From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set (21 page)

“How do we go forward?” Jake asked.

“Chloe is my priority,” Carmen said.
 
“To get her out of there and to keep her
safe, I’m going in.
 
I’m giving
myself over to them.”

Babe turned her head sharply at her.
 
“You can’t be serious?” she said.
 
“No matter what you do, they’ll still
kill her.
 
She’s seen his face.
 
We know how this works.
 
You’ll both die there, wherever ‘there’
is.”

“If he gets lucky, he may kill me, but there’s no way he’s
killing her.
 
It won’t happen.
 
I’ll see to it.”

“How can you be certain?
 
They’ll strip you of your guns and whatever the hell else you have on
you when you meet them.
 
You’ll have
no way to fight back.
 
We need to
explore other options.”

“I’m not going to just throw myself to the wolves, Babe.
 
As you suggested, we’re going to be
strategic.”
 
She looked up as Max
entered the room with a tray service of coffee.
 
He put it down on the table between the
red chairs and she nodded at him.
 

“I’m going to tell you what I have in mind,” she said.
 
“I’m open to suggestions, even from you,
Jake.
 
When we’re on the same page,
I’ll call Gelling to see if it’s something he’s capable of doing and also to
help him feel connected.
 
If we all
agree on what I’m about to propose, I can’t have him dropping dead on me now.”

*
 
*
 
*

When they finished talking and all agreed upon what needed to
be done, Carmen stepped away from Babe and Jake, who were discussing the plan,
and called Gelling.

“It’s nice to hear your voice, Carmen,” he said.
 
“That’s my second surprise of the
day.
 
The first was when I woke
up.
 
I’m always startled by
that.
 
It takes me a minute to
believe it.
 
The ceiling over my bed
is painted bright white and sometimes, if the light hits it just right, as it
did this morning, it’s blinding to the point that I think I’ve gone into the
light.
 
The second surprise is
hearing from you.
 
Do you have any
news for me?”

She told him about the video, what she’d discussed with Jake
and Babe, the compromises that were made and the plan that resulted from it.

“It can be done,” he said after a moment.
 
“To the extent of which I’m not sure,
but at least partly, which should be enough.
 
How quickly do you need this?”

“As soon as possible.”

“It’s always as soon as possible, just like it’s always Berlin
or Beirut, Moscow or Madrid, but never Brisbane.
 
Never Canada.
 
Never Maine.”

“We’re in a bind, James.”

“Let me ask you something, Carmen.
 
You’re willing to die for this girl?”

“I am.”

“But why would you do such a thing?
 
It’s puzzling.”

“Because I love her.
 
Because she’s involved in this because of her association with me.
 
Everyone has let her down in her
life.
 
I know how that feels.
 
He told her what I do for work, so now
I’m another disappointment in her life.
 
I plan on repairing that.”

“You’re a complicated woman, Carmen.
 
Nuanced.
 
You don’t think twice about taking an
adult’s life, but you’ll go to great lengths to save this young woman’s life.”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s why I find you fascinating.
 
I want you to listen to me for a
moment.
 
Are you in a place where
people can hear you?”

“Yes.”

“And it would look odd if you left the room?”

“Yes.”

“Then just listen and take from this what you will.”

“All right.”

“I’ve done some additional digging.”

She didn’t know what he was going to say, but the hesitant tone
of his voice told her she wasn’t going to like it.

“What I found is intriguing.
 
Did Babe McAdoo ever tell you that she
knew Katzev?”

“Yes.
 
Briefly.”

“Did she tell you that once they were lovers?”

A chill railed up Carmen’s spine.
 

“It was very quick.
 
Just an affair.
 
Matter of
weeks, happened years ago and ended badly.
 
But before you go forward with this plan of yours, you need to know
everything.
 
It’s what I promised
Spocatti I’d do.
 
Tell you
everything I know as I find out about it.
 
Just before you called, we spoke and he was concerned about the
news.
 
Babe and Katzev were lovers
and what I’ve learned during my one-hundred-and-three years of life, Carmen, is
that when you’ve had sexual relations with someone, things become skewed,
especially when death is at hand.
 
If she hates him still, it could go well for you.
 
But if some part of her doesn’t hate him,
if seeing him again evokes a fond memory of a romantic dinner or a good fuck,
I’m not sure that she’ll go the distance or what that will mean for you if she
doesn’t.
 
Has she ever told you that
they were lovers?”

Carmen looked over at Babe, who was sipping coffee while
listening to Jake, who was gesticulating with his hands and saying something
Carmen couldn’t hear because of the roaring in her ears.
 
“No.
 
Never.”

“Shouldn’t she have?”

“I would have.”

“Be very careful, Carmen.
 
I have to apologize.
 
If I’d
known this earlier, I never would have sent you to see Babe McAdoo.

CHAPTER SI
XTEEN

Aberdeen, Scotland

Liam Martin, longtime friend and colleague of Vincent Spocatti,
with whom he recently joined forces in taking out the wife and family of an
English banker who refused to pay the millions he owed one of Spocatti’s
clients, arrived at Aberdeen Airport with only a carryon, an overcoat and a
mission.
 

So the information could be employed as quickly as possible, he
was given just over two hours to get the photos and the footage requested of
him.
 
Then he’d wire it all to
Spocatti, who would send it directly to Carmen.

As quickly as he could, he went to the Alamo car rental agency,
where he rented a Lincoln MKX, which would was large enough for his needs, not
the least of which was his own size.
 

Liam Martin, a former Royal Marine, was not only tall but also
a former body builder, which had its curses and its blessings.
 
At forty-two and in his line of work, it
was rare that he didn’t view his size as a blessing.
 
It was only when the situation
physically became an issue, such as limiting his possibilities for concealment
or fitting into tight spaces, that he wished he were smaller.

Once inside the shiny black Lincoln with its tinted windows, he
made a telephone call and simply said to the person who answered, “Fifteen
minutes.”
 

He severed the connection, left the airport and took a left on
Dycer Drive.
 
Fall had settled upon
Scotland, which now was robbed of much of the deep greens Liam had come to love
and associate with it during the several times, often in summer, that he was
hired to come here to do a job.
 

The earth was hardening.
 
Few leaves were on the trees.
 
There was a chill in the air, so he clicked on the heat as well as the
heated driver’s seat and drove across the curving road until he came to an
intersection.
 
He stopped and then
turned right onto A96.
 
He drove for
five kilometers before he pulled off on the side of the road, where his contact
was waiting for him in a black Audi SUV.

The exchange was swift.
 
Wordless.
 
In a wide leather
duffle bag put into the back of the MKX were all the rifles, guns and
ammunition he’d need.
 
In a smaller
leather bag were the camera and video equipment, which were so powerful, Liam
Martin could do the work he needed at a comfortable distance without drawing
attention to himself until he was given the order to do so.
 
Should, of course, that order come.

He nodded his thanks to his contact, pressed a button that
lowered and locked the hatch, and got back into the car to speed down A96.
 
He drove until he came upon B979, slowed
and took a left onto it.
 

The Kesters’ farm was about sixteen kilometers away.
 
The photos he viewed of it online
suggested it was of medium size and used purely for the purpose of harvesting
sheep’s milk, which they turned into some sort of popular cheese sold around the
UK.
 
It was a year-round operation
and the sole way the Kester clan made its living.
 
Though the sun was waning, it still was
bright enough that he expected to see sheep on the land, and hopefully the
Kesters working with them.
 

Through Google Earth, he noted stands of trees surrounding the
property, which would be perfect for him to hide behind to get his shots,
particularly since the property they owned was large enough to require a
powerful lens.
 
Even if someone did
see him, he’d either have time to get out of there or shoot them should they
come after him with a gun for trespassing.

He hoped for the latter.
 
The latter would send the best message, even if it wasn’t what he was
hired to do.

It wasn’t long before he came upon the farm, which he passed so
he could have a long look before he pulled off to the side of the road and
stopped well beyond it.
 

His heart hammered with excitement as he turned back.
 
Hundreds of sheep were on the
hills.
 
Eight or nine Kesters were
tending to them, mostly men.
 
He
didn’t know who the men were, but Illarion Katzev would.
 
Likely the man’s brothers and
cousins.
 
Maybe an uncle, since an
older man lifted up his hand as he drove past.
 

But the one older woman he saw in the field?
 
The one with the white hair pulled away
from her face?
 
The one who stood on
the periphery, calling to the group?

He knew who she was.
 
He was sent her photograph when he took the job.

That was Katzev’s mother.
 
And she was out in full view.

CHAPTER SEV
ENTEEN

In the fog that wouldn’t lift, Chloe Philips’s mind continued
to drift.
 

In her unconscious state, which revealed to her the blackest of
blacks, she heard voices in the haze.
 
Sounds in the darkness.
 
Thoughts of death crept in and she reached out to them, as if the act of
embracing them would make them real.
 

She didn’t want to live anymore.
 
She was tired of this life.
 
She hated it as much as it hated her.

As time pressed on (hours, days, weeks?), she touched down upon
memories she either savored or wanted to erase forever.
 

Mostly the latter.

She tried to steer around the uglier times and linger on the
few good memories her life had provided her, but wherever she landed, in this
amorphous landscape from which she couldn’t wake, there was no controlling
it.
 
Her mind showed her what it
wanted her to see, which ran the gamut from the good to the awful.
 

She was seven.
 
Sunday morning usually meant church, though for some reason that was
declining as her mother and her boyfriend now only went when they weren’t so
“tired.”
 
Still, on that Sunday, she
woke in her bedroom in Queens and looked across to the other bed, where her
younger sister, Mia, was asleep.

“Mia,” she said.

Nothing.

“We should get ready for church.”

Nothing.

She slipped out of bed and sat beside her sister.
 
The action of the cheap mattress sinking
low at its side woke her sister and she looked up at Chloe, her eyes wide and
startled.
 
“Is it him?” she asked.

Chloe shook her head.
 
“I told you I wouldn’t let him go near you again.”

“But what about you?”

“I don’t matter.”

“Yes, you do, Chloe.”

She shrugged.
 
“Come
on.
 
We need to get to church.”

“Why?
 
We haven’t
been in a long time.”

“It was better when we went.
 
Everything was better then.”

Her younger sister, just six but already wiser than she should
be because of everything he’d done to each of them, sat up in bed.
 
“Who’s going to wake them up?”

“I was thinking of making them breakfast.
 
Maybe it’ll put them in a better
mood.
 
Especially him.”

“You only know how to make cereal.
 
And you know they don’t like noise on
Sundays.
 
They yell if there’s
noise.
 
He’ll smack us.”

“Then maybe just juice and coffee.
 
I can do that pretty quiet.”

“Are you sure?”

No, but she stood anyway.
 
“Go find something nice to wear.
 
Something for church.
 
Wash
your face and do your hair pretty.
 
Like I taught you.
 
Use those
barrettes we bought at the dollar store last week.
 
The yellow ones that look like bows.
 
Mama’s not going to help you get ready
for church, but she’ll expect you to look nice. ”

“If she goes.”

“We’re going to get them to go.
 
Now, go on.
 
Be quiet down the hallway.
 
Don’t shut the bathroom door all the way
because it’ll squeak if you do.
 
You
know how it squeaks.
 
And don’t
flush the toilet.
 
We’ll do that
when we wake them up, but we’ll have to do it fast so the water is clean when
they go to use it.
 
You remember
what happened the last time we didn’t flush.
 
We don’t want him angry.
 
All right?
 
I’m going downstairs.
 
Wear that dress.”

“Which dress?”

“Mama’s favorite.
 
The pink one Nanny gave you for Christmas.”

“I hate that one.”

“Mia...”

“OK.”

They crept out into the hallway.
 
Mia went into the bathroom and closed
the door just to the point before it started to creak.
 
Chloe went down the hall, past the closed
door to her mother and boyfriend’s bedroom, heard the faint sound of rushing
water behind her and moved down the stairs as quietly as she could in a house
that seemed to lend itself to noise and interruption.
 

The house was a mess, but that was nothing new.
 
What was new is that the couch wasn’t
empty.

He was sleeping there, breathing so deeply that his snoring
seemed to shake the room.
 
She
stopped on the second to the last step and stared at him.
 
Her mother gave birth to her when she
was sixteen.
 
Now, she was
twenty-three and with a man twice her age.
 
Maybe even fifty.
 
Her mother
took him in three weeks after her real father left.
 
Not long after, she found this one at a
bar and by the weekend, his bags were packed, they were hauled inside and he
was a fixture.
 

“We need him,” her mother told her and her sister the night he
moved in.
 
“He’s a Vet.
 
Got a bit of money and he’s not a bad
guy.
 
Don’t none of you screw this
up for us, OK?
 
We need him right
now.
 
He gets a monthly check.
 
Now, give Mama a kiss and remember to be
nice to him.”

That was six months ago and still, she only knew the man as
Eddy.
 
Didn’t know his last
name.
 
Didn’t care to ask for
it.
 
And if it was offered, she
didn’t remember it.
 
He was just
Eddy, the old man with a violent streak that rivaled her father’s.
 

On the coffee table beside him was a half-empty bottle of
Moonshine Clear Corn Whiskey, which he liked to say was “cheap but it sure as
shit does the job.”
 
Cigarette butts
filled the ashtray next to it, along with the stub of a lone, thin cigar, with
the crinkly plastic wrap next to it.
 

Did they have one of their fights last night, or did he just
pass out here and she went to bed alone not wanting to drag him up with
her?
 
Chloe never knew where they
stood in their volatile relationship, but right now she knew he was sleeping
deeply and she might be able to pull off this juice and coffee thing if she
hurried.

The kitchen was just beyond the living room, where Eddy slept
on his pleather sofa as if he was in a coma, and she crept toward it, nearly
seizing up when the floor ached beneath her feet in such a way that the wood
groaned.
 
She stopped once out of
fear that she’d wake him if she continued, but he was so out of it, he was
unfazed and kept rattling as if death had rented space in his throat.
 

She wished it had.

The juice was easy.
 
She put out four short glasses, pulled the carton of Tropicana from the
fridge and filled them.
 
The coffee
was more difficult.
 
She’d made it a
few times before for them, but right now, she forgot how many scoops he
liked.
 
Was it five?
 
Six?
 
How strong did he like it?
 
She couldn’t remember.
 
Since a safer bet was smack in the
middle, she went with that and started the brew.

The smell of coffee started to fill the humid air.
 
It smelled deep and rish and satisfying,
just how they liked it.
 
She removed
two mugs from the cupboard, the no-brand creamer her mother bought at the
dollar store and some no-brand sugar, purchased at the same place where they
found Mia’s yellow barrettes.
 
She
put two spoons next to the mugs and let the coffee maker do its thing.
 

It gurgled.
 
It
spit.
 
She looked down upon it as it
dripped.
 
She was thinking that
she’d hit a home run, that they might actually come together and go to church
today—maybe even have a normal day—when she felt a disturbance in
the air behind her.
 

She didn’t turn.
 
Knew it was him.
 
Kept her
eyes on the coffee.
 
Drip, drip,
drip.
 
She heard him say, “Wake me
up for this shit,” before he slammed the side of her head with a frying pan and
she fell to the floor, unconscious.

“Chloe...”

She heard her name being called, but she was in the
in-between.
 
Floating.
 
Turning.
 
Hanging on for the ride.
 
She saw a vision of herself fall when
the pan whacked the side of her head, and she wondered how she could see that
since she never saw it coming.
 

Mind tricks.
 

She didn’t see him hit her, but the moment before she blacked
out, she did see him standing above her with the frying pan held out at his
side.
 
She remembered him yelling at
her for waking him up.
 
She
remembered him apologizing for striking her later, upon orders from her
distraught mother, who had to rush her to the emergency room with Mia, who was
in her fancy pink dress from Nanny and who wore the yellow barrettes in her
hair.
 

She remembered her mother lying to the doctors, saying her daughter
fell on the pavement outside their apartment, and in that moment she knew
that’s how it always would be.
 
Her
mother would choose men “with a bit of money” over the welfare of her two
daughters every time.
 
And so on
that day, with the doctors looking doubtfully at her mother, Chloe Philips
changed her life for a new one—just not necessarily the better one she
hoped for.
 

“That’s not true,” she said to the doctors.
 
“Her boyfriend hit me with a pan.
 
And it’s not the first time he’s hit me
or my sister.
 
Or done other
things.”

After much debate and accusations, she and Mia were taken away
from their mother that day.
 
Chloe
hadn’t seen her since.
 
She didn’t
know if that was true for Mia.

“Chloe.
 
Wake up.”

Mia was younger and adopted from St. Vincent’s within four
months of being accepted into its services.
 
It was done quietly.
 
No one wanted to have a scene with
Chloe, who was about to lose her sister, and so when she woke that morning to
find her sister gone, she was told the truth by one of the social workers who
worked there.
 

Mia was adopted into a nice family.
 
The same would happen for
Chloe—they knew it would, but things take time for older children, even
slightly older children.
 
The
important thing is that Mia went into a good home, but before she left, she
wrote her sister a note on a piece of plain white paper.
 
Chloe knew her sister didn’t know how to
write yet and she also knew an adult’s handwriting when she saw it, even if
they did try to make it look juvenile.
 
“I’ll love you forever,” the note said.
 
“Please don’t forget me.
 
Love, Mia.”

Chloe tore the note in half and her stay at St. Vincent’s began
its long stretch into self-imposed isolation, anger and loneliness.
 
She began first grade in the fall.
 
Her grades were low, but she didn’t
care.
 
The social workers at St.
Vincent’s encouraged her to make friends and to try reach out to others during
recess.
  
iaybe music would
suit her.
 
Or dance.
 
Chloe ignored their advice and drew
inward.
 
Sometimes, she wondered if
she made a mistake turning her mother in the way she did.
 
Which was worse?
 
Being in an abusive family, or being
here with no family?
 
She wasn’t
sure of the answer.
 
It upset her
that she wasn’t sure.

“I’m not asking again, Chloe.
 
Wake up.”

It was a year later, one afternoon in September, that she met
Carmen.

She was watching television with five of the other kids when
Carmen entered the building.
 
Chloe
looked over at her and couldn’t help but stare.
 
She thought she was seeing a movie
star.
 
Or maybe a model.
 
The woman had that kind of
presence.
 
Long dark hair that
shined as if it caught the light and tossed it back.
 
Black leather pants and a form-fitting
white blouse.
 
Beautiful skin, tall
and slender, and so, so pretty.
 
For
awhile, the woman spoke to two of the social workers.
 
Chloe saw her hand them a check, she
listened to their gracious gushings, and because the woman obviously knew she
was being stared at, she looked over at Chloe and gave her a little wave.
 
Chloe, oddly wanting to meet her, found
herself waving back.