“He got on the subway, and I don’t know what happened, but that morning in upper Manhattan, he pushed a woman in front of the number one train.”
“At a Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Street,” I said, vaguely remembering the case now. “That’s why you blew it up.”
“Yes,” the son said. “You’re catching on. See, Mikhail was taken into custody. I’m away. Mikhail has no one, no ID. He can’t speak for himself, but he was obviously mentally sick. They should have taken him to a hospital, yes?”
“No,” said the old man bitterly. “Turned out the Manhattan DA knew the female victim and pulled strings to have Mikhail booked, put immediately into the system. Without learning the details about Mikhail’s condition. Without thinking about any of the consequences. Do you know the name of the man who was the DA at the time?”
“Mayor Carl Doucette,” I said.
He nodded, smiled.
“The late mayor Carl Doucette,” he said.
“So Mikhail is booked, and there’s no room in Central Booking to hold him, so they send him over to Rikers,” the son said. “My son cannot cope with this. He’s mentally sick, like I say, so he starts freaking. A corrections officer puts him in a room they have in the basement for people not cooperating. This room was over a hundred degrees. They said it was some boiler problem.
“It sure was a problem for Mikhail. They left him there for two days — my son. They forgot about him. My poor Mikhail. New York City boiled my mentally ill son alive.”
Chapter 106
“Why did you Emp Yorkville?” I said.
“Mayor Doucette had his mother at Sloan Kettering hospital,” said the old man, smiling again. “The precious old girl didn’t make it during the evac. Shame.”
“And Twenty-Six Federal Plaza?”
“The corrections officer who locked up Mikhail got a new job on the maintenance crew there,” said the old man. “I would have taken down an airliner if he was one of the passengers. To hell with him for slaughtering my grandson and to hell with this city and America. Oh, how you crowed when the Cold War was over; how much greater your country was than ours with your freedoms — or so you thought.
“And now look at yourselves. You have the freedom to land planes at the wrong airports, the freedom to shunt downtown trains onto uptown tracks, the freedom to kill prisoners by accident. Why? I don’t know. All I know is that you’re a pack of fools, and a fool and his civilization are soon parted.
“Because this isn’t over,” he said. “If it takes us twenty years, we’re going to make you bastards pay. I ran the Russian mob in Miami. I have millions of dollars and contacts and access to many interesting things. If you think Krasnyy Navodneniye is the only recipe in the old Soviet book of dirty tricks, think again. You should have thought twice before you fucked with my family!”
“I hear you,” I said, trying to buy some time. “I’m a father myself, and I can’t imagine how horrible it’s been for you. How angry you must be. What happened to Mikhail was a disgusting travesty that deserves justice. But think about all the other Mikhails out there who are going to die over this. You’re right about this decadent Sodom-and-Gomorrah direction we’ve taken of late. But there are still some good people out there.”
“What’s this? A Bible-thumping cop?” said the old man. “Spare the city for the sake of a few good people? Where are they? Who’s good? Wait. Let me guess. You?”
“Sure. I’m not so bad,” I said with a shrug. “Spare it for me. Why not?”
The old man dropped the flail and took out a Glock and pressed it to my forehead.
“If I were God, I might be tempted,” he said as he cocked the hammer. “Too bad for you: I’m the other guy.”
Chapter 107
That’s when we heard the noise. A heavy crunching sound followed by glass shattering.
It was coming from upstairs.
The old man still had the gun to my head as the two Russians stared at each other. The old man looked down at me with hate in his eyes, pressing the barrel hard against my head, but then there was another creak of wood. It was a footstep in the room directly above, and the younger man put a finger to his lips and the cold metal lifted away.
He cut a piece of duct tape and wrapped it around my mouth before the two of them went out the door. The massive shoot-out erupted thirty seconds later. Automatic gunfire in the next room starting and stopping and starting again. I hit the deck just before a round ripped a hole in the cheap wooden door.
Twenty seconds after that, I heard it. The three words I’d been praying for.
“He’s in here!” Emily said.
“How’d you find me? My phone?” was the first thing I said.
She nodded.
“That find-your-friend app comes in damn handy!” she said, smiling, as she unlocked my cuffed ankle.
“I’m glad we’re friends,” I said, finally standing. “There was an old guy and a younger one. Russians, like we thought. Did you get them?”
“The Filipovs. We heard. We got the younger one. He got hit and they found him a block away. They’d bugged out of a cellar door we missed.”
“What about the old bastard? He said he was KGB. Evil as a snake.”
“Not yet. But we have the whole neighborhood surrounded. He’s on foot.”
Emily handed me my Glock and I stumbled up the basement stairs behind her. Golly tamale, did it feel good in my hand at that moment. I could have kissed both it and her. They must have found it at the crash scene.
We went outside through the front door. I was shocked to see that the building was a small brick house at the dead end of a leafy residential street. To the right of it was a huge school or something — several dark buildings with a large empty parking lot beyond the guardrail at the end of the street.
“Where are we?” I said.
“Brooklyn. Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. That’s Kingsborough Community College right there. We think he ran in there. Don’t worry, we’re on it. A dozen agents are on his tail. We’re going door-to-door.”
I immediately hopped the guardrail and started running across the parking lot.
“Mike, stop! What are you doing?” Emily yelled at my back. “You need a doctor.”
I didn’t have time to explain. I was probably still half in shock or something after the accident and beating, but wherever he was I had to find the crazy old evil prick. There was nothing this guy wouldn’t do to get away — no depths he wouldn’t stoop to. He had no qualms about killing another innocent person. I had to find him if it was the last thing I did.
I passed a guard shack and came down some steps and was running past a building when I noticed one of its doors was slightly open. I creaked it open some more, then I heard feet pounding on the stairs inside.
I ran in and up and got to the second floor just as the person left the stairwell onto the third floor. I was coming through the third floor’s swinging door into a dark hallway five seconds later when I felt something on my face, and a wire was tightening around my neck.
I was just able to get my hands in as the old bastard tightened the garrote. It was a steel wire, incredibly fine, like titanium dental floss. Blood squirted as it slid deep into the edges of my palms above my wrists.
I bulled back into him. We went through the swinging door into the stairwell and tumbled backwards, banging down the stairs. The garrote slackened as I fell on him on the landing, and I ripped the wire away from my neck with a hiss of breath.
I crawled to my feet, blood freely pouring from the cut meat of my palms. I turned as the old Russian was taking something out of his pocket. It was a straight razor.