The Equalizer
Authors: Michael Sloan
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This book is dedicated to my wife, Melissa, my daughter,
Piper, and my son, Griffin.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my terrific editor at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, Brendan Deneen, for his wisdom and encouragement. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank some people who have really helped my career through the years: my manager, Peter Meyer; Richard Lindheim, my co-creator on
The Equalizer
TV series; my (at onetime) agent Lou Pitt; Peter Fischer; Robert Dozier; Jerry Thorpe; Glen Larson; Stu Erwin; Gregg Maday; my sister Judy; to Robert Campbell (a mentor); and to all of my friends who have always supported me and cared for me in England and Canada and the United Statesâyou know who you are!; to the late, great Edward Woodward, who brought such style and energy to the role of Robert McCall in the CBS TV series; and to the incomparable Denzel Washington, who is a fantastic movie Equalizer.
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CONTENTS
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CHAPTER 1
Robert McCall stopped at the mouth of a narrow alleyway behind a row of stores on Broome Street on the edge of Greenwich Village. It was an alleyway he'd passed a thousand times without bothering to look into it. He knew what was in it: Dumpsters overflowing with garbage, a thin carpet of debris, crushed cans and water bottles, used condoms, cigarette butts, newspapers, crumpled flyers, discarded confetti as if someone had tried to bring some color to the drab grayness. Doorways on the left led to the backs of the stores, a print shop, a greengrocers, a Chinese restaurant, a mom-and-pop grocery store. There were two iron doors on the right, warped on rusted hinges. There was a landscape of big cardboard boxes at the other end of the alleyway, jumbled up: people's homes.
The black pimp wore black, so he was just a fragment of the shadows, moving erratically as his fist came down again to hit the girl's face. It looked as if he was going to cave in her left cheekbone. Both of her eyes were blackened. Blood was running out of her nose. The prior blow had just missed breaking it. McCall could see the raw channels around her nostrils where they were being eaten away by coke. The pimp was lean, bald, probably mid-twenties, his cutoff tight T-shirt showing tattoos up and down his arms. Serpents and mermaids. He was big, probably six-four. He shook his white hooker as if she wasn't listening to the tirade in his head. His jewelled hands were the only moving points of light in the dimness, his many rings and bracelets catching the pale morning sunlight that barely penetrated the alley. The girl was probably seventeen or eighteen, McCall thought. She was thin and limp, dressed in torn jeans and a halter top that the pimp had almost dragged off. A safety pin dangled from her navel. Her jeans were torn in places that revealed track marks on her legs. She was wearing sandals. Her toenails were a frosted pink. Her hair was a straggle of dirty blond seaweed over her face, but McCall could see flashes of her eyes, wide and fearful before they shut tight in anticipation of the next blow. She'd been beaten before. He'd seen her in the neighborhood, makeup expertly applied to cover the bruises.
But this time it was different. She knew it and McCall knew it. Her pimp was in a blind rage over something. Maybe she'd been holding out on him. Maybe she'd pocketed some money from a john to go and have a glass of wine and a sandwich in an uptown bistro, just to pretend, for an hour, that her life wasn't a nightmare. McCall thought of her, irrationally, as a kid, running around a playground, laughing, having a tenth birthday party, a teenager Facebooking her friends, the images all coming to him in split seconds. Clichés, he knew, but that's what went through his head. Then of her being older and someone putting out lines of coke, handing her a rolled-up dollar bill, go ahead, it's a rush, all that talk about addiction is bullshit, you control your actions. She'd liked it. She'd done it again. Then she'd started shooting up. Heroin was the drug of choice again. She'd starting turning tricks, no big deal, she liked sex. But then she realized it was not about sex, it was about need and agony and being controlled.
None of that mattered now. It didn't matter to McCall. This was none of his business. He'd been off the radar for nine months. Keeping a very low profile. She wasn't the first hooker he'd seen in these streets getting a beating. And he didn't want to be late. He was on his way to see his son Scott. He'd catch the 1 line at the Twenty-third Street subway station, take it to Columbus Circle. It was a short walk from there to West Sixty-second Street. He might even get off at Forty-second Street and walk. He liked walking in New York City. But this time the pimp was going to take care of business. One more blow should do it. He'd dragged the girl up with one hand, clutching her halter top, up around her throat now, exposing her large, pendulous breasts. He was going to hit her from below. A vicious uppercut. It would drive her nose up into her brain and kill her.
McCall stepped into the alleyway. He felt like eyes were watching him from the large cartons, but nothing moved in them. Just a light breeze rustling through the cardboard living rooms and bedrooms.
The pimp had his fist balled up.
Swung it back.
McCall grabbed his wrist, yanking him away from the girl. She stumbled to her knees, trying to stem the flow of blood from her nose with the back of her hand. The pimp was in such a rage he just looked at McCall like he was a crazy man. It was a bad mistake. You're grabbed in an alley on your own turf, when you're teaching one of your whores a lesson, you don't let anyone stop you. Certainly not some white-ass, old dude in a suit and tie and a dark overcoat. Looked like he'd just strolled up from Wall Street. McCall took advantage of the second's hesitation to kick the pimp's legs out from under him. He fell to his knees. McCall gripped both of his hands, twisting them back, holding him in an iron grip. The girl scrambled away, but couldn't get to her feet yet. Didn't have enough oxygen in her lungs.
The pimp looked up at McCall, seeing Mr. Average, Mr. Nobody, maybe around forty-five, medium height, probably 180, a handsome face, soulful eyes, dark hair shot through with splinter streaks of gray. McCall held on to him as if he was stopping him from falling over.
“Whatever she did to you, she's sorry and it won't happen again.”
“I swear,” the girl gasped, choking as some of the blood pooled in her mouth. She spit it out and, as if suddenly self-conscious, pulled her halter top down over her breasts.
“I live in the neighborhood,” McCall said, conversationally, as if he and the pimp were arranging to meet for coffee. “I know the cops at the precinct. I like to chat with the guy who runs the morgue. Very erudite. Quotes Blake and Harry Potter. If I find out this girl's been beaten again, I'll come looking for you. And I'll find you. If you kill her, I'll personally deliver you onto one of the morgue's autopsy tables. Are we cool?”
The pimp nodded. Just nodded. McCall let go of his hands. Turned toward the girl, who stumbled away even more.
It was not a mistake McCall would have made a year ago.
He'd read defeat in the pimp's eyes. But he'd read it wrong. The guy was street-smart. Slump back, dejected, he'll let it go this time.
He grabbed McCall from behind, standing in one fluid movement, a massive muscular arm crushing McCall's throat. He tried to plunge his thumb into McCall's left eye. A street move, but a stupid one. McCall grabbed the pimp's left hand, breaking his middle and ring fingers in two sharp movements. The strangling hold on his throat went slack. McCall grabbed the pimp's right hand, broke the middle and ring fingers, turned him and kicked him in the balls. He crashed to the ground, closing up into a fetal position, his legs protecting his testicles, his hands trembling as he looked down at his broken fingers.
“It's going to be tough to beat up your bitches for a few weeks,” McCall said. “Your fingers will be in splints. But they'll heal.”
“You're a dead man,” the pimp managed to croak, his voice filled with pain.
“If I had a nickel⦔ McCall sighed.
He pulled the girl up to her full height, which was about five-nine. She grabbed her maroon jacket that had fallen onto one of the trash cans behind her. McCall hustled her down the alleyway, past the cardboard boxes, until they were out on Broome Street. There was a sudden rush of traffic; a bus and a couple of yellow cabs went by. The usual cacophony of impatient horns. McCall noted a uniformed cop at the corner of Broadway. He was looking their way, but he wasn't coming over. He continued talking to the owner of a computer store on the corner, which, judging from the stock in the windows, looked like the only merchandise it handled fell off the backs of various trucks.
The girl took some tissues from the pocket of her jacket and pushed them up both nostrils to stop the bleeding. SOP.
“Thanks,” she said. Her voice was clearer. “I think he would have killed me this time.”
“He would have.”
Closer to her, McCall saw her eyes were actually very beautiful, a hazel green. There was gratitude in them, but it was so pushed down by need it barely registered.
“I owe you,” she said. “I'm Lucy. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
“That's your street name. What's your real name?”
“Who cares? I never use it.”
“Humor me.”
“It's Margaret. Lame, huh? What's yours?”
“Mine doesn't matter.”
She moved right up to him, her voice taking on the husky quality she knew worked. “Sure, I get it. I don't need to know your name. Come with me. No charge. I don't want to be alone. Please.” She took his hand. “I'll do anything you want.”
She moved his hand under her halter top until it was on her left breast, then looked over at the uniformed cop on the corner. He was taking a little more notice.
“Can we go somewhere?” she asked urgently. “Your place?”
“I don't want to be late for my son.” McCall said it gently and removed his hand from beneath her halter top. “Your pimp will get his fingers strapped up. He won't come looking for you this afternoon. But maybe tonight. If you have friends in the city he doesn't know about, stay with them.”
