No Time To Run (Legal Thriller Featuring Michael Collins, Book 1) (5 page)

“
I was just at Lowell Moore’s place,” Michael said. “Lowell offered his guest house to me for the night, but …”

“
Mrs. Moore wasn’t in the mood for unannounced house guests this evening.” The guard flashed a wicked smile, and chuckled to himself. “Looked like she’d gone off and already made some plans.”

“
Something like that.”

“
I’ll call you a cab.” The guard picked up the phone and dialed.

After a brief conversation with the dispatcher, the guard hung up. He turned back to Michael and said, “You come a few minutes ago in that black Crown Vic?”

“
Yeah,” Michael said.

The guard nodded his head and then looked in the direction of a forest green Jeep Liberty parked about a half-block away.

“
Fella arrived about four minutes after you. Never got out, just sittin’ there. Nothing necessarily illegal about sitting in your car, but I was thinking of calling the cops. Have him move along.”

Michael stared at the Jeep Liberty. It was dark, but a nearby street light offered the silhouette of a bulky frame, probably the same man Michael had seen at the airport.

Before Michael could say anything, the Jeep Liberty’s engine started, its headlights turned on, and it drove away.

CHAPTER NINE

Michael was asleep before his head hit the pillow. His sleep was hard and soon spun into flashes of light and images. The images were random, sometimes still and sometimes moving – : Andie and Kermit; his dead mother; the torn photo of his father, or the man that his mother claimed was his father; graduations and childhood birthdays celebrated by himself; purchasing his first suit and leather briefcase; his first day at the firm; and then the incident. It always ended with incident: four shots, bang-bang, bang-bang.

Michael bolted straight up. His eyes were wide as he caught his breath. His heart pounded. For a brief second, a narrow stream of light cut across the dark hotel room. The door was open, just an inch. A hand reached through, fumbled with the chain.

The hand disappeared. The door closed, and everything went dark again.

Michael sat up, awake and still. He thought about grabbing his knapsack and running, somewhere in Europe this time –Eastern Europe, maybe Asia –  a place far away from New York.

Then he thought about Andie. He would never forgive himself if he left her.

What would he have done if she had left him? There were moments in the beginning when she was scared. They had both been scared about letting the other get too close. The incident had still been fresh. The nightmares had been every night, and each dark corner had contained a threat.

Nothing had ever been said or reduced to writing, nor had there been any vows in the traditional sense. But a line had been crossed. Andie and he were simply bound together.

Michael leaned over to the nightstand and turned on the light. He waited for something else to happen, but it remained quiet. In the stillness of the room, he wondered if he had actually seen anything at all.

CHAPTER TEN

The morning came early. Michael had never really fallen back asleep. He started making lists of things to do in his head, and once that started, it didn’t stop. The lists grew longer and longer. He prioritized and added detail, then he re-prioritized and added additional sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks.

Anxiety pressed down upon him, until there was no choice but to get up and do something, anything, to keep from going insane.

It was a method of self-motivation that he had learned as a scholarship kid at Harvard who still needed to hold down a full-time job for rent and food. It came in handy during the run-up to finals at Columbia Law School, and it was a method perfected, if not abused, as a young associate at Wabash, Kramer & Moore.

Then, Michael would often go to bed at eleven o’clock at night, thinking of the lists, and then wake up at two, jumping out of bed, alert and ready to work, motivated by fear of failure.

There were some associates and partners at the firm that would deliberately send emails at three or four in the morning. It was a source of pride. They craved the off-hand remarks that such emails would generate about “late nights at the office.” The emails were documentation of their labor, memorializing their dedication, however fabricated.

Michael had never done that. He didn’t need to prove how hard he worked, he just did it. Whether he was a sucker or a martyr, Michael didn’t know. Two years after leaving it all behind, Michael still didn’t know.

He wondered how life would have turned out if he had run away a little sooner. Nobody at the Sunset ever asked about his grade point average or even where he went to school. Nobody at the Sunset cared about the hip new restaurants and clubs that he frequented, or the fifteen-dollar mixed drinks he had bought for the girl of the week or the girl of the hour. And nobody seemed at all interested in knowing that he had been the highest billing associate at Wabash, Kramer & Moore for sixty-eight consecutive months.

Michael splashed a handful of water on his face, and then got dressed. He grabbed his knapsack, looked at his watch, and then poked his head into the hallway. When he saw that it was clear, he hustled into the elevator. Michael pressed the “close door” button about thirty times to ensure that he would be riding alone for the trip down.

A bell rang and the doors slid open. Michael walked out, checking the four corners of the lobby, noting the people sitting on the couches and standing around. Then he was out. Total time from room to cab was forty-five seconds.

The cab pulled away, and Michael’s eyes scanned the front door of the hotel. Then, he looked at all the cars parked in front, coming behind them, or on the street. He waited for someone to follow.

“
Where to?” The cabbie hit a button on the front of the meter.

“
Chinatown,” Michael said.   

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Shopkeepers were busy cleaning the sidewalks in front of their storefronts and sprinkling salt on the ground to keep ice from forming. The fruit and trinket peddlers arranged and polished their wares for the inevitable onslaught of tourists, gawkers, and locals looking for a bargain. They would all arrive in the next few hours.

Michael got out of the cab. He walked three blocks down Canal Street, the main corridor running through the heart of Chinatown. On either side, a patchwork of varying buildings, signs, and buzzing neon lights rose above the street and provided a constant sense of energy. Even in the early morning, it kept the uninitiated off-balance.

Unlike the previous night, there was no wind, just cold. It surrounded him. Air burned his lungs as he took it in, and Michael lifted the collar up on his “new” leather jacket, shoving his hands deep into its felt-lined pockets.

Michael turned down Mulberry, and then ducked into a narrow, dead-end alley by a small noodle shop with perpetually steamed windows. The cobblestones beneath his feet were slick. The snow, piled high on both sides, made the alley seem even smaller the further he went.

Michael stopped in front of a battered metal door. There was nothing indicating that this was a place of business, but Michael knew that it was. He had lived in Chinatown during law school. When you live in a place, you hear things, especially when you can dispense a little free legal advice to somebody in trouble.

Hoa Bahns had been around for over a hundred years and never closed. There were always people in need of its services, regardless of the day or the hour. It was created before marketing and mass advertising divided the world into consumer niches, and business and pleasure were separated, regulated, and licensed. Modern rules did not apply to Hoa Bahns. Its only requirements were money and discretion.

The door opened.

The man standing in the doorway could have been a sumo wrestler. He looked at Michael with a sharp gaze. His arms crossed over his chest. He waited for Michael to speak first.

“
Ni hao
,” Michael said. How are you?

The man in the doorway still did not respond, nor did his expression change.

“
Dui bi qi, wo bu shufu an wo yao kan yisheng
.” I’m looking for a doctor.

The man stared at Michael for what seemed like an eternity, and then he stepped aside.

“
Xie Xie.
” Michael thanked him and walked past. The metal door closed with a loud clang, and he was inside.

Hoa Bahns was always dimly lit and smelled of incense, cigarettes, and whiskey. The tin ceiling was low. The floor was covered with tattered Persian rugs, and traditional Chinese music played in the background, soft and spare.

Michael walked past a sitting area occupied by two young prostitutes in silk robes, and took a seat at the empty bar. The bartender approached with a glass and a small bottle of San Pellegrino.

“
Anything else, sir?”

“
No. This is fine.” Michael opened the bottle, poured it into the glass, and then waited. He knew it would take some time, and he tried not to look at the small camera perched above the bottles of whiskey. The camera pointed down at him. It was not a hidden camera. The proprietor wanted people to know that it was there and he was watching.

The camera transmitted an image to a monitor in a backroom where three men discussed whether or not Michael should be allowed to stay.

Michael sipped from his water and kept his head low. If people came or went, Michael avoided their eyes. Hoa Bahns was not a place to socialize or make friends.

He simply drank his water and waited, until he finally felt a slight tap on his shoulder.

“
Mr. Collins.”

Michael turned and saw a narrow man standing before him in a black business suit and white silk shirt.

“
It has been awhile since you last visited, thus the delay.” The man offered a slight bow.

“
I understand.” Michael followed the man around the bar to a door. On the other side, there was a hallway with a second set of sumo wrestlers and a stairwell.

“
I think you will find everything in order.”

“
I appreciate that.” Michael was led down the dark stairwell into another hallway.

They were probably twenty-five feet below Chinatown, but unlike the rest of Hao Bahns, this hallway was bright and sterile. Thick, polished stainless steel covered the ceilings and walls. A dozen closed doors lined each side, and each door had its own optical scanner and key pad.

Michael’s guide walked to the third door, punched in a code, and then leaned over the optical scanner. The door buzzed. He opened it, and Michael was directed inside.

“
When you are done, please press the red button and you will be escorted out.”

“
Thank you,” Michael said, and then he was left alone.

The room was no more than six feet by six feet. Like the hallway, the walls, ceilings, and floors were covered with polished steel. On the wall facing east, for luck, were a series of safe-deposit boxes inset into the wall, each one with their its own code. The only other objects in the room were a metal table and a large metal box that sat on top of the table.

Michael walked toward the box. Even though it was cold down in Hoa Bahns’ vaults, Michael felt the sweat roll down his neck and then further down his back.

He unlatched and opened the box. Inside, the contents were just as he had left them over two years ago.

On top, there was his well-worn briefcase. A present to himself, purchased on the day he had graduated from law school. It was a dark, honey-brown leather with a small engraved nameplate near the handle. It wasn’t the most expensive briefcase in the store, but it was his. Something he had purchased with money he had earned himself; something that he couldn’t part with when everything else representing his former life had been burned or given away.

Underneath the briefcase, Michael looked at the remaining contents: three passports, each from a different country and bearing a different name; one double-A Glock 22; two full magazines for the gun; a box of bullets; and below that, five perfect rows of one-hundred-dollar bills, crisp and bundled, totaling 350,000 dollars.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Michael walked out of Hoa Bahns and took a long deep breath of fresh air. With his briefcase in hand and a wad of hundred-dollar bills in his pocket, he walked briskly out of the alley. He had left the gun and passports behind with reluctance, but it wasn’t time for that, at least, not yet.

He turned the corner, and kept walking while he pulled one of two new cell phones out of his briefcase. The cell phones were fully charged, untraceable, and good for at least one week, according to Mr. Bahns.

Michael dialed the number for Father Stiles, and waited. The phone rang a few times, and Michael wondered what he would say. What could he say? The voicemail activated, and Father Stiles’ calm and reassuring voice began the universal instructions for leaving a message.