Deadly in New York (7 page)

Hayes went inside and poured himself a glass of cold herb tea and added a dash of coconut water.

Ceiling fans stirred the air as he carried his drink to the bathroom and stripped to take a shower. The last thing he did before he stepped beneath the spray was take off his glasses and set them beside his tea.

Without his glasses, he was nearly blind.

Later, he would wonder if the two men had followed him into the house, or whether they had simply waited for him there.

As he soaped his chest, the shower curtain was suddenly thrown back. Hayes looked up to see a blur of dark figures.

“What in the hell do you want!” he demanded.

“You know what we want,” said one of the figures in a heavy voice. “You've been collecting some information on a friend of ours. We want it. Now.”

Having recovered from his initial shock, Hayes's face became a placid, unreadable pool. “I won't give it to you,” he said simply. “And anything you may do to try and get it will be fruitless.”

“Oh, yeah?” snarled one of the dark figures. “But you won't be offended if we try, will you?”

Hayes's vision was too bad for him even to see the hand coming.

The figure hit him a stinging slap in the face and, as Hayes brought his hands up to protect himself, hit him again with a heavy fist, full in the scrotum.

Hayes dropped to his knees in the tub.

Barely able to breathe for the pain, he vomited into the drain.

As he vomited, one of the men kicked him in the buttocks, and Hayes lunged face first into the mess.

Just before he passed out, he thought, I can understand Fister's wanting the data. But this sort of cruelty is mindless. It cannot go unpunished.…

eleven

New York

Two days after James Hawker was questioned and released, he readied himself for his formal declaration of war on Fister Corporation and the mysterious Blake Fister.

At a Boston Road used car lot, he paid cash for a black Chevrolet van. When the salesman asked him for identification so he could transfer the registration, Hawker slid a hundred-dollar bill onto the table.

The bill disappeared into the salesman's pocket. The salesman looked up and smiled. “Didn't you say your name was John Smith?”

Hawker nodded. “Right.”

“Any particular address, Mr. Smith?”

“I'll let you choose one. You know the area better than I do.”

Hawker drove the van to the warehouse where Hayes had sent his equipment. He loaded three crates into the van and, once again, paid cash. After lunch at a corner deli, he drove down Rhinestrauss Avenue, past winos sleeping in the smoggy June heat, past the strange bag ladies with their shopping carts full of junk, past an old blind beggar lady with a white cane and a cup full of pencils.

The traffic on the sidewalks was heavier than traffic on the street.

He parked the van outside the two-story brownstone. It rented as separate apartments, and Hawker had leased the upstairs.

He had decided to stay in the German section because he wanted to see if there was a possibility of organizing the neighborhood into a unified body of resistance.

It was always easier to help people when they had the will to help themselves.

As Hawker began to unload the van, the blind lady shuffled past, tapping her cane. As she neared him, she stopped and her head swiveled back and forth as if she sensed the presence of another human being. The woman had stringy gray hair, and she wore an an old beret and heavy black glasses.

“
Guten Abend,”
she called out in a shaky voice. “
Guten Aben, lieber Freund!”

Hawker smiled. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't speak German.”

The old woman tottered around and smiled at him through bad teeth. “But I speak Amerikaner, yes? Quite good, I speak.
Welch schreckliches heiss Wetter!
Oh, what terrible hot weather, no?”

Hawker fished a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and put it into her can. “The weather is hot, yes.” When the old woman made no effort to leave, Hawker added, “Do you live around here?”

The woman nodded emotionally. “
Ja!
Such a nice neighborhood. Now so bad. The men come, buy my house. My husband, Fritz, such a good man, dead. The men say I must sell our house, so I sell. In Germany, I learn not to argue with the men,
ja!
I sell!”

From the look on her face, Hawker thought she was about to cry. Instead, she steadied herself and she flashed the bad grin again. “You live here, now?
Ja?
I come back some day. Bring you cookies I make. So nice to talk with my
lieber Freunden
. But I must leave soon. The men with guns say, and I do not argue with the men!”

“Come back anytime,” Hawker said, lifting one of the crates. “I'll watch for you. And, if things work out, maybe you won't have to leave your home after all.”

The woman beamed at him through her dark glasses, then tottered away down the sidewalk.

Hawker watched her until she disappeared around the corner, then carried his load inside.

There was something strange about the woman. Something strange and lonely and pathetic.

New York City, Hawker decided, was the perfect place for her.

At first dusk, Hawker began to ready himself for the fight.

He ate a light supper of fruit and iced tea.

He steamed himself clean in the shower, then forced himself not to flinch as he turned the cold water on full.

He urinated and defecated—two things he didn't want to have to think about in the middle of a firefight.

It was the same well-loved routine he had observed before a baseball game when he played for the Detroit organization, or before a boxing match, back when he was still a teenager, fighting Golden Gloves.

The only difference was, now the stakes were higher.

One hell of a lot higher.

He could feel the butterflies of tension building in his stomach: a good feeling.

Hawker pulled on a black T-shirt and dark jeans. To his ankle, beneath the jeans, he strapped a Randall Attack-Survival combat knife. His best holster—the Jensen Quick-Draw—had been built especially for the customized Colt Commander.

But he no longer owned the Colt.

Lieutenant Callis had insisted that Hawker could not claim the weapon, explaining, “If you say it's yours, I'll have to arrest you all over again. This state's got tough gun laws, and your permit is only good for Illinois.”

It was true, so Hawker had not argued.

So, in place of the Colt, Hawker selected the Browning HP 35 pistol. Along with a pretty fair range of effectiveness—seventy meters—the Browning's most attractive feature was its thirteen-round detachable clip. Carefully Hawker filled two clips full of 9mm cartridges and slid a third into the parabellum before housing the pistol in the shoulder holster he had strapped on.

The Browning was dependable, but Hawker had a more effective weapon in mind for the main assault.

From the crate he lifted one of three Ingram MAC10 submachine guns. It was only about twice as long as the Browning and weighed only two kilograms more.

But the Ingram offered one hell of a lot more fire power. The box clip held thirty-two 9mm rounds—and all could be fired, if need be, in just a deadly few seconds.

Hawker loaded five full clips and put them with the Ingram—along with the Ingram's threaded silencer and a silencer for the Browning—in a canvas knapsack.

Finally Hawker chose the weapon he would use for the initial assault. He had used it before—in L.A.—and he had come to respect it for its silence and its killing power.

It was a Cobra military crossbow. It was small and light, built of aluminum and fiberglass. By breaking it down like a pellet rifle, the weapon cocked itself automatically. It had an effective killing range of more than three-hundred yards, and the deadly, three-edged arrows traveled a hundred meters in less than a second.

Hawker packed a dozen of the small killing bolts, then, using the same professional care, he deposited a few more surprises for the Mafioso goons in the knapsack before locking the rest of his gear away.

That done, he pulled a jacket on over the shoulder holster and tugged a black British watch cap over his red-brown hair. After making sure the cheap lock had sealed the door as best it could, Hawker drew out a six-foot length of piano wire. He would have liked to put it at neck level, but that was impossible because the stair railing was too low. Instead, he strung it tight between two posts at ankle level.

He didn't want any surprises waiting for him when he returned home.

Hawker stepped over the wire and trotted the rest of the way down the stairs. Unexpectedly, the door of the bottom apartment opened. A wedge of light spilled out onto the tiny grass yard, and a figure peered out.

“Hello?” said a woman's voice. “Mr. Hawker? Is that you?”

Hawker stopped and walked toward the figure. It was hard to make out her features because she was back-lighted. He could only see that she was tall and lithe with fine, straight blond hair cut Dutch-boy fashion. She stood half in the entranceway, holding the door.

“That's right, I'm Hawker,” he said, stopping on the sidewalk. “Do we know each other?”

The woman seemed uneasy and just a little embarrassed. “No. My name is Brigitte Mildemar.” When Hawker did not immediately respond to that, she added, “I'm the owner of this house.”

Hawker nodded and smiled. “Oh …
right
. Yeah, I wondered why your name sounded so familiar.”

It was a lie. Hawker had leased the flat through a realtor. He had paid no attention to who owned it.

She moved backward into the house a bit—but not enough so that Hawker misread it as an invitation to come in. Even so, he could see her better now. And Brigitte Mildemar was a treat to see. Her hair was white-blond, like spun glass, and it framed one of those sensuous Germanic faces with its high cheekbones, pale-blue eyes that seemed to peer out from caves, and soft chin that curved gently upward toward sunken cheeks.

She was tall—almost as tall as Hawker, who was an inch over six feet. She wore expensive white slacks, pleated and pressed, and a white satin blouse that was primly buttoned at the neck. Even so, it revealed the sharp thrust of small, firm breasts and the narrow veeing of her waist.

She seemed to feel Hawker's eyes on her, and she fidgeted uncomfortably.

“Well,” she said quickly, “I heard you coming down the stairs, and I thought I should introduce myself.”

“I'm very glad you did … Mrs. Mildemar?”

Hawker expected her to blush. She didn't. Instead, her manner became frosty. “It's
Ms
. Mildemar, Mr. Hawker. And now that we have met, I would like to ask you something that I should have perhaps directed my real estate agent to ask—”

“You don't even have to,” Hawker interrupted, smiling. “I haven't leased many apartments in my time, but I think I know all the questions. Let's see … I don't smoke. I don't drink to excess, and I won't be having any loud parties because I don't like loud parties. Oh, yeah—I don't play any instruments, so you don't have to worry about that. I wish I did, but I don't—unless you count a very bad baritone in the shower. I'm a little bit weak in the pet department, too. No chimps, lion cubs, poodles, or any of the other animals New Yorkers think are so cute and so chic to lead around on a leash.” Hawker tapped his finger against his cheek, thinking. “Let's see, anything else? Yes—my hours are irregular.” Hawker held up the canvas backpack. “I'm a photographer, you see. I do a lot of night work. Available light stuff, so I'll be coming in late sometimes, but that won't bother you because I am extremely quiet.” Hawker gave her a pointed look. “And, of course, any visitors I may invite to my apartment are none of your business.”

Some of the coldness left Brigitte Mildemar's eyes as Hawker spoke, replaced by a flicker of amusement. The look of amusement didn't last long.

“That's all very interesting, Mr. Hawker,” she countered. “But none of it has anything to do with what I wanted to ask.”

“I left something out?”

“Yes. One thing. I'm going to ask you a straightforward question and I want an honest answer.”

Hawker smiled. “You're not studying to be the first woman priest or something, are you, Ms. Mildemar?”

Once again, she fought off an amused expression. “No, Mr. Hawker, I am not. What I wanted you to tell me is this: Do you or do you not work for Fister Limited?”

Hawker couldn't help himself. Once he had recovered from his surprise, he burst out laughing.

As he laughed, the woman's face became redder and redder. “Perhaps you will tell me why you find that question so amusing, Mr. Hawker?” she snapped. “For your information, my parents owned this house for a great many years. I grew up here. While I prefer to live in my apartment in Manhattan, I will stay here just as long as I must to make sure the thugs who work for that company don't destroy it in an effort to make me sell.” She jammed her hands on her hips. “Now, tell me—why do you find that so funny?”

Hawker wiped his eyes, still chuckling. “Some day, Brigitte, if you ever drop that ice-water facade of yours, maybe I will tell you. Until then, you can rest easy. I don't work for Fister Limited, and I don't work for anyone who's associated with Fister Corporation.” Hawker motioned toward his canvas knapsack again. “I'm a photographer, remember? And you know how we artists feel about big corporations.”

“Well, then,” the woman said primly, “I guess we have nothing more to discuss. It was … interesting meeting you, Mr. Hawker.”

As she began to push the door closed, Hawker called out, “And, Brigitte—if anyone comes around here from that corporation to bother you again, let me know, okay?”

Hawker thought he saw a dry smile touch the woman's lips before she disappeared inside. “And what would you do, Mr. Hawker?” she answered softly. “Take their photograph and scream for the police? I was raised in New York, and I'm afraid I
do
know how you artists feel—about big corporations … and other things.”