Long Way Down (22 page)

“I expect to hear from the Nassau County DA’s office first thing tomorrow morning. They will, no doubt, be dropping all charges against my client.” The lawyer finished strong.

“What do you think?” Roger asked.

“I saw that picture last week, Roger.” The news continued with a story about Lotto winners who had gone broke within a year or two of winning. “Turn it off, okay? There’s no way somebody reconstructed anything from what I saw. ‘Digitally enhanced,’ my ass. This is some very fresh bullshit.”

“Really? I thought they could do all kinds of things with digital pictures these days. I saw it on
24
.”

“Maybe,” I said, though I didn’t think so at all. They could make them fool the eye—that was easy—but a good technician would know the image had been altered. “But I know a guy.”

“Call him up,” Roger said.

“Not so easy,” I said. “But tomorrow I’m going to set about finding him.”

R
oger and I were huddled inside the security door to his building, watching the street and waiting for Savannah’s call.

“You think it’s just the two of them?”

“Has to be,” I said. “If they’re covering all of the possible places I could be holed up in around the city, they’ve already got a small army at work.”

There were two men, white and early forties, dressed in shabby suits, white shirts, and no ties, sitting in the front seat of a dented and dusty Chevy Impala across the street. A steady stream of gray smoke came from the muffler—they were running the engine to keep warm. The car was blocking a fire hydrant. Maybe I’d get lucky and a police car would come by and force them to leave.

“Who are they?”

“No idea. Private detectives? Off-duty cops? Russian gangsters? Mercenaries? I’d bet someone like Chuck Penn can hire hundreds of guys like that with one phone call.”

Roger’s cell phone rang, causing us both to start, even though we’d been waiting for the signal for ten minutes.

Roger put the phone to his ear and listened. He nodded once and clicked off. “Magic time,” he said.

“Break a leg,” I said.

“Call me sometime when you just want to catch a beer or something, will ya?” He pushed open the door and walked out. He climbed the three steps to the sidewalk and hurried across the street.

The two guys in the car saw him, followed him for just a moment with their eyes, and dismissed him almost at the same moment. They weren’t there looking for a short, older man with a slightly bowlegged walk. Roger slipped between two parked cars and stopped in front of the awning of the apartment building across the street. He leaned against the wall and waited.

A yellow cab came down the block and pulled to the curb. A tall, leggy redhead got out wearing a long winter coat and carrying a big leather purse hooked over one arm. The coat hung open, revealing a magnificent body, barely contained within a black minidress with a hemline that stopped one stitch this side of indecent exposure. Savannah managed to look both elegant and slutty. She strode toward the door of the building in tall heels, the coat swinging wide.

I checked on the two watchers. The guy on the passenger side had definitely noticed the woman only twenty feet away. He tapped the driver on the arm and his head swung around also.

Roger came off the wall and spoke to Savannah as she passed him. She stopped, turned, and put both hands on hips and jutted out her chin before saying something back. It appeared that the two of them were having a particularly rude conversation. It escalated quickly. A second later, she began screeching.

“You bass-tid. You little bass-tid,” she shrieked in a tone-perfect impersonation of a girl from Ozone Park. She swung the big leather bag. Roger put his arms up in defense and backed away, Savannah coming on strong. She staggered wildly on the
towering heels and the red wig came off, sending her into even greater screams as she pounded on my friend. Savannah was a good actress.

It was such a great show that I almost stayed watching too long. The two guys in the Impala were smiling, pointing, and laughing. I pushed open the front door and slipped out. I kept my head down and walked in the opposite direction, toward Amsterdam. I looked back quickly as I turned the corner. The doorman had come out of the building and was trying to calm the lady down. Roger took his opportunity and ran, making his escape.

I lengthened my stride and made mine as well.

—

It used to be called Hell’s Kitchen,
but that was when the Westies ran the West Side. They’d been gone for a while. What the police, the Mafia, and Rudy Giuliani had separately or collectively failed to do had been accomplished by Yuppies and gentrification. The tenements had been converted into condos or torn down and replaced with luxury high-rises. But there were still some relics of the past.

St. Patrick’s Thrift Shop catered to a mixed crowd. There were two well-dressed twenty-somethings going through the racks of silk blouses, designer camis, and once-worn party dresses, and there was a sable coat–wearing matron haggling over a Liberty scarf. And there was me.

I had missed more than a few hours of sleep in the past few days, and I hadn’t shaved since waking up in Santa Fe; I looked the part of a once prosperous executive on the verge of becoming homeless. I just needed to fill out my costume.

“I want to swap this,” I said, indicating the long sheepskin coat, “for a woolen overcoat. A warm hat. Gloves would be good, too.”

The clerk—a watery-eyed woman in her seventies, wearing a quilted cardigan and the kind of soft-soled sensible shoes that I had thought did not exist this side of the Hudson River—looked me over. My wrinkled suit, my graying white shirt, the sleeping bag under my arm. I confused her.

“Navy? Black? Gray? Camel’s hair? I have some in blond, and one or two in brown. What size do you need?”

“Something very large and very long. Something I can sleep in if I need to.”

Twenty minutes later, I was outfitted in a voluminous charcoal-colored woolen coat that hung two inches wider than my shoulders and almost reached my ankles, a blue woolen scarf with a Giants logo, and a pair of stained ski mittens. I looked myself over. The coat was far too clean, but a day or two on the street would fix that. Shoes! My Allen Edmonds looked like new.

“Do you have men’s shoes?” I asked.

“There’s not much of a selection,” she said.

“I’ll swap you these for anything that fits.”

She looked and then raised her eyebrows. “I think you ought to keep those. I always think a man looks so put together when he’s wearing wingtips.”

Skeli liked wingtips. Angie had always tried to get me to buy Italian slip-ons. I never liked them. They made me feel like I was always about to float up off the ground.

The clerk and I compromised. She sold me a beat-up pair of Eccos, with a sole that appeared to be made of tractor tire, and a canvas backpack into which I placed my wingtips and the gear I was carrying. The backpack helped to complete the picture. The essential accessory for the well-fitted-out urban homeless man.

I didn’t haggle. I paid in cash. Her eyebrows shot up again when I pulled out the roll of fifty-dollar bills, still thick enough to choke a
python. I made a mental note to carry some smaller bills in another pocket, so that I wouldn’t be flashing the kind of money that might get me killed on the street.

Then I went looking for Benjamin McKenna. Or Richard Kimble. Just as long as I didn’t have to play Jason Bourne.

A
t least it was sunny. It was also very cold.

I skirted the edge of Foley Square and took a seat on a bench opposite the park. One more homeless man on a bench across from the courthouse would not draw anyone’s attention. There were four other men who looked much the same as I did within fifty feet. Nevertheless, I tucked the cell phone into my sleeve and hunched over. A homeless man talking on a cell phone might stand out just enough to get me caught.

Special Agent Marcus Brady answered his phone on the first ring, as though he had been waiting for the call.

“Brady.”

“Hello. Just an old friend calling.”

He gave a long, low whistle. “Hello, old friend. You’ve become almost famous. Did you know?”

“I kind of figured.”

“That little dustup at Newark Airport put you on the map.”

“It’s amazing what you can do when you’re terrified.”

“Self-defense? That’s good. Be sure and use that argument when
the janitor tells the court how you bloodied both of those men and walked away without a scratch.”

“Who were those guys? Do you know?”

“One left before security got on the scene. Cameras caught him getting into a cab. The driver says he dropped him in Newark. He’s gone. Where are you?”

“Across the street,” I said.

“Uh-huh. I didn’t really think you’d give me a straight answer.”

“And the other one?”

“The one you popped with the mop handle? He told the Jersey troopers that he didn’t want to press charges. They didn’t give him the satisfaction. When they asked for ID, he handed them a phony passport. Then they called us. He’s being held by ICE until we sort things out.”

“I was worried I might have killed him.”

“So now you have the FBI looking for you, along with everybody else.”

“Any idea who they were working for?” I said.

“You are not my case. All I know is what people are talking about on the elevator.”

“But did you hear anything?”

“The guy with the broken nose has since forgotten how to speak English,” he said.

“Could he be Honduran?”

“Do they speak Russian there?”

“Russian?” I said.

“He’s hired muscle.”

“I think the other one—the one who got away—was driving the car last week when they tried to shoot me.”

“An incident that never officially happened because you failed to make a report—despite my advice.”

“It happened.”

“If you get pulled over for anything—a broken taillight—keep your hands in sight. From your description, you are a very dangerous person.”

“The police won’t find me. That’s not who has me worried.”

“You should come in. They know about the VW van. They tracked you as far as Pennsylvania. They know you’ve been using secondary roads since, staying off the highway. All you need is for some local deputy who’s seen too many Clint Eastwood movies to get all heroic and your son gets to watch his father bleed out on a back road somewhere in Pennsyltucky.”

“They know the Kid’s with me?” The sleeping bag, the clothes I bought. The Happy Meal.

“I know that you have a generally negative view of the abilities of people in my profession, but don’t get comfortable with it. These guys are very good.”

“That’s great.”

I caught him offsides. “Really? And why is it good?”

“Because if you guys think he’s with me, then the bad guys think so, too. And if they’re looking for him with me, they’re not looking somewhere else.”

“Come in, Jason. You’re not safe out there. The Kid’s not safe.”

“I can’t. Someone is trying to kill me and he’s got access. You put me in some nice safe jail and he’ll find me in no time. Believe me, I’m much safer under the radar.”

“Next time you call, I will be tracking your phone.”

“Hah! Come on. You’re already tracking me. Next time I call, you can tell me where I was and I’ll tell you how well you did. Later.”

I clicked off.

Was it safe to assume that if the FBI thought I was still on my way west, that anyone else who was chasing me would think the same? One of the first rules of trading—assume nothing.

M
cKenna had stopped staying at SROs when he got spooked. Someone had discovered that Selena Haley’s computer had been hacked the day that she had been murdered. They traced it back to McKenna’s laptop. He was pretty sure it wasn’t the police or the FBI, because they don’t normally leave death threats. He ditched the computer and dropped through the cracks. I knew where not to look for him. He would avoid the city homeless shelters—they were run like prisons and could be just as dangerous. The soup kitchens, rehab centers, and methadone clinics all had their regular communities where a new guy on the street would stand out all too easily. McKenna would want total anonymity. And so did I.

The city had closed—consolidated—many of its libraries, but I still had plenty of stops to make. I checked every public library on the west side of Manhattan, walking from Bryant Park to 179th Street. I walked because I didn’t want to show up on any of the surveillance cameras in the subway, and because waiting for a bus would have slowed me down.

Somewhere, McKenna was holing up, but he had to have Internet
access. The carrels in the public libraries were as close to anonymous as one could get—and they had wireless Internet connections. Homeless people rarely get rousted from a library unless they create a nuisance, like letting loose with a schizophrenic rant, or sleeping on the tables, or urinating in their clothes. It’s warm, there are newspapers to read, and the water fountains usually work and produce a quality product. But unless you are actually taking a book out, no one questions you or your right to be there. It was a long shot, but an educated one. If I didn’t find him on the West Side, I’d do the East Side the next day.

I felt the man’s eyes on me before I saw him. I walked in front of the reference librarian’s desk, heading for the bank of carrels in the back, when I sensed a startled intense gaze. I was careful not to respond. I continued on my way, took a chair, and settled into the space, plugging in my laptop and signing in. Then I took a moment to gaze around the room, lazily, as though bored and waiting for my system to boot up.

He was a tall black man, mid- to late twenties, lanky but not thin—his height made him look thinner than he was—wearing army surplus khaki and boots, and a desert camo jacket. His eyes flicked away when I looked in his direction.

I wanted to bolt. I thought I was absurd. Paranoid. Resorting to racial profiling. Did I really think that my ghostly pursuers had found me in an uptown library? That they’d been waiting for me there? Or that this man, who had done the unthinkable and looked at me, was somehow a threat? I was breaking up, deep into the DMZ of paranoia. Drifting. I needed to take control, no matter what it cost me. The sane strategy would be to act the part of a lunatic—confront my fears and the man. I stared at him, glaring.

He hid behind a magazine.
Rolling Stone
. I kept glaring. He looked around the room, overacting his nonchalance, until our eyes met. I refused to blink. He stood up, dropped the magazine on
the table, and walked out. Through the racks of new arrivals, I could see him pass the front desk and exit. He was gone.

I stayed for an hour, fueling my laptop, resting my feet, and attempting to reassure myself that what I was going through was nothing more than an episode. With a return to my life, these constant fears would dissipate, and I would be whole again. It was getting late.

The sun was dropping toward New Jersey as I headed up Saint Nicholas Avenue. I would have to start thinking of a place to spend the night very soon. There were parks up on the north end of Manhattan. It was going to be a cold night, but I had the long johns and the thermal socks—I was dressed for it and, in addition to my laptop and shoes, I had the sleeping bag tied to my backpack.

My street senses were all askew. I looked like someone that I would normally avoid. It kept me from looking too closely at the people I passed on the street. Another of McKenna’s rules.
Avoid eye contact
. I kept my head down, the ball cap pulled low, and the sunglasses in place. What energy I could spare for observation was focused on keeping an eye out for a tall black man in desert camo. That’s why I didn’t see them until they were right on top of me.

Neither man was much over five foot four, but they were both broad-chested and powerful-looking. The first bumped me as I passed an alley between a Dominican chicken joint and an auto parts store. I stumbled slightly and the second one pushed hard from behind. I took three staggering steps into the alley, with both of them alternating jabs and shoves to keep me off-balance. I pulled away, broke clear, and put my back against a wall.

The two had me cornered. Both were wearing cheap sneakers, jeans, dark hoodie sweatshirts, and quilted polyester vests. One had a long, sharpened screwdriver with which he made jabbing motions in my direction, though he stayed back out of reach. The other had
a knife, a heavy-bladed tool that would have been useful for chopping down small trees—or people. He advanced.

He said something in Spanish and pointed. My execrable foreign language skills were of no help, but I didn’t really need them. He wanted my backpack. I almost laughed. These were not the men who had chased me and tried to trap me all across the country. These were not the hit men from a Central American drug cartel, there to take revenge. These were two pitiful muggers, no farther up or down the food chain than I was at that moment.

Then it hit me. In a single day on the street, my priorities had changed. The day before, I would have handed over the backpack and wished them well. A laptop, some warm clothes, a sleeping bag? Even the cash? These weren’t things worth fighting or dying for. But it was a different day. I was terrified. My ability to survive without those clothes would be in jeopardy. My identity, what remained of it, as Jason Stafford was on those computer files. The path to reclaiming my life was there.

The cash. The cash was expendable. It was replaceable—somehow. It meant little to me, and might turn their weapons aside.

“Uno momento,”
I yelled, holding up a single hand in surrender, reaching into the bag with the other. It must have looked like a threatening move because the one with the knife took two quick steps closer and slashed the air in front of my face.

“No! No!” I screamed, unconcerned with letting my terror show. “
Dinero
. Much
dinero
. For you. Here. Here.” I had stashed the money in various pockets in the backpack and my clothes. I found four fifties and threw them on the ground between us.

The guy with the screwdriver bent over and swept the ground. The fifties disappeared. I sensed a shift in hostilities. They were getting what they wanted without committing murder. There was a chance we would all be able to walk away from this. I found two more fifties and threw them to the ground. Wrong move. I had
overplayed my hand. The knife-wielder, and the obvious brains of the team, saw the possibility of an even greater payoff. Just how many fifties were there in the bag?

He came forward and slashed at my face again. I leaned backward away from the knife and tripped over a black plastic bag of garbage. I fell.

“Take the goddamn bag,” I yelled, trying to extricate myself from the garbage and the backpack straps. What a ridiculous cosmic joke, I thought, to outwit hit men and hackers, and to die in a garbage-strewn alley, done in by two muggers. I kicked ineffectually at the advancing man, his knife swinging in ever-narrowing arcs. I was mesmerized, like a mouse waiting for the snake to strike.

The little man was suddenly lifted into the air by someone from behind and tossed face-first into the wall.

“Hey!
Retaco! Basta ya!
” a deep voice ordered. The black man from the library grabbed the Latino’s knife arm as he came off the wall. With one fluid motion, he pulled him forward and twisted the arm around and down. The mugger squawked like a throttled chicken and dropped the knife. His buddy ran. But not far. The black man kicked him in the leg as he passed and he dropped as though shot. With the first mugger dragging along, held by the overextended arm, the stranger walked over to the downed second man and kicked him again. This time in the ribs.

“Get that money out of your pocket,” he said. “I want to see it. All of it,
conejo
.” He let the man get up as far as his hands and knees and drew his leg back for another kick.

“No. No,” the man cried, tossing the fifties back on the ground.

“Very good. Now get the fuck out of here. The both of yous.” He swung the first man by the injured arm and let him fly back out onto the street. Both of them ran. Neither looked back.

I got up from the garbage and brushed myself off.

“Thank you. The money is yours. A reward.”

He looked at me scornfully. “You’re Jason Stafford.”

I felt a major twinge of fear. “Who wants to know?”

“I heard you were smart. I don’t think so. Pick up your things and let’s go. I got someone wants to talk to you.”

I didn’t want to die in that alley, and from what I had just seen, this guy would have no problem making that happen. Nonetheless, I felt that some resistance was required.

“I’m not going anywhere with you. You’ve been following me. I saw you.”

“I wasn’t following you, numbnuts, I was waiting for you. My man said you’d be along and I could just wait you out. And there you were. And about time, too. Come on, it’ll be dark soon and we got some walking to do.”

I reviewed my chances of getting away. Slim and none. I picked up the bills and stuffed them back into my bag. “Ready,” I said.