by Dylan Rust
There were over fifty wireless cameras hidden throughout the ten thousand square foot penthouse. It also had motion detectors which would alert the NYPD if someone were to break in.
It was a fortress atop the clouds.
A symbol of strength and power.
Lyle Cunningworth bought the penthouse three years ago.
He liked it, but he was growing bored.
He wanted something new.
He was in the only room he’d spent any time in.
He was asleep on his bed.
The two prostitutes he’d picked up earlier were on either side of him, draped across his body.
His nose bled, staining the three thousand dollar pillows his assistant purchased for him six days ago.
He snored.
The prostitutes looked at each other and laughed.
***
Getting into the building was easy.
The custodial staff had just arrived to perform the morning clean up.
Three vans, each carrying four workers parked in the alley behind the building. They were close to the back entrance.
One of the workers lagged behind.
He told the others that he’d be one minute.
They left him.
He pulled out a cigarrette and took a long drag. That was when everything went black.
Jack grabbed him by the neck and put him in a sleeper hold and waited until he’d lost consciousness.
He placed the worker in the back of one of the cleaning vans and put a hundred dollar bill beside him. Poor bastard.
He took off the worker’s shirt and put it on. He then grabbed the security access keys to the building that were connected to the worker’s belt buckle.
Jack knew a penthouse like Lyle’s would have the latest high-tech security.
He would have to either dismantle or inactivate it to get inside without any police interference.
To do that, he would have to get access to central security.
One inside the central security, he’d be able to turn off the security features in each unit.
The security access keys he’d picked up from the custodian gave him enough access to get close to central security, maybe even inside.
He buttoned up the custodial shirt, lowered his ball cap, grabbed a bucket and a mop and made his way inside the building.
The sky turned a light blue. A sliver of the sun’s light pierced the horizon.
Jack closed the back entrance door to the building.
***
Lyle awoke to the moist, iron smell of his leaking nose. He pushed one of the prostitutes legs off of his body and got up out of his bed. He made his way to his bathroom, dripping tiny blots of blood onto his wool carpet.
The gold plated framed mirror in his bathroom was smeared with finger prints and lipstick. There were empty plastic bags and empty pill bottles all over the counter. One of the prostitutes had left their panties on the ground. Lyle kicked them out of his way. They landed in the toilet. He laughed. These girls would have to leave soon. He didn’t want to see them sober. Whores belonged in his drunken, inebriated memories.
He stuffed a piece of tissue up his nose to quell the bleeding and walked back to his bed.
“Get up,” he said loudly.
The girls didn’t stir. He grabbed a pillow and hit one of them across the head.
That worked.
Her eyes opened.
“Get up. You need to leave.”
He grabbed his wallet and tossed five one hundred dollar bills on each of their naked bodies. “You have five minutes. I’ll give you the rest of the money at the door if you hurry.”
The girls, their make up smeared on their faces, their brains hazy from the coke and drugs, stumbled out of the bed and put their clothes on.
“I can’t find my underwear,” one of them said.
“It’s in the toilet.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re filthy. You don’t need underwear for your job. Get the fuck out of here.”
The other girl whispered into her ear not to complain. Lyle was powerful, had influence, had connections to the mayor and gangsters. She’d just have to accept it. Move on.
The girls walked to the entrance of the penthouse.
Lyle handed them each another five hundred at the door.
They left the condo and stumbled down the hallway toward the elevator.
Lyle went back to his bed.
He needed sleep.
***
Jack kept his head down and his face hidden.
He pulled the mop bucket down the narrow, bare hallways that the custodians and security staff used to get around the ground floor of the building.
The fluorescent lights buzzed, the floors were bumpy.
Water splashed everywhere.
A group of custodial staff were huddled in front of a group of lockers that were in front of the door marked with a security camera symbol.
That was central security. It had to be.
Jack saw them and ducked into a small storage room. They’d recognize that he wasn’t their co-worker. He’d have to wait the group out.
Despite his efforts to evade their detection, one of them saw him.
“Jose? Jose?”
Jack ignored him. He turned his back to the storage room door.
He opened it.
He pretended to look for something a custodian would use. He grabbed a bottle of detergent and looked at its label.
The man who’d noticed him walked up to the him.
“Jose, you’re late.”
“Sorry,” Jack mumbled.
“Jose?”
His cover was blown.
No point in pretending.
Jack turned around and quickly pulled the man into the storage room. He jabbed him in the throat so he wouldn’t scream. He then put him into a sleeper hold and waited for him to lose consciousness.
One… two… three… sleep.
He waited. Would the others from the lockers come to investigate, too?
Five minutes passed.
The other workers disbanded. They didn’t seem curious as to where the man Jack had just knocked out had gone to.
He must’ve been their manager.
They’d probably just figured that he was giving Jose the old one-two. They didn’t want to be around when he came back.
Jack stuffed the unconscious man into the corner of the room.
He left and locked the door on the way out. He made his way to the entrance of central security. He tried using the access keys to open it.
They didn’t work.
He knocked on the door.
Someone answered.
It was the security room all right. The guard who had answered was surprised to see Jack. He looked at his face. He was trying to think about why Jack looked so familiar. He didn’t have time to clue in that Jack was the guy he’d seen on the Nightly News the night before.
Jack’s fist was quick and sudden.
The other security guard didn’t notice what happened to his partner.
Jack slid up behind him and knocked him in the back of the head with a quick, precise jab. The guard slouched over in his chair.
***
Lyle was fast asleep, snoring, and still bleeding out of his nose. The tissue hadn’t done a very good job.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
His eyes stirred.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
He got up, tied his robe closed, and checked his security cameras on his phone. The whores were back.
“You fucking bitches.”
He walked to the front door and opened it.
The girls looked scared.
Lyle was confused.
Each girl took a step back.
“Igor’s going to hear about this!” he said. “You know what happens to bad gir…”
He felt a pain he hadn’t felt before.
Jack pulled his fist back.
Lyle fell backward, holding
his balls. Tears streamed down his face. He rolled on the floor.
He saw Jack’s face. The man from the Dacha House. The man who stopped him from beating the girl.
42
His gurney was covered in blood.
They pulled him into Emergency.
Claire ran beside the paramedics.
Tom was going to make it. That’s what they’d said. They managed to stop most of the bleeding when they arrived. Once they stopped the blood, they intubated him, which provided oxygen for his lungs and brain.
They pulled Tom into a room, his gurney trailed blood the whole way.
Claire pulled out her phone. She needed to contact the assistant director and tell him what was going on.
He couldn’t ignore her calls anymore. He should just be arriving at the office.
His secretary answered. She punched Claire through to Edward.
“What is it?”
“We’ve been attacked,” she said. “Tom and I were ambushed by Igor’s men in the street last night. I’m at the hospital right now.”
“Slow down, slow down.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Tom and I are at the hospital. It’s the same one that Luka is at.”
“Okay,” Edward said.
“You need to check on Agents Wright and Clarkson. They were at the warehouse. They were packing up the investigation. I tried calling them last night but I didn’t get an answer.”
“I’ll look into Wright and Clarkson’s whereabouts,” he said. “For now, stay with Tom. I’ll get to the bottom of this. Are you sure it was Igor’s men who attacked you?”
“Yes,” she said. “They were speaking Russian. They had to be Igor’s men.”
“I see. I’ll take care of it. Just hold tight.”
Claire hung up.
She collapsed onto a chair, her hands on her temple. She was exhausted and worried. She wondered how Jack was doing.
She closed her eyes and thought about his touch.
About his kiss.
About the love they’d made.
A nurse walked up to her.
“You okay, honey?”
“I’m fine.”
“Your friend, the one with the gunshot, he’s being treated right now. He’s lucky.”
Claire smiled. It was nice to hear some good news.
She thanked the nurse and got up. She walked around the hallways a little bit, grabbed a KitKat from a machine, and decided to go check on Luka. She hadn’t seen him in a couple days.
She made her way to his room.
He was in the medical wing.
She checked in with the desk at the medical wing and made sure that it was alright to check on Luka.
She walked to his room.
He was in his hospital bed, an IV stuck in his arm, his vitals were on a monitor. He was coming back from the brink. His blood pressure was one hundred and six over sixty. Low, but better than it’d been. After the shock his body had been through, she’d expected it to be worse.
She sat beside him and rested her hand on his arm. He was in a medically induced coma.
“Hang in there,” she said.
The beep of his heart rate on the monitor pulsed.
She took a deep breath. At least he was safe. No Russian gangsters would try to take his life in a hospital room. Bellevue was too busy. There were too many people walking around for Igor’s men to try anything.
She got up and walked to a sink in the room. She grabbed a paper cup and poured herself some water. The KitKat had made her mouth dry.
Suddenly, the power in the room went out.
It sounded as if all the generators in the hospital had turned off.
Nurses cried out for assistance and patients screamed for help.
Claire panicked.
She ran to the window and looked outside.
Was it a storm? There were no clouds in the sky. Could the generator have frozen? Maybe, but the backup generator would have enough juice to keep things going for at least a couple hours.
After a few seconds of blackness, the emergency generator kicked in. Power returned, albeit, in a reduced form. Red emergency lights flashed on and off.
Luka’s life support beeped erratically. A nurse ran into the room.
“You have to leave,” she said.
“Of course.”
Claire left.
She sat on a bench in the hallway just outside.
The halls were lit up by eerie flashing red lights. Hospital staff ran in every direction.
The nurse who walked into Luka’s room walked out.
She walked into a crowd of running doctors, nurses and patients and disappeared.
She had a Russian accent.
Claire’s heart sank.
She jumped up and ran into Luka’s room.
His vitals had flat lined. His heart had stopped. A needle was stuck in his arm.
She pulled it out. She tried to resuscitate him.
He was dead.
Targeted. Just as she and Tom had been.
She needed to get to Tom as quickly as possible.
43
Lyle was in his boxers and was tied down to one of his lavish ivory chairs.
He tried to break free.
Nothing.
Something was jammed in his mouth, too. A sock? Underwear? His screams sounded like muffled groans.
He was in his dining room. The lights were off. He could see the black silhouette of his attacker, Jack Spade.
Jack stepped toward Lyle. The sharp contours of his face were lit by the rising sun.
Lyle panted and was groggy. He looked around the room.
Jack pulled out the Charter Arms Bulldog.
He wanted Lyle’s full attention.
He got it.
The billionaire squirmed and screamed.
Jack pressed the barrel against Lyle’s forehead and pulled the sock out of his mouth.
“Don’t kill me! I’ll give you anything you want! Just please don’t kill me!”
Jack shoved the sock back in.
He then slammed the butt of the gun against Lyle’s temple. The force was strong enough that Lyle’s neck audibly cracked. The billionaire screamed out in pain.
Jack pulled out the sock.
“Fuck you!” Lyle said.
Jack lifted up his gun and threatened to hit Lyle again.
Lyle cowered. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
Jack took a few steps back. He turned on the lights in the penthouse.
It was as decadent and lavish as he had expected. Gold plates, diamond encrusted chandeliers, and a collection of vintage Japanese whiskeys. For a yuppy, Lyle had good taste.
“Are you going to rob me? Take my whiskey? You stupid fuck. Is that what this is about?”
Jack smiled. “No.”
“Then what is it? How did you get past my security system? The police should be here.”
“I turned it off.”
“Fuck you,” Lyle said. “You’ll pay for this.”
“I don’t think you’re in the position to be making threats.”
“When I get out of this, I’m going to ki…”
Jack whacked Lyle with the gun before Lyle could finish. One of Lyle’s teeth flew across the room and landed on his carpet.
“You’re a lunatic!” Lyle mumbled. He wouldn’t be able to talk normally for a few weeks.
“I’m not joking around,” Jack said. “Where does Igor Grekovitch live? Where is his penthouse?”
“I play poker at his club. That’s all! I don’t know anything.”
Jack sighed. “You mentioned at the poker table to Igor’s right hand man that you were going to drop off some documents at his penthouse. You must know where he lives. Tell me.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I’ll ask you once more, before I lose my cool,” Jack said. “Where is Igor’s penthouse?”
“Fuck you!”
The billionaire wasn’t getting the message.
/>
Jack walked to the dining room table and grabbed a steak knife. Its silver handle had been encrusted with diamonds. The blade was sharp.
It would do.
“What are you doing?” Igor shouted.
“I’m a wanted man. I’m wanted all over New York for killing a cop. Taking out a piece of shit billionaire pales in comparison to that. Hell, people might even consider me a hero.”
“Please,” Lyle said. “I’ll give you money, drugs… whatever you want!”
“I just want to know where Igor lives.”
“I can’t give you that.”
“Why?”
“If I tell you anything, Igor will kill me.”
“Looks like you’re between a rock and a hard place.”
“Look, I’ve got connections, I can help you out. Maybe that dead cop thing can go away? I’m friends with the mayor.”
“So is Igor.”
“Yes, yes,” Lyle said. “Igor has lots of friends. I’m sure that this can all go away. Just trust me. I’m a man of my word.”
“You promised those twenty thousand workers in Indiana that their jobs were safe. Three weeks later, you shut down the factory and opened one up in Mexico. You’re a man of your word?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
Jack held the blade up in the light.
Lyle squirmed, pleaded.
Jack ignored him.
Lyle rocked the chair from left to right. He managed to knock it over. He was on his side, still tied to it. He screamed for mercy.
Jack knelt beside Lyle and grabbed his head by the hair, pulling it back so he had a clear view of his ear.
“Please!”
Jack placed the edge of the knife on Lyle’s skin.
“Okay,” Lyle said. “I work for Igor. I’ll tell you why, but I can’t tell you where he lives.”
Jack cut into Lyle’s ear. Not deep, but enough that he bled.
Lyle cried like a baby.
“Okay,” he screamed. “Okay. You win.”
Jack pulled the knife back from Lyle’s face. He’d only scratched the surface. Their wouldn’t even be a scar.
“Igor’s penthouse is in the Bronx. It’s close to Hunt’s Point. There is a new building there. I helped fund its construction. He’s on the top floor. You can’t miss it. It’s the largest building in the neighborhood.”