by Tom Barber
For the best-intentioned reasons, he’d lied to her about Vargas’ absence for the past four and a half weeks but he couldn’t lie to her about this.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled up a chair, sitting in front of her. He felt her eyes scanning his face, beginning to sense something was wrong but not yet sure what it was.
‘Did someone hurt you?’ she asked, looking at a trickle of blood that had dried by his temple. He reached up and touched it, remembering the pistol-whip sucker shot that had caused it in the Park Avenue hotel bar.
‘I walked into something.’
‘You’re always injuring yourself. You need to be more careful.’
He smiled. ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’
The smile quickly faded and he hesitated, trying to find the words, feeling the girl’s eyes on him as she waited. The room was silent, Isabel sitting there wondering what was going on but seemingly happy to have Archer all to herself.
‘Do you remember those dreams you told me about?’ Archer said eventually. ‘The ones with your mother?’
She nodded. ‘We talk to each other.’
‘There’s going to be someone else there now too with you both.’
‘Who?’
‘Alice.’
He paused.
‘She had to go away.’
‘When is she coming back?’
‘She’s not, sweetheart. She’s in the same place as your mother and the rest of your family.’
Isabel’s brown eyes stared at him as she took in what he was saying.
Then they filled with tears as realisation started to dawn, just like Vargas’ in the car park after she’d been shot.
‘She died?’
Archer swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes. She did.’
He paused.
‘But now she’ll be there too when you have your dreams. She’ll be with your other mother too; I think they’ll already be friends.’
Isabel didn’t speak for a moment; then she looked at him again. ‘How? They never met.’
‘Because they both love you. And that’ll bring them together. That never stops, no matter where you are. And that means they’ll always be with you, wherever you go. They’ll see everything you do, everyone you meet, everything.’
Isabel blinked, releasing the tears from her wide eyes as she realised that Vargas was gone. ‘I can’t touch her anymore.’
‘But she’ll never leave you. And you don’t need to touch her for that.’
She looked up, her wide brown eyes focusing on him through the tears.
‘Are you going to leave me too?’
He shook his head, looking her in the eyes. In that moment, every reservation he’d had about getting close to the child disappeared forever.
‘I’m never going anywhere. I promise.’
‘Really?’
He nodded, reaching forward and squeezing her hands. Silence fell again as they looked at each other, the little girl sitting on the edge of the table, him on the chair in front of her.
Then Archer leaned forward and Isabel hugged him, her arms around his neck, his own around her small back as she started to cry.
Inside his Wall Street apartment, Henderson was just doing a final wipe-down with bleach, making sure he’d left no trace in case the cops came looking.
He was working methodically but fast; after what he and Tully had done to the cops in the hospital they knew the net would be closing in. Unlike Carlos Goya, who’d been easy enough to track to that Scranton motel, and Santiago, who’d been at his apartment fresh from lock-up when they came knocking, they wouldn’t leave a trail for anyone to follow. The NYPD would never see or hear from them again, their job finally done, disappearing like their victims without a trace into thin air.
He looked around the Financial District apartment, his home for the past ten months. The apartment was basic, white walls, plain furniture, black kitchen units. Like the warehouse they used as a base, which was rented under a front company selling pipes, this place was leased for a twenty four month period under a fake name for just over $1.1 million; he still had four months of the lease to go, but Santiago and Goya’s killing of the escort four weeks ago had brought that departure forward. It didn’t matter; he wasn’t exactly strapped for cash.
They’d set out on this path six years ago in San Diego after Lister was released from prison and had been reunited with Henderson and Tully. Each had a different perspective from the same horrific experience, but they’d all agreed on a mutual objective and had set out east.
They’d stopped a thousand miles into their journey in Denver, realising that if they were going to do this they’d need money. It’d been Lister’s idea to take over a sex-trade operation; she’d realised how lucrative it could be, making thousands of dollars a day with the right girls and clients. Pimps pushed girls and boys out onto the corner for one thing; money. The higher class the service, the more money flowed in, particularly if you threw blackmail into the mix. Most pimps wouldn’t care who they worked for; if they were paid enough, they’d sell their own mother for cash.
So the three of them decided to target one of the more successful operations in the city and take it over.
Lister had assumed they’d just shoot their targets and dump their bodies somewhere but Henderson and Tully had said different. Just before they’d left California, the pair had taken up with a Mesa cartel meth cooker who’d taught them about lye and the best way to dispose of a corpse. Their first target had been a lucrative East Colfax sex gang and when they’d killed the six men who’d headed up the operation, Henderson and Tully had demonstrated to Lister just how well the magic marinade worked. She’d been impressed. No evidence to incriminate them.
When the six men had been disposed of, Henderson, Tully and Lister took over the operation, the middle-men not caring who was running the show as long as they received their cut. However, the money made from the escort service hadn’t been enough for them. They were after the big fish and with their blackmail operation soon up and running, a john didn’t end up just paying for that one trick.
That year in Denver, the trio had earned just over two million dollars. Changing the operation from high-class hookers into a top-quality escort service, the girls had some pretty important clients captured on camera. Professional athletes, politicians, lawyers; their careers and reputations potentially ruined if their less reputable activities were made public.
Selecting their targets carefully, the money soon started to roll in, tens of thousands each week as they made a fortune from their blackmail racket, their victims having no idea who they were and so unable to exact revenge. A prominent Nuggets player had called their bluff, refusing to pay, and Lister had immediately sold some very interesting photos to the city papers for almost seven figures. His expensive divorce a few weeks later had also been big news.
The girls never met the trio running the show; their pimps did, but they knew better than to talk, taking their extra cash their new bosses were paying them and doing exactly as instructed. They were well aware their previous top guys had disappeared when these three had suddenly turned up and taken over the operation, and none of them wanted the same thing happening to them.
However, things went sour when a prominent politician who had everything to lose hired some people to track down who was behind the extortion racket and take care of the problem. Henderson had killed them both, but hadn’t had time to dispose of the bodies, discovering late that night when watching the news that they were ex Denver PD, which meant he’d just opened up a huge can of worms.
Within thirty six hours, the two pimps who’d worked for the three of them were both dead and the trio were out of the State, two million dollars richer and their operation immaculately well honed. They left the hookers; they’d never seen them and therefore couldn’t identify them.
A thousand miles later, Chicago was next, and by that point they knew exactly what to do. They picked out a similar South Side operation, taking out the guys a
t the top and leaving just four lowlifes on the street, the pile of money the group was accruing growing by the day. Most people had secrets; however, for the clients snared in their traps, Henderson or the other two were there with a camera to catch theirs.
They’d stayed in Chicago until the beginning of the year when they’d moved on to their final target, Pittsburgh. However, when they’d arrived they’d discovered things had changed and their ultimate target wasn’t in the city anymore. It’d taken time to find out where they’d gone, but they’d finally tracked the leader to New York City. When the trio had arrived in NYC it’d been business as usual, sourcing a successful operation but then there’d been a totally unexpected development. This had worked in their favour, their team gaining a fourth member who’d proved invaluable.
Although the most unexpected and unlikely of unions, the foursome had worked together like clockwork; after all, they were all bound by a mutual hatred of the same group, an enemy that had brought them together.
The Russian Prizraki in Little Odessa.
THIRTY NINE
The Little Odessa Prizraki were a whole new ballgame; they were vicious, tough and ruthless, other gangs in the city steering well clear of their area by Coney Island. Like Henderson, Tully and Lister, the Russians were also pretty adept at making people disappear so the trio knew going after them was extremely dangerous; if they were caught, they’d pay a very heavy price. However, they’d relished the challenge; this was their ultimate goal and one they’d been planning for years.
Over the last ten months, they’d managed to liquefy eleven Russians, the new member of their team providing invaluable information and helping make the process a whole lot easier. Achieving that number of disappearances without being caught or leaving a trace had been one hell of a feat, but with meticulous planning, inside knowledge and seamless execution they’d pulled it off.
But then the entire operation had been jeopardised by Carlos Goya and Alex Santiago.
Henderson, Tully and Lister had had a rule; never go after cops unless it was absolutely, one hundred per cent necessary. They’d made that mistake in Denver and having only just got away with it, ensured it was the one thing they made crystal clear to the pimps who worked for them. They figured most police departments wouldn’t lose too much sleep over some missing gang members but losing one of their own was a different issue entirely.
However, that was exactly what Goya and Santiago had done. The escort Leann Casey had checked herself into rehab over the summer, which had pissed them all off; they’d already lost three months of earnings from her this year after she got busted and was sent to Rikers for a ninety day sentence, and with this latest stunt they were going to lose yet more money with her out of the game. However, instead of giving her a beating when they heard she was planning to bail on them, those two brain-dead idiots had decided to kill her. Then, not only had Goya shot her in a public space but he’d also managed to hit two cops in the process. That had been the real icing on the cake.
A team who only operated in the shadows was now the focus of an entire police department.
And they hadn’t completed their task yet.
Their normal evac time was thirty six hours; that was long enough to dispose of everyone they’d come into contact with who could identify them, but when the shooting took place there’d still been eleven Prizraki left alive and no way were Henderson, Tully, Lister and their new accomplice leaving without taking care of them.
They also had to dispose of Goya and Santiago. However Carlos had gone on the run, laying low somewhere, and Santiago was doing twenty one days upstate for a public order offence, the police with no idea that they had a perpetrator in a police shooting already locked up in a cell.
Steps had been taken by Henderson, Tully and Lister to buy themselves some more time to waste the last few Russians and find the last hooker by setting up the cops and their families. They’d also found two pimps from another neighbourhood and framed them for the Casey shooting using the murder weapon Goya had had with him at the Scranton motel. They’d killed Carlos on Wednesday, framed Valdez and Carvalho on Thursday and had hit Santiago today, twenty four hours after he was released from County.
However, today had to be their last day in the city. Despite their delaying tactics, the police investigation had changed hands and the new team had an impressive track record, not only for getting results but for the speed at which they worked. These cops had proved much harder to deal with and they’d be totally focused now that they’d lost Detective Vargas.
Kneeling by the door, Henderson pushed a rug to one side and used a key to open a safe sunk into the floor. Reaching inside, he withdrew several keyed bricks of hundred dollar bills, each one ten thousand in total, and put them into the pockets of his coat. Relocking the safe and pushing the rug back in place, he rose and took a last look at the apartment, loading his silenced pistol then double-checking he had his knife in his pocket.
Satisfied, he hitched his sleeve and switched off the light, stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Grinning, he pulled his baseball cap down over his forehead and continued down the corridor towards the stairs, thinking of the last four Prizraki sons of bitches who were going to die.
He’d been waiting a long time for this.
Once Isabel started hugging Archer she seemed incapable of stopping. He wanted to stay here with her but knew he had to leave; the last thing he needed right now was Royston causing another scene.
Rising, Archer carried her out of the Conference Room, down the walkway and into an empty office. A couch was pushed up against the far wall; walking forward, he laid her down carefully, Isabel finally releasing her hold on him as she lay back. Taking a blanket someone had left at the foot of the couch, he unfolded it and laid it over Isabel, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.
‘I have to go out into the city for a bit,’ he told her. ‘But I’ll be back soon.’
‘I don’t want you to leave.’
‘Me neither. But you’ll be safe. This is one of the safest places in the city. No-one can get to you here.’
Archer glanced at his watch.
‘Anyway, you must be tired,’ he said. ‘It’s way past your bed-time.’
‘Am I a curse?’ she suddenly asked.
‘What?’
‘Everyone around me dies,’ she said quietly. ‘Am I a curse?’
Archer smiled.
‘No, sweetheart. You’re not a curse. Just the opposite. And whatever happens next, we’ll figure it out. OK?’
She nodded. ‘OK.’
‘And remember; your mother and Vargas will both be looking out for you too. And if you ever have a bad dream, they’ll be there to protect you.’
‘They don’t need to. Someone else already does that.’
‘Who?’
‘You.’
Caught off guard, Archer smiled. The girl suddenly sat up, hugging him again. Archer held onto her for a moment then settled her back down and rose, leaving her tucked under the blanket in the office.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ he told her. ‘I promise.’
She settled back into the couch, staring up at him. ‘OK. I’ll be waiting.’
Taking a last look at her, Archer turned and walked to the door, twisting the blinds shut so the room was dark.
Then he opened the door and quietly shut it behind him.
FORTY
Inside the rear office of the nightclub in Little Odessa, Vladimir Bashev locked the door then moved over to the wall behind his desk and lifted down a piece of artwork, revealing a safe. Checking a series of CCTV monitors mounted on the wall to his left, his last three men somewhere out there but invisible amongst the mass of revellers, he quickly turned back to the safe and entered the six digit code.
He was getting the hell out of here. As he’d waited to hear from Marat, Valentin and the others that they were on their way to Long Island, one of his men had been checking the news and seen the report of a failed attack at
a police sergeant’s house in the city, three men shot dead and another critically injured.
Four more losses, half their remaining force put out of the game in less than an hour, but at least on this occasion he knew what had happened to his men. They’d been set up; the tip-off had been phony, and he and his men had been suckered. Going after a member of the NYPD and their family was just about the dumbest move someone in his position could make.
Cursing, he opened the safe, revealing a wad of dollar bills and a handgun. He’d been in the city for less than twelve months, inducted at the end of last year after the previous head had been killed by a sniper. The Prizraki’s operation in Pittsburgh had been drying up due to a renewed FBI presence in the city, and Bashev’s promotion had signalled the end of that group, the rest of the faction being reassigned elsewhere on the East Coast, the ghosts staying true to their name and avoiding Federal attention.
However, Bashev was the only one who’d become a vor, recommended because of the success of his operation in the Steel City; getting his stars was a huge honour, an opportunity many men in the organisation chased their entire lives but never achieved. Working for the New York arm of the Prizraki was the ultimate achievement; it was the top faction on the East Coast, outranking Boston, Philadelphia and Bashev’s old haunt, Pittsburgh. When he’d been inducted, he’d joined the most feared gang in New York State, whose legacy went back almost eighty years.
But now, from the original seventeen, including himself there were just four of them left.
The first to go down had been three enforcers, all vanishing without a trace in February. The Little Odessa Russians had many rivals, but the leadership at the time figured the Georgians must have been responsible. Four men had been sent to exact retribution. That was how it worked; you get hit, you hit back harder. That was the only way to stay in business.