Thoughts about women slain on Berwick Street stayed with me. I was worried about Powder Springs. Had checked the cameras all day long, Catherine still devastated by the death of her friends.
I wondered if she had cried that way when Margaret had been killed and left in a Dumpster, wondered if that tragedy had ripped out her heart, compelled her to take me and raise me as her own.
I wondered why she wasn’t the type of mother to me that she was to Steven.
But he was her son. She told me I was the stray she had rescued from a life in foster care.
It was too much to think about right now.
My target had been impossible to get to because he had spent most of the night upstairs in Tootsie’s Transit Car. That was a scaled replica of a New York subway car that was only in the VIP area.
The waitress came back. She handed me a napkin; on it was her phone number written in ink.
She said, “I hope you don’t think I do this all the time.”
“Guess I said something right.”
“You have this roughness about you. You look like a leading man. The man who is up on the movie screen and women can’t take their eyes off him. Charisma, panache, strong sexual energy that surrounds and emanates from you. Intoxicating. It crosses racial lines, what you have. Bet all kinds of women are attracted to you. Cuban, German, Australian, Japanese China dolls . . . all kinds. Am I right?”
“You really want an answer to that?”
“No, I don’t.”
We laughed.
I said, “Not all women. Not all.”
“Somebody you can’t get to, huh?”
“Somebody I’ve never been able to get to.”
“Well, whoever she is, she is a fool.”
“Can I buy you a drink when you get off?”
“I don’t drink. Alcohol is bad for my legs.”
“Do they swell?”
“No, they spread.”
I smiled. She winked at me.
“I’m getting married in July, so don’t wait too long to look me up.”
“You live nearby?”
“Miki Morioka. South Miami. Dixie Highway. I’m listed in the phone book.”
Then Miki Morioka was gone, her cute little ass doing a nice side-to-side move as she strolled.
Flirting with her had been part real, part cover, helped me look like I wasn’t lingering.
I kept my eyes on the doors and sat down at La Colonne, their full-service restaurant, ordered grilled shrimp, and sat at an angle where I could see the target when he left VIP and headed for the front door. Saturday night the place was open until six in the morning, but I lucked out and he left around three. It was still dark enough.
As dark as my thoughts.
Nusaybah had been butchered. So had Ivanka, the eighteen-year-old Yugoslavian.
They had not been soldiers in this war. Now this war had no unwritten rules. No one off-limits.
I had done my best to find where my Detroit problem was hiding out. All I knew was she had left Motown, had taken vacation time in the middle of a political scandal. But because they said she was gone, that didn’t mean she was gone. I needed to finish up here and fly into the Midwest, ease into Detroit. Would have to fly in on a Cessna. That way I could load up whatever I needed to do a job, have what I needed when I landed, no need to make contact with some connection at the other end to get me a piece, no one to warn her. I was going to procure a thirteen-pound sniper rifle before I headed north.
She would have to go back to Motown at some point. She loved Detroit too much to stay gone too long. And when she returned, I would be there waiting, eager to put her arrogance in my crosshairs.
Two hours later I was at a safe house on Miami Gardens Drive, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets. First Moorings condominiums, across the street at the Shops at Skylake. Publix and L.A. Fitness were across the street. Julio’s Natural Foods, Wachovia, T. J. Maxx, Goodwill—there were dozens of eateries and shops in the strip mall. Going east, the boulevard was lined with shops, with Aventura Mall not far away.
I was inside a second-floor unit, one bedroom, the rear windows covered with thick curtains.
I cracked the curtains, the view opening to palm trees and a lake. I made it in just in time to look out and see the ducks mating. Male ducks lined up and chased the female duck. One of the chasers caught her in the pond, had his way, damn near drowned her trying to relieve itself of the need to come.
Again I looked at the cameras in Powder Springs; nothing on but night lights, everyone sleeping.
I was tempted to call Alvin, but I didn’t bother him. Didn’t know anyone else to chat with.
I turned the television on, changed to the local news, WSVN on channel 7.
A report was on. Two miles away the occupants of a stretch Hummer had been gunned down underneath the overpass at I-95. One of the occupants was an informant, set to testify against a politician in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The rest were bodyguards who were taken by surprise.
My cellular buzzed. I checked the message. FUNDS TRANSFERRED.
I couldn’t relax. Turned the television off, began pacing in the dark; I opened the windows and curtains along the back side of the condo, letting a view of the stars and a decent breeze into the rooms. Gun in my hand, I walked from kitchen to sunroom to the opening that came back into the single bedroom, back through the bedroom door that led to the kitchen and living room and back toward the sunroom, did that over and over, plotting, imagining, teeth clenched, jaw tight, a thousand veins in my neck.
Then I was on the landline, having a conversation with a man who supplied the business, a New Yorker who could deliver to me what I needed. I wanted to transport a .223 M4 and a case of Black Hills 77-grain .223 with a scope. I had maps of the city sent to me, downloaded the information on my iPhone. The map had details that weren’t printed on a regular city map, information about how to maneuver underneath the city, tunnels that created a maze of exits. Police would be looking aboveground while I was under their feet. Would print that out later, map out my entry and exit plan. I ordered tactical gear, a vest, military shoes, ordered everything but a nuclear bomb. Then I transferred money from my account in the Caymans to his account in Switzerland. My mood was extreme, my angst too deep to handle, emotions high, logic nonexistent. I would’ve taken the Cessna high over the Manoogian Mansion and dropped a bomb on the mayor’s home, would have leveled every house within a mile of 9240 Dwight Street, would have destroyed the Berry Subdivision Historic District, taken out the city’s east side up to the Detroit River, would’ve done that to get that tick off my skin, to get my revenge.
I had to use the bathroom, gun in my hand, heeding the threat from my enemy. There were two bathrooms in the condo, one inside the bedroom and the other by the front door, both toilets situated on the front side of the apartment. The windows faced and opened to the walkway and front side of the building. The window in the bedroom bathroom was open, night sounds creeping inside. First I sensed vibrations, someone coming up the stairs. Someone was easing down the walkway. I reached and turned the bathroom light off. Waited. Listened. The building was populated with Jews and Puerto Ricans older than Jesus, so I doubted any of the geriatrics were up at this hour. And if they were up they wouldn’t be outside, not in Miami. They wouldn’t tiptoe in the night. More vibrations; a second person came up the stairs, someone lighter, someone whose gait had a different pace. Two people were out there. Neither talking. Both began moving, took slow steps, stopped right outside the front door.
Minutes after I ordered equipment a terrorist would use, someone had come there.
No sound. Not a whisper. In my mind they knew I was in there, they had gone silent, were using hand signals. Pants up, I eased to the bathtub, peeped out the window. If it was the police, if they had tracked me there after the scene I had left down at I-95, then the parking lot would have been full of cops.
There were no police cars in sight. No FBI. No CIA. No Homeland Security.
The parking lot was hushed, just a night breeze blowing through, tickling palm trees.
They were picking the lock. The front door opened in less than five seconds, a mild creak on its hinges. They had entered. They were on the other side of this painted drywall, guns leading the way.
A light came on, lit up the dining and living room; that same light threw luminescence into the bedroom and back toward the sunroom. Three footsteps. Not loud. Someone had stepped inside. Two steps. Different weight, lighter. Two were inside. Front door closed. Imagined them giving hand signals.
My heart was in my throat, breathing shallow, tried to breathe slowly, hardly blinking, gun leading the way as I stepped out of the bathroom, a room that could have me trapped. I took two steps into the bedroom, which was one wall away from the front room. The condo had two doors; both were on the other side of that wall, both facing the boulevard. Windows were along the back side of the building facing the lake. No way to run and break out a window. This wasn’t a movie. Running and diving into double-pane glass wouldn’t shatter the glass like it did the breakaway they used on television. But I might have to try, put a few shots into the glass to weaken it, then hope for the best. The windows were more horizontal than vertical, crank-out style, and opened inward, each pane about two feet wide.
That idea was a no-go; diving sideways was not going to work, not from two stories up.
The only way out of this condo was through one of the front doors.
I would have to shoot my way out.
Hard-soled shoes moved across tiled floor, took two quick steps, the pace that of a killer in no hurry. I waited where I was, ready to fire, not about to move and give away my position.
Suffocated in London. Attacked in the Cayman Islands. Shoot-out in Huntsville.
Trapped inside a condo in South Miami, time moved like cold molasses.
The assassin took another step. Then another. I waited. The start of a silhouette rounded the corner, inched inside the bedroom. My teeth clenched. I didn’t know where his partner was, didn’t know if the other half of that team had moved across the living room, from there making a right, and was at the edge of the sunroom, another room that opened into the bedroom, or if they were holding position in the front room, blocking my chance to exit out the front door. As soon as I moved his gun was on me.
My gun pointed at the center of his forehead and his pointed at the center of mine.
Twenty-five
those who walk away
The lead assassin
had salt-and-pepper hair and a George Clooney face, could pass for an aging international model but was a clean-shaven Russian, born in the world’s largest country, a nation that covered eleven time zones and possessed all climate zones except tropical.
He said, “Son of a bitch. Gideon.”
His partner was behind him, a woman who held two guns at her sides, both nine-millimeters.
She wore boot-cut Levi’s, a big belt buckle that depicted a knife inside a big red heart, Lucchese crocodile cowboy boots, and her standard black T. The top part of her burgundy hair with the highlights was braided toward the back, those braids stopping at the back of her neck; the rest of her loosened mane hung to her butt.
I lowered my weapon and took my finger off the trigger, my heartbeat at a strong gallop.
He had already moved his .22 from my face.
Some people called him The Man in the White shoes.
I said his name. “Konstantin Pentkovski.”
Seeing him with Hawks was the bigger surprise.
Konstantin told me, “Don’t scare me like that. Almost gave me a heart attack.”
I said, “Didn’t know you were using the safe house.”
“You always go to a hotel.”
“This was closer.”
“We tried to come up I-95. Shut down. News said body bags were everywhere.”
“Was in a hurry. Had other things on my mind and wanted to wrap it up.”
“Next time you change your agenda, you need to let someone know.”
“I’ll put a sock on the doorknob next time.”
“A text message would be better.”
He opened his arms, and guns in hand, we hugged like old friends. His heartbeat was twice as fast as mine, his hug telling me he was relieved he hadn’t made a mistake, that he had been scared too.
We talked off and on, but we hadn’t been face-to-face in over two years.
He looked good. For a man with cancer, he looked damn good.
His homeland, Russia, had over one thousand major cities, over a dozen with a population of more than one million. The rumor was each city would have had a population of more than two million if not for him. He had grown up putting people in the ground in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg, as well as many other places, before he came to America to do the same. The man in front of me was a chisel-chinned hit man wearing a double-breasted suit, an unlit Belomorkanal cigarette dangling on his lips, frowning like he had just stepped out of an Edward G. Robinson movie.
Konstantin said, “Bad weather up north. Tornadoes in Atlanta and Oklahoma. Airports closed, canceled flights, so we got stuck here after working, decided to leave in the morning.”
Tension gone, we laughed the laugh of men who would live to see another day.
Hawks didn’t laugh, her angered expression telling me I was the last person she wanted to see.
Hawks said, “You should’ve shot him anyway. And I’m talking to you, Konstantin. Would’ve shot him myself but you were standing in the way. But if you could manage to scoot over just a wee wee little bit I’d be more than happy to engage in some impromptu friendly fire with that worthless jerk.”
Konstantin clunked his .22 down on the dining room table. I went back to the bathroom and finished up, then took a long, hot shower before I came back out and sat at the wooden dining table.