The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel (22 page)

No sooner did he think it than Fisk was on the radio with the surveillance team’s chief, pleased to hear that she was sending all available units into the parking garage. After that he could only sit and watch as the monitors brought video of a young man in a Pace University T-shirt hurrying away from his table and then out of a Starbucks, slowing as he entered the garage. At the same time, a
woman in her early twenties, clad in a Yankees jersey as well as a cap with the interlocked
N
and
Y,
ran toward the parking garage, relaxing her pace on arrival.

Pointing at them, Chay asked, “Won’t a sudden influx of people tip off Merritt?”

“Yes,” said Fisk. “But only if he sees a lot of them. They’re each being deployed to a different sector to search, so there’s no reason he would.”

“Iron Apple has a fix on a drone,” announced R2, going on to detail the Specter quadrocopter hovering at 108 feet above Park Row, blocked from the view of those on the street by a canopy of trees in City Hall Park, by the intersection of Spruce Street.

Fisk gathered as much with the vibrant green thermal imagery on the centermost monitor, replete with data readily accessible to any amateur, like
AIR SPEED 0 MPH
and
SYSTEM
’
S BEST GUESS: SPECTER QUADROCOPTER MODEL
Q4.3. His attention went to
ARMAMENT: NOT RECOGNIZED
.

“Any idea what it’s packing?” Fisk said into the intercom.

“Zooming,” said R2. The image of the drone enlarged, filling the monitor. In the craft’s payload area, where the assault rifle had been in the past, hung a box about the size of a pint of milk. “Looks like an HDR-AS100VR.”

“Please translate to English.”

“Action video camera—Sony’s smaller, cheaper version of the GoPro.”

“So this is a recon mission?”

“Apparently.”

So if they couldn’t find Verlyn, the drone could give him away soon enough, Fisk thought. Why else would it be here but to confirm that the inmate was free?

But before he could relax, Chay exclaimed, “What in the world is that?”

He followed her stare to monitor 3’s image of a bright beam of
light rising from a rooftop and enveloping the quadrocopter. Then the drone plummeted, end over end, its descent slowed by a tree limb, but only slightly. It struck the sidewalk, the fuselage popping apart at the seam connecting the upper and lower halves, the camera exploding into too many shiny pieces to count, some of them bouncing as far as half a block. Then there was no movement at all.

Disappointment numbed Fisk. “Let’s hope Yodeler has a better backup plan than we do.”

“What is your backup plan?” Chay asked.

“Follow Verlyn to Yodeler.” Fisk fought an urge to run down the stairs and across three blocks to the parking garage to recover their lone remaining lead. He regarded the monitor. No movement on Spruce except for an NYPD cruiser that appeared to be on routine patrol. It pulled up at the curb opposite the Pace Plaza garage, and two officers hurried into the street and whisked the quadrocopter debris into their trunk—into evidence cases, Fisk hoped.

As the two men went back for the remains of the camera, a lanky college-age kid—or maybe he was a full-grown but scrawny twenty-something—ran up to them, his exuberance obvious from half a block away and through the grainy infrared security cam feed. As the kid jumped up and down—you’d think he’d just scored the game-winning touchdown—a metallic baton in his hand caught the streetlight glow. The baton had what looked to Fisk to be a folding back sight and foresight, and, between them, a trigger. The kid plunged it into a sheath that hung from his belt.

“Where does this leave us?” asked Chay.

“Ah, this is just another day at the office.” Fisk wished it were true. Things usually go wrong. Lots of things go wrong.

Today, everything had.

T
he six-story apartment building, directly across Centre Street from the old police headquarters, looked to Blackwell to have been built a hundred years ago—and like it ought to have been torn down fifty years ago.

But around that time, he knew, artists and other bohemians in search of cheap loft space started buying up these outmoded commercial buildings in this part of the city and turning them into co-ops. Urban hippie compounds. They’d painted this one maroon for some reason. Probably because they were on acid, he thought, slinging the duffel bag containing his rifle over his shoulder and falling in on the sidewalk behind two couples who looked like members of the newest bohemian generation, on their way toward the maroon building. One of the dudes carried a liquor bottle in a paper bag. The other had a hookah protruding from his knapsack.

The first of the group to reach the building entrance was the girl whose down-to-her-ass hair almost matched the paint on the building. She punched in the door code. Blackwell slowed, trying to time it so that, without drawing their attention, he could grab the door as it fell shut behind them.

Act like you live here, he told himself. Wealthy guy, maybe Silicon Alley money, who dropped $2 million on a dinky two bedroom
because . . . Blackwell couldn’t think of a reason to live in this dump for any price.

The second girl gave it to him, though. The sight of her inspired him. Her body, emphasized by a miniskirt and halter top that combined used less fabric than a typical hand towel, reminded him of a statue of Venus, the goddess of beauty.

You invested $2 million on a two-bedroom loft here, he told himself, because of the girls. And it’s paying off.

His gait slowed to the sort of strut befitting a Silicon Alley prince on the prowl. He reached the entrance to the building just as the last of the four, the guy with the hookah, pushed his way through the door. Blackwell prepared to spring and catch the door, when the hookah guy spun around and said, “Whoa!”

Shit, Blackwell thought.

The guy snared the door, preventing it from falling shut, and held it open.

“Thanks, man,” Blackwell said.

“
De nada,
bro.”

Blackwell followed the four into the ancient industrial elevator. Venus pressed six. “How about you?” she asked Blackwell.

“Two, please.” He was actually going to three, having calculated that Chay’s iPad was in a room on the third floor of the old police headquarters building.

“You got it.” She pressed the button, the old kind that snapped into place, staying flush with the elevator panel until the car reached the floor. With a series of grunts and groans, the elevator began to rise.

“So is 4A having another party?” Blackwell asked the group.

“The girls in 4G,” the hookah guy said, as if anyone in the building would know those girls.

“Oh, the girls, yeah.” Blackwell flashed a smile. The elevator ground to a stop, the door chugged open. Stepping out, he said to the hookah guy with a wink, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

As soon as the elevator door closed behind him, he turned in to
the stairwell. Exiting on the third floor, he found the light-switch panel and snapped the switch down, killing the row of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling, dropping the hallway into darkness. He quickly flicked the lights back on.

“Oops,” he said, in case whoever was in 3E had come to the door.

Three-E was the only apartment that was occupied, he’d determined by the light that shone beneath the door when the hall was dark. Three-C’s placement in the center of the building was ideal for his purposes.

In twenty-five seconds, his feeler prong and torsion wrench had defeated the lock and he was in. He didn’t have to wait long for his eyes to acclimate to the Manhattan take on darkness; he was in a one-bedroom space so Spartan that it had to be a single guy’s. The blimp of a black leather couch, matching recliner, glass-topped chrome coffee table, and chrome floor lamps all looked to have been picked up in the same place as the La-Z-Boy. The air was still and warm. Maybe the guy was away on business. Taking no chances, Blackwell bolted the front door. You couldn’t open this one from outside. If the guy who lived here came home, Blackwell would hear him, and he would slip out while the guy went back downstairs to ask the super WHAT THE FUCK?

Blackwell set his duffel bag on the coffee table, unzipped it, removed the components, and put the rifle together on the couch. He set the bipod on a windowsill that was so deep you might think it was designed for use by a sniper. Before opening the window, he knelt and peered into the scope, searching for Fisk. Like the majority of the third-floor apartments across the street, in the old police headquarters building, the one Blackwell had identified as containing the iPad was dark. But inside, something flickered.

Blackwell brought the scope into better focus, enabling him to see an iPad sitting on a table beside the window. Two people were visible on a couch, their backs to the window, watching the flickering TV. A man and woman. Oddly still. Extremely still. In fact, Blackwell realized, they weren’t moving at all.

Because they were mannequins.

Because—
shit!
—this was a trap. The iPad had been the lure. The cops were probably on the roof of their old headquarters building, on the lookout for a rifle scope—and/or they had their fucking Big Brother cams and sensors trained on the buildings a sniper might use. Meaning they’d probably made him by now. Maybe not, but he couldn’t chance it. He had to assume men were on their way up to this apartment right the hell now. And fast.

So, no time to break down the rifle, to get it back into the duffel bag. And carrying it as is would slow him down, not to mention make him a million times more conspicuous as he tried to get away. He decided to leave behind the rifle, bipod, bag, ammo, everything. It was for this sort of contingency that he’d been on Capecitabine, the antimetabolic drug given to patients for whom chemo had been successful. Cancer cells needed to make and repair DNA in order to grow and multiply. The drug stopped those cells from making and repairing DNA, keeping the cancer from returning. Capecitabine’s almost universal side effect was inflammation of the palms and the soles of the feet, leading to peeling and blistering of the skin. It was a small price to pay. The downside for patients was it also eliminated fingerprints, making identification problematic. But if you were in the liquidation trade, Capecitabine was a godsend.

He ran for the door. Every fraction of a second counted, he knew. He unbolted the lock. Flung the door open. No time for stealth. He launched himself toward the stairwell. Got there just as the elevator ground to a halt ten feet away from him.

Now stealth was a matter of life or death.

He opened the door to the stairwell a crack and listened. Footfalls rose up the stairs. Two men, he thought, entering at the ground floor. Planning to be upstairs before they could see him, he darted through the door, closing it behind him, but not before glimpsing the two men emerging from the elevator. SWAT. As were the two guys now jogging up the stairs. And the fifth guy he could hear running
down from the roof. Damn. The roof would have been the ideal escape route. Of course it was. That was why Fisk had sent people there.

Trying to move quick and silently—
Be a cat
—he took the stairs three at a time. Reaching the fourth floor, he exited the stairwell and gently closed the door behind him. It shut just as the guy from the roof ran onto the landing. And kept running, down to the third floor.

Blackwell had asked the kids in the elevator where the party was as a contingency. The girls in apartment 4G. That information was superfluous now. The loud music left no doubt about the party’s location. The door to 4G was open.

He stepped into a clove-intensive cloud of cigarette smoke and made his way down the spacious entry hall, past two girls making out, into the loft space, a huge room lit by digital Lava Lamps that also splashed bright and psychedelic-colored amoeba shapes onto a hundred guests, all of them standing around and drinking and smoking, many swaying to the music. Decent place to hide, he thought.

“Hey, you came!”

He spun around and found himself looking into Venus’s alluring eyes. He said, “I decided I didn’t want to stay in.”

“Awesome.”

The entry door swung open. Blackwell made out the silhouettes of two men in the doorway. Big men. Scoping the place out. SWAT, almost certainly.

Blackwell pointed to Venus’s beer bottle. “Hey, you need another drink?”

She smiled. “Sure, that’d be great.” She cocked her head toward the kitchen, the entrance to which was the epicenter of the party.

“Be right back,” he said, regretting that he couldn’t be.

He started toward the kitchen, then swung into the corridor leading to the bedrooms, the farthest of which overlooked a trash alley. He entered the dark room, startling the couple going at it beneath the comforter.

“Yo, dude!” one of them protested.

No time to worry about them. Blackwell crossed the room, nearly tripping on their clothes.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

He unlocked and raised the window. Lights from within the surrounding apartments showed the alley to be a weedy, dismal repository for trash, much of which was piled against the walls, possibly because the boxcar-style Dumpster directly below was overflowing with bags that reeked of spoiled food.

In the main part of the loft, the music ceased midsong, allowing Blackwell to hear a booming voice, elevated, as though addressing the whole crowd: “No one here may leave . . .”

Blackwell damned well was going to leave. But would the window work? The onetime commercial building had no window ledges to climb out onto. He hoisted himself onto the deep sill and raised the narrow window. Narrow, but, fortunately, just wide enough for him to fit through.

“Dude, I mean, what the hell, man?”

The couple in the bed. Good-looking twenty-something black guy and an even better-looking blonde. Could have met at a fashion shoot.

Blackwell tapped the pistol grip protruding from his waistband. “Next one of you who says a word, the other gets shot,” he said.

They said nothing. Good.

But how to get out of here?

He considered the Dumpster brimming with garbage bags. Three stories was a big jump in a regular building, Blackwell thought. Twenty-seven feet, as much as thirty-three. In a loft building, closer to forty. Into water, that wasn’t a big deal, but into a pile of trash bags, even if the contents were mushy, he would hit at twenty miles an hour. Bones could break. But jail would be worse. He leaped out.