The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  McCall was dressed in black jeans, a black sweater, a charcoal tweed sport jacket, and Nike Air Pegasus + 26 running shoes in black with two pale red stripes. They were scuffed and almost blackened with filth.

  Kostmayer had told him Jimmy’s route. He lived in Hell’s Kitchen on West Fifty-second Street. He would start his run on Ninth Avenue, cut across to Broadway at West Forty-ninth Street and then on through Times Square. Eventually he would end the run at Penn Station and walk home.

  McCall glanced at his watch. If Jimmy was still in shape, he’d be here any second. He looked up. A figure ran into Times Square past the TKTS booth sign on the pedestrian side, glanced at the tables on the island, and immediately changed direction. He slowed his pace and jogged up to McCall’s table.

  Jimmy was slight, maybe five-ten, in his late forties, in a dark green running suit with Mizuno Wave Creation Anthracite/Orange Nikes. McCall knew runners liked them because they had an intercool full-length midsole ventilation system. Jimmy had wavy black hair, shot through with gray, that was pulled back into a small ponytail. His face was long and angular. His eyes were hazel, not bright. He looked like he worked for a big accounting firm, fourteenth office on a low floor somewhere toward the back.

  Jimmy jogged in place at the table. If he was surprised to see McCall he didn’t show it.

  “If you want to talk to me, McCall, you’ll need to keep up. I’ll slow my pace.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” McCall said, wryly, getting up.

  Jimmy looked down automatically at McCall’s running shoes. Dedicated runners tended to do that.

  “Where’ve you been walking, in the sewers?”

  McCall didn’t want to tell him that was exactly where he’d been walking, so he let it go. Jimmy started to run, at a relaxed rhythm, a little faster than a jog. McCall kept up with him.

  “How’d those tranquilizer darts work out for you?” Jimmy asked as they continued down Broadway.

  “They were fine. I need something else and I need it in a hurry.”

  “You know I’m not with The Company any longer?”

  “If you were, I wouldn’t be talking to you. When did you leave?”

  “Retired three years ago. Sarah said it was about time. Every day I walked out of the house she was afraid I wouldn’t come home that night. Like a cop’s wife, you know? It ate away at her.”

  “So now she’s relieved?”

  “Yeah. I work for a private security firm. Lots of rich folks, lots of CEOs who spend most of their time in the Bahamas, old buildings converted into multimillion-dollar businesses that a street punk could knock over with a penknife. I was always good with alarm systems.”

  “Bypassing them.”

  “And installing them.”

  “And not as many bad guys shoot at you.”

  “That’s what sold it for Sarah. She wouldn’t be too happy to know I’m running with you.”

  “Control still have a leash on you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a leash. He reaches out from time to time. He’s a hard man to say no to. He always looked out for me. He’s the best.”

  “He was.”

  Jimmy nodded. “Mickey told me about Elena Petrov. I know you two were close. Mickey said Control feels badly about what happened.”

  “Doesn’t change anything.”

  “You’re not much on forgiving and forgetting, are you, McCall?”

  “I forgive, I don’t forget. You didn’t mention to Control that you’d helped me out?”

  “I heard you’d resigned. Mickey said you’d been off the radar for a while. I figured you didn’t want anyone to know you were shooting curare mixed with strychnine into bad guys. You get one more free favor.”

  “Because you always liked me?”

  “I never got to know you. I don’t know anyone who did. But you’re also a hard man to say no to. You want to take a rest?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What do you need?”

  McCall took a small piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to Jimmy. He unfolded it and brought them to a stop himself. McCall steadied his heart rate and glanced around. They were at the corner of Broadway and West Thirty-seventh. There were no pedestrians here at all. A few more yellow cabs passed them, along with a waste removal truck.

  “You got a picture of this?” Jimmy asked.

  “No, I drew it from memory.”

  “But that’s where the initials go?”

  “Yes, on the bottom right-hand side.”

  “This the correct dimension of the letters?”

  “Close enough.”

  “When do you need this?”

  “Before Danil Gershon’s funeral this afternoon.”

  Jimmy nodded, refolded the piece of paper, and slipped it into the pocket of his running pants. “I didn’t know him. I heard he was a good agent.”

  “He was.”

  Jimmy noted the change in McCall’s voice.

  “You have something to do with his death?”

  “I’d like to think I didn’t, but I might have been the last nail in his coffin. Can you do this for me?”

  “If I can’t, Mickey will get in touch with you. If I can…?”

  “Leave it in an envelope at the reception desk in the Plaza Hotel addressed to Honus Wagner.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “One of the best shortstops in baseball. In twenty-one seasons he hit .329 and stole 722 bases. He was one of the original five-man class inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1936.”

  “That’s pretty safe,” Jimmy said dryly.

  He looked at McCall as if wanting to say something meaningful to him, but couldn’t find the right words.

  “You’re a free agent,” he said instead. “You don’t owe The Company anything.” McCall didn’t answer. “Mickey says you’re living in New York now. Come and have dinner sometime. Sarah would be glad to see you again.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. But thanks for the offer.”

  McCall winced, rubbing the top of his left shoulder.

  “That old bullet wound still giving you trouble?”

  “The memory does.”

  “Can’t let it go?”

  “Unfinished business.”

  Jimmy nodded. “You want to run with me to Penn Station?”

  “I’ll bet it’s still there.”

  Jimmy smiled for the first time. “Good to see you again, McCall. I know Danil’s death was no hit-and-run accident. Don’t get yourself killed.”

  Jimmy ran on down Broadway. McCall watched him for a while, but then his figure grew fainter in the gloom and the last of night swallowed him up.

  * * *

  McCall went back to his apartment. There was a package waiting for him on the living-room coffee table. No note, but he knew it was from Kostmayer. He unwrapped it. Inside was a Beretta M19. It was nestled in a Bianchi M12 holster. McCall put the gun and holster into a drawer in the bedroom. Then he slept for five hours. He felt safe enough. Kirov didn’t know his home address. But he did know where he worked. Daudov and his enforcers must have followed him from Bentleys to the Liberty Belle Hotel last Saturday night.

  McCall showered, changed underwear and shoes, kept the rest of his outfit the same. He put the Beretta M19 into his coat pocket, forsaking the holster. He took the subway uptown to Fifty-ninth Street. He picked up the small package addressed to Honus Wagner at the reception desk in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel at 11:30 A.M. He sat in one of the round yellow chairs in the massive lobby beneath a chandelier that looked like it had been rescued from the Titanic ballroom and tore open the envelope.

  The item was perfect.

  He took a cab to Lexington and Fifty-second Street and walked into Manhattan Electronics. Brahms echoed, but discreetly this morning. He actually recognized the piece, a song for tenor or soprano and piano: “Nightingales Swoop Happily.” Somehow incongruous when thinking of his Brahms. Mary, dressed today in Madison Avenue chic, with her Diane von F
urstenberg dark tortoiseshell glasses firmly in place, was actually serving a customer. She turned when the little bell tinkled over the doorway as McCall entered. She smiled and hearts leaped and ships sank. She motioned for him to go on into the back.

  Brahms sat in his cramped office with what looked like a pile of bills. He was looking at a spreadsheet on his Mac screen and frowning. McCall laid the item on top of the bills. Brahms glanced down at it and nodded.

  “Come back in an hour.”

  “Have you noticed anything suspicious in the last couple of days?”

  “Mary flirted with me yesterday afternoon.”

  “No one following you?”

  “I don’t get followed anymore, McCall, except by bill collectors. So what’s happened to you that you’re worried about an old man’s safety?”

  “A bunch of Chechen enforcers tried to kill me.”

  “I’m guessing they failed. Hilda says when I state the obvious God rolls his eyes.”

  “I want to make sure they don’t go after the people I care about.”

  “I’d be touched if I thought I was one of them.” But he smiled, then frowned again at the computer screen, as if it was betraying him. “Go away. Leave your cell phone.”

  “I need to make one call.”

  McCall took out his iPhone and dialed Bentleys bar. Then he set his iPhone on Brahms’s desk, walked through the store and out onto Lexington Avenue.

  He hailed a cab and it took him to McSorley’s Old Ale House on East Seventh Street in the East Village. McCall got out of the cab, paid the driver, and looked at the front of the place. The sign said: ESTABLISHED 1854. When he walked inside the blast of sound hit him in a wave. It was jammed to the rafters at lunchtime. He made his way to the bar, where there was one seat at the end. He took it. The bartender, who looked like he’d been working there since Jimmy Cagney was a regular, moved down to him. McCall ordered a Rolling Rock pale lager. They only served beer and wine in this establishment. McCall looked at a sign over the bar that said: BE GOOD OR BE GONE.

  Words to live by.

  Andrew Ladd walked into the place three minutes later. He spotted McCall at the bar, and moved over to it. The man on the stool beside McCall got up to leave. Laddie took his place.

  “Hey, Bobby.”

  “It’s Robert,” McCall said.

  Laddie nodded. “Okay.”

  He ordered a Bud Light and waited until the bartender served it to him before he looked back at McCall.

  “You missed four shifts. We tried calling you, but it kept going to voice mail. I looked up your address and went to the street. It doesn’t exist.”

  “I’ve had to lie to you. Mainly by omission. I can’t tell you or Harvey my real name.”

  “I always wondered a little about you,” Laddie said. “Something just not quite right. I didn’t think you were a criminal, but … just something.”

  “I’m not on the run from the police.” McCall thought about the death toll at Grand Central Station and at the Liberty Belle Hotel. “But there are criminal elements who are looking for me. I don’t want them coming to Bentleys and endangering any of you. Just tell Harvey I’ve had to go out of town. Personal stuff. If I can come back sometime, I’d like to. I like working behind the bar with you.”

  “Thanks.” Laddie took a swallow of the Bud Light. “Are you in the witness protection program?”

  “No.”

  “Just who the hell are you?”

  McCall shook his head.

  “But you’re one of the good guys, I know that,” Laddie said.

  “Depends on your perspective,” McCall said, and smiled.

  “I’ll handle things with Harvey. The servers will be distraught. Especially Amanda. Who’s she going to go punk for with you gone?”

  “You’ll be a good surrogate.”

  “She likes older men.” He grinned. “Sorry. Hostess Sherry will be very upset. You’re her favorite. Come back when you can.”

  “How’s your play coming along?”

  “Nearly done with the first draft. It’s an erotic comedy.”

  “I’ll be at the first night when it opens off-Broadway.”

  Laddie toasted that idea, finished off the beer, and stood.

  “You’re not going to get yourself killed, are you?”

  “I have to go back into an old life. It’s dangerous.”

  “Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in,” Laddie said, dramatically, very Al Pacino. “Michael Corleone in Godfather III.”

  “I remember.”

  McCall wrote something on the back of a McSorley’s cocktail napkin and handed it to the young bartender.

  “My cell number. Don’t give it to anyone else. But if someone you don’t like the look of walks into Bentleys, if some real alarm bells go off in your head, call me.”

  Laddie nodded and slipped the cocktail napkin into his pocket. He held out his hand. McCall shook it.

  “Good luck,” Laddie said. “I really will miss working with you behind the bar.”

  He turned around and walked out of the noisy pub.

  McCall was surprised to know that he would miss it also.

  He took a cab back to Manhattan Electronics. Brahms had gone. Mary handed him the item. Her look was quizzical.

  “Brahms says you are, and this is the quote: ‘Good to go.’”

  McCall nodded and dropped the item into the pocket of his jacket.

  “What am I missing here?”

  “Boys and their toys. Where is he?”

  “He went home for lunch. His wife makes spectacular holishkes, I believe that’s stuffed cabbage, on Wednesdays with Jewish apple cake. Oh, and here’s your cell phone. He said he added the software you needed.”

  “Good.” McCall dropped the iPhone into his jacket pocket. “Do you know if he’s going to the funeral?”

  “He said your friend was a good man, but he doesn’t go to funerals. Besides, and here’s the next quote: ‘Tell him I’m busy this afternoon and probably half the night getting him something that will result in my own funeral’ end-quote. I know you’re someone from his past. I know his past is mysterious. I think it was dangerous. Just little things he lets slip sometimes when he’s melancholy and has a few too many nips at the dry sherry bottle he keeps in his desk. You’re not putting him in harm’s way, are you?”

  She asked him the question so ingenuously that McCall was at a loss for an answer.

  “He told me he owes you big time.”

  “He doesn’t owe me anything,” McCall said.

  “Don’t bring him any more grief, please. I love him dearly. Like a dad. Mine died when I was four.”

  The bell tinkled and a young man walked into the store as if on an urgent quest. Mary moved over to him. McCall walked out.

  He did some shopping at the Manhattan Mall on Broadway and Thirty-third. After that he had one more delivery to make and then he was good to go.

  CHAPTER 35

  Green-Wood Cemetery lies a few blocks southwest of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It has comforted New Yorkers for 175 years. McCall remembered a reporter for the New York Times once wrote: “It is the ambition of every New Yorker to live upon Fifth Avenue, take his airings in the Park, and sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood.”

  There was a big turnout for Danil Gershon’s funeral. Most of them were his family and friends, which appeared to number in the dozens. Few, if any, of them knew Gershon’s real job. They believed he worked as a consultant to an independent contractor for the U.S. Army that provided extra security in hostile theaters around the globe. People crowded one side of the grave, dug beneath some beautiful black beech trees, a few of them twisted into pretzel shapes, somehow Faustian and eerie. McCall knew about three hundred of the century-old trees in the cemetery had been damaged by Hurricane Sandy. They were still being worked on. As he’d walked in, he’d seen the green feral parrots that nested in the huge ornate gates to the cemetery. He’d walked down the paths and noted again the
big mausoleums with Tiffany glass in the windows. He had been to the famed cemetery once before to visit the grave of Laura Keene. She was an actress who had been on stage the night Lincoln had been shot. McCall had promised to lay a single rose at the headstone for a young woman he’d met in Paris. He’d never heard the story of why she’d wanted him to do that, but he’d promised he would.

  McCall stood back in the shelter of some trees, the leaves damp with rain. A misting drizzle was just starting to shroud the scene. He spotted Control standing about forty feet from Danil’s graveside, Mickey Kostmayer beside him. Control had on a dark raincoat. Kostmayer was in a black Windbreaker and dark jeans. Near them was Jimmy and his wife, Sarah. She was a tall girl, towering over her husband, very pretty with blond hair and pale eyes. She could look severe at times, especially when she’d looked in McCall’s direction in the past, wondering if he was going to get her husband killed. But he’d always liked her. Beside them were some Company men McCall didn’t know. You didn’t get to meet a lot of the folks back in Virginia when you were out in the field all the time. He did recognize one of them: Jason Mazer, who stood on Control’s right side. He was in his early fifties, a stocky, volatile Company man, also a “Control” in the field. McCall remembered Control had described him as “somewhat deceptive and manipulating,” which McCall had always thought was a little pot-calling-the-kettle-black. He’d never had a run-in with Mazer, but if anyone on the shadowy Company committee was demanding McCall’s head on a plate, it would be him. There was one tousled blond head not far from the group: Granny, but he stood alone, like McCall, to pay his respects. If Control knew McCall was there, he didn’t acknowledge him. Kostmayer looked once in his direction, then back to where the minister was walking up, shaking hands with the bereaved. His eulogy would start soon.