not Dallas, McCall thought. Pretty close.

  McCall did not shake hands. Clemens let his hand drop, but was still grinning.

  “Mr. Kirov’s been telling me about his dancers. How he looks after them. Think I’m gettin’ a pretty good picture here. I’d say you’re in a heap of trouble, son.”

  Sa
muel Clemens was probably only a couple of years older than McCall, but he let it go.

  “Good that you know what you’re getting into,” McCall said. “Sinatra liked to hang out with the mob, but they never took him seriously. He didn’t interfere with business.”

  “This is damn excitin’.”

  “You got any daughters, Mr. Clemens?”

  “My eldest, Bonnie, is twenty-four, an attorney, don’t that beat all? And I’ve got a teenage brat, Zoey, a giant pain in the butt.”

  “Will this still be exciting when you do something that pisses Mr. Kirov off and he grabs your pain-in-the-butt teenage daughter and lets one of his errand boys fondle her breast while she’s sleeping?”

  That shut Clemens up. Kirov’s eyes flicked over McCall’s right shoulder, to where McCall knew Kuzbec was standing. Then those eyes came right back to McCall’s face.

  “The girl wasn’t to be touched,” Kirov said.

  “Good help is hard to find.”

  “So, in your vigilante world, what happens now, Mr.…?”

  “Bobby Maclain,” McCall said. “Nothing happens now. At least, not to Katia or her daughter. Life goes on. No one gets hurt. I never walk back into this nightclub and you never hear from me again.”

  “And if life doesn’t go on the way you want it to?”

  McCall leaned against the table with one hand.

  With his other hand he attached the little silver bug that Brahms had given him beneath the table. His fingers found a groove and wedged it in. It had a strong adhesive on the top. It would not fall off if the table was jostled or even moved. Of course, if someone was looking for a bug, it would be found, but McCall didn’t think Kirov had regular sweeps through the club. He was secure here. This very table was where he watched and listened and did business.

  It was sacrosanct.

  “Katia’s not important to you,” McCall said.

  Kirov’s expression betrayed nothing. “How can you be sure of that?”

  A tickle crawled up McCall’s spine. Something Katia had said.

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

  Something Melody had echoed. Katia was important to them. Perhaps Borislav Kirov had his own sexual fantasies about her.

  “If you harass her in any way, from this moment on…” McCall leaned forward even farther and his voice was soft, although every syllable echoed in the small alcove. “I’ll know about it. Whether she confides in me or not. I’ll come back to this club. But I’ll be coming back for you, Boris. May I call you Boris? I’ll hold you personally responsible for anything bad that happens to Katia or Natalya.”

  “Am I supposed to be scared by that?” Kirov asked.

  “I would be,” McCall said.

  He leaned back, the fingers of his left hand gently brushing against the little silver bug. Still in place. He’d seen the Slavonic type push himself off the table in his peripheral vision. His coat was unbuttoned. McCall could see the butt of a gun in a shoulder holster. But the man didn’t move.

  Now there was amusement in Borislav Kirov’s eyes as he regarded McCall.

  “I’ve gotta say…” And then he laughed. “You’ve got balls. You take something from me in the middle of the night, you march in here without a weapon, and threaten me to my face. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since that’s happened to me. If ever.”

  “I figured it would be a first,” McCall said.

  Now Kuzbec grabbed McCall’s right arm from behind. McCall didn’t bother throwing him off. Kirov made an impatient gesture and Kuzbec let him go.

  “I’m glad Natalya’s safe,” Kirov said. “She’s a fragile girl. When Katia returns to work her duties will be made clear. They won’t include anything but dancing. That was…” He paused. “Someone else’s idea.”

  Bakar Daudov, McCall thought. You’d better rein in your pit bull a little tighter, Boris.

  “This is a nightclub, Mr. Maclain, not a strip club or a brothel. There are fifteen Dolls clubs in the United States and more are going to open. Like the one in Mr. Clemens’s area of Fort Worth. I’m not looking for any trouble. No bad press. No misguided citizen complaining to the authorities. You’ve changed your friend’s situation. We’ll leave it at that.”

  McCall nodded. He glanced once at the Slavonic type standing at the end of the table. His tension was palpable. But he would do nothing. McCall smiled pleasantly at him and walked out of the alcove, across the nightclub and out the front door, past the line of waiting patrons desperate to get in.

  He felt exactly like he’d felt when he’d stepped into the alley to stop J.T. from beating Margaret to death. He was not supposed to interfere. He was supposed to stay off the radar. But he was back on the radar, wasn’t he?

  And as Samuel Clemens would say: Damn! That was excitin’!

  This time interfering felt good.

  CHAPTER 18

  Karen Armstrong loved going home on the weekends. Cold Spring was a beautiful village right on the Hudson River in Putnam County, New York. She’d adored the summers there, and even the winters, when the wind was howling and the rain sleeting. Being in the house now made her feel comfortable and secure. Especially when she watched her family.

  Her mother looked like a slightly older version of herself, long blond hair, blue cornflower eyes, crow’s feet around them, pale skin, lots of freckles across her face and chest. She described herself as an aging hippie who’d actually missed the hippie era of the sixties, although Karen was convinced she’d been conceived at a free outdoor Grateful Dead concert in Golden Gate Park where her mom had first met her dad. That chance sexual encounter had led to twenty-five years of marriage and three kids, Karen being the first, followed by her brother Todd, two years younger, and her sister Kelly, who was fourteen and had been a surprise. Karen’s mother, whom everyone called Mandy, including her children, always wore soft silk blouses and long diaphanous skirts and enough jewellery to make Mr. T in that old A-Team TV series jealous. Her dad looked like that guy who played the leading role in Picket Fences—Karen could never remember his name—lean and tanned with a lot of lines etching his face and a terrific smile.

  Karen watched her family playing flag football on the front lawn. Her brother, Todd, was very aggressive and her sister, Kelly, looked like she wanted to roll her eyes and be anywhere else, but then her competitive spirit took over and she tackled her brother to the ground. He jumped up and tried to patiently explain to her there was no tackling in flag football. Her mom and dad just laughed. The family golden retriever, Maggie, was romping around, but somehow she could never quite catch the football. She only managed to trip up the players who shouted at her.

  The Gleasons from next door had joined in the game. Karen couldn’t remember a summer when the Gleasons hadn’t played flag football with her family on her front lawn. Ali Gleason was her mom’s best friend and they’d lived next door to the Armstrongs forever. Ali and Tim Gleason had four children, two boys and two girls. The girls were away at American University in D.C., but both boys were older, in their mid-twenties, Jerry and Blake, both of them attorneys in New York City. They were like her older brothers, that’s how close the two families were. They were in the thick of the football game.

  Karen looked at Blake now, leaping up to catch the football that her dad had thrown across the lawn—interception!—avoiding being tackled again by Kelly, who either didn’t understand the rules or chose to ignore them. Karen smiled to herself. Good thing these two strapping Gleason youths weren’t her real brothers, as she and Blake had mutually discovered all about sex in an overturned rowboat on the sand on the beach when they were both fourteen. No one ever knew about it. Neither of them had ever told their siblings or their parents. It was their secret. It had happened quite a few more times after that, but once they’d gone to high school, other lustful crushes had happened, and the two of them remained just great friends. How couldn’t they be? They had grown up within a few yards of each oth
er.

  Karen looked out at the beautiful Hudson River beyond their mansion. Her father told her they did not have a mansion, it was a nice Colonial four-bedroom on the river, but Karen had seen the square footage of most Manhattan apartments, and to her their Cold Spring home was a mansion.

  She knew where her father kept his gun.

  Karen walked back inside the house into the kitchen. She picked up her dad’s ring of keys off the counter and moved quickly to her dad’s office. She had left the windows open in the living room so she could hear the football game in progress. She didn’t want to be caught and have to explain. On her dad’s desk was a laptop and overflowing manila files with sketches in them. He was an architect.

  She tried a small silver key in the lock of the bottom drawer. It was tricky at first, because it was slightly bent, but then it turned and she slid the drawer open. It was filled with old pens and batteries and crap. In the bottom of the drawer was a Smith & Wesson SD9 VE pistol with a 10 + 1 capacity. There was a box of ammunition beside it. She checked that the gun was unloaded, then set it onto the desk chair along with the box of ammo. She closed the drawer and locked it again. And straightened.

  And thought she was going to have a coronary.

  Her sister Kelly was standing in the doorway.

  She couldn’t see the gun and the box of ammo from where she was standing. The chair was blocked by the desk.

  “What are you doing in here?” she demanded.

  Younger sisters always demanded.

  “I was looking for some Wite-Out. Dad’s only got dried-up tubes he’s kept for God knows why. What’s up?”

  “Mandy wants you on our team. We’re getting out butts kicked.”

  She rushed out of the doorway. Karen knew her sister. If she had seen the gun, she would have said something. She wouldn’t have let it go to chat about it with Big Sis at a later time. Kelly wore her heart on her sleeve.

  Karen picked up the Smith & Wesson gun and the box of ammo and walked quickly out into the ground-floor hallway. The front door was still ajar. No one locked their doors in Cold Spring. Karen could hear the football game continuing with more cries and falling and laughter. She ran back into the kitchen and dropped her father’s ring of keys on the counter exactly where she’d found them. Then she ran up the stairs to her old room on the second floor. She grabbed her backpack from the floor, stuffed the Smith & Wesson SD9 way down in the bottom, with the box of ammo, and zipped it up.