by Tom Barber
Glancing to his left, he saw his gun, resting on the concrete.
Get up, Archer.
Gritting his teeth, he managed to push himself up into a seated position, the waves hitting the dock-front wall behind him.
He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the nausea and dizziness washing over him, focusing on the pistol lying there by his hand.
He reached forward, curling his hands around the grip.
Get up.
Moving through the warehouse with Marquez, Josh couldn’t see any sign of Karen.
But then ahead of them through the door they both caught a glimpse of movement outside, Karen heading for the police Ford Marquez had arrived in. Pistol in hand, she was moving fast straight towards Palmer, who hadn’t seen her. Theresa was on the phone and had her back to Karen, facing away from her as she spoke.
‘Oh shit!’ he hissed.
Stalking towards the unsuspecting social worker, Karen lifted her pistol as she drew nearer. With cops on her tail, she’d need a hostage.
‘Theresa!’ Josh suddenly warned from the warehouse doorway.
Karen spun round, firing at the two cops with her silenced pistol, the pair ducking back behind the cover of the hangar. Swinging back towards the police Ford, she suddenly froze in disbelief.
The blonde social worker was now facing her.
And she was holding a pistol aimed directly at Karen’s head.
FIFTY TWO
As Josh and Marquez snapped out from behind the warehouse door, ready to drop Karen Casey and protect the social worker, they saw Palmer shoot Karen between the eyes. Thirty yards away, they froze in stunned disbelief at what they’d just witnessed as Karen’s body hit the ground.
Without hesitation Palmer switched her aim and fired twice more, dropping them both, hitting Josh in the chest and Marquez in the leg. As the sound of the shots faded she walked slowly towards the two detectives, her pistol trained on them as she loosened the buttons on her jacket with her other hand.
She kicked their guns away then stood over the pair, watching as Josh tried to breathe and Marquez clutched the wound to her thigh.
‘Theresa?’ Josh grunted.
‘She was the last one,’ Palmer said, jerking her head back in Karen’s direction.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Josh managed to get out.
Palmer smiled. ‘You know what the prison guards back in Russia did in the 1940s when the gangs fought each other?’
She paused for a moment, looking down at the two detectives who were staring at her blankly.
‘Nothing. They let them kill each other and stepped in when there were only a few left standing.’
Behind her was a flash of headlights at the gate as another van entered the yard, pulling to a halt twenty feet away. A beat later four men stepped out, two of them starting to walk towards the group.
Watching them approach, Marquez stared in confusion.
They were the doormen from the Little Odessa nightclub.
Looking at the other two she recognised the third man as an officer who’d arrived as back-up after they’d found Santiago’s body. And the fourth was a CSU photographer who’d been present at Nina Lister’s crime-scene all those hours ago.
All of them looked very different now, dressed in dark clothing, automatic weapons in their hands. She switched her gaze back to the social worker, trying to breathe through the pain from her gunshot wound.
‘Our organisation has wanted that piece of Little Odessa for years,’ Palmer explained, smiling down at the two injured police detectives. ‘It’s prime real estate for those of us involved in the trafficking trade, but the Prizraki were always too powerful. However, our bosses decided to make a push at the end of last year; I capped off their top guy, put a bullet between his eyes with a rifle after he was driven home one night. They replaced him of course, as we expected, but it shook them up. Then just as we were planning our next move Henderson, Tully and Lister suddenly appeared. They might have been Suki, but they did a great job; saved us a world of work.’
‘You’re Volki,’ Marquez coughed. ‘Chechen Mafia.’
She nodded. ‘We’ve been watching you all night, trying to keep you focused on the missing women and give our Suki friends time to finish off the Prizraki. Which they did admirably.’
She glanced over her shoulder and nodded at the two men by the van. One of them dragged open the sliding door, revealing metal barrels stacked inside. Ether was printed on the chemical stamp, along with a flame warning due to the highly-flammable contents. The pair each took out a single barrel and walked towards Palmer, Josh, Marquez and the other two Volki members.
‘The Russians have had that piece of the Beach for decades,’ Palmer explained. ‘You can’t just walk in and take it over. We’ve been watching and waiting for an opportunity for almost eight years; we got jobs under fake identities, we became pillars of the community. All funded by our people back home.’
She smiled.
‘Now at last, it’s there for us to take.’
The two men placed the barrels down beside the two injured NYPD detectives, then backed away.
‘If you want to dispose of a body successfully, you have to think of the elements,’ Palmer said, ‘We Volki prefer fire. So much neater than waiting for a body to dissolve or burying people alive. Our people have already started to move in on Little Odessa. We’ll stay in our roles; me working for Polaris. Such a help being on the inside.’
With the barrels sitting on the concrete directly beside him, Josh looked at Marquez. She was clutching her leg but looking at Palmer. They watched the five Chechen mobsters, four male and one female, move back out of the blast radius.
They came to a stop thirty yards away.
‘I’m sorry it had to end this way for you two,’ Palmer called out, as the group raised their guns. ‘Sooner or later, we all run into someone stronger, tougher or smarter than us.’
She shrugged.
‘It’s nothing personal.’
‘It is for me,’ a voice suddenly said, forty feet to Palmer’s right.
Snapping her head round, she saw a blond-haired figure standing in the loading bay, holding a pistol double-handed.
But he wasn’t aiming it at her or any of the four men beside her.
Focusing on the ether cans stacked in the van immediately behind the group of Chechen Mafia, Archer aimed his sights on the central barrel.
‘You’ve been green lit, bitch,’ he said.
Before the four men and Palmer could react, he pulled the trigger.
A split-second later the entire van exploded, knocking him back off his feet once again as the vehicle went up in a huge fireball, the heat intense. The van hit the ground with a crash, a flaming mass of metal.
Pushing himself back to his feet, Archer looked at the wreckage and the billowing flames.
Palmer and the four men were gone.
Then he looked at Marquez and Josh. Having been far enough away not to be seriously affected by the blast, Josh hauled himself to his feet and moved over to Marquez who was lying on the ground, blood pooling out from the gunshot wound to her leg. Running over, Archer and his partner did what they could to staunch the flow, sirens in the distance confirming that back-up would be with them very shortly.
‘I never trusted that bitch,’ Archer said, compressing the wound.
‘You’re hurt…too,’ Marquez said, looking at Archer, Josh glancing over and seeing blood running down his partner’s neck.
‘It’s just a scratch.’
‘Liar,’ she whispered, screwing up her face in pain as Archer applied pressure to the gunshot wound. ‘Maybe it’s about time…we found another career.’
‘And give all this up?’ Archer said, smiling at her. ‘No way.’
Pause. The sounds of sirens in the distance could be heard clearly now over the waves and crackling flames from the burning van. It was strangely peaceful. As emergency vehicles pulled into the dockyard, Josh rose and ran towards the
m, attracting their attention.
Staying with Marquez, Archer suddenly realised he was still wearing Henderson’s coat, which was keeping him warm but was also bulky. There was something in each pocket.
‘Remember what I told you?’ Marquez said quietly, catching his attention. ‘About my son?’
‘Of course,’ Archer said, seeing the paramedics climb out of their vehicle.
‘I never told anyone…else in the Department…that.’
He smiled. ‘I won’t say anything.’
‘You’d better not. Or I’ll…kick your ass.’
Laughing but keeping the compression on her leg, Archer watched as paramedics ran over towards them, the operation finally over, the burning van crackling and casting their silhouettes out across the dockyard behind them.
After the fight in the Rikers shower, the shootouts at Santiago’s and Josh’s homes, saving April at Park Avenue, the attack at his apartment, Henderson and Tully’s ambush at the safe-house, Royston’s grenade and the explosion which killed Palmer and the other Chechen Mafia, he figured he could use another bandage or two himself.
FIFTY THREE
After ensuring April was safely under police protection and the surviving Latino gang who’d attacked Archer were in custody, Hendricks and Shepherd made it to the docks twenty minutes or so after the paramedics, fire service and other officers from the NYPD. They found a burning van, a dead police Lieutenant and a dead Karen Casey.
By the time the two sergeants arrived, Archer and Marquez had been taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital, Josh left to fill them in on the showdowns with Royston, Karen Casey and Theresa Palmer. They were stunned to hear of Palmer’s involvement and of what had happened to her and her companions thanks to Archer. Almost by way of poetic justice, their bodies were nowhere to be found and never would be.
As Josh explained, the full scale and depth of the evening’s events started to become clear to the two men. Karen Casey had been the wife of a Russian mobster, Leann Casey’s father, a man called Vladimir Bashev; he’d been ordered to kill Karen, all part of this Thieves Law Detective Massaro had told them about, to prove his total loyalty. He’d failed, and Karen had survived.
The consequences had been far-reaching; the end of the New York Prizraki faction Bashev had been inducted to lead. It turned out that not only had Karen intended to destroy the faction, but Henderson, Tully and Lister had also targeted the gang for totally different reasons. Grandchildren of the leader of the Pittsburgh Suki, the Prizraki’s hated rival, they’d been sold by the Prizraki in Pittsburgh to people in San Diego when they were teenagers, finally tracking the man responsible to New York City, Vladimir Bashev. Responsible for twenty seven homicides across three different states, Henderson and Tully’s bodies had been found at the NYPD safe-house, Henderson’s in much better condition than his brother’s by the time officers arrived at the scene.
Inside the warehouse, the NYPD found equipment for making the lye solution, empty canisters and a van containing a significant number of files. It soon became clear the trio had carried out their blackmail business in two other cities while always managing to remain anonymous. The van had contained meticulous records and boxes of explicit photos and DVDs they’d used to blackmail the men caught in their carefully prepared operation. Royston had been one of them and he’d ended up paying the heaviest of prices for his corruption.
Theresa Palmer and the men who’d been with her had operated completely under the radar. Detective Massaro had been right in that the Volki had arrived in the city some time ago, but the level and extent of their influence and power had been completely underestimated. Palmer’s phone which she’d left in the car and her partial explanation had given him plenty to work with and he and his team were setting up operations at the Beach, waiting for the unsuspecting Chechens to turn up. They also now had a wealth of valuable information on the Prizraki organisation, which still had ties in other cities across the country; the FBI had already been in touch.
Josh left to go to the hospital to see how his wife, Marquez and Archer were doing and the two sergeants were finally being seen to by medical personnel, Shepherd on the phone as they worked on him, wanting to find out what Marquez and Archer’s statuses were.
‘You need to get to a hospital,’ one of the medics told Hendricks.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You got shot, Sergeant. You need to get checked out.’
‘I tell you how to do your job?’
Beside him, Shepherd ended the call and thanked the medic treating him.
‘How are they doing?’ Hendricks asked.
Before Shepherd could reply, his attention was caught by a commotion taking place across the warehouse, right by Henderson and Tully’s truck. Standing up, he made his way over, the other officers making way for him.
As soon as he saw what they were all looking at, he stared in amazement.
‘Oh my God.’
He swung back to Hendricks.
‘Jake! You need to come take a look at this!’
*
At Grand Central Station the next morning, dressed in a new pair of jeans, top and jacket, April stood beside Josh on the platform. For the first time in a very long time, she was feeling upbeat and with very good reason; she was getting out. She’d only suffered mild whiplash in the crash last night but fortunately nothing more serious. She’d experienced far worse at the hands of the pimps who used to control her.
And now she was free.
‘Archer was sorry he couldn’t make it,’ Josh said. ‘He had a court date.’
‘They’re still going through with that?’
Josh smiled. ‘I reckon he’s got a good chance of beating the charges now.’
He looked at her.
‘You know you don’t have to leave so fast.’
‘I don’t want to stick around. I’ve really had enough of this place.’
He smiled. ‘I can understand that.’
‘I’m nervous,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘That’s a good thing.’
He passed over a jacket.
‘Archer told me to give this to you. He said you might get cold on the train.’
Frowning, she held it up. ‘It looks big.’
‘Trust me; just take it.’
‘Tell him thanks.’
‘I will.’
The last call for the train echoed around the station.
‘I’d better go,’ she said.
They shook hands, then April turned and headed down the platform. However, after a few steps, she turned and looked back.
‘You think I deserve a second chance?’
He smiled. ‘I think you deserve a hell of a lot more than that.’
She grinned; then moving through the crowds, she showed the conductor her ticket and stepped onto the train, walking down the aisle and taking a seat.
Settling back, her neck aching slightly from the crash last night, she thought back to the moment when she’d roared out of the parking lot. Taking the car had been her idea and she’d had a hell of a job persuading Archer it was a good one; she was well aware he’d only given in because he needed to get after Karen Casey.
She looked down at the jacket he’d asked Josh to give to her and was confused; it was definitely a man’s, too large for her slim frame, and she was puzzled why he’d insisted she take it.
As it rested on her lap, she felt something in the pocket under her right hand. Reaching inside, she took hold of something and pulled it out.
It was a banded brick of hundred dollar bills.
Caught completely off guard, she snapped her hand back inside the pocket, checking around to make sure no-one had seen. Satisfied the other passengers’ attention was elsewhere, she stared down at the jacket. She tentatively felt in the other pocket and found another large brick of notes. Then the same in the inside pocket, what had to be thousands and thousands of dollars in total.
Feeling something else pinned to the inside lining,
she saw it was a note.
Figured all this belonged to you anyway. Take care of yourself.
Ax
P.s: Next time you’re in town I could use a good set of eyes looking over my car.
Covering her mouth in shock, she closed her eyes as tears started to roll down her cheeks; suddenly, she wasn’t penniless anymore. Archer must have found the jacket inside the van when he’d raced to the docks, along with the money she and the other girls had been made to work so hard for.
Outside there was a whistle and the train lurched forward as the wheels engaged.
A few moments later it slowly pulled away from the platform and began to gather speed, taking April Evans towards a brighter future, far away from New York City.
Outside the courthouse on Pearl Street near One Police Plaza, Josh pulled up in a replacement Bureau Ford to find Shepherd and Hendricks standing in the Square, both men looking upbeat despite their injuries.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘The case was thrown out. After it was reported what Royston did, no way was Archer going to be punished. The judge commended his actions instead.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Not yet.’
Josh grinned. ‘So where the hell is he? We need to talk.’
‘We don’t know. We’ve been waiting here for him for twenty minutes. He’s disappeared.’
‘Again? Where the hell is he this time?’
On the Upper West Side, people walking down Central Park West glanced at the good-looking blond man sitting alone on the bench in the black suit, looking slightly incongruous with the bandage on his neck and the marks on his face. He should have worn his NYPD uniform for his hearing, but much of his apartment had been trashed in the shootout with the Latino gang and he’d bought the suit in a hurry on the way to the court-house.
Archer was looking across the street at a building as people flowed past either side, the branches on the trees beside him waving in the gentle breeze, leaves falling to the ground around him. He’d been cleared of all charges, but he couldn’t remember much about it, the hearing passing by in a blur; he’d left the moment it’d ended, wanting to come up here and be alone.