All David had to do was go upstairs, hand the flash drive to the district attorney of New York City, and then just wash his hands. Bert would have experts who could dig into the information on the zip drive, and then—
He was moving between two parked cars when he caught the blur of movement in the window glass of a Nissan.
David spun fast, a fist shooting out, striking hard, one knuckle out. He smashed the knuckle into the man’s trachea, and he fell back sputtering, the knife falling from his hand, glinting metallic as it tumbled, and clattered on the cement.
The other two were already coming at him from the other side, crowding him between the parked cars. He ducked as the first swiped at him with a tire iron and smashed a car window, glass raining. David punched him in the groin, and the man folded, going to his knees. David vaulted over him and kicked out hard, catching the next attacker in the gut.
The guy grimaced but was already coming back at him with a short knife. David moved fast, trapping the man’s knife arm between his own arm and his body. He twisted sharply, turning his body, and redirected the man’s knife thrust into the other attacker who was getting to his feet behind him.
The guy grunted, slid off the bloody blade and hit the garage floor with a meaty slap.
David still had the other man’s arm trapped and wrenched it hard. The guy yelled high-pitched like some agonized farm animal. Another sharp twist, and he was rewarded with a wet snap.
The guy screamed more high-pitched than David thought possible. “Fucking broke my arm!”
David grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and slammed his forehead against the hood of a car. He picked his head up, nose bloody, and slammed it down again. A third time for luck. David let go of the man, watched him slide down unconscious, blood trailing red down the hood.
He looked around the parking garage. Cocked his head, listened. He stood, muscles tensed, hands made into tight fists. Nobody else came at him.
He double-timed it into the parking garage elevator and thumbed the lobby button, all thoughts of suits and résumés and ordinary day jobs evaporating.
* * *
He moved through the lobby quickly, not drawing attention to himself, and found the exit to the stairs. He climbed until he reached Bert’s floor, cracked the door and peered into the hallway. When he didn’t see anyone, he stepped out of the stairwell and scooted down the hall, arrived at the corner, and peeked around it at the nurse’s station.
A single nurse sat with her head down, scribbling something into a file folder. David had no idea if one nurse on duty was the usual thing at this hour or if the others were making the rounds, but he didn’t want to dither. He needed to get past her to Bert’s room unseen.
David backed down the hall, and when he thought he heard voices, he ducked into a random room. He turned, poised to apologize but cut himself short.
A full brass band wouldn’t wake the old man in the bed. Some kind of coma patient, David guessed, hooked up to multiple tubes and machines. He looked shriveled and unreal yet at the same time peaceful.
He waited a moment, cracked the door and looked into the hall. Empty. He spied a closet across the hall. There would have been a security keypad if the closet had been for narcotics, but there was just a door. He darted across the hall, entered, and pulled the door shut behind him with a soft click.
Mundane supplies. Latex gloves, antiseptic wipes, paper towels, cotton swabs. He thought for a moment, improvising a plan. He rummaged the closet until he found the box he wanted. Thin-gauged hypodermic needles prepackaged in plastic. He grabbed a few and shoved them into the pocket of his Windbreaker.
After making sure the hall was clear, he darted across to the room with the coma patient again. David found the nurse call button, pressed it, then put it into the hands of the old man and ran from the room.
From the closet, he watched as the frantic nurse came running down the hall and entered the room of the coma patient. That’s right. He’s not supposed to be calling for the nurse, is he? I bet that was a surprise.
He wouldn’t have long. David darted from the closet and jogged past the now-vacant nurse’s station to Bert’s room. He opened it, entered quickly, and closed it quietly behind him with a final look over his should to make sure the nurse hadn’t spotted him.
Bert sat up in bed, paging through an issue of Golf Digest. He looked up when David entered, frowned. “Hello?”
It took Bert a moment to recognize him. “Oh. It’s you.” Bert’s eyes shifted to the door then back to David. They’d only met a few times at office functions. David thought Bert seemed a little grayer than he’d remembered, but after all, the man had recently been shot. That would age anyone.
“You seem surprised to see me, Bert.”
Bert cleared his throat. “No, of course not. It’s just … you got here fast. Good.”
“I was a little worried at first,” David said. “The police you arranged didn’t meet me in the parking garage.”
“No? Well, I’ll … I’ll have to ask about that.”
“But it’s okay,” David said. “I found my way up here just fine.”
Bert was nodding now. “Good. That’s good. Amy’s okay?”
“She’s fine. She trusts you. Thanks for helping us.”
“Of course,” Bert said. “We’ll get this straightened out. I promise. You brought the flash drive?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me, and we’ll make sure it’s safe,” Bert said. “We have people who can break the codes, find out if there’s anything useful on it.”
“In a minute,” David said. “I want to ask you a few questions.”
Bert frowned. “Oh?”
David saw Bert’s hand edging toward the nurse call button.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that, Bert,” David said. “I want this conversation to be private.”
Bert blinked.
David’s gaze shifted to a pole that held a bag of clear liquid, a tube down to Bert’s arm. “What’s that?”
Bert looked. “Just keeping me hydrated.”
David went to it, leaned in, and squinted at the bag of fluid. “Too bad they can’t put some Chivas in there for you.”
Bert laughed nervously.
David took hold of the tube. Bert opened his mouth to object but shut it again.
David pointed at a plastic attachment halfway down the tube. “What’s this?”
“That’s where they give me injections,” Bert said. “Sedatives and so on.”
“I guess it saves poking another hole in your arm, right?”
“That’s the thinking, I guess.”
“So, like I said, I was a little disappointed the police weren’t there in the parking garage. Made me think something had gone wrong.”
“I’m sorry nobody was there to meet you,” Bert said. “I can assure you, we’re going to find out—”
“I didn’t say nobody was there to meet me,” David said. “Just not the police.”
Like any seasoned attorney, Bert understood saying nothing was better than saying the wrong thing. He waited for whatever David said next.
“There were men waiting for me,” David said. “Not nice men. The same sort that tried to get at me and my family at my home. And what I’m wondering, Bert, is how those men knew I would be here.”
David and Bert locked eyes.
“Okay, I see where this is going,” Bert said, his voice becoming firmer. “And you’re chasing a rabbit down the wrong hole. I want you to listen to me because—”
“Don’t do that, Bert.”
“Do what?”
“That thing that men like you do when you think it’s time to take charge of a conversation,” David said. “Like you’ve been very patient with a small child, but now it’s time for the adults to take charge. That’s not going to work with me. I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer them.”
The authority in Bert’s voice kicked up a notch. “This is d
isappointing. I’d have thought a woman as smart as Amy would have picked better. Do you know who I am? I’m one of the most powerful men in this city.”
“No, you’re not, Bert,” David said. “Right now, your entire world is you and me in this room. If I snatched you out of that bed right now, you’d only be the guy with his naked ass hanging out the back of a hospital gown.”
David took one of the plastic wrapped syringes from his pocket. Bert’s eyes focused on it immediately.
“You told Dante Payne I’d be in the parking garage, didn’t you, Bert?”
Bert said nothing.
David peeled the syringe out of the plastic.
“We trusted you,” David said. “You’d been shot, after all. I mean, you had to be on our team, right?”
David pulled the plunger halfway out of the syringe’s cylinder, filling it with air. Bert looked straight ahead, as if he refused to acknowledge what was going on.
“I need to know what happened, Bert.” David inserted the needle of the syringe into the IV. “I want you to imagine how much I love my wife and my children. Compare that with the fact I barely even know you, Bert. Do the math.”
David’s thumb hovered over the plunger. With almost no effort at all, he could push it down, and the air bubble would go right into Bert’s bloodstream.
Bert didn’t look at the syringe, didn’t even look at David. His gaze shot straight ahead, unblinking. A long, heavy pause.
“I wasn’t supposed to be shot,” Bert said at last.
David didn’t move, kept his thumb poised over the syringe. Let him talk.
Letting them talk is always better than making them talk.
“Nobody was supposed to be hurt. Nobody besides the witness, I mean,” Bert said. “I want you to know, David, that I never intended anything to happen to Amy. You have to believe that. If I thought there was a chance of that…”
David didn’t budge, syringe still firmly in his grip.
Bert cleared his throat. “Nothing ever goes quite as planned, I guess.”
“What does Payne have on you?” David asked.
Bert sighed, deflated, but also David thought he looked like a weight had been lifted, as if Bert felt some acute relief at what he was about to confess. Probably it had been gnawing at him a long time.
“I’d been stepping out on Marie,” Bert said.
David fished around in his memory for an image. A woman just a few years younger than Bert with laugh lines and a welcoming disposition, streaks of white just beginning to appear in her hair. Marie, Bert’s wife.
“It was nothing really,” Bert said. “Stupid. And of course Dante Payne had pictures. Thinking back now, I sort of suspect it had been Payne who’d aimed the other woman at me in the first place.”
“You allowed a man to be killed to hide your infidelity?”
Bert rubbed his eyes. “No. No, of course not. Small things at first. Little favors. And then I looked up one day, and I had a leash around my neck. There was money, too. I bought some nice things for Marie, trying to smooth over my guilt. A week in Saint Thomas.”
“It got to the point where you couldn’t say no to him even if you’d wanted to,” David said.
“I could have. If I’d been strong enough to face the music. I wasn’t.”
“When my wife called and arranged for me to come here, you didn’t call the police, did you?”
“No.”
“You called Dante Payne.”
“Yes.”
“You knew he’d send men to kill me and take the flash drive.”
Bert’s eyes shot to the syringe in David’s hand.
David asked, “If I give you the flash drive now, and you hand it over to Payne, will that end it?”
A long pause this time, long enough that David wondered if Bert hadn’t heard him. Bert’s gaze rose slowly, as if he were fighting gravity itself. His gaze met David’s squarely at last.
“No,” Bert said. “He’ll kill you. He’ll kill anyone who might have seen what’s on that drive. He’ll kill Amy.”
Yeah. But I had to ask. Something cold began working its way up David’s spine, but he immediately shook it off. Focus. Set personal feelings aside. Do the job.
“Are you in contact with Payne directly?” David asked.
Bert nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the syringe. “I can get a hold of him if it’s important.”
“It’s important, Bert,” David told him. “It’s your life.”
David looked around, saw a pen and a small pad of paper near the phone. “Give me that pen and paper,” he told Bert.
The district attorney did as he was told.
Keeping one hand on the syringe, David jotted notes onto the pad. He ripped off the top page and handed it to Bert. “That’s a bullet point list of what I want you to say, but you can put it in your own words,” he told him. “Just make it convincing.”
Bert read the paper then looked up at David. The expression on David’s face was stone.
Their eyes locked in cold silence.
Bert picked up the phone and dialed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dante’s secretary transferred the call to his cell. He rode in the back of his limousine on the way to the airport, a dour bodyguard sitting across from him.
Dante frowned at his smartphone screen when he saw who was calling but answered it anyway. “Yes?”
“Your men didn’t show,” Bert said.
“Hold on.”
Dante covered the phone and asked his bodyguard, “Who did we send to the hospital?”
“Carlo and his brother,” the bodyguard said. “And that tagalong idiot that’s always with them. Mustafa.”
Dante sighed. “Have we heard from them?”
“No.”
Dante put the phone back to his ear. “How do you mean?”
“He was just here,” Bert said. “It was my understanding that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Dante’s mind raced. Could his men have gone to the wrong hospital? Idiots. Or maybe they’d been caught in a traffic jam.
“There’s more,” Bert said.
“Tell me.”
“He left the flash drive. I have it right here.”
Dante felt a palpable sense of relief. “That’s one thing at least.”
“I told you,” Bert said. “I don’t want to get caught with this thing. Can you send a man to get it?”
Dante covered the phone again. “Who’s available to run a simple errand?”
“Send Fat Jon,” the bodyguard said.
Fat Jon. Why in hell did he have somebody working for him named Fat Jon?
“I can send somebody right away,” Dante said into the phone. “I’ll send him up to your room.”
“I don’t think it’s smart to be seen with one of your men,” Bert said. “I’m going to wrap it up and leave it at the front desk in the lobby. Don’t worry, it’ll be safe. Tell me your man’s name and I’ll label it.”
They concluded the phone call, and Dante hung up.
Good. He felt much better. The information on the flash drive in the wrong hands would have caused him no end of trouble. Slowly they were cleaning up the mess a bit at a time.
So. What business remained?
There was still the matter of the woman. If she’d seen what was on the flash drive, she’d have to be silenced. Her husband, too, and anyone they may have shown the flash drive to. Every little bit of clutter would have to be swept up. Only when the problem was erased from history as if it had never existed would Dante be able to relax again and return untroubled to his excellent life.
The limousine driver took the LaGuardia exit, and they spotted Yousef Haddad standing at the edge of a loading zone. He wore an olive suit with a muted red tie and carried an overnight bag. He stood straight and grim, and there was a small opening in the crowd around him as if some bleak aura kept others at bay. To Dante, Haddad looked every inch a cold and ruthless killer, but of course he knew the man and had
seen his bloody work firsthand.
The limousine glided to a halt in front of Yousef Haddad, and Dante climbed out. The two men embraced briefly, patting each other on the back, then returned to the car and drove away.
Dante filled a tumbler with good Scotch from the limousine’s bar, dropped in two ice cubes. “Do you want a drink? I’m having one.”
“Thank you, no,” Yousef said. “Do you have the items I asked for?”
Dante nodded at the bodyguard who slid a case across the floor to Yousef.
“If these aren’t adequate we can find you something else,” Dante assured Yousef.
Yousef put the case on his lap and opened it to inspect the contents.
The twin .40 caliber Glocks were a bit generic but wouldn’t surprise him with any problems. Yousef had known Dante would provide him with adequate weaponry. Likely, the pistols were from Dante’s own stash. Extra magazines. Shoulder holsters. A six-inch belt knife. Stun gun. He took off his jacket and began strapping on the gear.
“These will do,” Yousef said.
“There have been developments,” Dante said.
Yousef’s eyes met Dante’s. “Oh?”
“Three others answered my call to arms just as you did.”
Yousef frowned. “You didn’t think I could manage it?”
Dante held up a placating hand. “I thought you could use some seasoned soldiers. They understand you’re in charge. Use them as you will.”
Yousef thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “Anything else?”
“Part of your work has already been done.” Dante briefly explained.
“I told you to wait for me,” Yousef said.
“The opportunity arose while you were en route,” Dante said. “It doesn’t matter. One of my men is on the way to get the flash drive.”
“And you sent men after Sparrow?”
Dante shrugged, a half apology. “It seemed an opportunity.”
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