Every Man a King

22

As I walked down the street at a few minutes shy of 11:30, the world was feeling pretty good. I had a few names and quirks of some players in the international fuel bootlegging business. I had a personal reason to talk to Quiller again and a bodyguard.

I crossed over to the park side of Fifth. There I took out a phone.

“Hello, Joe,” Oliya Ruez said, answering her phone after the third ring.

“You sound like you’re outside.”

“I went out for dinner.”

“A little late for that, isn’t it?”

“I live by a European schedule. Where are you?”

“Midtown Manhattan.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No. I’ll be home in under an hour.”

“See you there.”

It was just before I disengaged the line that he grabbed me from behind and pulled me into the park. At first I thought it was Lyle making good on his warning, but my attacker was too big. Then I thought maybe the fay assassin had enlisted help. I reached out with both hands to grab the man’s neck and hair. Then I yanked hard.

“Uh,” he grunted, loosening his grip.

Pushing him off-balance, I followed up with the heel of my palm against his cheekbone.

As he fell I saw his two friends closing in from the A and C sides of the right angle we formed. I thought about running but did not. I wondered if I’d die there because I didn’t have a gun. Then I just waited.

In a street fight I prefer close quarters, especially when facing multiple opponents. They tend to trip over each other when rushing at a solitary target.

The attackers wore business suits. I noticed this just before throwing a body blow at the skinny guy to the left. He grunted but didn’t go down, and the man on the right hit me above the ear. This caused ringing but no immediate pain or dizziness. I jumped on that man, bringing him to the lawn with my weight. I felt another man’s heft on my back and twisted to avoid whatever he was trying to do while bringing my left elbow down on the man under me. In a perfect world that strike would have landed on his throat, but it felt more like shoulder.

Then, using all my adrenaline-enhanced strength, I pushed up hard enough to dislodge the man on my back and make it half the way to standing. It was a good maneuver, but two of my adversaries were already up while the guy on the concrete was almost there. I hit the latter with a comic book haymaker. He went down again and I turned using the speed of fear to attack the closest one.

That was my waterloo.

I had the man by his arms but he had me too. I tried to kick him. Missed. He managed to kick me but only got shins. In the meanwhile the third man, wearing the darkest suit, pulled out a handgun. He rushed up at us. I was sure that he intended to put a bullet in my body before I fell, when he could put another in my brain.

He was right on me. I could feel his breath. Then a warm spray hit my face.

The man dropped the handgun, bringing both hands to his throat as he fell. The gesture was useless. Oliya had severed his jugular and no amount of pressure would stem the flow of blood.

The man I was dancing with let go. Oliya was on him immediately, her silent knife buried all the way to the hilt in his chest.

The luckiest of the attackers was the one I laid low. Darwin at work again.

“We should get out of here,” Oliya suggested.

Her car was illegally parked two blocks away. Well, not actually illegally because she had some official-looking city placard on the dash of her maroon Dodge telling the world that whoever drove that car had the right to wait.

Ms. Ruez took a few packets of alcohol wipes from her black duffel bag. She used these to wash the blood off my wrist, jaw, and neck.

“Lucky you wore dark clothes,” she said while wiping my face the way a patient mother scrubs a baby’s butt. “Blood don’t show there.”

“Wasn’t luck, Olo,” I said, coining the nickname as I spoke. “Darkness is a Black man’s best friend.”

Oliya smiled at me. That simple expression filled me with pride.

“You took some chances but you were good in that fight. Real good. Just with a knife and you would have won by yourself.”

“Speaking of knives, we should get out of here.”

Oliya turned the key and we were on our way toward the Bronx.

I was still breathing hard, unable to keep thoughts in any kind of sequential order. Two dead men, blood everywhere. Aja. Yes, Aja was safe. They tried to kill me. Who did? Why? On Fifth Avenue, in Central Park.

“How’re you doing?” Oliya asked. It was a simple question but also an intellectual lifeline.

“We got a problem.”

“How do you mean, Joe?”

The question brought a hiccup-like chortle from my diaphragm.

“I didn’t tell anybody where I was going. And if anybody knew my movements they would have stopped me at the stone cave.”

“Maybe they were following you and got the go-ahead to attack when you left the office building.”

“Those motherfuckers tried to kill me.”

“Yes, they did.”

“Did you watch me leave on the monitors?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Was anybody else watching?”

“Not that I could see.”

“And how long were you on me?”

“I followed you the entire day, put a tracker in your wallet when you were asleep.”

“I don’t like that.” I turned a stony stare at her.

“Maybe not. But it saved your life.”

I took a deep breath into an angry cauldron of lungs.

“What about your cell phone?” she asked.

“I got a dozen burners to choose from. I mean, they might have a line on me in some way, but let’s look at you too.”

“Me?”

“Have you told anyone about the job?”

“Only...” she said and then stopped talking.

I was quiet too. The panting had stopped. The car engine wheezed on a steady flow of gasoline. Five minutes passed. Something about my bodyguard seemed a little less certain.

“I know you can’t tell me about other clients and their business. But do you think—”

“I don’t know,” she replied to the darkness outside the windshield.

“Two days ago ZI sent out a man to kill me,” I prompted. “He died before he could accomplish that end.”

“It’s possible,” she said. “They know my codes. They could have located you.”

“You want to go to a motel?” I offered. “I know a really disreputable one in Jersey.”

We stopped along the way in Manhattan. I climbed down into the number 1 subway station and left the tracker on a southbound car.

Dingo’s Retreat Motel was a horseshoe-shaped single-story structure on the outskirts of Hoboken. The night manager had no problem taking cash. I bought a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and a small box of Dixie Cups from the twenty-four-hour liquor store across the street.

Sitting up, facing each other on the pair of single beds, Oliya and I had three drinks apiece before we began the debrief.

The TV was tuned to a late-night talk show, up loud.

“Did you see them following me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “They were good. I only saw the one that grabbed you when he did.”

“It’s not all that easy to follow a cell phone, even if you got the number,” I said, moving on.

“No, it isn’t.” Those three words comprised what would be, if official, a forty-page Pentagon document.

“You should probably reach out to your controller and tell ’em what you did.”

I wondered if I could take the girl guard one-on-one. She was ruthless in a fight. I could see that in the way she eliminated the professional killers.

“No,” Oliya said, studying my eyes.

“No what?”

“I will not turn against you and I won’t leave.”

“So you’ll call ’em?”

“In the morning. Before we go.”

After that we turned off the lights and TV, then stretched out on our bunks, fully dressed.

I was on my back in the semidarkness of the room. Light came in from the parking lot through battered shades. My nerves were still jangled from the surprise attack on one of the most well-known streets in the world. I felt very alone in the gloom until...

“You were on me the whole day?” I asked behind closed eyes in the dark.

“Yes,” she stated. “I mean, it wasn’t so much following as more waiting. First outside Loretta Gorman and Lamont Charles’s place and then around Augustine Antrobus’s office.”

“You got all that information from the outside?”

“I did have that tracker on you,” she said. “It’s pretty accurate. Int-Op is aware of Antrobus because he is a key figure in much of the criminal activity in your country. And Mr. Charles keeps company with some of the most powerful and influential players in the world.”

“Huh,” I said.

“I saw you come upon an old lady on your way to Antrobus. Her shopping cart was too heavy and you helped her lift it. I could see that you weren’t using her to test the waters, to see if someone followed.

“Helping for no reason, that is life at its best. Most people in your cities don’t know it. Almost everyone in our business thinks that they cannot afford kindness. They don’t have a reason for living and so go through life like the dead.”

I slept well after that. I was alive. I had an ally. I’d probably live to see morning.

We stopped at a restaurant called Pic’s on the way north. I had two soft-boiled eggs and she, avocado toast. After breakfast, in the parking lot, Oliya made a call with the speakerphone on.

“Seventeen,” a man’s voice answered.

“One seven,” she replied.

“You were supposed to report last night.”

“The client was approached by hostiles. I helped him but he was hurt and I had to move fast and silently.”

“We lost his tracker.”

“I didn’t know you were following it.”

“What happened?”

“He took off his pants... the blood.”

“How is he?”

“Immobile but he’ll make it.”

“Where are you?”

She gave her contact the name, address, and room number at Dingo’s.

“How long will you be there?” the controller asked.

“An hour or so. Mr. Oliver’s friend is coming to take us for medical care.”

“What friend?”

“Someone named Carlson.”

“First name?”

“I don’t know. Just Carlson.”

“Where are you now?”

“In the car.”

“And the client?”

“In the room, sleeping.”

“Carry on.”

And the call was ended.

We sat in the front seat with an iPad set between us. The image on the screen was the motel room we’d vacated. Neither of us talked. We just waited.

Fifty-six minutes later three men burst into the room with guns out. They were well dressed like the assassins the night before. They spent no more than a minute checking to see if their targets were there.

Then they were gone.

“Your people?” I asked Oliya.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“To begin with we don’t have a hit squad. I would know about that.”

“So — Zyron?”

Oliya hesitated a moment before saying, “Maybe. They’re a big client.”

“You think the top people at Int-Op would play this dirty?”

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask that question.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Oliya turned to me, a blank expression on her hard face.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I gauged this apology.

“I should cut you loose,” I said at the end of the assay.

She nodded.

“I mean, you put killers on my ass.”

She gave another assent but with a wordless caveat at the end.

“What?” I asked.

“You need help with this, Joe.”

“I got friends.”

“You have me too... if you want.”

Being a cop is a tough job. You have to make split-second decisions a dozen times every day. Is someone a threat? Do they see you as a threat? What’s waiting behind that door? What would your mother think?

Since I was bounced out of the NYPD, without retirement, life just got harder. I had all those decisions to make without backup, without respect.

These thoughts in mind I asked, “You wanna take a ride out to Brownsville?”