McCall closed the stairwell door. Footsteps were pounding up the stairs from below. He saw a figure in black climbing fast. McCall took the stairs two at a time up to the next floor where the door read 7TH FLOOR. He pushed it open. Margaret was standing in an identical corridor to the one on the floor below, just as dimly lit. She looked scared.
“More of J.T.’s guys?”
“No. They’re here for me. In five seconds a man’s going to come through this door with a gun in his hand. You’ve just come out of your hotel room. Distract him.”
McCall stepped to the side of the stairs door. Margaret stepped back to the closed door of room 710. She unbuttoned her blouse and took it off. The fire alarm continued to wail. The stairs door burst open and the figure in black came through it. He was holding a M92 semiautomatic pistol in his hand. He stopped dead at the sight of Margaret, supposedly leaving her hotel room, pulling on her blouse, hastily getting dressed.
“Is it a real fire?” she asked him, anxiously, ignoring the gun. “Or is it a false alarm?”
The enforcer’s eyes went instinctively to her bra. McCall hit him in the side of the head and knocked the gun from his hand. It fell to the carpet. McCall thrust his arm around the enforcer’s throat, cutting off his air. The Chechen writhed, clutching wildly at McCall, but unconsciousness came fast. McCall twisted his head savagely to one side, snapping his neck. He went limp in his arms. McCall dragged him to a doorway and through it. He was in a service area. He opened the door of a broom closet with a sink and shelves piled with rolls of toilet paper, soaps, shampoo kits. He dumped the body onto the floor and closed the door. He ran back into the corridor to Margaret, leaned down, and picked up the enforcer’s fallen M92 pistol.
“Did you kill him?”
Her voice was calm. She’d seen him kill three men in his apartment.
“Didn’t have a choice.” He threw open the door to the stairs. “Back down!”
She just nodded, buttoning up her blouse.
There was a lot of movement on the stairs as they descended back to the sixth floor. People had come out of their hotel rooms, hearing the fire alarm, and were using the stairs, not the elevator, descending toward the lobby. Some were dressed, others had thrown coats over pajamas and T-shirts or sweats. They were climbing down from the floors above. McCall and Margaret reached the door to the sixth floor. McCall kept Margaret behind him as he opened it.
The door to Margaret’s hotel room hung ajar. Daudov and the Chechen were no doubt searching it to see if they were hiding somewhere. McCall ran to the elevator, punched the button and the door slid open. Margaret was breathless beside him.
“We’re taking the elevator?”
“It’s not a real fire.”
They stepped inside. McCall pressed the button for the second floor and the door closed. The elevator descended. The insistent shrill of the alarm bell was especially loud in the enclosed interior.
“Why are they trying to kill you?”
“Been rescuing too many damsels in distress.”
They reached the second floor. McCall had the M92 in his hand. The elevator door slid open. There were no hotel rooms on this floor, only offices and ballrooms. The lighting on the floor was brighter than in the other hotel corridors. It was deserted. There was a carpeted staircase to their right, which led down to the lobby.
A black-suited enforcer was running up it. McCall grabbed Margaret’s hand and ran to the first door across from them. Carlyle Ballroom. The door was locked. McCall blew it open, thrust Margaret ahead in front of him, and closed the door.
Not in time.
In McCall’s peripheral vision he saw the enforcer reach the top of the lobby staircase.
McCall flipped on the light switch.
The ballroom was set up for a convention. There was a high dais with a microphone on his left, the mic not yet connected. Behind it had been erected a forty-by-sixty picture of a cruise ship on the high seas. There were travel photos on big Chinese screens all through the room, breaking it up. There were small tables with brochures on them and empty pitchers and glasses. There were models of the cruise ship throughout the ballroom, with cutouts to show the various decks and myriad fun activities. There were also large pieces of scenery of a deck with a shuffleboard court on it, a climbing mountain, a wading pool for kids, pieces of other decks with portholes, all big props in an elaborate presentation.
“Get behind the dais!” McCall said.
Margaret ran to the dais and crouched down behind it.
McCall took a penknife out of his pocket, flipped out the long blade, knelt beside one of the sockets at the foot of the wall, and jammed the blade into it. Then he straightened and kicked the blade further in with the heel of his shoe.
The lights fused.
Darkness descended.
There were heavy drapes drawn at the three big windows.
McCall ran to the dais and knelt beside Margaret, gripping her shoulder.
“Don’t move from this spot,” he whispered. “I’ll come back for you.”
There wasn’t time for more.
The door to the ballroom opened. A sliver of light from the corridor cut across the darkness. The figure of the enforcer moved inside, gun in hand.
McCall ran, crouched low, through the darkened obstacle course of the room, kneeling beside a hatchway leading out onto the shuffleboard court.
The ballroom door closed. McCall could hear the light switch being snapped up and down.
No lights.
He waited.
* * *
One floor below, right beneath McCall, Mickey Kostmayer had been forced back into the deserted kitchen by the gunfire. He knelt down beside one of the counters in the darkness. Two of the men from the Lincoln town car had come in after him. They’d fanned out to his right and left. He figured they were Chechen enforcers from the nightclub where Katia worked. Probably didn’t care for the fact that McCall had rescued Natalya from them without a shot being fired. Kind of embarrassing. So tonight they were making up for it.
One of them raised his M92 pistol and raked the counter above Kostmayer’s head. Pots and pans pinged and were blown off their hooks, hitting the floor as the bullets ricocheted. Kostmayer was in a bad position. He picked up a frying pan and threw it along the floor. When it hit the stove at the other end two things happened simultaneously. One enforcer spun around and fired into the darkness. Kostmayer ran to his left and fired. The enforcer staggered and turned back. Kostmayer fired again, the bullet smashing into the man’s forehead, sending him to the ground. The second man opened fire on Kostmayer, but he was no longer in the same place.
Kostmayer maneuvered more to his left until he was behind the second assassin. Shot him in the back of the head. He gave himself a moment, his breath coming quickly. Then he ran, crouched low, to the door leading out into a darkened dining room. He pushed it open. It was deserted.
He ran through it.
Where are you, McCall?
* * *
In the Carlyle Ballroom McCall had moved to another piece of cruise ship scenery, a staircase leading up to a portion of a deck with deck chairs. The door to the ballroom opened again and three shadowy figures entered. McCall could hear them moving.
And then the drapes at one of the big windows were pulled back.
Moonlight flooded into the large space. McCall could see the silhouetted figures. They were dressed in black, so it was hard to define them until they moved again. But a spear of light caught Bakar Daudov’s face. He’d obviously been called, probably on a walkie, to let him know his quarry was on the second floor in one of the ballrooms.
Visibility in the room was poor, but McCall needed it to be worse.
He ran, still crouched low, to one of the tables where he remembered seeing a pack of matches in a gilt ashtray. He found them, then ran back to the fake deck. Beside him in the piece of scenery was the staircase that led up to the fake deck. He climbed the staircase. Caught some movement. Daudov and
his enforcers were penetrating deeper into the obstacle course. They didn’t have much time. The fire department would be on its way, summoned by the alarm, false or not. McCall didn’t know what had happened in the lobby, but he knew Sam wouldn’t have given up the hotel room number without a fight. Shots may have been fired. Hotel guests were climbing down the staircase and were about to descend on the lobby. One or more of them might already have called the cops on their cell phones.
McCall reached the top of the staircase. He did not step through onto the sliver of boat deck. He lit one of the matches and ran it under the sprinkler in the ceiling.
It took three seconds.
The sprinkler erupted.
McCall climbed down as the rest of the sprinklers in the ceiling came on. Suddenly the entire ballroom was under a deluge of water. McCall looked out at the surreal scene. The pieces of scenery and tables looked like they they’d just been hit by a tropical rainstorm.
Visibility was virtually nonexistent.
McCall was drenched in ten seconds, but so were Daudov and the enforcers. Two of them, in frustration, fired machinegun-like bursts into the room. It lit them up in the downpour.
McCall threw up the M92 pistol and fired, killing one of them, wounding the other.
An angry voice shouted, “Stop firing!”
It was Daudov.
McCall headed back toward the raised dais and Margaret.
* * *
Below the ballroom, Kostmayer moved through a small cocktail bar, closed up and deserted, out into the ground-floor corridor leading to the lobby. He pocketed his Beretta 9 mm when he heard the sound of raised and confused voices over the noise of the ringing fire alarm. He ran into the lobby just like he was a hotel guest. There were twenty real hotel guests, some of them permanent residents, Kostmayer thought, milling around. A young attractive brunette wearing the hotel uniform, gray slacks, and a blue blazer with the words LIBERTY BELLE HOTEL stitched onto one of the lapels, ran into the lobby. She had a small silver nameplate on the other lapel that said CHLOE. She knelt down and put her arms around twin girls, aged four, who were crying, trying to comfort them. She looked around, stunned.
Firemen were moving into the lobby. The sound of police sirens was echoing, getting louder. Kostmayer saw an old woman with a white poodle in her arms beckoning frantically to the firemen from behind the reception counter. She was ashen.
“He’s been shot!” she called out. “Mr. Kinney! Please hurry!”
One of the firefighters talked into a walkie.
Kostmayer made it to the reception counter before any of them. Mrs. Gilmore was trying to comfort her poodle who quivered in her arms. Kostmayer knelt beside Sam Kinney.
“Sam!” he whispered.
The old agent opened only his left eye, looked up at him blankly for a moment, then recognized him. He tried to speak, but couldn’t.
“Fire department’s here,” Kostmayer said. “That means paramedics. Cops are on their way, I can hear the sirens. Liked the fire alarm gag, Sam. Very cool.”
Sam reached up with a trembling hand and gripped Kostmayer’s arm.
He managed one word.
“McCall?”
* * *
In the ballroom the rain came down in torrents from the ceiling. McCall slipped and slid around the jutting pieces of furniture and cruise ship scenery. Water streamed down his face. He could barely see. The wailing of the fire alarm ceased. The silence was oppressive. Only the drumming of the downpour echoed in it.
McCall ran to where the shape of the dais loomed. Gunfire exploded around him. He fired blindly back in the rainstorm and slid behind the podium. Found Margaret there. She tried to get up.
“Don’t move!” McCall hissed.
Bullets splintered wood from the dais.
“Sorry, sorry,” she murmured.
It was almost a whimper. She was shivering violently. Her new blouse clung to her breasts like sodden tissue paper. Her hair was like lank, dripping seaweed.
“I’m getting you out of here,” McCall said. “Don’t leave my side.”
“As if.”
He gripped her hand with his left hand, holding the M92 pistol in his right and they ran out from behind the protection of the dais.
No one fired on them.
They slid on the slippery floor. McCall stopped, both of them crouched low behind a table of brochures. They squinted through the blinding deluge the sprinklers had created.
There was no movement in the ballroom.
McCall heard faint sirens and then they ceased. Cops arriving. Daudov would have cut his losses and got the hell out of there fast. His window of opportunity had closed.
But McCall waited five long seconds in the torrential downpour to be sure.
Then he silently urged Margaret on toward the back of the ballroom.
They skirted around the large piece of boat scenery with the shuffleboard deck and ran to where a door was outlined in the wall. McCall pushed it open, gun held up. Outside was a dimly lit back corridor.
Deserted.
They moved into it. They looked at each other and Margaret burst out laughing. A combination of terror and genuine surprise.
“We look like drowned rats!”
“Stay with me,” McCall said, running a hand through his saturated hair. He motioned to one end of the corridor where another narrower staircase led down to the ground floor. Margaret nodded. They ran to the staircase and descended.
At the bottom on the ground floor the gift shop was closed and dark. The gifts looked like they’d been put into the window when people wore “I Like Ike” campaign buttons. There was an archway off to their right through which they could see a small sliver of the lobby.
It was a madhouse. Paramedics were pushing a gurney with Sam Kinney on it. His shirt was soaked in blood. His face was the color of faded parchment. McCall couldn’t see too much of it, but there was something wrong with his eyes. The paramedics were giving him oxygen and a makeshift saline drip had been hooked up. There was a brunette hotel desk clerk running with them. She was holding one of Sam’s hands tightly. McCall could see firefighters and cops in the lobby and some of the guests, old and young, and small children who looked around wide-eyed. From the sound of it there must have been thirty people in the lobby, if not more.
There was no sign of Kostmayer.
McCall changed position so he could get a better look at the paramedics wheeling Sam away.
I don’t want any trouble here, McCall. I’m too old for guys in dark coats with guns to come in looking to blow your head off.
The paramedics wheeled Sam through the lobby doors out of the Liberty Belle Hotel. The brunette desk clerk went with them, still holding on to Sam’s hand.
McCall dropped the M92 pistol into a gilt trash bin. He didn’t want to be armed if he ran into one of the cops.
“What do we do?” Margaret asked, shivering again.
“Walk out of here. We heard the fire alarm and left our hotel room like everyone else. There’s a side entrance to the hotel beyond the gift shop.”
“We’re soaking wet.”
“We can’t do anything about that. Come on.”
McCall knew the cops would lock down the multiple homicide crime scene within seconds. They walked quickly past the gift shop. McCall looked over his shoulder. Through the archway he could see uniformed police were gathering the hotel guests along one side of the lobby. A couple of detectives were questioning old Mrs. Gilmore. She held on to her poodle as if they were going to physically wrench the animal out of her arms. She looked at the place where Sam had disappeared.
She was crying.
McCall and Margaret reached the side entrance to the hotel and stepped out onto Amsterdam Avenue.
“Keep walking,” McCall said.
They walked down to the corner of Sixty-fifth Street.
Kostmayer was waiting for them there.
“How’d you guys get all wet?”
“Doesn’t matter,” M
cCall said. “How bad is Sam?”
“Gunshot wound in the shoulder. And his right eye is hanging out of its socket. The paramedics are taking him to Lenox Hill.”
McCall nodded. Kostmayer could see the anguish in his eyes.
“He had our back, old Sam,” Kostmayer said.
“Yes, he did.”
McCall raised his hand at a passing yellow cab that pulled up to the curb.
“Get her to the Port Authority. Give her that envelope of money. Wait until the Greyhound bus pulls out.”
“No one’s after her.”
“Wait anyway. I’m going to the hospital.” McCall took Margaret’s hand. “You okay?”
“I’m drenched from head to foot, these are the only clothes I got, and I’m going home. I’m great. I hope your friend Sam is okay.”
She kissed McCall lightly on the mouth.
He turned and walked farther down Amsterdam Avenue. Two more police cars passed him, lights turning, sirens blaring, and pulled up to the side entrance of the Liberty Belle Hotel. Uniformed cops jumped out and sealed off the entrance.
Kostmayer opened the back door of the cab.
“He’s not much for good-byes,” he said.
“Sure, he is.”
Margaret slid inside. Kostmayer followed her onto the backseat and leaned forward to the cabbie.
“Port Authority.”
The cabbie nodded. “Fire at the Liberty Belle, huh? That place has always been a death trap.”
Kostmayer nodded at the unconscious irony.
“Yeah,” he said.
The cabbie pulled away from the curb. Margaret turned to look out the back window, but McCall was gone.
* * *
McCall stayed at the hospital most of the night. He wanted to make sure Daudov didn’t go there to finish what he started, or send one of his enforcers. Sam had killed one of his own. But they didn’t arrive. Chloe, the desk clerk, had stayed for about an hour, then left. After that, no one had come into the quiet waiting room. McCall knew Sam had lost his wife to heart disease some years before. He thought there was a daughter somewhere, but she and Sam were estranged. There might have been a son in New York, also estranged, like McCall’s own son. Sam was good at estranging. No son, daughter, sister, brother, or friend came to the hospital as McCall sat there hour after hour. They operated on the old spook at 10:49 P.M and removed the bullet from his lung in a three-hour procedure. The lung had collapsed, but they repaired it. They had saved his right eye, but his vision from it would be permanently impaired.
The Equalizer Page 28