CHAPTER 54
McCall stopped at the Chase Bank on Madison and accessed his safe-deposit box. He unwrapped a black Glock 19 Gen 4 pistol with a fifteen magazine capacity. He lifted out two mags and a box of ammo. He put the safe-deposit box back and took a cab to the Liberty Belle Hotel.
The girls behind the reception counter were dealing with new check-ins and Sam Kinney was standing by one of the ornate couches patiently listening to a tale of outrage from Mrs. Gilmore, who sat in her slippers and fur coat, holding her white poodle on a short leash. The poodle looked as if it wanted to sink its teeth into every leg that passed it. Sam glanced over as McCall entered, rolled his eyes, gave McCall a thumbs-up sign, and motioned to Chloe behind the counter. Then he went back to appeasing Mrs. Gilmore. McCall caught the words: “Pounding away at all hours of the night, and I know the old boy’s on Viagra because I saw him get the package in his mail yesterday morning…” as he moved to the reception counter. Chloe came around it and handed McCall a computer key.
“Room seventeen twenty-eight,” she said. “It’s all ready for you, Mr. McCall. Are you going to be staying with us long?”
“For a while.”
“You’ll like it here. Have a good night.”
She bounded back behind the counter. McCall took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. He unlocked the door to suite 1728 and walked into his apartment. Sam’s cousins had put the furniture in all of the right places. The bookshelves were against the wall in a spacious living room beside a window that looked out on the Manhattan skyline and Central Park. The TV was near the window, the couch, low coffee table, and easy chairs in their places. The Eel Walker sculpture was in one piece and graced the wall on the other side of the window. All of McCall’s books had been unpacked and stacked on the bookshelves along with the flea market ornaments and the large glass ashtray. The Tiffany lamp was there. The dagger bookmark sparkled on a lower shelf. The orange Frisbee was beside it. His Mac laptop, Venice coffee table book, earphones, and a bowl of M&M’s were on the coffee table. The chess table was in a corner, the defenders of the Alamo facing the Mexican Army. There was a small kitchenette off the living-room area. The counter was set up the way he’d had it in his apartment. There was a different refrigerator and stove, belonging to the Liberty Belle Hotel. Sam must’ve put his in storage. These were newer. McCall opened the refrigerator. It had been restocked with milk, eggs, butter, a loaf of whole wheat bread, cans of Diet Coke, bottles of light beer, cheese, a carton of OJ, and a jar of honey. Also a bottle of 2005 Domaine Ramonet Chardonnay. He opened the freezer door. Frozen dinners and frozen steaks.
McCall walked into the bedroom. The bed was made. The bedside tables were on either side of it. The misty Turner painting of London in the rain had been hung over the bed. His clothes were in the dresser and the closet. His toiletries were all in the bathroom.
He walked back into the living room and knelt by one of the cabinets. His sound system was there, the sensurround speakers discreetly placed in the corners of the room. He put on some Thelonious Monk—“Round Midnight”—and poured himself a Glenfiddich from the wet bar, which was better stocked than when he’d left it. He did note the Glenfiddich bottle was about three-fifth’s down, but that was all right. Collateral damage.
He set his iphone on the coffee table, sat on the couch, and looked out the far window at the canyons and glittering stalactites of Manhattan.
He accessed his phone messages and hit the speaker.
The impersonal female voice said, “You have fourteen new messages.”
Thirteen of them were crank calls.
Yo, Equalizer, where you been, man? We gotta city to clean up here! Pimps, hookers, street vermin. Meet me at …
McCall hit the button. Next message.
A sultry voice: Hey, Mr. Equalizer, come over to my place, I’ll show you some odds that you won’t be able to …
He hit the button. Next message.
A teenage girl: Uh, hi there, Mr. Equalizer, my boyfriend is really giving me shit, and … There were girls giggling in the background.
McCall hit the button. Next message.
So do you wear a superhero costume? Is there a big E on your chest? You got a cape?
McCall hit the button. Next message.
Hi … are you there? Look, I’m desperate.… I’m standing on a ledge in midtown … twelve stories … seriously, if you don’t call me back, I’m going to fucking jump … so don’t be an asshole and call me back … my number is …
McCall hit the button. Next message.
Hey, Equalizer, I’m DM—Demolition Man. I protect the streets of Manhattan. I patrol the area between …
The next seven messages were variations on the same theme. McCall moved onto the last message. He heard a woman’s hushed voice, filled with emotion.
“Hi, I don’t know who you are, or if you’re for real, but I don’t know who else to call. My name is Laura Masden. I’m a stranger in the city and I can’t find my daughter and there are men following me. I know I must sound paranoid and I’m sure you get a lot of crank calls, but please, if you are for real, please call me back.”
She left her number and the connection was severed.
McCall called the number immediately.
The same woman’s voice answered: “Hello?”
“Hi, Laura, you called me an hour ago,” McCall said.
“Are you the Equalizer?”
Hearing the name spoken out loud by a real client gave McCall pause, but he said, “Yes. You have a problem.”
“Yes, I do. I don’t know where else to turn.”
“Are you in the city?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll meet you at the River Café on Water Street in Brooklyn. Any cabdriver will know it. Twenty minutes.”
“All right,” she said, and hung up.
McCall finished his Glenfiddich, put a full clip into the Glock 19, put the gun into his coat pocket, and left his new digs.
* * *
The River Café is located on Water Street in the Brooklyn docks offering a spectacular view of Manhattan lit up across the East River. It was crowded when McCall walked in, but he spotted Laura Masden immediately. She was sitting alone at a table by the window, nursing an apple martini. She was an attractive redhead, early forties, dressed in a suit and a black Dior coat. McCall slid into the seat opposite her.
“Hello, Laura. My name is Robert McCall. What’s your problem?”
She seemed a little disconcerted by the less-than-effusive greeting.
“I feel very awkward, opening my life up to a complete stranger.”
“Sometimes they’re the best people to talk to. They’re not sitting in judgment. I have experience in difficult situations. Just start at the beginning and tell me what’s happened to you.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s my daughter Emily. She’s twenty-two. She’s always been a difficult child, but she’s not into drugs or alcohol. She’s a dreamer. She wants to make a difference in the world.”
“Why did she come to New York?”
“She was accepted at the Art Institute of New York City. Media arts. After being at the college one month she dropped out. And disappeared.”
“When did this happen?”
“Three weeks ago. I came to Manhattan and talked to her teachers and the head of the college. They all liked her. They were very surprised when she just left, but it happens. I filed a missing persons report with the police. They investigated, but they just believe she’s a runaway.”
“Has she run away before?”
Laura looked out the window, across the river, as if thinking her daughter was somewhere in that jeweled array of Manhattan spires.
“Twice when she was a teenager. But she always came back. I’m supposed to fly home tomorrow, but I can’t leave without knowing Em’s safe.”
“Do you have a picture of her?”
Laura took a small snapshot from her purse and handed it to McCall. Emily Masden was a young blonde with the kind of face that didn’t need makeup to be beautiful. She had pale blue eyes and a great smile. McCall put the picture into his pocket.
“Does she have a boyfriend here?”
Laura tried to stem the tears brimming in her eyes. “Yes. Very slick, seemingly very nice, a stockbroker. He says Em broke up with him right after she dropped out of college. He has no idea why and he was pissed off.”
“When did you talk to him?”
“Two weeks ago and then tonight. At his office near Rockefeller Center. He’s with Morgan Stanley. He practically threw me out. He said he knew about the postcard.”
“What postcard?”
“I got a postcard at our home in San Francisco right before I left for New York. It was from Emily. Saying she was fine and she loved me and to let her go. I had to show the police here the postcard. That was the final nail in the coffin. They stopped looking for her after that.”
“The postcard didn’t reassure you?”
Laura leaned across the table. Now the tears had nowhere to go and spilled down her cheeks.
“It wasn’t from Emily. It looked like her handwriting, but it didn’t sound like her. The phrasing was all wrong. And she wouldn’t have sent a postcard. She’d have called me.”
“How did her boyfriend know about it?”
“I have no idea. He threatened to call security if I didn’t leave.”
“You said you thought you’ve been followed here in New York?”
“I’ve seen the same two men in four different places in the last two weeks. And there were others. Looking at me on the street. In the cafés. Oh, God, I sound really paranoid, don’t I?”
“Not to me,” McCall said. “Are they in this restaurant? Just look around casually, as if you’re a little restless while I talk.” Laura glanced around the busy room. “What else did Emily’s ex-boyfriend say at Morgan Stanley tonight? Anything you can remember, no matter how insignificant it might have seemed.”
“Well, Blake, that’s his name, Blake Cunningham, sounds like he should be in a soap, doesn’t it? He was on his cell phone when he walked out of his office. I was waiting for him in the reception area. He was repeating an address. He was startled to see me and got off the phone.” She looked back at McCall. “They’re not here.”
“What does Blake look like?”
“Maybe six-two, dirty blond hair, an athlete’s body.”
“What was the address he repeated?”
“Eighty-nine Whitehall Street.”
“That’s near the docks, outside Battery Park. He was going there tonight?”
“He said, ‘When does it start?’ I heard the person on the phone say, ‘Midnight.’ Then Blake saw me and hung up.”
“We’ll go there,” McCall said.
“Then you believe me?”
McCall reached across the table and took her hand to stop it from trembling.
“I’m going to find your daughter. If she’s in danger…”
“You’ll equalize those odds?” she asked, smiling through her tears.
“Yes,” McCall said. “I will.”
When they walked out, McCall looked into one of the mirrors along the top of the opposite booths. He saw the two young men he’d noted when he first walked in, who’d been watching Laura, get up from their table and follow them.
* * *
Eighty-nine Whitehall Street turned out to be a deserted office building under construction. Faint music pounded from the shell. McCall paid off a cab and he and Laura walked around to an alleyway at the back. That’s where the action was. There were four entrances to the building, all of them being monitored by young men in burn masks, giving their faces a hideous, macabre look. Young people were pouring inside, but there were enough older partygoers that McCall and Laura weren’t completely out of place.
The first three floors of the building were open—no ceilings. Stairs crawled up from four or five places. The music reverberated up to the rafters. There were six bars set up. The floors were so jammed with people dancing or standing drinking it was hard to move. McCall and Laura were jostled as they pushed their way deeper inside.
“Rave party,” Laura said, keeping her voice low, not that anyone could have heard her.
McCall nodded. He was watching the drugs being handed out freely, little packets of pills. Molly’s. Joints were being passed around. The drinks consisted of wine and beer. The music was loud enough for eardrums to bleed.
Suddenly Laura gripped McCall’s arm.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “There’s Emily!”
She pointed to a part of the dance floor where it was hard to locate just one person. But McCall saw her. She was dancing apparently on her own, in a black goth outfit, torn in revealing places, ripped stockings, her face with black Alice Cooper tears on it, pale makeup. Her hair was jet black.
“She’s changed her hair color,” Laura said. “She’s lost so much weight. It doesn’t even look like Em, but that’s her.”
“You’re sure?”
“I know my daughter. Even if I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s high.”
“Stay here,” McCall said. “Put your back against this pillar. Don’t move from this spot. I’ll bring her to you.”
Laura put her back against one of the big steel columns. She watched her daughter gyrating in the center of the ground floor. Her eyes filled again with tears.
McCall pushed his way through the dancers toward the girl. He picked up the two young men who’d been at the River Café behind him in the crowd. He noted three other young men on his right, coming down stairs from the next level, heading for his client’s daughter. On his left two more men were edging their way toward her.
Going to create a barrier right around her.
McCall looked up. Two more men leaned on the iron railing on the next level, watching Emily be surrounded. They’d spotted McCall and both of them had their coats open, revealing Heckler & Koch 9 mm pistols in their belts.
A young man with dirty blond hair in a dark business suit pushed aggressively through the crowd right up to Emily. This had to be Blake Cunningham. He grabbed the girl’s arm and swung her around to face him.
Then he backhanded her.
McCall heard Control’s voice in his mind.
Just make sure the odds you’re equalizing aren’t too high. Will you do that for me, Robert?
McCall counted his adversaries, two behind him, five on either side, closing in on the girl, her ex-boyfriend holding on to her wrist, two more above on the next level with weapons.
Ten to one.
McCall smiled.
He’d take those odds.