Manhattan Is My Beat (2 page)

“But … what’s that?” Gittleman pointed.

The marshal dropped the magazine to the floor, rose, and stepped to the window.

“A video camera?” Gittleman asked.

“Well, it looks like it. It does. Yeah.”

“Is it … But it’s not yours, is it?”

“No,” the marshal muttered, frowning. “We don’t have surveillance outside.”

The marshal glanced at the thin cable that disappeared up, presumably to the room above them. His eyes continued upward until they came to rest on the ceiling.

“Shit!” he said, reaching for his radio.

The first cluster of bullets from the silenced machine gun tore through the plaster above them and ripped into Son One, who danced like a puppet. He dropped to the floor, bloody and torn. Shivering as he died.

“No!” Gittleman cried. “Jesus,
no
!”

He leapt toward the phone. A stream of bullets followed him; upstairs the killer would be watching on the video camera, knowing exactly where Gittleman was.

Gittleman pressed himself flat against the wall. The gunman fired another shot. A single. It was close. Then two more. Inches away. Teasing him, it seemed like. Nobody would hear. The only sound was the cracking of plaster and wood.

More shots followed him as he dodged toward the bathroom. Debris flew around him. There was a pause. He hoped the killer had given up and fled. But it turned out that he was after the phone—so Gittleman couldn’t call for help. Two bullets cracked through the ceiling, hit the beige telephone unit, and shattered it into a hundred pieces.

“Help!” he cried, nauseated with fear. But, of course, the rooms on either side of this one were empty—a fact so reassuring a few moments ago, so horrifying now.

Tears of fright in his eyes …

He rolled into a corner, knocked a lamp over to darken the room.

More bullets crashed down. Closer, testing. Trying to find him. The gunman upstairs, watching a TV screen of
his own, just like Gittleman had been watching Charlton Heston a few minutes ago.

Do something
, Gittleman raged to himself.
Come on!

He eased forward again and shoved the TV set, on a roller stand, toward the window. It slammed into the pane, cracked it, and blocked the view the video camera had of the room.

There were several more shots but the gunman was blind now.

“Please,” Gittleman prayed quietly. “Please. Someone help me.”

Hugging the walls, he moved to the doorway. He fumbled the chain and dead bolt, shivering in panic, certain the man was right above him, aiming down. About to pull the trigger.

But there were no more shots and he swung the door open fast and leapt into the hallway. Calling to the marshal at the elevator—not one of the Sons, an officer named Gibson. “He’s shooting—there’s a man upstairs with a gun! You—”

But Gittleman stopped speaking. At the end of the hallway Gibson lay facedown. Blood pooled around his head. Another puppet—this one with cut strings.

“Oh, no,” he gasped. Turned around to run.

He stopped. Looking at what he now realized was the inevitable.

A handsome man, dark-complected, wearing a well-cut suit, standing in the hallway. He carried a Polaroid camera in one hand and, in the other, a black pistol mounted with a silencer.

“You’re Gittleman, aren’t you?” the man asked. He sounded polite, as if he were merely curious.

Gittleman couldn’t respond. But the man squinted and then nodded. “Yeah, sure you are.”

“But …” Gittleman looked back into his hotel room.

“Oh, my partner wasn’t trying to hit you in there. Just to flush you. We need to get you outside and confirm the kill.” The man gave a little shrug, nodding at the camera. “‘Causa what we’re getting paid they want proof. You know.”

And he shot Gittleman three times in the chest.

In the hotel corridor, which used to smell of Lysol and now smelled of Lysol and cordite from the gunshots, Haarte unscrewed the suppressor and dropped it and the Walther into his pocket. He glanced at the Polaroid picture of the dead man as it developed. Then put it in the same pocket as the gun.

From his belt he took his own walkie-talkie—more expensive than the Marshals’ and, unlike theirs, sensibly equipped with a three-level-encryption scrambler—and spoke to Zane, his partner, upstairs, the one so proficient with automatic weapons. “He’s dead. I’ve got the snap. Get out.”

“On my way,” Zane replied.

Haarte glanced at his watch. If the other marshal had gone to get food—which he probably had, since it was dinnertime—he could be back in six or seven minutes. That’s how much time it took to walk to the restaurant closest to the hotel, order take-out, and return. He obviously hadn’t gone to the restaurant
in
the hotel because they would just have ordered room service.

Haarte walked slowly down the four flights of stairs and outside into the warm spring evening. He checked the streets. Nearly deserted. No sirens. No flashing lights of silent roll-ups.

His earphone crackled. Haarte’s partner said, “I’m in the car. Back at the Hilton in thirty.”

“See you then.”

Haarte got into their second rental car and drove out
of downtown to a park in University City, a pleasant suburb west of the city.

He pulled up beside a maroon Lincoln Continental.

Overhead a jet, making its approach to Lambert Field, roared past.

Haarte got out of the car and walked to the Lincoln. He got in the backseat, checking out the driver, kept his hand in his pocket around the grip of the now-unsilenced pistol. The man sitting in the rear of the car, a heavy, jowly man of about 60, gave a faint nod, his eyes aimed toward the front seat, meaning: The driver’s okay; you don’t have to worry.

Haarte didn’t care what the man’s eyes said. Haarte worried all the time. He’d worried when he’d been a cop in the toughest precinct of Newark, New Jersey. He’d worried as a soldier in the Dominican Republic. He’d worried as a mercenary in Zaire and Burma. He’d come to believe that worry was a kind of drug. One that kept you alive.

Once he finished his own appraisal of the driver he released his grip on the pistol and took his hand out of his pocket.

The man said in a flat midwestern accent, “There’s nothing on the news yet.”

“There will be,” Haarte reassured him. He flashed the Polaroid.

The man shook his head. “All for money. Death of an innocent. And it’s all for money.” He sounded genuinely troubled as he said this. He looked up from the picture. Haarte had learned that Polaroids never show blood the right color; it always looks darker.

“That bother you?” the man asked Haarte. “Death of an innocent?”

Haarte said nothing. Innocence or guilt, just like fault and mercy, were concepts that had no meaning to him.

But the man didn’t seem to want an answer.

“Here.” The man handed him an envelope. Haarte had received a lot of envelopes like this. He always thought they felt like blocks of wood. Which in a way they were. Money was paper, paper was wood. He didn’t look inside. He put the envelope in his pocket. No one had ever tried to cheat him.

“What about the other guy you wanted done?” Haarte asked.

The man shook his head. “Gone to ground. Somewhere in Manhattan. We aren’t sure where yet. We should find out soon. You interested in the job?”

“New York?” Haarte considered. “It’ll cost more. There’s more heat, it’s more complicated. We’d need backup and we probably should make it look accidental. Or at least set up a fall guy.”

“Whatever,” the man said lackadaisically, not much interest in the details of Haarte’s craft. “What’ll it cost?”

“Double.” Haarte touched his breast pocket, where the money now rested.

A lifted gray eyebrow. “You pick up all expenses? The cost of backup? Equipment?”

Haarte waited a moment and said, “Add ten points for the backup?”

“I can go there,” the man said.

They shook hands and Haarte returned to his own car.

He called Zane on the radio once more. “We’re on again. This time in our own backyard.”

CHAPTER TWO

Rune got elected to pick up the videotape and her life was never the same after that.

She argued with her boss about picking up the tape—Tony, the manager of Washington Square Video on Eighth Street in Greenwich Village, where she was a clerk. Oh, she argued with him.

Rewinding a tape, playing with the VCR, snapping the controls, she stared at the fat, bearded man. “Forget it. No way.” She reminded him how he’d agreed she didn’t have to do pickups or deliveries and that was the deal when he’d hired her.

“So,” she said. “There.”

Tony peered at her from under flecked, bushy eyebrows and, for some reason, decided to be reasonable. He explained how Frankie Greek and Eddie were busy fixing monitors or something—though she guessed they were probably just figuring out how to get comped into
the Palladium for a concert that night—and so she
had
to do the pickups.

“I don’t see why I
have
to at all, Tony. I mean, I just don’t see where the have-to part comes in.”

And right about then he changed his mind about being reasonable. “Okay, here’s where it comes in, Rune. It’s the part where I’m fucking
telling
you to. You know, as your boss. Anyway, whatsa big deal? There’s only one pickup.”

“That’s like a total waste of time.”

“Your life is a waste of time, Rune.”

“Look,” she began, not too patiently, and went on with her argument until he said, “Thin ice, honey. Get your ass outa here. Now.”

She tried, “Not in the job description.” Only because it wasn’t in her nature to give in too quickly and then she saw him go all still and before he exploded she stood up and said, “Oh, will you just
chill
, Tony?” In that exasperated, sly way of hers that would probably get her fired someday but so far hadn’t.

Then he’d looked at an invoice and said, “Christ, it’s only a few blocks from here. Avenue B. Guy’s name is Robert Kelly.”

Oh, Rune thought, Mr. Kelly? Well, that was different.

She took the receipt, snagging the retro, fake-leopard-skin bag she’d found in a used-clothing store on Broadway. She pushed out the door, into the cool spring air, saying, “All right, all right. I’ll do it.” Putting just the right tone in her voice to let Tony know he owed her one for this. In her two decades on earth Rune had learned that if she wanted to live life the way she did, it was probably a good idea to collect as many obligations from people as she could.