Fifth Ave 01 - Fifth Avenue (36 page)

But that won’t be.
 
My job is to kill you.
 
Allow me to apologize now.
 
When I take your life, it won’t be with pleasure.

And that is why I’m giving you an opportunity--take the gun, press it against your temple and pull the trigger.
 
It will weigh much less heavily on my mind knowing you had the good sense to take your own life and I can guarantee you that it will be far less painful, especially since I've been paid to make certain it's painful.
 
Sometimes, when people don’t take my advice, I can become quite....brutal.

It really is a perfect day for a suicide, wouldn’t you say? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the gun is loaded.
 
Please make the right decision, Miss Redman.
 
Someone as pretty as you should be spared as much pain as possible.

I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make your decision.
 
Any time after that and you’re fair game.
 
Oh, and please don’t do anything foolish like telling someone about this.
 
If you do, I’ll know--and neither of us wants that.

Leana crumpled the note and dropped it in the box.

Her breathing was uneven.

Perspiration shimmered on her forehead.

Eric was behind this.
 
She was sure of it.

She looked at the phone.
 
She should call Mario and tell him everything.
 
But she couldn’t.
 
If she did, there was no doubt that somehow this man would find out.

She felt suddenly and entirely alone.
 
There was fear, but it was a different kind of fear from the fear she felt when Eric beat her.
 
She knew then that he wouldn’t kill her.
 
She knew now that he wanted her dead.

She looked at her watch and saw that it was getting late.
 
She wondered where Michael was.
 
She wondered if he had already come by and found her gone.

Her head was spinning.

I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make your decision.
 
Any time after that and you’re fair game.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

From the Mercedes’ cool interior, the three men watched Michael Archer walk down the busy sidewalk, watched him shift a bag of groceries from one arm to the other, and watched him stop to say hello to an elderly woman pushing a rusty shopping cart.

Only after he entered the brick tenement on Avenue B did they make their move.

One by one, they stepped out of the car.
 
Doors opened, clicked shut.
 
Two men were tall and muscular, their dark hair slicked back into shiny ponytails.
 
The other man was slightly older, wiser-looking, with short graying hair and pale skin--the glass of his silver spectacles flashed white in the hazy, early-morning sun.

His name was Ethan Cain, he was an international assassin and he had been hired yesterday morning by Stephano Santiago.
 
While he hadn’t met Santiago in person, the $125,000 Santiago deposited into Cain’s Swiss bank account was perhaps the only introduction he would ever need.

His instructions were simple--remind Michael Archer that in one week a certain gambling debt was due.
 
Use whatever force is necessary.

Cain had his own ideas about that.

Although he was American, he had lived the better part of his life in Paris and spoke in French to the two men beside him.
 
“Archer’s apartment is on the sixth floor.
 
Try not to kill him.”

They crossed the street and entered the building.
 
Inside it was dark and musty.
 
The air smelled of alcohol and cigarette smoke.
 
Cain glanced down both ends of a long corridor, saw peeling wallpaper, a cat urinating in a shadowy corner, a woman stepping half-naked into her apartment.
 
He also saw two stairwells and a service elevator.
 
He gave his men their instructions.

When they separated, it was Cain who took the elevator.
 
As he rose in the rattling iron cage to Michael Archer’s apartment, he reached inside his black leather jacket and felt the gun he concealed there earlier.
 
Its steely coolness sent a rush of anticipation up his spine and he wondered if Archer would give him an excuse to use it.

He hoped so.
 
It had been a week since he’d taken a life.

They met on the sixth floor.
 
In one of the apartments, someone was playing a stereo so loudly that the walls and floor literally vibrated with the sounds of heavy metal music. This pleased Cain.
 
It was a sign to let him know that Archer was in his apartment. Earlier, he had given the man playing the music five hundred dollars to be a lookout.

They started down the hall.
 
Cain’s senses were acute.
 
He was aware of sights and sounds and smells he normally would have ignored.
 
Later, as always, he’d be able to describe--in detail--exactly how the job went down.

They stopped at the door at the end of the hall.
 
Cain withdrew his gun, took a step back.
 
There was a silence while he and his men stood looking at one another.
 
Then Cain nodded at the taller of the two men and winced as the door was kicked open.

They rushed inside, ready for anything.
 

But the room was empty.

Incredulous, Cain stood in the middle of the small living space.
 
As the driving beat of the hard rock music enveloped him, he saw on a side table the sack of groceries Archer had with him on the street and knew that he’d been here.

He looked around the room.
 
How did Archer leave when all three exits were covered?
 
Was he still in here, hiding?

Cain threw open a closet door, shoved aside a rack of clothes.
 
Nothing.
 
His gaze swept the room.
 
Boxes filled with Archer’s belongings cluttered a floor that was scarred with a million heel marks.
 
Sunlight from an open window played across a bed that had been slept in.
 
A pair of torn, faded curtains moved in the breeze.

And then Cain knew.
 
Knew.

He went to the window and looked out.
 
Archer was hurrying down the fire escape, rapidly approaching street-level, his footsteps deadened by the music thundering from the hallway.

Somehow, he had seen them.
 
Cain raised his gun, had an impulse to shoot, but stilled it.
 
There were too many people on the street.
 
He would have to take Archer another way.

He fled the apartment with his men.

*
 
*
 
*

The streets were thronged with people.
 
Michael pushed his way through them, shot through traffic, got nudged in the hip by a moving car and kept running.
 
Not once did he look behind him until he reached the corner of East Houston.
 
And there they were, closing in, hands in outsized pockets, unseen weapons gripped--just as he had feared.

He ran faster.

Since his dog's death, he had taken precautions.
 
He knew his father was correct.
 
No matter what Santiago promised, the man couldn’t be trusted.
 
And so, whether leaving his apartment--or returning to it--Michael always found an excuse to stop and glance around.

Today, the excuse was saying hello to the elderly woman with the rusty shopping cart.
 
If he hadn’t stopped to say hello to her, he never would have seen the three men watching him from the Mercedes.
 
And if he hadn’t rushed up the steps to his apartment and looked out his only window, he wouldn’t have seen those men leaving the Mercedes to cross the street.

He turned up First Avenue, looked over his shoulder.
 
The men were still there, closer than before, threading their way through the crowds on the sidewalk.
 
Michael knew that as long as they kept him in sight, they could force him to keep running blindly, not knowing which street or alley he took might lead to a dead end where he could no longer run.

He felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of rage.
 
They had killed his dog.
 
Did they think they could kill him, too?
 
Right here in the open?

And then he thought of the woman who was shot dead outside his apartment.
 
Of course they could kill him here.
 
In these crowds, they could fire three or four muted gunshots at close range and escape in the resulting chaos.

He was moving faster, his mind racing.
 
Why were they here?
 
He still had a week to come up with the money.
 
He didn’t think they wanted to kill him, but he was certain they wanted to hurt him.

He was running so quickly now, the people on the street gave him looks ranging from annoyance to indifference to surprise and even a sense of fear.
 
Lower First Avenue was a mecca of stores and shops.
 
If he could somehow slip unnoticed into one of the shops, he could wait a few minutes and then leave for a place where he knew he would be reasonably safe--Leana Redman’s apartment.

But he cast it idea aside.
 
The moment they couldn’t see him was the moment they'd start searching each shop for him.

The men were fifty feet behind him.
 
Desperation rose in him.
 
Michael’s legs were beginning to cramp.
 
He bumped into a woman stepping out of a Laundromat and sent her clean clothes flying--a rainbow of color was tossed into the air.
 
He stumbled, righted himself and began wondering if this was worth it.
 
Why run?
he thought.
Sooner or later, they’ll find me.

But he wouldn’t give up.

An intersection was approaching.
 
The light was red and cars were racing by.
 
He couldn’t cross.
 
He looked left, then right....and was surprised to see a van rounding the corner and screeching to a stop in front of him.

Car horns blared and there was the sudden stench of burnt rubber in the air.
 
Then the van’s passenger door shot open.
 
Michael recognized the driver instantly.

“Get in!” Vincent Spocatti shouted.

Michael did as he was told and the van shot forward

He tried to catch his breath.
 
The muscles in his legs and lower back ached.
 
He looked at Spocatti, saw him glancing in the rearview mirror, saw the determined set of his jaw and knew it wasn’t over.

“They’re following us, aren’t they?”

Spocatti didn’t answer.
 
He jerked the van to the left.