Marked Man II - 02 (4 page)

He was an intimidating physical specimen. Fifteen years as a green beret Jordan Ross was a precision instrument, but now he was even stronger, faster, and more toned than the prime of his youth in the army. Jordan Ross would have preferred a tight, light t-shirt to show off his relatively new physique, but he went with a loose fitted long-sleeved polyester number instead. The heat was cruel but there was no hiding a .38 in a pair of running shorts and a t-shirt. He never left the condo without it now.

Detective Bollier had mostly followed the same principle for several months, but before driving to meet Jordan Ross she decided that if she was going to be shot so be it, it would be less painful than melting in a solar flare. She was trim and relieved that she still fit into her short-cut jeans from college. An NYPD detective’s badge was strung around her bare neck on a lanyard.

They found a bench and sat down to talk. Both of them were wearing aviator sunglasses as they surveyed the glare of the river. After Bollier filled Jordan in on how the case against Shirokov was proceeding, there was a tense silence. Jordan was the first to break it.

“I told you we should have just killed him.”

“I know you did. You don’t have to say that I told you so.”

“Nobody said that. All I’m saying is right now, we wouldn’t be…”

“No, but we still would be no closer to finding anything out about the operation as it extends above and beyond Shirokov. I told you it’s bigger than him.”

“Seems big enough already. I should have put one in his brain, not his damn foot.”

Bollier was not a sentimental woman, but above all else she appreciated practicality. If nothing else Jordan Ross had that in spades. He would have made an excellent cop, she thought, if things had turned out different. Slowly she reached out and touched Jordan’s hand.

“It must have been hard. But you did the right thing.”

“Doesn’t feel that way. Now it looks like he might get away with everything.”

“Hey. He won’t. He won’t. There’s no way that we will let him. Whatever the jury decides, however it turns out, he will not get away with it.”

“He’s already gotten off for enough. Did I ever tell you about the last conversation that I had with Sarah before the accident?”

A chill passed through Bollier that she hoped she hid well enough. The arrangement with Jordan Ross had been strictly business. Both of them wanted revenge against the Russians, she had the knowledge, he had the expertise and nothing else to lose. Along with Agent Clemons’ resources they made a dynamic team, but that was the extent of it. They weren’t friends and Jordan Ross had never talked about his family before.

Bollier was an unapologetic introvert and It served her extremely well at her job. That keen analytical mind could recall every detail, every angle from a case and work towards a solution even when she was focused on something else. But she usually had no idea how to handle emotionally-charged discussions. She felt like she should say something but didn’t. She hoped it was one of those appropriate silences when you were waiting for the other person to say something meaningful. When Jordan Ross started talking again she felt a flood of relief.

“We were arguing. First it was about how hot it was in the car. Sarah was always too warm, everywhere we went. At the fundraiser in D.C. that night she complained it was too hot, then in the car on the way back…”

Jordan stopped. Bollier wasn’t sure what to say so she said I’m sorry. Another short silence passed and then Jordan repeated his regret that he should have killed Shirokov when he had the chance. Bollier shifted uneasily on the bench, which was all hard cedar and right angles.

“Who knows? Maybe you’ll get another chance.”

“Not if he’s convicted. Out here, in the open I can get to him maybe. If he’s locked up in Sing Sing until doomsday forget it. Anyway. I’m sure you didn’t call me just to have a nice little riverside chat. What’s up?”

A lump in her throat kept Bollier from speaking for a moment but she swallowed it down.

“One of our witnesses… went missing. And he’s not coming back. So we need another Russian stoolie who knows about Shirokov’s business.”

“What happened to the witness?”

“Got himself shot trying to escape FBI custody. Do you happen to recall if Zhadanov shared any of his travel plans with you?”

Jordan Ross laughed bitterly and slapped at his knee.

“Are you kidding? I dropped him off at a Greyhound station with fifty grand in cash. He could be anywhere. He could be on the Mars Rover for all I know.”

The detective felt a surge of anger rising and she fought to keep it down.

“Petyr Zhadanov had intimate knowledge of the heroin shipment. He had at least half a dozen girls working for him in that god awful night club. He was probably our best hope for …”

“He’s gone, detective. He’s gone. Jesus I handed you guys the case on a silver platter. How many people did I have to go through? How many? And you just drop your key witness like a nickel out of your pocket.”

“Don’t put that shit on me, Corporal. I wasn’t the one guarding Uri. And I wasn’t the one who just let Zhadanov go after interrogating him.”

Feeling restless, Jordan got up and paced between the bench and the short fence that divided the street from the Hudson. He had too much nervous energy. Like a volcano, he had been building up steam for weeks. He needed a release, but what he really wanted was a fight. He craved it. All of the intense cardio workouts in the world wouldn’t slake the insatiable craving to dig his hands into a Russian’s rib cage and pull a beating heart out with his bare hands.

“I let him go because it was the right thing to do. You said yourself that he could have witness protection if he wanted. He gave us that boat. He gave us everything we asked for.”

“Oh so now you’re going to play the honor card?”

“What do you want from me? If we’re going to second guess every decision…”

Jordan stopped talking, Bollier assumed because he was trying to suppress his temper, but it was because a stranger was approaching the bench. A young man with a dark complexion and a Mets hat with the sticker still on the bill. He was carrying what looked like a manila envelope. When Bollier heard his footsteps she wheeled around to face him and stood up next to Jordan.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you the detective woman?”

Bollier instinctively tugged at the lanyard around her neck. It was reassuring somehow.

“I’m Detective Bollier. Who are you?”

“Here. This guy gave me this to give to you.”

He shoved the envelope forward for her to take but Bollier didn’t move a muscle.

“What is this?”

The young Mets fan shrugged and looked at Jordan Ross, as if asking him to explain the situation somehow. On the envelope someone had scrawled DETECTIVE BOLLIER in all caps in an even hand with a red marker.

“Who gave it to you?”

“I don’t know lady. Some Polish dude or something. Gave me fifty bucks and said all I have to do was give it to you.”

Jordan took a step towards the young man, who flinched a little.

“Where? Where’s the guy who gave you the fifty?”

Turning, the young man raised his hand up and made a visor by his forehead. The Mets cap could have done the same, but it was turned sideways.

“Over there. In the Chevy.”

He pointed and Jordan followed the line of his finger towards a black Chevy Tahoe parked on the curb about fifty yards up on Weehawken. The glare of the sun on the windshield made it impossible to identify whoever was at the wheel. Jordan walked a few tentative paces towards the Tahoe, feeling for the .38 at his waist. The big truck gunned its engine and pulled out of the parking space, then made a quick and violent U-turn and sped away, leaving a scent of burnt rubber behind in its wake.

Bollier already had the envelope torn open. The kid in the Mets hat swaggered off, lifting a pair of giant headphones onto his ears and nodding to the beat.

“What is it?” Jordan asked when he rejoined the detective.

She flipped the envelope open and pulled out a single loose leaf sheet of paper, folded into fourths. The paper smelled vaguely like cigar smoke. There was nothing written on it. Bollier flipped it over, revealing an address written in the same style as her name on the envelope.

“It’s just some random address.”

The detective read the address and then read it again. She scanned her memory for anything significant associated with it, but she couldn’t think of anything. After a minute she handed it over to Jordan to read.

“No idea. You?”

Jordan Ross examined the writing.

313 Revere Court, Montville, New Jersey.

He dropped the paper and began breathing heavily. Jordan’s mouth hung open and he stared up the length of Weehawken Street in the direction where the Chevy had sped off too.

“What? Does it mean anything to you?”

“That’s my sister Mary’s address.”

“Oh God.”

Detective Bollier tried to grab Jordan but he was already off to the races, sprinting towards his car in a manic dash.

“Corporal! Use your head! It’s obviously a trap. They want you to go there.”

She screamed after him until her voice was hoarse. It didn’t make any difference. Jordan Ross was already breaking the speed limit on his way to Montville before Bollier even got back to her car.

Chapter Three

Jordan Ross steered his trusty Honda CRV steed on pure instinct, ignoring stop signs, red lights and cross traffic. He drove like he was playing a racing video game with nothing more at stake but a few wasted minutes and a press of the reset button. At the first intersection he made a dangerous U-turn and headed south on Washington Street, aiming for Canal.

The radio was tuned in to the classic rock station and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s hit Bad Moon Rising was thumping through the speakers. Jordan didn’t consciously hear a single word of the song but some part of his subconscious was listening intently and his left foot tapped the rhythm while his right worked the break and the accelerator. Jordan would have been ashamed to admit that his heart rate was jacked and he was just as excited as the first time he walked into Ashley Gent’s bedroom in the tenth grade, but that wouldn’t have made it any less true.

Mary Ross had been a typical older sister to Jordan his whole life. When they were kids and she had three years and four inches on him, their playful wrestling matches turned into savage beat downs more often than not. They began innocently enough. After a long day of sitting still in private Catholic school both Jordan and Mary were restless and needed an outlet for their physical energy. In that special hour after they got home from school and before mom and dad got home from work they fought ferociously, almost every day. Mary would pin Jordan first and tell him to say uncle.

Sometimes Jordan would refuse and Mary subjected him to all sorts of diabolical torments that only an older sibling could devise. She would use a single blade of grass to tickle the inside of his nose, or shove him into the bathtub and let the faucet drip on his forehead, promising that eventually it would make a dent. When they got older and Mary brought boyfriends home the tortures grew worse. The boys of Saint Francis Academy seemed to delight in tickling her younger brother to tears to impress Mary. Once Jordan was spent or screamed too loud they let it go and locked themselves in Mary’s room until the Ross patriarchs came home.

Sometimes Jordan would say uncle and just as soon as he felt Mary’s weight lift from his body, he would shove her off as hard as he could. One time she flew back and hit her head on a doorknob and suffered a concussion. Thanks to his flawless Catholic upbringing he never fully forgave himself for the incident, but Mary gave at least as good as she got.

As Jordan swung a hard right onto Canal Street he remembered one particularly hot afternoon in the spring when he was twelve years old; he dropped Mary’s nail polish remover while he was rummaging through her purse. The bottle shattered on the floor and the smell of it got everywhere. Mary discovered him a minute later. She blackmailed him for months, forcing him to do weekend chores in exchange for her silence. One Saturday when Mary told him to rake the backyard which was full of leaves, Jordan declared he didn’t care anymore and dared her to go and tell their parents. They greeted the news with a shrug and instructed Mary to rake the lawn like they’d said. Jordan would never forget the look on Mary’s face, but he was sure that he was still more upset than she was considering everything he’d put up with during the last several months.

The Holland Tunnel was a predictable mess of crawling tail lights, even though it was the middle of the day. Jordan honked his horn twice and then resigned to waiting in line with the rest of the cars. While he was still in the queue to go in his burner rang. Detective Bollier was calling. He answered.

“Hello detective.”

“Corporal, I sincerely hope you’re not going where I think you’re going.”

“You know I am.”

What are you doing? Can’t you see this is obviously a trap?”

“Gee really do you think? I can see how you got your job.”

“Well then why the hell are you driving out there? Do you have a death wish or something?”

“Detective. All due respect, we’ve been doing things your way and Agent Clemons’ way for the last three months. Today we’re going to do things my way.”

“Ok I know maybe it’s time to take the fight to them, but…”

Jordan cut her off.

“But nothing. I need you to trust me, detective. I know what I’m doing. I’m not going to run into a hail of bullets. Don’t worry about me. I’m not even going in the house. I’ll leave that to your people. They’re going to try to ambush me outside.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Very simple. I’m going to ambush them first.”

On the other end of the line Detective Bollier sighed.

“Alright go ahead. But don’t expect me to show up at another one of your funerals.”

Jordan clicked to end the call and tossed the phone into the empty passenger’s seat.

Another dozen memories of growing up with his sister danced through Jordan’s mind as he waited to enter the cool, artificially lit tunnel.

Both of them had inherited the Scotch-German temperament that came with their name, and Mary and Jordan fought hard and dirty like only a strictly-raised Scotch-German child could. Their father just scoffed and turned the TV up louder when they quarreled. Their mother tried to make up for his indifference by scolding them all the louder, all the harsher, which only served to make her reproaches seem that much more ridiculous.

Once Jordan sprouted a few facial hairs and a couple of extra inches, the fights with Mary took on a different tone. They still hassled but not as often. As Jordan eased into the tunnel he found himself wondering if it was because she had grown wary of his newfound masculine strength or because wrestling was no longer appropriate once they were both of age.

Jordan loved Mary Ross all the same. She was his sister, and he’d only been given one. She might have been a violent, domineering sort of a tyrant, but she defended him at school when he got into trouble. When he’d grown old enough to learn that her abuse was the norm for an older sister rather than
a cruel exception to the rule he accepted that she had been a decent sister, all things considered.

The Russians had discovered his secret. How and why were matters to deal with another day. The whole idea behind faking his death had been to protect the few people that Jordan Ross cared about from those animals. Now, as he jerked and zig-zagged his way through the tight confines of the Holland tunnel Jordan found himself grinding his teeth and kicking himself for the whole damn-fool idea, even if it wasn’t his to begin with.

Special Agent Kyle Clemons truck Jordan as a sharp guy. He wore a well-fitted, conservative kind of suit that seemed to say this was a man who did not take stupid risks, or come up with half-baked plans that melted under the microscope of reality. Perhaps he had misread him.

Uri Grigoriyevich was under the care of the FBI as far as Jordan knew, and now he was dead. The plot to fake Jordan’s death to throw off the Russians was an FBI production, and now that had failed as well. Jordan was not the kind of person who was prone to complaining about the efficiency of the federal government but he was beginning to understand why some people ended up as conspiracy kooks and libertarian wing-nuts.

Everything that Special Agent Kyle Clemons and Detective Bollier seemed to have come up with had gone wrong. Jordan was upset with himself for disobeying his gut. He should have never trusted them. He should have wasted Shirokov and then disappeared into the wind, never to be seen or heard from again.

But against his better judgment Jordan had listened to the detective and the
federale
. All he wanted was a simple matter of revenge. After he wiped out Shirokov and his gang, Jordan could have gone anywhere or done anything and it wouldn’t have mattered, but now because he had tried to toe the line, to play by the rules, Mary and her whole family was in danger.

The tunnel opened into a blinding sheen of New Jersey sunlight. Jordan turned left and then right and then on to 280 North and hit the freeway at eighty miles an hour and he didn’t slow down until the exit was coming on fast and he had to slam on the breaks because his heavy foot had him going 115 miles an hour.

The town where his sister lived was an ideal place to raise a family. More than once Sarah had brought up the possibility of moving from Brooklyn to Montville before Emma started high school. Jordan was resistant to the idea, and not just because it would cost a limb to send her to private school in a posh Jersey suburb. Jordan loved the city. He loved the bustle and dirt of New York and wanted Emma to experience the cultural capital of the world as long as she could. None of that mattered now.

Mary Ross Pollard lived with her husband and two kids in a private gated community just north of Montville called Cedar Peaks. Good schools, low crime, easily navigated so long as you didn’t have to use public transportation. All of the houses in Cedar Peaks were made in the same design, two story bungalows with dormer windows and a swimming pool in the backyard. Strict guidelines were enforced within the community about what could and could not be done regarding the homes and properties. When Mary tried putting up a basketball hoop in the driveway so that her son could practice shooting her neighbors shunned the whole family, refusing to speak or even acknowledge them until they finally took it down. The same thing happened when her husband Phil erected a tool shed next to the garage that did not follow Cedar Peak’s specifications as to the color scheme. For two weeks Phil held out. Mary begged him to just give in and repaint the damned thing, but in the end he tore it all down rather than accommodate the code.

Equally stringent were the procedures that visitors had to go through before gaining admittance to Cedar Peaks. At the main gate there was a small enclosed security outpost. Two guards were stationed there around the clock. Before the gate opened the guards had to contact the homeowners and verify that they were expecting the visitor. If there was no answer nobody got in.

When Jordan pulled up to the gate and saw only one security guard his suspicion was aroused. He rolled down his window and the guard leaned forward from his post.

“Can help you?”

Jordan paused momentarily before answering, taking in the guard’s baggy, ill-fitted uniform, dirty blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. The nametag on his chest read Steve.

“Yeah. I’m here to see Mary Pollard.”

The guard nodded quick and then glanced at something inside the little structure.

“And your name?”

“Just tell her that it’s her brother.”

He tensed and waited while the guard leaned back in his station and fiddled around out of Jordan’s line of sight. Jordan heard him speaking.

“Misses Pollard? Your bruzzer is here to see you.”

Time slowed to a dull crawl. Jordan tried to get an angle to see what Steve was doing but he could not raise himself up high enough without getting out of the car. Jordan was not under any circumstances doing that. Five seconds passed that felt like five hours and then Steve stood up and smiled at Jordan.

“Yes. Right away. You can go in.”

Steve pressed a button and the rail controlling the gate receded, opening the entrance to the happy little family community. When he was still officially alive and visiting Mary for the holidays, Jordan had never been allowed to pass through the gate without giving his name and showing a photo ID to corroborate it.

Jordan looked up the road and then back at the guard. His foot was on the break. His left hand was on the steering wheel and his right was inching slowly toward his waistband. Jordan never took his eyes off of the guard, and he returned the stare.

The guard gaped impassively at Jordan, then waved his arm forward. The sleeves of his uniform were rolled up to the elbow and a red phoenix was tattooed on his antecubital.

“Thanks. Steve is it?”

“Yes. Yes it is Steve. You go in now.”

Jordan almost laughed. He gazed hard at “Steve” and waited patiently for him to blink. When it finally came Steve lunged for something behind him and Jordan whipped out his .38. The Russian must have had his weapon loaded, cocked and ready beside him because he got one shot off before Jordan did. He missed. Jordan did not.