The Equalizer (51 page)

See the Japanese chef's knife in his hand.

See that he was blocking her only exit from the bathroom.

See the look of realization that would come into her eyes. They'd look beyond him. Knowing she had the gun on her bedside table. Knowing there was a way to get past him, let him ogle her body, seduce him with pleas of terror, he can do anything he wanted, just don't hurt her, don't cut her, out into the bedroom where she could reach her gun and shoot him dead.

But it wouldn't happen that way. He'd let her walk into her bedroom. It was too cramped in the bathroom and he didn't want to slip on a floor suddenly slick with water. He might even allow her to grab her gun, point it, and pull the trigger.

And see the shock and despair in her eyes.

He'd use the chef's knife to make her go down on her knees and beg him.

Then he'd make her do everything he wanted.

That didn't happen, either.

He never heard anyone come up behind him. Maybe it was the sound of the shower masking the footsteps. Or perhaps the footsteps were completely silent. All he knew was that suddenly an arm snaked across his throat. Simultaneously the Japanese chef's knife was wrenched from his hand, even though he'd been holding on to it very tightly. It didn't drop to the floor. It had been caught. The pressure around Carlson's throat tightened. He was choking, but he couldn't even struggle, the grip around his neck was so tight. The world started to rush away from him on all sides. He felt his body go slack and then his world suddenly reversed and darkness began to rush
toward
him.

And engulfed him.

Two minutes later Karen turned around fully in the shower. She gave her hair one more rinse and stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel.

*   *   *

McCall had been one block from his apartment building when his iPhone had beeped a distinctive beep. He'd fished it out and had seen a video picture of Karen's apartment building on the LED screen. Jeff Carlson was entering the lobby. McCall had hailed a cab and given the driver Karen's address and told him he'd double the fare if he got him there in ten minutes. He got him there in twelve, but McCall doubled the fare anyway. There'd been no doorman standing outside the apartment building. McCall had taken the stairs up to the fourth floor and found Karen's apartment door not quite latched shut. He'd noted Carlson's backpack lying beside a glass table near the short hallway into her living room. He'd heard the sound of the shower. He'd run across the living room and entered her bedroom. He hadn't pulled his Beretta. He didn't want to shoot Carlson if he didn't have to.

He'd seen the young man lounging in the doorway of the bathroom, the sound of the shower thrumming loudly now, steam streaming past him. He had a large knife in his right hand, some kind of a Japanese Ginsu kitchen knife. McCall had reached the doorway to the bathroom in three silent strides. He'd wrenched the knife out of Carlson's hand and brought his arm around his throat in one move. He'd held the rapist so tightly he couldn't even struggle. He'd just wanted to incapacitate him. It was easy to crush the larynx if you weren't careful. Only then had McCall looked into the bathroom. He'd seen Karen through the open door of her shower, rinsing shampoo out of her hair. Her back was to them. She'd turned slightly, water splashing off her breasts. She still hadn't seen them.

Two seconds later Carlson had slumped unconscious into McCall's arms. He'd dragged him away from the door. Karen hadn't heard them. The sound of the shower filled her ears. At the bedroom door McCall had heaved Carlson over his shoulder and carried him back out to the living room.

McCall had leaned the unconscious rapist against the sofa had gone through his pockets. Found a clip of ammunition for a Smith & Wesson—Karen's gun—and a small glass elephant. McCall had glanced at the bookcases, seen a space where the elephant probably lived, and had gingerly put it back. Then he'd heaved Carlson back over his shoulder in a fireman's lift and had run over to the last glass table. He'd picked up Carlson's backpack with one hand, still carrying the big knife in the other. He'd looked around to see if there were any signs that Carlson, or himself, had been in the apartment. Nothing seemed disturbed. He'd walked out of the apartment and closed the door behind him. The lock had caught and held. He'd carried Carlson's unconscious figure through a staff door and down a flight of back stairs into a service corridor on the lobby floor. He'd carried him out a side entrance to the apartment building.

Kostmayer had parked his black Chrysler rental exactly where McCall had asked him to, two streets over. The doors had been unlocked, the keys in the glove compartment. McCall had hit the button to raise the trunk. There was a roll of gray duct tape there. McCall had dumped Carlson into the trunk and bound the young man's hands and ankles tightly. Then he'd slammed the trunk shut, slipped behind the wheel, found the keys, fired up the Chrysler, and pulled away from the curb.

The whole operation had taken four minutes and fourteen seconds. Karen would have stepped out of her shower, toweled off, got dressed in the clothes that had been waiting for her on her bed. She might have checked her gun and found the clip was empty. She might think she had forgotten to load it, or she might not. But she probably wouldn't have checked. She'd have dropped the Smith & Wesson pistol into her faux Louis Vuitton purse. She might have noted the two bolts were not drawn at her front door when she went out for her dinner date, but she could have forgotten to throw them across. She would still feel secure that she had her stalker situation under control.

And she did.

She just didn't know how.

It all went through McCall's mind as he sat on the edge of a dented fender amid the jumbled panorama of smashed and discarded vehicles. The automobile wrecking yard was in a remote industrial area in Queens. Moonlight fractured through the piled-up metal carcasses. There were big iron gates shutting off the yard, with razor wire coiled at the top. But the padlock on the gates had been no trouble for McCall. The Chrysler was parked a few feet away from the opening in the gates.

Jeff Carlson stood upright in front of McCall at a towering mountain of wrecked cars. His hands were high above his head, taped together around a steering wheel that protruded from the smashed dashboard above him. His ankles were duct-taped together. He looked like he was doing some kind of extreme yoga exercise where you reached up as high as you could for the sky without moving your feet apart.

He was naked.

McCall had the KIYA Deba Honkasumi Japanese chef knife at his balls, blade up.

Carlson stirred and opened his eyes. McCall gave him a few seconds of orientation. He was cold and shivering. He noted a dark car parked at some open gates. There was moonlight reflected off the rotting car skeletons.

And then he looked down.

And saw where the knife was.

He gasped. It was audible, like a whimper, which echoed across the glistening canyons of destruction. He twisted around, but couldn't see who was sitting beside him, holding the knife. His face was in shadow. All he could see were jeans and black loafers.

“I wouldn't move if I were you,” McCall said. “Not an inch.”

Carlson froze. His eyes flicked desperately left and right, but there was no one strolling along this desolate piece of real estate. The sound of traffic was a low murmur, very far away.

He was terrified.

“Breathe deeply,” McCall advised. “You don't want to start hyperventilating. Not with this knife blade where it is.”

Carlson took in a deep breath and let it out. McCall allowed him to take a couple more.

“Here's how this is going to work,” McCall said, his voice snatched away by a rising wind and thrown down the rotting metal corridors. “I'm going to ask you some questions. You're going to answer yes or no. Do you understand?”

Carlson shook his head. He didn't understand.
Was this Karen's boyfriend? Her father? Some old professor?

“Don't shake your head,” McCall said. “I need to hear your voice. Do you understand me? Yes or no.”

“Yes,” Carlson said, but his voice was so hoarse it was barely audible.

“Do you know Karen Armstrong?”

“Who's that?”

McCall applied a little upward pressure on the knife blade. Carlson gasped and shut his eyes tight.

“Yes or no answers,” McCall said. “You've been stalking her. Let's not go down the path of ‘I walked into the wrong apartment, I'm an old friend, I was just scaring her with the knife, I used to fuck her but she dumped me.' Because if we go down that road, my hand is going to twitch. She was your next rape victim. But did you know her personally?”

Carlson opened his eyes, took another deep breath, let it out.

“No.”

“Are you from New York?”

“No.”

“So you haven't lived here long?”

“No.”

“Rented apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything in that apartment you can't leave behind? Any personal stuff that you'd really want to take with you?” Carlson opened his mouth to speak, but McCall said, “It's a trick question. It doesn't matter if you say yes or no. You're not going back to your apartment. You're leaving New York tonight with the clothes you have on your back. Well, the ones I folded and put into that crumpled Ford Mustang about seven feet west of us. Second level up. You and I are going to come to an understanding. There's no discussion or negotiation. Either you do exactly what I tell you, or I cut off your balls and let you bleed out. Clear?”

“Yes.”

Carlson's voice was so constricted he could barely get the word out.

“When I leave, you're going to get dressed. You're going to walk to the nearest main thoroughfare, which is about twenty streets west of here. You're going to hail a cab. You're going to go to LaGuardia and take a plane out of the city. I don't care where you go. I put some money into your coat pocket. It will get you wherever you want, unless it's the Bahamas. And you can't go there without your passport. You won't come back to this city again. You will never go near Karen Armstrong again. With me so far?”

“Yes.”

His voice was stronger now, McCall noted. Getting over the terror. He was still alive. His balls hadn't been chopped off. This maniac was going to let him go.

“If you deviate from this path for any reason, I'll know it. Just like I knew you were going to rape Karen tonight. If you come back into the city, I'll know it. If you go back to your old apartment, I'll know it. I'll find you and I'll kill you. Still with me?”

“Yes.”

“Say it like you mean it.” McCall's voice had dropped to a whisper. “Because I mean it.”

“Yes.”

Stronger.

McCall said, “Good.”

Carlson mustered enough courage to ask: “Who the hell
are
you?”

There was a pause, and Carlson froze, as if remembering his yes-no orders and realizing he might have just said good-bye to his manhood.

McCall said, “I'd say your worst nightmare, but Eastwood does that line so well. I'm the man who's going to kill you if you break our deal. Do you really understand that? One word, yes or no, convince me.”

“Yes,” Carlson said, and McCall was convinced.

He took the knife away from Carlson's balls.

“When I cut the bonds to your wrists you can bring your arms down, but you can't try and tear through the duct tape on your ankles until I'm gone. Okay?”

“Yes.”

McCall stood and lifted the knife up to where Carlson's wrists were bound to the broken steering wheel and slit the tape. Carlson brought down his arms. He turned his head. McCall moved out of the shadow so that Carlson could see his face. He was too afraid to speak. Just looked at McCall with wide, wild eyes.

“I'll be taking the Japanese knife with me,” McCall said.

“Don't you want to know if I'll do this again?” Carlson asked.

Not really defiance, more like a real question in his voice.

McCall didn't stop as he walked back to the Chrysler. “None of my business.”

“Why was Karen Armstrong your business?”

McCall turned back. “Because she had no way to stop you. I did.” He hefted the Japanese cutting knife in his hand, looking at Carlson's flaccid penis and balls. “I should just cut them off, save us all a lot of trouble, but we're miles from an ER and you really would bleed out.”

The terror came back into Carlson's eyes. Reflexively his hands went down and covered his genitals.

McCall climbed into the Chrysler, turned the key in the ignition, and drove through the gates. He didn't bother to get out and close them again. He was sure the wrecker's yard was broken into all the time. Junkies looking to stash dope, teenagers looking to screw somewhere nightmarish, homeless people looking for some kind of shelter.

He glanced up once into the rearview mirror. Carlson stood naked and shivering in the night cold, looking vulnerable and terrified and alone.

After that McCall didn't give him another thought.

Until much later.

 

CHAPTER 37

He sat at the coffee table in his living room in front of his laptop. He had a glass of Glenfiddich beside him. He inserted the black flash drive into the USB slot. A couple of seconds later the file came up on the screen. It said
SERENA JOHANSSEN
at the top in small lettering and
TOP SECRET—FOR CONTROL'S EYES ONLY
. That meant Control, Jason Mazer, and a Control named Davidson that McCall had never worked with, but knew by reputation. McCall didn't know how Brahms had obtained the file. Didn't know if he'd figured out how to bypass all of the firewalls and Company protocols while sitting in his cramped office at his computer, of if he'd taken a trip to Virginia to physically break into the system there. That was unlikely. Brahms's days of stealth and covert infiltration were over. But he could still surprise you. He could have walked into Control's office and hacked right into his computer while waiting for some tea to be served for them by Emma, Control's curvaceous British assistant. McCall suspected it was the former. Brahms could hack into any database around the world right from Lexington Avenue without breaking a sweat. And he would want to stay near Hilda, if she was in the hospital in New York.