Long Way Down (17 page)

“Can you freeze it?”

He did. The license plate was visible, but blurred and unreadable. Jenkins zoomed in until the plate filled the screen. It didn’t help. The rain or the motion of the car or wireless interference had turned the image into a vaguely whitish-gray smear.

“It could be a New York State plate.”

“It could be anything,” I said. And what murderer leaves the scene in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce?

T
he Number 2 train got to Park Place and sat. The doors opened, closed, and opened again. I checked my watch. I was still all right for my ten o’clock with Virgil. I pulled out my phone and checked messages. None. None was becoming the standard. None as in zilch. Nobody. The doors closed again and the train lurched and stopped. The doors opened again.

“This train is being taken out of service. Please exit the train immediately. There is another Number Two train at Fourteenth Street that will be here momentarily.”

Unless it gets routed onto the local track, I thought. Or held up at Chambers. Or turns around and goes back uptown, for all I know. I checked my watch again as I stepped out onto the platform. Still okay. A conductor slammed his way through the door at the end of the car, striding purposefully, checking to see that the train was empty. He exited at the far end and continued on down.

A short, broad-shouldered woman in a dark overcoat and helmet-shaped wool hat pushed by me into the empty subway car and took a seat. I thought about telling her that they were taking the train out of service, but then decided not to.

“Hey! Lady!” A young-looking black man dressed like a typical white suburban teenage male, in baggy jeans, a Jets hoodie, and a flat-brimmed Yankees cap with the size sticker still prominently displayed, gave a hoot and called to her. “Yo! That train is going to the yards. You s’posed to get off.”

She glared at him and stayed put. The doors closed and the train sped off.

The young man looked over at me and shrugged. I nodded back.

Minutes ticked by; the second train did not arrive. I checked my watch again. If I left the station and walked quickly, I could cut down Ann Street and get to Virgil’s offices with four minutes to spare. The foot traffic on Ann was always less than Fulton or Broadway. I decided to split the difference and give the New York subway system—the most efficient method of transportation in the industrialized world—another two minutes to make good. The seconds ticked off. It was a bad bet, but I pushed it another thirty seconds. No luck. No train.

I ran upstairs, caught the light at Broadway, crossed over and quick-walked around the corner to Ann Street. My watch told me I was doing just fine, but I pushed up the pace. Two blocks later, I rounded the corner onto William and saw my goal just past Fulton Street.

The blast of December-morning sunlight, streaming over the old fish market and up the hill toward Broadway, left me momentarily blinded as I entered the dark canyon on the far side. A crowd of straphangers emerged from the Fulton Street station as I reached the stairway; the young black man in the Jets hoodie jostled me slightly and mumbled a quick apology, sweeping past me in nonrecognition. I stumbled for a step, and as I recovered, I saw the car.

It was a 7 Series, black, idling and hugging the curb just past the subway entrance. There was nothing unusual about a large luxury car idling on a downtown street, nor in midtown, nor even in much
of my uptown neighborhood. But the license plate caught my eye; someone had obscured it with strips of gray duct tape. Too precise to be accidental, it stuck out. It was unusual.

The driver saw me and registered both surprise and recognition. He knew my face, had expected me, but not from that angle, not out of the blinding sun. He had been watching for me to come up out of the subway. I don’t know how I knew this, but it was as clear to me as the front page of the
Journal
. Just as clear was the menace I saw in him. There was nowhere to turn, no way to avoid it. I walked faster. I saw a flicker of panic in his eyes; we were already way off script. He said something over his shoulder to someone in the backseat. I kept coming.

The rear door opened and a man’s head appeared. He wore a knitted watch cap pulled low, covering his eyebrows, and a pea jacket buttoned to his neck with the collar up. I registered a dark, full Turkish mustache that could as easily have been Iranian or Argentinian, or Nebraskan for that matter. His dark, almost black, eyes focused on me and his arm came up, still partially blocked by the car door.

I may have seen the gun first, or just reacted to an imagined view. But I recognized the intent. I spun on my right foot, lifted my left leg, and kicked the door—hard. The man was jolted back and I rushed forward, grabbed the side of the door and swung it into him again and again. The gun, a long-barreled handgun with a silencer attached, fell to the ground between us and I kicked at it frantically. It skittered out into the street. I took the door in both hands and slammed it into him, catching the side of his head as he tried to duck back into the car. Blood splattered over the glass and I heard him groan in pain.

I felt, rather than saw, the front door opening, and realized that the driver was a large man and that he was about to pull himself out and come for me. I turned and ran. The big guy almost caught me.
His hand swiped my shoulder; it felt like I’d been hit with a line drive. I started to fall, and for a moment I scrambled on two feet and one hand, running like a three-legged dog. I tripped over the step at the head of the subway stairs and tumbled down the next three steps. At least I tumbled faster than he could run. People were screaming, some in fear, some in anger. As big as he was, he wasn’t prepared to face a crowd. I hit the bottom of the stairs and looked back up. He was gone.

I gulped air and reviewed the damage. I was all in one piece, no gaping wounds, no broken bones, though I thought my shoulder might be sore for the next few days and my right shin was scraped. The camel’s hair overcoat was a total loss; I had split the shoulders on both sides, rolling down the stairs. The coat was a throwback, custom-fit to a younger version of myself—with narrower shoulders and a bit too much room through the middle. I wouldn’t miss it as long as I stayed out of the wind. I left it draped over the top of the nearest trash can.

My pulse was returning to normal and I discovered that, despite the December chill, I was covered in sweat. I felt jumpy and fragile, like I needed some tea and a nap—or a shot of vodka. None of that was going to happen.

Someone wanted me dead. It wasn’t the first time, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. I was pain-averse and death-averse. In high school, I was a math club geek, not a tough guy, not even an athlete. Now, just months after some monster with a gun had killed my ex-wife—a bullet that should have been for me but that was pointed at my son—the monsters were back.

I was no hero. The little almond-shaped section of the brain that governs those kinds of emotions—the amygdala, I think it’s called—functioned quite well in me. If someone wanted to kill me, I was terrified. But I had learned something in the last few years. There are worse things than pain, worse than death. In prison, I fought
back and I found that others would bend when I did. I hadn’t really known that before. And when I became a parent, an event that, because I was stupidly preoccupied, only occurred years after the birth of my son, I learned another lesson: I will fight to protect him. I will kill to protect him, if necessary. And, I believe, I would die for him—if only because the thought of living without him would kill me anyway.

I walked up the stairs, pausing for a moment as my eyes reached ground level. The car was gone. The pistol in the street was gone. The two men were gone. I continued up and crossed the street. I had a meeting with Virgil Becker, and I was late.

V
irgil poured me two fingers of Jameson 12 Year Old and sat me down.

“Thank you. I’m not hallucinating or making this up. Someone did just try to kill me. They screwed up, but they were professionals. No doubt.”

“Are you hurt?”

I’d have some aches and pains; I didn’t roll down subway stairs often enough to do it without getting a few bruises. “I’m all right.” The whiskey went down well. “I’m not a whiskey drinker. Is this good stuff? I should sip it, right?”

“It is very good stuff, but at this moment, it is medicinal. Pour it down if that’s what you need.”

I sipped it. “I could get used to this.”

“We need to report this.”

I shook my head. “I had a fight with two men on the street. They got in their car and drove away. Oh, and by the way, I started it.”

“You saw a gun.”

“No one else did. Those two were waiting for me to come up out
of the subway. Who knew I was coming here? You, me, your secretary.” I held up one finger for each of us.

“Are you suggesting that I had something to do with this?”

“No, no, no. I don’t know who’s behind this, but they have very good information. How often am I here? Two, three times a week on average? They didn’t look like they’d been sitting there for two days hoping I’d just pop up. They knew I was due here and at what time. And if the trains weren’t screwed up, I would be dead right now.”

Virgil looked thoughtful—and frightened.

“What is it?” I said.

“The banker. London got back to me just before you arrived.”

“Did they come up with a name?”

“Yes. Dillman. But the man is dead.”

I took that in.

“Murdered?” I said.

“No. Or not obviously so. He died of an overdose of cocaine mixed with a powerful painkiller. Something called fentanyl. Very dangerous stuff, I’m told.”

It could quite easily have been murder. “Last night?” Was he dead because of me? Because of the threat I had made to Selena?

“No. Weeks ago. Before all this started.”

And right after he signed off on the account authorization, I thought.

“His housekeeper found him. He’d been dead for hours. The drugs were right there.”

These people didn’t like to leave loose ends. Virgil was right. I needed help.

“Who’s your friend at the FBI?” he said. “Call him. If you won’t report it to the police, at least talk to him.”

“Put him on speakerphone.”

I gave him the number, and a few rings later Special Agent Marcus Brady answered. We had a history together. We would never be friends exactly, but I trusted him. And, just as important, I believed he trusted me.

“It’s Jason Stafford. I’m calling from Virgil Becker’s office. You’re on speakerphone.”

“And I imagine you need my help. When else do I hear from you?”

“When’s your birthday? I’ll send a card.”

“I saw a draft of a letter about you the other day,” he said. “The U.S. Attorney is petitioning the judge to rescind your fine after what you pulled off last summer.”

I still owed more than half a billion dollars in fines and reparations from the fraud that had landed me in prison. I had no intention of ever paying it, but getting it off my back would still be a relief.

“That’ll be great, if I live to enjoy it.”

“What’s that?”

I told him the story of the attack.

“What does the NYPD say?” he asked.

“I’m not telling them. I’m telling you.” The NYPD and I had a complicated relationship. At various times they had treated me like a hero, like a patsy, or like a perp.

“And I understand why, but you should make a report anyway.”

“Come on, don’t be a cop,” I said.

“Then what did you call me for?”

“I want you to tell me who’s trying to kill me.”

“You think this is something out of your past coming back at you? I doubt it. You piss off a lot of people, but very few of them would bother hiring guns to get you back.”

“The Latin Americans?” I said.

“We’ve had this conversation before. We covered your tracks on that pretty well.”

“Would you know if they were after me?”

“If you are asking if the multiagency task force that I work with is operating wiretaps and other surveillance on specific Latin American cocaine caballeros, I would have to say, ‘No comment.’ But if in the course of my normal workday I ever found anything that I thought might constitute a legitimate threat to a valued source, I would take immediate steps to ensure his safety.”

“All right. So it’s not the guys from Honduras.”

“Who have you pissed off lately?” he said.

Selena Haley. She was dead. Chuck Penn, if and when he got the bill from the yacht club dinner. But hiring assassins seemed like an over-the-top response to my prank.

I hated giving him information without getting some back. “I may have stepped on some toes.”

“You’re not giving me much to go on, pardner. Make a report.”

“The NYPD can’t keep me safe. Or my family.”

“Neither can I, if I don’t know what’s going on.”

I wasn’t getting what I wanted. Maybe I could get something else.

“Just give me a ride uptown. In return for past favors.”

“Oh-ho. The FBI now runs a car service?”

I gave up. “On the way, I’ll tell you a story.” Or at least part of one.

Virgil raised his eyebrows. I made reassuring motions and continued.

“The Haley case has a big hole in it,” I said.

“It’s not my case.”

“It’s a good story.”

“It had better be.”

S
o what are you going to do now? I mean, right now?”

Brady and I were sitting in the back of an FBI motor pool Crown Victoria—I half expected the windows to have roll-down handles.

“Make my family safe. I have some ideas, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t share them. I seem to be having a hard time keeping important information confidential. No offense.”

“None taken, but be careful. These people seem to have the kind of resources usually reserved for governments or multinational corporations.”

The fact that there were two more armed agents sitting in the front seat gave me a rare feeling of invulnerability, but my concern was primarily for those who might be used as targets in place of me.

“There’s not much I can do, you know. I’ll pass your information along, but Haley is not my case—either for insider trading or for murder. I have zero pull with the SEC and the white-collar-crime guys in our office.”

Brady had once been one of the white-collar-crime investigators in the FBI New York office. Moving over to the interagency drug
task force had been a major career boost. He had gone from a third-tier forensic accountant to a rising star with an impressive arrest record.

“And the Nassau County DA’s office might as well be on foreign soil. They’ll listen to Haley’s defense attorney before they’ll take my call.”

“As soon as they identify that Rolls-Royce, they’ll release Haley. How many can there be in the New York area?”

“That’s a joke, right? I’d guess tens of thousands for a start and those are just the ones with local license plates. Now add in all the tax dodgers who keep an address in Florida. Without the plate number, they have no chance of finding this guy.”

“What about following up on the connection with the banker?”

“The dead guy?” he asked by way of answering my question.

“It’s too convenient that he just happened to OD right after signing off on that bogus account.”

“Oh, it was murder all right. Fentanyl is not your garden-variety recreational drug. It’s much too dangerous.”

“So is heroin,” I said, more to elicit information than to argue the issue with an expert.

“Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and about one hundred times more powerful than heroin. They give it to terminal cancer patients. Every once in a while we get cases of junkies OD’ing on it. Some low-level dealer who’s trying to hawk heroin that’s been stepped on one too many times might add a small taste of fentanyl to boost the high on his product. But killing your customer is generally considered to be bad for business, even in the street-level drug trade. If some idiot made a speedball of coke plus that stuff, it was manslaughter. If he had a brain, it was murder. There is no way to reverse the effects of an overdose. The respiratory system shuts down first. The guy would have suffocated within minutes.”

“Is it hard to get hold of?”

He raised his eyebrows. “We live in a capitalist society. Supply will always meet demand. The only variable is price.”

Economic lessons from the FBI. “I should go,” I said. “There’re things I need to get started on. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, start looking.”

“Where shall I start?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll leave a trail.”

The feeling of invulnerability disappeared the moment I stepped out onto the sidewalk. I felt cold, tired, bruised, and much too visible. I walked quickly toward the doors to the Ansonia.

I saw the man coming out of the corner of my eye. Raoul, the doorman, saw him, too, and came out to head him off.

“Hold up, Jason,” the man called in a hoarse whine.

I didn’t stop, but I turned my head to look him over. He knew me—or my name, at least. When I examined him, he looked a lot less frightening. Unpleasant, but not threatening. He was a bone-thin, gray-bearded man in an ancient trench coat and filthy sheepskin bedroom slippers. Though he looked like he had survived on the streets for years, a well-aimed gust of wind would have sent him flying like a page from yesterday’s newspaper.

“Fuck off, pal.” Raoul stood between us.

“I got a message,” the old man said, holding out a small envelope. “The man said you’d give me five bucks for it.”

“Not fucking likely,” Raoul said. “Now move off.”

“Just a sec.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out a bill. “Give me the letter.”

“You can’t encourage these guys, Mr. Stafford.”

“That’s okay, Raoul. You can help most by getting me inside as quickly as possible.”

The old man and I exchanged our bits of paper. He turned and immediately began shuffling toward Broadway.

“Is this from Dr. McKenna?” I called after him.

“Don’t know the man. Said his name was Kimble.”

I knew that game. “Richard Kimble?”
The Fugitive
.

He was still moving away. “Dunno. Said he was a doctor.”

Raoul had the door open. I rushed inside before opening the message.

RUN

Followed by a ten-digit number beginning with 917. A cell phone.