The Last Minute

43

Hotel Esper, Williamsburg

I decided to suit up for the meeting. I wanted to look like a legitimate business owner for the property management company, and I thought, given that I had a black eye, I needed every ounce of respectability I could muster. And I didn’t want Jack Ming, if he was hiding in the building, to see me as a soldier. I wanted to look like the other side of my life, the owner of a really nice bar. When I worked undercover for Special Projects I quickly learned that most high-level criminal groups adopt a stylish look. I would prefer myself to always be in T-shirt and jeans but life demands more. So I figured out, like a personal shopper to an assassin would, what suits worked for my build as well as what I could wear if I had to fight while dressed to the nines.

Also, even though I didn’t pay much attention to The Last Minute as I launched my search for Daniel, I was conscious of when I looked rattier than Bertrand (who always looks annoyingly dapper) and the staff. So, I’d grabbed from my office above The Last Minute the dark navy Burberry Prosrum suit, sleek-fitting. I put on a light gray shirt, a soft silver tie. To the back of the tie I attached a small, thin fighting knife; it stayed in place thanks to a customized loop I’d sewn in. The blade’s handle was extremely slender, and the weight of the knife kept the tie tucked against the shirt. I buttoned the jacket; you’d have to look hard to see the blade. I attached a holster to the small of my back; my Glock went there. Another thin blade was bound to an ankle; I put on a pair of Allen Edmonds shoes, with a slightly thick heel. I am man enough to kick when there is a need to.

I left Leonie tapping at her keyboard. ‘He’s probably not there, but if he is, and I get him, we’ll have to run quickly.’

You don’t rush in if you can help it. We had to be prepared for a couple of eventualities: that Jack Ming might somehow already be here, and have turned the building into his own fortress, and that the CIA might be here as well. Anna could be wrong about the rendezvous being set for tomorrow. Her source inside could be wrong, and, with our children’s lives on the line, neither Leonie nor I had any intention of walking into a trap. If we were caught, our children were lost to us.

Would Jack Ming hide where he planned to meet? Possibly. But if I were him, I would try to stay on the move as much as I could. Hunkering down in a place tied to his father could be dangerous, an unacceptable risk.

Of course, he was a twenty-two-year-old grad student, not a trained operative. He might not think the same way I would. But he’d run home, the most dangerous thing he could do if his false ID in the Netherlands had been cracked, and so he might commit a whole chain of mistakes. If he didn’t realize that his mother was gone, he might feel perfectly safe coming to this building that he knew to be empty.

He, after all, had to have taken the key for a good reason.

The building was enemy territory. It could be a kill zone. I had only seen it in the dark late last night and now it looked like a difficult place to defend. It was neat red brick, windows covered to keep damage and neglect at bay. An outdoor market was in full swing two streets over; pedestrians passed on their way to and from the stalls.

I walked down to the building a few minutes late. If Jack was inside I didn’t want him to spot me until the very last minute. I had no idea if he had seen me in the Rotterdam shootout, or if he would register my face from those horrible few minutes.

As I walked up to the door, a Volvo sedan with New Jersey plates pulled up. Two women got out. Great, I thought: if Jack Ming is holed up inside and gets violent then I’ve got two people to protect. They both wore practically identical pinstriped suits. Maybe Mrs Ming enforced a dress code. They were both in their late twenties, I would guess. One was dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a lovely face and a kind smile. The other was blonde, steel-eyed, a bit taller, but something in her face registered wrong. Like the smile was just for practice.

‘Mr Capra?’ This was the brunette.

‘Yes.’

‘Beth Marley.’ We shook hands. ‘This is my associate, Lizzie.’

She offered her hand, I shook it, and she held onto it a little longer than necessary. ‘Oh, what happened to your face?’ Odd tone to her question – she almost sounded disappointed. I thought for a moment she was going to reach out and touch my black eye.

‘Surely not a bar fight?’ Beth said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And that dude won’t walk a check again.’

‘Oh, rough stuff,’ Lizzie said. Her smile didn’t waver. I felt sure commercial leasing agents have seen nearly everything.

‘May I see your ID?’ Beth said.

I understand leasing agents have to be careful, going into buildings with strange men. I gave her both my New York driver’s license and my Last Minute business card, which looked even sharper than I did. She inspected them and handed them back to me.

Beth gestured to the building. ‘Shall we?’

I nodded.

Beth unlocked the door with a key with a small tag on it. She stepped inside and punched in the code for the building. She didn’t hide her tapping finger and I saw the code was 49678. She seemed to hesitate for just one moment, as if expecting the alarm to sound, but it stopped its warning chime and the indicator light turned green. But I stepped away from her before she could register that I’d been watching and turned my gaze critically to the ceiling, as though I expected to see a pox of water leaks. Lizzie stayed close to me. A little too close. I didn’t like her, all of a sudden.

On the first floor was some unfinished plasterboard, a wall left undone.

‘Did someone start to remodel and forget to finish?’

‘Apparently so. Of course, if you lease the whole space we’ll remove any left-behind renovations that were incomplete.’

Beth started to tell me about all the building’s wonderful features, of which there were three. She embellished in the way that best sales people do. I let her lead me but I stepped first through every door. I didn’t think Jack Ming, if he’d hidden himself inside here, seemed like the type to just start shooting; I didn’t even know if he had a gun. But I wasn’t going to risk the leasing agents getting hurt.

We walked through the building. The first two floors were configured for offices. Beth was giving me a very generic patter. On the top floor we could see the roofs of the adjoining building, which only went to three floors. This floor was mostly cleared concrete space.

‘So you’re thinking a bar on the ground floor?’

‘Yes. And private party rooms on the second and third floors,’ I said. ‘Office space on four.’

‘Oh, party space, I hope you’ll invite us,’ Lizzie said. ‘You won’t make us wait in line, will you? Can we jump the rope?’

I gave her a smile, but I didn’t much care for the smile she gave me back. She kept standing a little too close to me, clutching her oversized purse. ‘I’ll make sure you’re on the special guest list.’

‘Next door it’s being renovated into restaurant space,’ Beth said. ‘I believe the top floor is going to be a sushi bar. They’re opening next week, I think. You could have a synergy, depending on their clientele.’

‘I’m all about the synergy,’ I said. I never know how the hell to use that word in a sentence.

The fourth floor was mostly open space. Russell Ming was using it for storage. Boxes of all shapes and sizes, Chinese paintings, a set of rounded tables in a row, lightly covered with dust. Windows faced out onto the neighboring roof; below was a skylight that looked new. The sushi bar, celebrating natural light, I guess.

In the back corner there was a door.

I walked straight over to it and tried the doorknob. Locked.

‘What’s in here?’ I asked. My voice sounded a little louder than I’d intended.

‘Storage, I believe. Don’t know why it would be locked.’ She stepped forward. She opened the door with another key. I tensed in case Jack Ming had set up camp inside the room. He hadn’t. It was empty. I tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. He wasn’t in the building. I knew the access code now and I could pick the locks. I didn’t need Beth and Lizzie so best to get them out of the way, come back and wait for Jack Ming.

‘You seem to be… expecting to see something here,’ Lizzie said when I finished twisting the knob as I stepped away from the door. She leaned against one of the square tables.

‘Just counting the footage in my mind,’ I said.

‘I like math,’ Lizzie said. ‘I like to add things up.’

‘So,’ Beth said smoothly. ‘How would this property work for you, Mr Capra?’

‘I think it might work well indeed. How firm is the leasing price?’

‘Pretty firm, I would think. The original owner died a couple of years ago; his wife has it now, and she would rather hold out than lease too cheap.’

I had my back to them, surveying the adjoining roof. Could he enter the building this way? No, I thought not. ‘Well, I think I’ve seen enough,’ I said.

‘Enough to know Jack Ming’s not here,’ Lizzie said.

I turned. Beth had a Glock 9mm aimed at me. Lizzie was pulling from her oversized purse a metal chain, an iron weight at one end, a steel spike at the other, firm in her grip. Surujin. A weapon I’d seen before in Japan, mostly used these days for individual martial arts practice. The weight dangled like a pendulum; she started it on a gentle sway, just above her feet.

‘Hands still, where I can see them, please, Sam,’ Beth said.

‘Are you kidding me?’ I nodded at Lizzie’s toy.

‘You’re supposed to be a graceful runner. I brought it to leash you in case you ran. Don’t make me chase you.’ Lizzie’s smile didn’t quite just look socially awkward; now she looked coolly cruel.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said.

‘We just want to talk,’ Beth – well, I knew now that wasn’t her name, but her name didn’t matter – said. Her aim steadied on my chest.

‘Gun on the ground, please,’ Beth ordered.

I obeyed. Dropped it to the hardwood floor, kicked it over to her. I kept my hands slightly raised, in front of me, where she could see them.

‘Hands on head. Lizzie, search him.’

She did with gusto, fingers dancing over me, exploring more than she should have, while Beth kept the gun leveled at my head. She probed my arms, my groin, my backside. She ran her hands along my ribs and my legs. Lizzie found the thin blade at my ankle. She ran her fingernails along the skin of my leg. She was so busy toying with me that her search was incomplete. She’d not thought to pat down my tie.

‘Boys and their toys,’ Lizzie said. She flicked the knife at my face. I didn’t flinch; she stopped a good inch away from my cheek.

It seemed to displease her I hadn’t given the reaction she wanted. ‘I can make you flinch,’ she said. ‘I will.’

‘Lizzie, step back,’ Beth said. Lizzie obeyed.

‘The preference is not to shoot you,’ Lizzie said. ‘It makes a mess.’ She stepped back, tucked my knife in her belt. She picked up the surujin and began its slow swing again. There is a whole subclass of punk-ass killers who have seen a Hong Kong or Tokyo gangster movie and decided to flash up their act a bit. One supposes they think it makes them look more dangerous. Most of them are older than me and honestly should know better. I’d dealt with one back in Amsterdam with a Japanese sword fetish and now he was dead.

Lizzie just kept smiling at me. Like she wanted to encourage me to ask her on a date.

‘Are you kidding me?’ I said again. ‘Put that down.’

She didn’t. She laughed. The little weight kept spinning, slicing the air; it sounded like a knife. ‘See, with this, I don’t kill you, I knock you around a bit, bad bruises, yes, cuts, yes, but those can heal without too much care. I can play with you a lot more. A gunshot takes forever to heal, trust me, it’s so annoying. And smelly.’

The other one – Beth – looked embarrassed, for just the barest moment. ‘Where is Jack Ming?’

‘I don’t know. I thought he might be here.’ Truth. ‘That’s why I was eager to look in that locked room.’

‘And why you tried to shield me in case he was there with a gun. Oh, how sweet,’ Beth said.

‘I won’t shield you again.’

Lizzie started swinging the surujin, harder, higher; it made a steel halo around her head.

‘Why are you looking for him?’ Beth said.

Well, I wasn’t expecting that question. But I like the cards on the table in moments like this. ‘Why are you?’

Lizzie threw the surujin. The weight slammed into my shoulder with the force of a savage punch. With a flick of the chain she’d drawn it back to her, whirling the weight in front of her. She actually knew how to use the thing. Where do you go to surujin school?

‘She can break your nose, shatter your teeth, shred your ears with it,’ Beth said. ‘I really suggest you tell us what we want to know.’

‘Talk, talk,’ Lizzie hissed.

‘Because the people who have my child want him dead.’

‘That’s very moving.’ Lizzie walked to one side of me, the weight orbiting her head. The sound it made was an awful whirring hiss. She was at both her weakest and her strongest when she threw it, if I could keep it from coming back to her. The spike was to stab someone tangled or stunned by the weight and the chain. It was like a Swiss Army knife of weapons.

‘And these people, they just want Jack dead?’ Beth asked.

‘Yes. Kill him and I get my kid back.’

‘That is so sweet,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’ll be the bestest daddy ever.’

Beth said, ‘Jack Ming is going to die. You can see it happen, if you like. But we do the job. Not you.’

Something inside me broke. They had a gun on me, fair enough, and the one playing at samurai was crazy as hell. But this was over.

‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust you to do what needs doing.’

‘We’re taking the responsibility off you, man,’ Lizzie said. ‘And then what?’

‘Then we talk.’

‘No. Then I go get my son if Jack Ming’s dead.’

‘No, that’s not going to happen, I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. I wasn’t sure what she enjoyed more, the stab or the twist.

Beth said, ‘I would like to know where we can find your friend Mila.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘I think you’re lying,’ Lizzie said. ‘This – whatever you’re doing, on the side – it ends now.’

‘On the side?’

‘Working for someone other than Special Projects,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’re on the same side, babe.’ She made the last word sound like a plop of poison. ‘You just have to stand aside and let us clean up this mess.’

Oh. These two were going to kill Jack Ming, all right, but they were going to kill August, too, and whoever came with him, and they were going to kill me after I’d told them where Mila was.

Someone inside Special Projects was protecting Novem Soles and knew about the bounty on Mila, and had decided to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone. And that someone did not care one whit whether I lived or my child lived. August knew. Who else?

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You kill Jack Ming, then I get my kid back and walk away.’

‘You walk away if you give us Mila,’ Lizzie said.

I didn’t nod for twenty seconds, and let the agony play out on my face. Then I nodded, once.

‘Where is she?’ Beth asked.

‘She’s coming here. In an hour. To help me dispose of Jack Ming’s body. She got a confirmation he was going to be here. A phone call to a friend.’

‘She’s hunting Ming?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why isn’t she here with you now?’

‘Because killing him is my job. Not hers.’

The surujin, wound in an increasing arc while I talked, lashed out at me.

It caught me in the side of the throat as I tried to dodge and felt like a baseball bat had swung into my flesh. I staggered back, choking.

‘He’s lying,’ Lizzie said. ‘I know a liar and he’s lying. He’s not giving Mila to us.’

She flicked it again at me and this time I whipped out my hand and caught the weight. It hurt – like a hammer pounding into my palm – but I yanked on the chain and Lizzie flew toward me.

I slammed a fist into her face but she kept her grip on the chain. So I threw her into Beth, who was holding fire to keep from shooting her partner.

The two women hit the floor. Where was my gun? Beth had kicked it somewhere. I didn’t see it.

First things first. Don’t get shot. Lizzie clambered to her feet. I whirled and powered a kick into her chest, knocking her back into Beth. The gun fired into the hardwoods; shards and splinters kicked up by Lizzie’s foot and she screamed. I couldn’t tell if it was rage or pain.

Right now the biggest threat was the gun. Lizzie threw three brutal sharp jabs, muay thai -style, connecting with my jaw, my nose, my mouth, and then kicked me in the chest. Strong as hell. I staggered back and she whipped the weighted end of the surujin downward, anchoring my hands, binding my wrists together. But now she didn’t try to drag me back; I was caught, she had the other end of the chain. The spike gleamed in her hand.

She rushed me, stabbing at my shoulder, just as Beth charged at me, gun in hand, doing what I would do to subdue a prisoner with useless hands: put the gun to my head, order me to stand down. So, no. I dodged two stabs of Lizzie’s, and since I was bound to her, she was bound to me. Beth lunged at me and I drove an elbow into her nose. It broke and she staggered back, for just a moment.

That was my advantage: they wanted me uninjured enough to talk, to give them Mila. I wanted them out of the way between me and my son and that could mean hurt or dead. It made no difference to me, at that moment in time.

I seized, with my bound hands, Lizzie’s arm with the spike, levered it up. I had to get free of her; Beth ignored the blood streaming from her nose, raising for her shot. There was a connection between them – they were partners, not just two people assigned to kill Jack Ming together. She would not risk a shot to Lizzie’s head. I hoped.

I swung Lizzie hard, and her arms plowed right into Beth’s head. Beth went down, and I yanked again, pulling Lizzie along with me. We trampled over Beth, then I yanked her back again, stumbling and stepping hard on Beth a second time. My foot hit the gun and I kicked, scuttling it into the mass of Russell Ming’s junk.

‘Goddamn it!’ Lizzie screamed. Easily frustrated, not calm.

I got my hand on the dangling weight since Lizzie still had her death grip on the spike. She jabbed the spike straight at the center of my chest, hitting my tie. It hit the metal of my knife, instead of soft flesh.

I clubbed the weight into the side of her head. She fell, hard.

I pulled free from the surujin, kicked back from her, just in time for Beth to nearly open my throat.

She had my blade, the one Lizzie had handed her from my ankle. I ducked as she slashed at me; she was only missing by a centimeter.

I threw myself back in a herky-jerky dance as she advanced, chasing me. The blade scored along the front of my jacket, slicing the lapel. She overextended on her thrust and I caught her and threw her to the side. I groped at my tie for my blade.

My tie was gone. She’d sliced the whole thing off, severing the silk, leaving a faint score on the shirt. Where the hell was it?

Beth stumbled, back on her feet, her hand bleeding from where the blade had turned on her. Lizzie, untangling her deadly Japanese not-really-a-toy. My severed tie lay on the floor between them.

I ran, grabbed the cloth, felt the reassuring weight of the knife under the silk. I skidded under the row of tables bordering the boxes where Russell Ming stored his junk. I worked the knife free from the silk, closed fingers around the handle.

The top of the table exploded into splinters, punctured by the weight of the surujin.

My shield – the table I was under – flew up, the two of them throwing it off me.

Which meant they each had one hand otherwise occupied.

I slashed with the knife, at knee-level. I caught Lizzie but not Beth. Lizzie howled but hammered the weight into the small of my back. Pain exploded along my spine. My knife clanged against Beth’s, slash, parry, slash. She cut at my suit sleeve. I sliced across her knuckles.

I backed away. She stayed level, knife out. She knew what she was doing. Next to her, Lizzie raised and started whirling the surujin. Then I saw the weight in her hand.

She whirled the end with the spike.

Lizzie exploded it toward me and it missed me by inches, drilling into one of the crates. She yanked at it with a gasp but it caught in the hole she’d pierced in the wood. Beth crouched before me, defending her partner. All that mattered was that for one moment the field was equal.

‘It doesn’t have to end this way, bitch,’ Beth told me. ‘We are going to win. We are going to wear you down.’ The fact that she was even negotiating was telling me I’d fought harder, hurt them more than they figured I would.

‘You’re between me and my kid. So you either walk away and don’t look back or you’re dead,’ I said.

‘When I get you in the playpen… ’ Lizzie hollered. ‘You will not ever make another threat to us again.’

‘We could see. Trade the notebook for my son.’ I yelled.

For the barest moment Beth paused. ‘What notebook?’

‘The one Jack Ming filled with dirty secrets.’ Our knives clanged as she pressed the attack. Behind her Lizzie yanked the spike free from the crate. She started whirling the damned surujin again, running toward us.

‘We’re sort of kind of on the same side,’ Beth said.

‘Who’s your boss,’ I answered.

Lizzie whipped the spike toward me, arcing hard. I parried it with the blade and it slammed, sideways, back into Beth’s head. Her temple, the soft part. The impact was squelchy and thudding and Beth fell, timbering, boneless, her head a sudden brutal mess on the side.

For a moment neither of us moved. The blade was broken by the blunt weight of the spike. I held it because I had no other weapon.

And then Lizzie began to scream, incoherent rage, the kind of fury that rises like a storm in the soul. She screamed: ‘Meggie!’ She yanked back the spike by seizing onto the chain, whipping it into a cloud of frenzy.

I dropped the broken knife, grabbed the one still clutched in Beth’s hand. I stood and the weight of Lizzie’s surujin began to spiral around my neck. Instinct to save my throat kicked in and I raised my arm. The weight and the chain caught it, pressing it against my face, the blade now above my head, wedged and useless. Lizzie yanked me toward her, the spike raised. The whirring had cleaned a fair amount of Beth’s brain and blood off of it.

No playpen for me. No keeping me alive now. Now there was just the vast, awful, empty rage in her eyes.

So I flowed with the tug on the chain and I threw myself into her.

We crashed to the floor. She hit me in the head with the spike and the weight at the same time, cymballing my head. I couldn’t shrug free from the chain to release my arm and she whirled me loose and snapped a brutal kick into my face. I fell back and then she looped the chain in a savage noose and began to squeeze, her knees in my back.

Colors swam before my eyes, broke apart, descended into grays. I gritted my teeth. The blade was beyond my reach. I pulled away from her, like a plow horse dragging an impossible weight. Grasping for the knife. She howled and shoved her foot hard against my spine.

Daniel. The thought of him fueled me. My hand closed around the knife.

She leapt over me clawing for it. And this is how a person dies.

The pressure on the chains eased.

We both grabbed for the knife.

I could hardly breathe. When she tried to pull it away, I let her do the work and I just steered it. With a thrust that surprised us both the blade pierced her chest.

She gasped, a very quiet sound for such a loud, bragging fool. I lay beside her. There was not a lot of blood because it had slid into the heart with a pure straightness.

She didn’t die as fast as Beth but then she was gone. I pushed her off me.

Special Projects was basically a rogue group. What happened when you had a rogue inside the rogue? They know about Mila, and they know about my son. I’ll do what they want and they’ll just ask for Mila next. It won’t ever end. Ever.

I staggered to my feet. I pulled the chain free from my throat like a man just spared from the gallows. I got to the window and I spat blood.

Think. I dug in my pocket, I found my cell phone. I just hoped I still had my voice.