Sweet Razor Cut (Harry Bauer Book 11), page 9
His smile, still cold and cruel, broadened. “So you admit it.”
“I don’t admit a goddamned thing. I am asking you if he was your father. Keep pushing, pal, and I’m going to drag you upstairs and dangle you from the window till you tell me who the hell you are!”
It didn’t shake him. “And you ask me where I get my information from.” He gave his head a small shake. “All I have to do is observe you. You’re a walking charnel house. Wherever you go people die, butchered by you.”
“For the last time, goddammit! Based on what? You can’t just throw accusations at me and act like it’s a damned given that they’re true! What’s your evidence? Where’s your proof? And for that matter, what damned right have you got to be stalking me in the first place?”
“It’s my job.”
“Bullshit! I checked with the Feds and they’ve never heard of you.”
“Yeah? What a surprise. I talk to them quite often.”
I took a step toward him, but he raised a finger and made a quiet, “Ah!” With his left hand he reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a leather wallet which he dropped open. It said he was Detective Alistair McDonald of the New York Police Department.
I snarled, “Another phony badge?”
He shook his head. “The NYPD has been looking at you since you moved here from the Bronx. That was quite a move: pokey little cottage on the water, to a big, beautiful brownstone in Manhattan, just a few blocks from the park. Looks like fortune smiled on you, huh, Harry?”
“You have no grounds to investigate me.”
“Really? Where were you today? You booked a room in a hotel in the Bronx. Were you feeling nostalgic? And for just one night. A night you didn’t even spend there. That seems to me to be odd behavior, wouldn’t you agree, Harry?”
“That is none of your goddamn business. As far as I know, McDonald, behaving oddly is not yet a crime.”
He ignored me. “It was quite a coincidence. You used the room for a little more than an hour, and you know who turned up during that hour?” I went cold inside. He saw it and smiled. “Mr. Marco Benini and two of his thugs. He’s a man much like you, Harry. Everybody knows he’s a killer, but nobody has been able to prove it—yet.”
I spoke very quietly. “Your problem, McDonald, is that you have become obsessed, because you believe I killed Gregorio McDonald. What was he, your father? Whatever your relationship was, when he died you pinned it on me. But you’re wrong. I was just the doorman that night. And if you keep letting that obsession drive you, you are going to wind up in deep trouble.”
He frowned. “Really? What kind of trouble would that be, Harry? You wouldn’t be threatening me, would you?”
I spoke through gritted teeth. “The man who killed Gregorio McDonald was Peter Rusanov. I was not even there. I was sent home. McDonald had turned up with a van full of punks with AK47s. He was going to make a massacre in that club!”
“Keep talking, Harry.” He took a step closer, so he was just a couple of inches away, looking straight in my eyes. “But whatever you say, you are responsible for Gregorio McDonald’s death, just as though you had wielded the machete yourself. And the problem I have with going after Peter Rusanov, Harry, is that curiously enough, he happens to be dead too.”
“You know I’m going to call the 32nd Precinct, and the 40th, and if you’re not on their staff, the next time I see you I am going to exercise my right to protect myself.”
He gave a small laugh. “Sure, Harry, everyone has a right to defend themselves. Even monsters like you. I’ll look forward to it. You take it easy, now.” He paused at the door and looked back at me. “Have a shot to calm yourself down. You like the expensive stuff, don’t you? The Macallan? Have a nice evening.”
He stepped out and I followed him out to the stoop just as a FedEx biker rolled up. McDonald stopped at his car and watched, smiling, as the biker ran up the steps and handed me a large envelope. I signed for it and the biker left. McDonald climbed in his car and I watched him drive away.
When he was gone I examined the house. I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. So I went out, took a cab to a shopping mall in the Bronx, bought a burner and called the brigadier.
“Why are you calling from this number?”
“We have got a big problem.”
“Be precise and be brief.”
“Alistair McDonald was waiting for me when I got back. He had followed me to my meeting with Benini. He knew I had booked a room at the Hyatt. He saw Benini arrive while I was there and put two and two together. He also accused me of killing Gregorio McDonald and said he knew I was a paid killer. He does not know who I work for. He showed me a different badge this time and claimed to be a detective with the NYPD. If he’s in my precinct, that’s the 32nd. If it’s where McDonald was killed, it’s the 40th. I need to know if he’s a real cop.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then, “It’s too soon to decide whether to abort. I need to make inquiries. If he is not a policeman, then he somehow has access to a great deal of information.”
I cut in. “He is obviously a trained, and highly experienced investigator. McDonald may not be his name. He may have used it simply to rattle me. The question is, what does he want?”
“He’s a damned sight more than an experienced investigator, Harry. He has killed two of our men and broken into your house multiple times without your noticing. He was living in my attic, and you didn’t know. You know how that works, Harry.”
I scowled. “What?”
“What is our motto?”
I frowned, thinking. “Who Dares Wins.”
“You have seen that a hundred times on operations. Sometimes, the sheer reckless courage of a person who no longer gives a damn can carry them twice as far as a person with the best training in the world. He may well be highly trained and experienced. But more than that, he doesn’t care about the risks.”
I thought about it. “Yeah, you may be right. This guy is cool. He is not afraid.”
“All right. You’ll see a van down the road from your house when you get home. We’ll be watching and listening. These are not just pros like the other two, Harry. These are blades.” Blades were what we called members of the Regiment. “The corporal is one of our best men. They know what they are doing. No one is going to take them out. So go home, relax, and prepare for the next meeting with Benini. I’m going to make inquiries. If we need to abort you’ll be the first to know. Until then, the operation is a go. You got the report?”
“OK. Yeah, I got it. Oh, one more thing. Have someone drop me off a Land Rover for tomorrow. I don’t want to use the TVR. It’s not exactly subtle.”
I hung up, dumped the burner and made my way home by train, bus and taxi, making it virtually impossible for anyone except the whole of the KGB en force to follow me. At six PM FedEx delivered a small package which turned out to be the key to the cottage on Long Island. I decided to go see the place in the morning, and at six thirty I pulled a steak from the fridge and started heating a cast-iron pan with sunflower oil. I made some salad to keep my conscience happy and when the pan was frighteningly hot I sprinkled coarse salt on the meat and prepared to drop it on the searing iron.
Then the doorbell rang. I sighed and waited, hoping it wouldn’t ring again. It did, insistently. I removed the pan and crossed the hall to the door. I looked through the spyhole and saw it was Angel. I felt a hot jolt of pleasure which was all twisted up with anxiety.
I opened the door. It wasn’t cold but she had a woolen hat on and a scarf and gloves.
“You’re dressed for three months’ time.”
She stared at me a moment before speaking. “I am so sorry to be a pain, Harry. I’ll go if you want me to.”
“No. Don’t be silly. Come on in. What’s the problem?”
“I’m scared.”
She stepped in and I closed the door behind her. I helped her off with all the wool and was surprised to see how her face was healing. She wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful.
“Come through to the kitchen. I was just making a steak. Are you hungry?”
She stopped. “Oh, God! I’m sorry, Harry. I should go and come back another time. I’m probably just being stupid.”
“Come on.” I went back, put an arm around her shoulder and guided her toward the kitchen. “Did you eat? Can you manage a steak to keep me company?”
“No. I mean yes, I could. No I haven’t eaten. Thank you. But I don’t want to intrude.”
I pulled two cold beers from the fridge and showed them to her. She nodded and I pulled two cold glasses from the freezer. As I cracked them and poured I asked her, “So why are you scared?”
“A policeman came to see me. A Detective McDonald. He said he was investigating Johnny’s death, and wanted to know if I knew him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I said I hardly knew Johnny, that I’d eaten in his bar a couple of times. And anyway I didn’t have time to talk to him right then. He didn’t insist. He just went away.” I handed her her beer and she took it. “But, Harry?”
“Yeah.”
“He really scared me. There was something about him. He was cold, and creepy. Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”
She took a small sip and I drained half my glass. As I set it down she said, “Can I stay here tonight?”
“Yeah,” I said, and smiled. “Of course you can.”
Eleven
I awoke at six. She was lying next to me, asleep. I rose, and as I shaved I held my eye in the mirror. My reflection told me it did not approve of what I had done. I told my reflection I didn’t give a damn what it approved of.
I showered hot and cold, and went down to my gym where I worked out for a couple of hours before having a sauna and another cold shower. By the time I got up to the kitchen she was making coffee, barefoot in jeans, with a loose blouse. She gave me a shy smile.
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“I get up early. I was in the gym.”
“You want me to make breakfast? I don’t want to intrude and start messing up your daily routine.”
“I have to go out. You help yourself to bread, eggs, bacon, ham.” She nodded, looking down at the floor. I felt like a heel but ignored it. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. I want you to do me a favor.”
“Sure, anything.” She still wouldn’t meet my eye.
“Stay put. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t open the door. Don’t go out till I get back.”
She listened to all this frowning at her feet. When I was done she asked, “Why?”
“I can’t really explain now, Angel.”
“Is it to do with Detective McDonald?”
“I’m not sure he is a detective. I have some friends looking into his background. I didn’t want to involve you in all this, but it just kind of happened. I’m sorry.”
She smiled. It was a sad kind of smile. “Not a very romantic morning after, huh?”
“I guess not. Let’s get this little problem sorted, then we’ll talk.”
She was looking at her feet again. “Candlelit dinner talk, or ‘Sit down, we need to talk,’ talk?”
It was a good question, and I wasn’t sure I knew the answer. I said, “You’ll have to help me make that choice.”
“OK.”
“Stay put.”
She nodded, I grabbed the attaché case I’d prepared the night before and I left.
It was a longer drive than you’d expect. I went via Randall’s Island and the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. I drove too fast, feeling impatient to get through Brooklyn and Queens, but once I’d passed Flushing Meadows I began to relax, and once I had left North Hills behind me, and the trees started to encroach on the Long Island Expressway, I eased my foot off the pedal and began to enjoy the ride.
I had kept one eye on my rearview mirror to see if McDonald was on my tail. I hadn’t seen him so far, but then this guy was apparently so subtle he was practically invisible. The other possibility was that the brigadier might have interceded and got somebody to sit on McDonald—assuming he was a cop like he said he was.
One thing was for sure, whoever or whatever he was, McDonald knew an awful lot about a small aspect of my life. But he didn’t have a clue about COBRA. And that fact might just save my skin.
It took me a little over two hours to reach Montauk, way out on the flat, narrow spit that reaches into the north Atlantic, like a pointing finger at the end of Long Island. I passed the town and kept going, beyond Fort Pond and into the dense woodlands, turning to russet and red in the early autumn, the time of mists and mellow fruitfulness, under a maturing sun.
I came at last to a fork in the road. There was a riding stables on my left and on my right a narrow road that plunged in among the trees. I slowed and took that narrow path. As I progressed the road became narrower and the forests either side became deeper and darker, and encroached further on the blacktop. There was room for only one car, and I wondered what would happen if I encountered someone coming the other way.
That didn’t happen and eventually, at shortly before eleven AM, I came to a large wooden gate. Beside it there was a quaint sign that read “Hero’s Cottage,” and beyond it there was a drive through an unkempt lawn to a green garage door, where dappled shade made the grass a luminous green.
I climbed out of the TVR and pushed open the gate. The cottage was picture book, with two floors and an ancient gabled roof. The doors and windows had heavy wooden frames and I guessed it might have been as much as two or three hundred years old.
I drove in and closed the gate behind me, and followed the drive down to the garage that, on closer inspection, looked like it might have been added on to the house in the 1920s or ’30s. It was faded redbrick with two big, wooden doors that had been painted military green long ago, and had started to peel. Inside, when I heaved open the doors, it smelled of creosote and musty shadows. I parked the car, grabbed the attaché case, closed the garage doors and let myself into the house.
There was a musty entrance hall with an old sage green carpet, a small hat stand with a mirror on the right, and a staircase with a white banister which climbed the right-hand wall into shadows. Between the hat stand and the staircase there was a white door which stood partially open onto a cottagey living room with a fireplace and big, floral armchairs.
On the left there was another door. This one was closed, but beyond the staircase I could see an open one and through it bright light, tinged with the green of a lawn and abundant trees. I could also see a sink and a pine table. I waited a moment, listening.
There was only silence.
I went into the living room. It was what you’d expect. A big floral sofa, two winged armchairs of the same design, an open fireplace with a basket of logs beside it. A couple of bookcases held paperbacks by Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Le Carré and Raymond Chandler, and I wondered if this was evidence of the brigadier’s hand.
French doors led out to a patio, and beyond the patio a long lawn bordered by cypress trees and pines. A small wooden gate at the far end gave access to a narrow path that led down to the beach. The ocean looked dark and cold.
I returned to the hall and opened the only door that had stood closed, across the hall from the living room. It was a dining room. It had a polished, oval table in the center and six chairs ranged around it. A doily in the middle held a silver candelabra. There was a threadbare Persian rug on the floor and prints on the walls showing fox hunting scenes. They might have been English or American. The dining room had two doors. One led to the hall, the other led to the kitchen.
It was in the kitchen that I found a shopping bag sitting on the large kitchen table. Inside there were four kilos—eight and a half pounds—of premium-grade raw opium. There was also a pound of C4 and a handful of remote detonators which I could configure to my cell. I broke up the cake and set the charges where I wanted them, taking care to visualize the scene as it would be.
When I was done I went back to the living room, sat in one of those comfortable floral armchairs and started reading the preliminary report the brigadier had sent me, on Alistair McDonald.
As he had told me already, the Bureau’s New York field office had no record of a Special Agent Alistair McDonald. So they had looked into Gregorio McDonald to see if he’d had any children, and if so, who they were. As it turned out he’d had seven sons that they knew of, and two daughters. Two of the boys and none of the girls were legitimate. The two legitimate boys had been born to his wife, Olga Maria. The other seven kids were mainly with three prostitutes who’d worked in his clubs, but two were from the mistress he kept in town. None of them was called Alistair. They all had Mexican names: Armando, Eulogio, Nelson, Fermin, Ambrosio, Sancho and Francisco, all aged between twenty-two (Armando, studying marine biology at Columbia), and thirty-six (Francisco, practicing law in the Financial District of Manhattan). That left Ambrosio and Sancho who might fall within Alastair’s probable age bracket. They also happened to be his only legitimate kids.
The girls were Maria, twenty-one and studying journalism at UCLA, and Carla, twenty-four, who had gone to Paris to study art. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
There wasn’t much else, but the two prime candidates were clearly not working for the NYPD. I went into the kitchen to make some coffee and stood staring out of the window at the long lawn, the small gate and the dark ocean. And all I could think of was that the whole thing was culturally wrong. I remembered McDonald well. He was brash, loud, aggressive. He was one of those Mexicans who could just as easily be Texan. He had all the aggression of the Scots and all the swagger of the Mexicans. Or was that the other way around: the swagger of the Scots and the aggression of the Mexicans?
I thought back to what had happened before I worked for COBRA. I had just left the SAS and returned to New York. I couldn’t find a job and wound up working as a doorman at the Mescal Club. The boss, Mr. Rusanov, had told me one Gregorio McDonald would be coming to cause trouble, and I was not to let him in.
