Mischa flipped open an old briefcase and handed him a cell phone. “This one’s never been used.”
Gennadi punched in Stanislov’s telephone number. “Found him, Nikolai. He just goes to office.”
“Did he see you?”
“Da. I was standing not too far away, down from front door of building, waiting on street. He still scared.”
“Was he alone?”
“Nyet. He was with that girl—fat, dirty blonde. Same one always with.”
“And his wife and kid?”
“Small problem. They get away on highway,” Gennadi said, shrugging his shoulders as he smiled at Mischa.
“Shit, Anatoly, I told you not to lose them.”
“Can’t help. Viktor and Georgy say much traffic. Drive too fast.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Maybe airport.”
“Damn it. I want you to find them right away,” Nikolai said, shouting angrily.
Gennadi covered the mouthpiece and leaned over to Mischa. “Stanislov big-time pissed off. Freaking out on telephone.” Then he said to Nikolai, “I tell guys to look. Maybe find. Maybe not. We see.”
“So where are you now?”
“Parked outside TV station. Not going anyplace.” Anatoly lit another cigarette. “So what you think, Nikolai? Time to teach Benson big lesson?” He exhaled the smoke through his nose.
“Do it,” Nikolai said. “I ran it by the Pakhan and he said okay. Let me know if anything changes.”
Anatoly hung up the phone and tossed the burner into the backseat. He looked up at the Broadcast Center, his expression cold, his eyes dead. “So now time to have real fun with Ethan Benson,” he said, grinning at Mischa. “And I know best way to make sorry he ever start television story.”
• • • • •
Ethan unlocked his office door and dropped into the chair at his desk, running one plan through his head after another, trying to decide the best way to flush out the identity of the people chasing him. He turned to Mindy, who was standing quietly in the hallway, visibly upset. “Take five minutes and pull yourself together. They can’t get by security and into the building. Then find David. Tell him I want to see him right away.”
Without answering, she scurried away.
Ethan sighed.
He was confident Sarah and Luke were safe now that they were on a plane headed to Cleveland—unless the guys harassing him had a good network of connections and unlimited resources. Then, and only then, might they figure out where to find them. But was Mindy right? Was he in danger? Should he go to Paul? To the police? No. Not yet. That wasn’t the right way to go. He had to figure out who they were first.
David and Mindy walked into his office and sat down on the couch.
“Mindy just told me what happened to Sarah and Luke,” David said, concerned. “And that the same guy who tailed you earlier this morning is outside the building.”
“Yeah, he’s out there—big and muscular and scary as hell. Look, have you heard anything about the Lincoln Navigators?”
“One of my contacts at the DEA confirmed your suspicions. Alexey Kolkov has a whole fleet of them.”
“And what did Howard say?”
“The same thing. Kolkov has some weird taste for high-end Lincolns. Black and only black.”
Ethan rubbed his chin. “So it probably is the Russians. Now what? Did they tell you anything else?”
David stood and walked over to a swivel chair facing Ethan’s desk. “My DEA source confirmed everything we were told by Howard and the junkies. The agency knows all about Pavel Feodor, his connection to Nikolai Stanislov, and about the heroin deal in the Meatpacking District.”
“How do they know?” Ethan said.
“My source emailed me this.” He leaned over and handed Ethan a document. “It’s a list of informants the DEA relies on for information about the Russians. He told me he’d deny it was real if we put it on the air. So I promised I’d keep it confidential.”
“What should I be looking for?” Ethan said, scanning the document.
“Read the second page.”
Ethan ran his finger down a column of names, stopping in the middle and whistling. “Leonid Karloff is one of their informants?”
“Bingo,” David said, grinning. “And my source confirmed Howard’s take on him—the guy’s intel is always dead on target. He may be a heroin addict, but he knows what he’s talking about.”
“So Karloff told the DEA the same story he told us? The same story he told Detective Jenkins and the cops? That the Russians were involved in Cynthia Jameson’s murder?”
“Bingo again,” David said.
“And the DEA believes him?” Ethan said.
“One hundred percent. They heard the same thing from many of their other informants.”
Ethan shot Mindy a quick glance before turning back to David. “Did your source say whether they discussed this with anybody involved in Feodor’s case?”
“It took me a little while to get him to answer that question, but he told me, off the record, that the DEA discussed the Russians and their role in the heroin deal not only with the cops investigating the murder—including Detective Jenkins—but also with the assistant district attorney herself.”
“With Nancy McGregor?” Mindy said, stunned.
“Yup. At a meeting with McGregor and that other ADA, Nelson Brown.”
“Why didn’t McGregor pursue it?” Mindy said, grabbing the document from Ethan and scanning the list of names until she found Karloff. “If they’d followed up on the Russians, it might’ve changed the whole case.”
“Good question,” Ethan said, now wondering if Nancy McGregor was the mystery person in the crime scene video who wanted to review the police reports before they were placed in the case file. Could she be the mastermind tampering with the evidence? Was she giving the orders? It made sense, but why would she do that? “I’ve got another question, David. Why did the DEA sit on the Russian connection once they realized McGregor wasn’t going to make it part of her case?”
“According to my source, their hands were tied. They had no jurisdiction over the murder and were pressured by some political bigwig here in New York to sit on it. So once they gave the information to McGregor, they backed off and left it to the ADA to use or ignore.”
“And she obviously chose to ignore it,” Ethan said, dumbfounded. “Look, we need more background on McGregor. Much more. We need to find out where she came from, who she’s close to, and why she was given this case. I want both of you to work your contacts here and in Washington. I wanna know why Nancy McGregor buried the lead about the Russians and Feodor. I wanna know what she’s hiding.”
“Jeez, I know this shit about McGregor is important,” Mindy said, climbing off the couch, “but before I hit the phones, tell me what you’re planning to do about that guy downstairs.”
Ethan hesitated, then looked up at Mindy looming over his desk. “I need to shoot some pictures of them,” he said stonily.
“What? That’s insane,” Mindy said frostily. “How you gonna do that? You can’t use a camera crew. That’s like painting a target on your back.”
“You’re right, but I need pictures to show Lloyd. Maybe he can ID the guy downstairs and the other guys who are tailing me. Then I can go to Paul and to the police.” Ethan stood and paced around the room, then turned to David. “You’re a good still photographer. Julie Piedmont showed me the press pictures you shot when she interviewed Paul McCartney. They were incredible. Spot on. Have you ever done any undercover shooting?”
“Lots of times,” David said confidently. “It doesn’t scare me. I have a Nikon digital camera and some high-powered lenses. I’m up for it. When do you wanna take the pictures, Ethan?”
“The sooner the better. How about tomorrow?”
“I can do that,” David said excitedly. “And where do you wanna do it?”
Ethan wrote down his address on a piece of paper and handed it to David. “There’s
a black Lincoln Navigator staking out my apartment building. I’m a block from Fifth Avenue. You can get a clean shot with a telephoto lens from behind the big stone wall that runs around Central Park. You should be safe there.”
“I know the spot. Should work.”
“So we’ll shoot tomorrow. In the evening. After dark,” Ethan said reflectively. “But David, if you decide it’s too risky, you can change your mind—at any time. I won’t be upset. I’ll find some other way to shoot the pictures.”
“No, I’m good with it, Ethan.”
“Well, I’m not,” Mindy said crossly. “You’re talking about messing around with the fucking Russian Mob. They’re dangerous. They’re killers. They’re threatening you and your family. This is not a good idea.”
“It’s the only way,” Ethan said emphatically. “If we’re careful, they won’t know we’re spying on them—like they’re spying on me.” He paused a split second. “I just thought of something.” He picked up the telephone. “Hey, Willy, it’s Ethan Benson. I’ve got a question for you. Can you rig me a shoulder bag with a hidden camera for a shoot I wanna do tomorrow night?” Another short pause. “Great. I’ll come by later today and pick it up. Thanks, pal.” He hung up the phone. “What do you think, David?”
“Great idea. You can record a point-of-view shot as you walk by the Lincoln, while I snap away the still pictures from the park.”
“And if it works,” Ethan said, “we’ll have images to show Lloyd and an extra undercover sequence to use in our story.”
“Ethan, what’s wrong with you? You’re not listening to me,” Mindy said, exasperated. “It’s one thing exposing the Russian Mob’s involvement in the murder. It’s another going head-to-head with them on the street. You sure you want to do this?”
“I need the pictures, Mindy. I’ve weighed the risks and think we can pull it off without getting caught.”
“It’s a good plan,” David said, adding his support.
“Well, I think it’s absolute madness,” she said, and without uttering another word, stormed out of his office.
“She gets this way whenever she doesn’t agree with me,” Ethan said, watching her disappear down the hall. “She’ll come around once she thinks about it for a while. She always does.” He checked the time. It was getting late. “I’ve got a bunch of loose ends to tie up and need to brief Sampson. Let’s regroup before we head home.”
“Sure thing, Ethan.”
As David departed, Ethan picked up a portrait of Sarah and Luke sitting on his desk. They were smiling into the camera, arms wrapped around each other, beaming, without a care in the world. Suddenly, his heart sank. Was he making the right decision? Was he putting himself and his family in harm’s way? Should he tell Paul? He looked out at Central Park, uncertain, then sighed deeply, grabbed his iPhone, and punched in Peter’s number.
CHAPTER 22
JIMMY BENITO PULLED INTO THE employee parking lot outside the North Infirmary Command Building. He was driving a broken-down Ford Mustang that had seen better days. The car was two decades old and had clocked over 250,000 hard New York City miles. The engine barely turned over and often stalled, always at the wrong time, like this morning on the highway when he was driving to work. Every day he prayed to the Virgin Mary before inserting the key, hoping the car wouldn’t start so he could dump the junker into Flushing Bay and put it and himself out of misery.
After circling for ten minutes looking for a space near the building, he gave up and parked by the barbed-wire fence surrounding the complex. Opening the glove compartment, he pulled out the standard-issue handgun all corrections officers carried on duty, made sure it was loaded, and put it into the holster sitting on his hip. Then he looked at himself in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t pretty. He’d been drinking heavily, one beer after another, and hadn’t showered or shaved, his uniform wrinkled and dirty. There were deep circles under his eyes, blotches on his face, and his hair stuck out in every direction.
Reaching for a cigarette, he closed his eyes and tried to will away the pounding in his head. He wanted to call Nikolai Stanislov and tell him he hadn’t come up with a plan to kill Feodor—that he couldn’t go through with it—but the twenty-five thousand dollars was burning a hole in his pocket, and he could taste the second big payday once he took care of business and the little shit was dead.
He needed the money.
He could buy a new car.
So he avoided the call.
Checking the time, he realized he’d been daydreaming, that the windows were closed, and that he was perspiring heavily, beads of sweat dripping down his face and spreading under his arms. He wiped his brow, opened the car door, and staggered to his feet. After popping the trunk, he grabbed his rifle and nightstick and slowly made his way to the security entrance in the back of the building.
The ten-by-twelve-foot anteroom was packed with corrections officers. The warden had just finished a security check and added more personnel to make sure the interview would go off without a hitch. Jimmy Benito panicked. There was less time to make the hit than he thought—the odds of success diminishing each day like sand in an hourglass.
He walked up to an X-ray machine and emptied his pockets—unhooking his holster and handing his rifle and nightstick to a big African-American security guard. Then he walked through and set off the alarm. The guard put up his hands and stopped him. “Mr. Benito, sir, please turn out your pockets and spread your legs.”
Benito looked at the officer’s name tag and barked, “Jesus Christ, Leo—that’s your name, isn’t it? Do you know who I am? I’m the commanding officer on H Block. Cut me some slack.”
“Just doing my job, sir,” the guard said apologetically. “Special orders from the warden on account of the interview.” He ran his hands over Benito’s back and sides and then down his legs. “Thank you, sir. You’re all clear to go.”
Benito picked up his weapons, snarled, and was buzzed through a steel door leading to a long hallway down to the cellblocks. When he arrived at a second security checkpoint, he waited for a corrections officer to punch a code into a keypad, then walked through another steel door and onto H Block, where he was met by more firepower. Shit, man, how am I gonna take out Feodor? he thought. There ain’t this much security even when the building’s on lockdown.
Taking a deep breath, he opened the door to his office and sat down at his desk, the room spinning like a top. He reached for a bottle of aspirin, but it was empty. Cursing, he hurled the bottle against the wall and yelled at a guard named Miguel Johnson who was standing just outside the door. “I need aspirin. Get me some from the infirmary.”
“Sure—sure—sure thing, Jimmy,” Johnson said meekly. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good. Are—are—are you sick?”
Benito wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “No, I’m not sick. I gotta a headache. Go the fuck and get the aspirin and stop your fucking stuttering. It’s driving me crazy.”
Miguel didn’t answer. He stared at his CO and scooted down the hall.
Benito shook his head, trying to focus, then booted up his computer. Maybe he could find a way to take out Feodor somewhere in the day’s schedule. Was he due for a shower? Shit. Not until tomorrow. So he couldn’t leave him alone in the bathroom with some half-crazy nigger who’d be more than happy to do the job for him. Maybe he was expecting a visitor? Maybe his attorney or his mother or somebody else? No luck there either. Pavel wasn’t scheduled to see anybody. So there was no way to stage an accident.
How was he going to kill Feodor?
Think. Think. Think.
He opened the master intake log for the jail complex. A new inmate had been brought in early that morning. He’d been booked for beating an old woman to death and would soon be housed in a cell three doors down from Feodor. A vague plan took shape in his mind. Maybe he could make an unannounced visit to Feodor’s cell when they brought the new inmate to H Block. He could say he was checking for contraband, then beat the living shit out o
f him and claim the little bastard was trying to escape. It was a long shot, but it might just work and give him a chance to put Feodor out of commission. That would buy him some more time to figure out the best way to kill him.
Miguel Johnson walked back into his office with Hector Ruiz, another prison guard who worked on the cellblock. “Here you go, Jimmy. I got some—some—some aspirin for you.” He put the bottle down on the desk. “Can I get—get—get you anything else? You really don’t look—look—look too good.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Benito said, exploding. “I’m fine. I told you I have a headache. And if you can’t stop stuttering, don’t open your mouth and say another word. I don’t wanna listen to your bullshit.”
“Take it easy, Jimmy,” Ruiz said, holding out his hands, palms up. “Miguel’s just trying to help. You look sick, man. Everybody can see it. Maybe we can tell the warden that’s why you were late and missed the run-through for the interview. He’s pissed you weren’t there.”
“I don’t care about the warden. Fuck him. I had car trouble. That’s why I was late.” He started to get up, intending to push the two guards out of his office, but the room began spinning, round and round, and he fell back into his chair.
“Jimmy, what’s wrong with you?” Ruiz said, raising an eyebrow. “Are you drunk? You smell like a brewery.”
“I haven’t had a drink since yesterday,” Benito said nastily. “I must’ve spilled whiskey on my uniform. That’s what you smell. There’s nothing wrong with me but my head.” He opened the bottle of aspirin, shook out a couple of pills, and popped them into his mouth. “Now get the fuck outta my office. I have work to do.”
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