The Myron Bolitar Series 7-Book Bundle (68 page)

“You still live on Eighty-first?”

“Yes.”

Myron took the exit and stopped at a traffic light on Riverside Drive.

“Now it’s your turn, Myron. Why did they hire you?”

“It’s like you said. They want me to find Greg.”

“What have you learned so far?”

“Not much.”

“So why were you so concerned I’d jump the gun and tell the story early?”

Myron hesitated.

“I promised not to say anything,” she reminded him. “You have my word.”

Fair is fair. He told her about the blood in Greg’s basement. Her mouth dropped open. When he told her about finding Sally/Carla’s body, he feared her heart might give out.

“My God,” Audrey said when he finished. “You think Downing killed her.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She fell back against the seat. Her head lolled against the headrest as though her neck could no longer support her. “Christ, what a story.”

“And one you can’t tell.”

“Don’t remind me.” She sat back up again. “Do you think it’ll leak soon?”

“It might.”

“Why can’t I be the recipient of that leak?”

Myron shook his head. “Not yet. We got a lid on this so far. You can’t be the one to blow it off.”

Her nod was grudging. “Do you think Downing killed her and ran?”

“There is no evidence of that.” He pulled up to her building. “One last question,” he said. “Was Greg involved in anything unsavory?”

“Like what?”

“Like is there any reason thugs would be after him?”

Again her excitement was palpable. The woman was like an electric current. “What do you mean? What thugs?”

“A couple of thugs were watching Greg’s house.”

Her face was positively glowing. “Thugs? You mean like professional gangsters?”

“Probably. I don’t know for sure yet. Can you think of anything that would connect Greg to thugs or for that matter, the murder of this woman? Drugs maybe?”

Audrey shook her head immediately. “It can’t be drugs.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Downing is a health nut, a real Granola head.”

“So was River Phoenix.”

She shook her head again. “Not drugs. I’m sure of it.”

“Look into it,” he said. “See what you can come up with.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll look into everything we talked about.”

“Try to be discreet.”

“No problem,” she said. She got out of the car. “Good night, Myron. Thanks for trusting me.”

“Like I had a choice.”

Audrey smiled and closed the car door. He watched her walk into the building. He put the car in drive and headed back to Seventy-ninth Street. He got back on the parkway and continued south toward Jessica’s. He was about to pick up his cellular phone and call her when the phone rang. The dashboard clock read 12:07
A.M
. It had to be Jessica.

“Hello?”

It wasn’t Jessica. “Right lane, three cars behind you. You’re being followed.”

It was Win.

Chapter 17

“When did you get back?” Myron asked.

Win ignored the question. “The automobile following you is the same one we spotted at Greg’s house. It is registered to a storage facility in Atlantic City. No known mob connections, but that would seem to me to be a safe bet.”

“How long have you been following me?”

Again Win ignored him. “The two men who jumped you the other night. What did they look like?”

“Big,” Myron said. “One was absolutely huge.”

“Crew cut?”

“Yes.”

“He’s in the car following you. Passenger seat.”

Myron didn’t bother asking how Win knew about the thugs jumping him. He had a pretty good idea.

“They’ve been communicating on the telephone quite a bit,” Win continued. “I believe they’re coordinating with someone else. The phone activity picked up after your stop on Eighty-first Street. Hold on a second. I’ll call you right back.” He hung up. Myron checked his rearview mirror. The car was still there, right where Win said it was. A minute later the phone rang again.

“What?” Myron said.

“I just spoke to Jessica again.”

“What do you mean, again?”

Win sighed impatiently. He hated explanations. “If they are planning to jump you tonight, it is logical to assume it will be by her loft.”

“Right.”

“Ergo, I called her ten minutes ago. I told her to keep an eye out for anything unusual.”

“And?”

“An unmarked white van parked across the street,” Win answered. “No one got out.”

“So it appears they are going to strike,” Myron said.

“Yes,” Win said. “Should I preempt it?”

“How?”

“I could disable the car following you.”

“No,” Myron said. “Let them make their move and see where it leads.”

“Pardon?”

“Just back me up. If they grab me, I may be able to get to the boss.”

Win made a noise.

“What?” Myron asked.

“You complicate the simple,” Win said. “Would it not be easier to simply take out the two in the car? We could then make them tell us about their boss.”

“It’s that ‘make them’ part I have trouble with.”

“But of course,” Win countered. “A thousand pardons for my lack of ethics. Clearly it is far wiser to risk your own life than to make a worthless goon feel momentary discomfort.”

Win had a way of putting things that made very frightening sense. Myron had to remind himself that the logical was often more terrifying than the illogical—especially where Win was concerned. “They’re just hired help,” Myron said. “They’re not going to know anything.”

Pause. “Fair point,” Win conceded. “But suppose they simply shoot you.”

“That wouldn’t make any sense. The reason they’re interested in me is because they think I know where Greg is.”

“And dead men tell no tales,” Win added.

“Exactly. They want to make me talk. So just follow me. If they take me someplace well guarded—”

“I’ll get through,” Win said.

Myron did not doubt it. He gripped the steering wheel. His pulse began to race. Easy to dismiss the possibility of getting shot by reasonable analysis; it was another thing to have to park a car down the street from men you knew were out to hurt you. Win would have his eye on the van. So would Myron. If a gun came out before a person, the situation would be handled.

He got off the highway. The streets of Manhattan were supposed to be a nice, even grid. Streets ran north/south and east/west. They were numbered. They were straight. But when you got to Greenwich Village and Soho, it was like a grid painted by Dalí. Gone were the numerical roads for the most part, except when they twisted and turned between streets with real-live names. Gone was any pretext of straight or systematized.

Luckily Spring Street was a direct run. A bicyclist sped by Myron, but no one else was out. The white van was parked right where it was supposed to be. Unmarked, just as Jessica had said. The windows were tinted so you couldn’t look in. Myron didn’t see Win’s car, but then again he wasn’t supposed to. He moved slowly down the street. He passed the van. When he did, the van started its motor. Myron pulled into a spot toward the end of the block. The van pulled out.

Showtime.

Myron parked the car, straightened out the steering wheel, turned the engine off. He pocketed the keys. The van inched forward. He took out his revolver and stuck it under the car seat. It wouldn’t do him any good right now. If they grabbed him, they would search him. If they started shooting, shooting back would be a waste of time. Win would either remove the threat or not.

He reached for the door handle. Fear nestled into his throat, but he did not stop. He pulled the handle, opened the door, and stepped out. It was dark. The streetlights in Soho were nearly worthless, like pen beams in a black hole. Lights drifting out from nearby windows provided more of an eerie kindle than real illumination. There were plastic garbage bags out on the street. Most had been torn open; the odor of spoiled food wafted through the air. The van slowly cruised toward him. A man stepped out from a doorway and approached without hesitation. The man wore a black turtleneck under a black overcoat. He pointed a gun at Myron. The van stopped, and the side door slid open.

“Get in, asshole,” the man with the gun said.

Myron pointed at himself. “You talking to me?”

“Now, asshole. Haul ass.”

“Is that a turtleneck or a dickey?”

The man with the gun moved closer. “I said, now.”

“It’s nothing to get angry about,” Myron said, but he stepped toward the van. “If it is a dickey, you can’t tell. It’s a very sporty look.” When Myron got nervous, his mouth went into overdrive. He knew it was self-destructive; Win had pointed that out to him on several occasions. But Myron couldn’t stop himself. Diarrhea of the mouth or some such ailment.

“Move.”

Myron got in the van. The man with the gun did likewise. There were two more men in the back of the van and one man driving. Everyone was in black, except for one guy who looked to be in charge. He wore a blue pinstripe suit. His Windsor-knotted yellow tie was held in place by a gold tie bar at the collar. Euro-chic. He had long, bleached-blond hair and one of those tans that were a little too perfect to come from the sun. He looked more like an aging surfer boy than a professional mobster.

The van’s interior had been custom designed, but not in a good way. All the seats had been ripped out except for the driver’s. There was a leather couch in the back along one wall where Pinstripe sat alone. A lime-green shag carpet even Elvis would have found too garish ran along the van’s floor and up the sides like a poor man’s ivy.

The man in the pinstripe suit smiled; his hands were folded in his lap, very much at ease. The van started moving.

The gunman quickly searched Myron. “Sit, asshole,” he said.

Myron sat on the carpeted floor. He ran his hand over the shag. “Lime green,” he said to Pinstripe. “Nice.”

“It’s inexpensive,” Pinstripe said. “That way we don’t worry about bloodstains.”

“Thinking of overhead.” Myron nodded coolly, though his mouth felt very dry. “That’s smart business.”

Pinstripe did not bother with a response. He gave the man with the gun and dickey/turtleneck a look that made the man jolt upward. The man cleared his throat.

“This here is Mr. Baron,” the gunman told Myron, indicating Pinstripe. “Everyone calls him the B Man.” He cleared his throat again. He spoke like he’d been rehearsing this little speech, which, Myron surmised, was probably likely. “He’s called the B Man because he enjoys breaking bones.”

“Say, that must woo the women,” Myron said.

The B Man smiled with capped teeth as white as anything in those old Pepsodent commercials. “Hold his leg out,” he said.

The man with the turtleneck/dickey pressed the gun against Myron’s temple hard enough to leave a permanent imprint. He wrapped his other arm around Myron’s neck, the inside of his elbow jammed into Myron’s windpipe. He lowered his head and whispered, “Don’t even flinch, asshole.”

He forced Myron into a lying position. The other man straddled Myron’s chest and pinned the leg to the floor. Myron had trouble breathing. Panic seized him, but he remained still. Any move at this stage would almost inevitably be the wrong one. He’d have to play it out and see where it went.

The B Man moved off the leather couch slowly. His eyes never left Myron’s bad knee; his smile was a happy one. “I’m going to place one hand on the distal femur and the other on your proximal tibia,” he explained in the same tone a surgeon might use with a student. “My thumbs will then rest on the medial aspect of the patella. When my thumbs snap forward, I will basically rip off your kneecap laterally.” He met Myron’s gaze. “This will tear your medial retinaculum and several other ligaments. Tendons will snap. I fear it will be most painful.”

Myron didn’t even try a wisecrack. “Hey, wait a second,” he said quickly. “There’s no reason for violence.”

The B Man smiled, shrugged. “Why does there have to be a reason?”

Myron’s eyes widened. Fear hardened in his belly. “Hold on,” he said quickly. “I’ll talk.”

“I know you will,” the B Man replied. “But first you’ll jerk us around a bit—”

“No, I won’t.”

“Please don’t interrupt me. It’s very rude to interrupt.” The smile was gone. “Where was I?”

“First he’ll jerk us around,” the driver prompted.

“That’s right, thank you.” He turned the white smile back to Myron. “First, you’ll stall. You’ll do a song-and-dance. You’ll hope we’ll take you someplace where your partner can save you.”

“Partner?”

“You’re still friends with Win, aren’t you?”

The man knew Win. This was not a good thing. “Win who?”

“Precisely,” B Man said. “This is what I mean by being jerked around. Enough.”

He moved closer. Myron started to struggle, but the man jammed the gun in Myron’s mouth. It struck teeth and made him gag. The taste was cold and metallic.

“I’ll destroy the knee first. Then we’ll talk.”

The other man pulled Myron’s leg straight while the gunman took the revolver out of Myron’s mouth and pressed it back against his temple. Their grips grew a bit tighter. The B Man lowered his hands to Myron’s knee, his fingers spread like eagles’ talons.

“Wait!” Myron shouted.

“No,” B Man replied calmly.

Myron started to squirm. He grabbed a loading handle on the floor of the van, the kind of thing used to tie down cargo. He held on and braced himself. He didn’t have to wait very long.

The crash jarred them. Myron had been ready for it. No one else had. They all went flying, their grips slackening. Glass shattered. The scream of metal hitting metal filled the air. Brakes screeched. Myron held on until the van slowed. Then he curled into a ball and rolled out of harm’s way. There were shouts and a door opened. Myron heard a shot being fired. Voices sounded in a cacophony of confusion. The driver ducked out through his door. The B Man followed, leaping like a grasshopper. The side door opened. Myron looked up as Win stepped in with his gun drawn. The man with the turtleneck/dickey had recovered. He picked up his gun.

“Drop it,” Win said.

The man with the turtleneck/dickey didn’t. Win shot him in the face. He turned his aim toward the man who had straddled Myron’s chest.

“Drop it,” Win said.

The man did. Win smiled at him. “Fast learner.”

Win’s eyes slid smoothly from side to side, never darting. Win barely moved, seeming to glide rather than walk. His movements were short and economical. He returned his eyes to his captive. The one still breathing.

“Talk,” Win said.

“I don’t know nothing.”

“Bad answer,” Win said. He spoke with calm authority, his matter-of-fact tone more intimidating than any scream. “If you know nothing, you are useless to me; if you are useless to me, you end up like him.” He vaguely motioned toward the still form at his feet.

The man held up his hands. His eyes were round and white. “Hey, wait a sec, okay? It’s no secret. Your buddy heard the guy’s name. Baron. The guy’s name is Baron. But everyone calls him the B Man.”

“The B Man works out of the Midwest,” Win said. “Who brought him in?”

“I don’t know; I swear.”

Win moved the gun closer. “You’re being useless to me again.”

“It’s the truth, I’d tell you if I knew. All I know is the B Man flew in late last night.”

“Why?” Win asked.

“It’s got something to do with Greg Downing. That’s all I know, I swear.”

“How much does Downing owe?”

“I don’t know.”

Win moved closer still. He pressed the barrel of the gun between the man’s eyes. “I rarely miss from this distance,” he said.

The man dropped to his knees. Win followed him down with the gun. “Please.” His voice was a pained plea. “I don’t know nothing else.” His eyes filled with tears. “I swear to God, I don’t.”

“I believe you,” Win said.

“Win,” Myron said.

Win’s eyes never left the man. “Relax,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure our friend here had confessed all. Confession is good for the soul, is it not?”

The man nodded hurriedly.