The Last Minute

79

The Ramble, Central Park, Manhattan

A guy with a broken arm in a fiberglass cast just doesn’t look threatening. Ted Bundy and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs used arm casts as camouflage to lure in women to help them so they could commit abduction. Then they turned the casts into weapons. Of course, they didn’t actually have broken arms. I did.

It’s hard enough to kill someone when you’ve got two good hands. I was only going to get one chance.

I sat on a bench north of the beautiful iron-built Bow Bridge, a book in hand, a Yankees cap pulled low over my head. Waiting. I was on the edge of the Ramble, a dense, wooded area planted by hand well over a century ago, now mature woodland, with a maze of walkways cut through its growth. I saw at least four different passersby with binoculars and field guides: this was a prime birding spot. I also saw teenagers who looked like they might savor a bit of privacy. But this stretch of park, at least this afternoon, wasn’t quite as busy as the Zoo or the playgrounds or the Mall. Now and then a family milled by, joggers jogged, a pair of lovers leaned into each other, walking hand in hand. I still don’t like to see couples. Nothing against them. I’m all for love and commitment. It just reminds me of what I thought I had, and never truly did, with Lucy. I thought we would grow old together. I thought we would be grandparents together, Daniel bringing us his own children to spoil and love. We should have had years to spend in parks, tossing crumbs, hearing the lull of the breeze in the trees, watching the sunlight shift its mosaic on the grass.

Now I sat alone on a park bench waiting to murder someone.

My orders were explicit. When the Nine Suns contact – I knew it was probably Zviman but I wasn’t going to admit to him I knew who he was – walked away from Jack Ming, I would intercept and kill Ming. I didn’t believe for a second that Ming’s bank account would go unhacked; Nine Suns wasn’t going to give him ten million dollars.

The day was grayish, clouds grappling with sun for a momentary dominance. I sat, with my sunglasses and my book. I checked my watch. Time. On the under side of the bench I groped and my fingers found tape. I pulled the tape free. In my hand was an earpiece. I thumbed it into place.

‘Hello, Sam,’ the voice slipped into my ear.

I said nothing.

‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘No. I just have nothing to say to you.’ I put my gaze back to my book.

‘I have taken precautions. If I do not call in to a number and give a correct passcode, your son dies. Don’t decide you can kill both Ming and me, or take me hostage for your son.’

‘I can follow orders.’

‘I played with your son the other day,’ Zviman said.

My blood went cold.

‘He’s very responsive for a child. I don’t know a lot about babies, but your little lad looks you in the eye. I enjoyed getting to hold him.’

Wordless rage.

‘I know you’ll do a first-rate job. Then you’ll get to see your son. I hope I don’t cry. Family reunions make me tearful.’

I saw a man move from the walkway to a dense copse of black locust trees, a good thirty feet off the path. He stood in their shade, and produced a smartphone from his pocket. The blond mohawk was a trimmed, ghostly strip of hair. I knew his face from Mila’s description. It was Zviman. He didn’t walk funny, though. I didn’t look at him but I felt quite sure he looked at me. I kept scanning the approaches.

Then I saw Jack Ming. Dressed in jeans, and a Giants windbreaker, and a Giants baseball cap.

He was holding the red notebook in his left hand, and had his right hand in his pocket.

The stiletto I had hidden in my cast felt heavy. The handle of the blade I’d cut down to conceal it rubbed against my wrist. Bertrand has an interesting collection of knives at The Last Minute.

‘Here he comes,’ I said.

‘I see him,’ Zviman said. ‘Look at him, he thinks he’s tough. I wonder how he thinks he got tough sitting at a keyboard all day.’ The hatred in his voice was thick.

I glanced around. Two people, binoculars up, looking the opposite way, focused on their birding. A couple and a single man heading toward Bow Bridge. A young woman, iPodded, lost in her music rather than birdsong and park noise.

Ming had his back to me.

Jack Ming stopped and glanced around. Then he looked right at Zviman. And he walked to the tree.

I waited.