The Last Minute

28

East 59th Street, Manhattan

I ran back down to the lobby. The doorman stood by the glass entrance and when he saw me exit off the elevator – carrying a laptop – he stormed back through the door. Well, stormed rather politely.

‘Sir, I know you needed to recuperate, but this is a private building and-’

I punched him, hard, one smart blow in the tender spot between the edge of the jaw and the lip. He staggered back and I hammered a fist into his gut and then into the vulnerable joining of neck and nerve.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Really, mister.’ He folded. I knelt, went through his pockets and found a passkey. I stood and hurried down the hallway. Saw a door marked Security. I keyed the door with the passkey. A rented cop stood before a set of monitors. He charged at me, going for his holster. I knocked him down and I took the gun from him. I told him to sit down. He obeyed.

‘Turn around. And, no, I’m not going to kill you.’ I slammed the gun into the back of his head, three times, and he went down. I went to the security recording. Rewound. I saw myself enter, I saw Mrs Ming exit. I saw people come and go, as fast and as energetically as if they had espresso in their blood. Then him.

Jack Ming, leaving, alone, practically running out of the building. At the exit he turned left.

A bit more rewinding and I saw him enter the building with his mother. This I played slowly.

On another monitor a woman got off the elevator and screamed when she saw the fallen doorman. Okay, I was officially out of time, thank you for playing.

Footage of Jack Ming, walking inside the building with his mother. The body language was clear. The kid was anxious. He was holding two grocery bags and he kept swinging them over his feet. A small knapsack sat on his back that he’d left with as well. He kept glancing about, not even looking at his mother, while they waited for the elevator.

And Mrs Ming. You could tell this was not a happy reunion. She was not touching her child. She was not looking at her long-departed, wanted-by-the-police kid. She was looking at the tile floor, and her watch. Did she have an appointment to keep? She looked as though she wanted to wriggle free of her own skin and slither away. She kept shaking the rain from her umbrella. It was a constructive action, something to do other than watch her kid.

I stopped the digital recording. I erased it, from Jack’s appearance to now, and then I powered down the cameras. There was no point in me being remembered either.

I hurried out the door, past the woman crouching by the unconscious doorman. She had a cell phone pressed to her ear. She called to me to help her but I ignored her.

I let the traffic carry me along. I wanted out of this neighborhood now. I went down to the 59th Street subway station, rode the train to Grand Central, got off. I found a store in the terminal and put the laptop in a knapsack I’d bought.

I tried Leonie on the cell phone; there was no answer. I didn’t like that at all. Maybe she didn’t like to talk on the phone while she drove but I figured that for me she’d make an exception.

For a moment I felt torn. I had the address of an empty building where my target would be, and if you’re planning to kill someone an empty building in New York City is convenient. But having Leonie tag after the limo driver felt like a mistake now. Jack had left his mother behind, and maybe she knew where he was, but maybe she didn’t. I had an address, an actual, throbbing clue, and Leonie could be off with our car on a fool’s errand. I stepped back out onto the street, trying to decide what to do.

The wind broke the rain clouds into jagged curls of gray; the sun flooded the sky, weak as tea.

The iPhone rang inside my pocket. The phone that Anna had given me.

‘Yes?’

‘Sam?’ Leonie. Her voice tight and stiff, rattled by fear. There is a certain pronunciation made when the lips are bruised; you don’t quite form your words right.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, God, I messed up, I messed up, please… ’

And then the limo driver’s voice. ‘You. You sent this woman to follow me. Who are you?’

‘Don’t hurt her.’

‘If you don’t want her hurt, then you come get her.’

No. Not now. I had the address where Jack most likely had run. I had Jack Ming in my grasp.

What would you do to save your child? she’d asked me.

A choice. What would I do to save my child? Would I sacrifice this woman who was basically a stranger? A little, awful voice inside me said, you don’t need her. You found Jack, not her. What good is she, what has she done to help save your kid? It was from a dark corner deep in the well of my soul, but when you are in a battle for your child’s life darkness stands close to you, whispers in your ear. Nine Suns wasn’t going to give me Daniel, or give Leonie her daughter, if Jack Ming breathed long enough to turn himself into the CIA.

‘I strongly suggest that you listen to me, mister. Retrieve your bitch. Or I’ll cut her throat.’

In the background I could hear Leonie, gasping, saying, ‘Don’t, don’t!’

I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or to the driver. Then a piercing scream.

‘Where are you?’ I managed to say.

He gave me an address and directions to Morris County, in northern New Jersey.

I clicked off the phone. If I made the wrong choice I could be abandoning either a woman I barely knew, who seemed to hold me in contempt, to death, or my own child.

If the situation was reversed, what would I want her to do? Leave me to die? Absolutely. Go save the kids, lady, what happens to me is nothing. Go.

We hadn’t anticipated an enemy beyond Special Projects, who would not have grabbed one of us and threatened us with death. Caught up in the mad rush to find Jack Ming, I had not planned for this contingency. It was on me.

I went outside, stood on the sidewalk in the warming humidity, and I started to shudder. It felt like every nerve in my body was wired to open current. I gave myself thirty seconds of weakness and I stopped shivering then I put the decision aside. Leonie was in the greatest danger right now. I could no more leave her to die than I could anyone else.

I started to walk. I needed a car.

A couple of turns later I saw a parking garage, four suited men coming down the ramp to merge into the river of pedestrians. I maneuvered carefully, bumping directly into the one who’d had his hand in his right front pocket as he had turned from the ramp onto the sidewalk.

‘Jesus, watch where you’re going, jerkwad,’ he snapped at me.

‘My bad, I’m very sorry,’ I said. I turned into the parking ramp and hurried up the stairs. I didn’t even glance to see which keys I’d pickpocketed off him until I was on the second level. A Mercedes logo on the keychain. I ran along the parked cars, testing the automatic unlock, until headlights on an SE flashed at me.

One minute later I was heading toward the Lincoln Tunnel.

If you save her and Jack Ming gets away…

I had to get a grip. Focus. I wanted to make good time. The limo driver apparently had and I thought, please, don’t let there be bad traffic or an accident. Don’t let the guy whose car I’m stealing realize his keys are gone. Let the doorman and the guard be okay after I punched them. Forgive me everything I do to save my son.

Don’t let me fail.