Five Days to Fight Night
Gruzman got the call from Privalov very early in the morning, as he was heading out of his nondescript hotel in Brooklyn. He had finally traced Carter back to New York and was heading to mount a watch outside Carter’s office, when his phone had rung.
‘When will you finish the job?’ Privalov demanded.
‘When I can.’
‘The timetable has changed. You need to finish it in five days, or else the job’s gone.’
Five days. Gruzman didn’t like being rushed. Still, five days was enough time, especially with this new information he had received the previous night.
Gruzman no longer used middlemen since all his jobs now came from Privalov. However, he still maintained his network, and that network had reached out to him. There was this guy, in Manhattan, the old man whispered when he met Privalov in a restaurant.
They were the only two customers in the restaurant, yet the old man whispered. Habits of a lifetime. ‘Many people want him dead,’ the old man’s skin was like wrinkled parchment. Pale and translucent, with blue veins standing out. ‘Whoever gets him will get paid. Handsomely. Even if there’s no job out on him.’
Gruzman listened. It was one of the many skills he had. He could listen without interruption. He owed the old man a few favors. The least he could do was listen.
‘He has an office in Manhattan. On Columbus Avenue.’
Gruzman was pleased that his fingers didn’t tremble or that his face didn’t twitch. Even his involuntary muscles were trained to do his bidding.
‘His name is Carter. He has become lazy. He has fallen into a routine. A morning run in Central Park, every day.’
‘I can’t take other jobs. I’m quite busy,’ Gruzman let the old man down as gently as he could. Just because Gruzman was a killer didn’t mean he didn’t have social graces.
‘That’s good. Busy is good,’ the old man whispered. ‘I hadn’t heard from you for a long time. I thought this might interest you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Gruzman was genuinely apologetic. In his business, friendships and relationships were impossible to maintain. The old man wasn’t a friend, but he had come through good for Gruzman several times.
Gruzman drove the white van he had rented and joined the early morning lines of vehicles on Brooklyn Bridge heading to Manhattan. Some vehicles peeled off and headed deeper, downtown. That wasn’t Gruzman’s direction. He headed up, towards Central Park. He knew where Carter’s office was. It wasn’t far from Columbus Circle. He figured Carter would use one of the entrances to Central Park on the east side.
Gruzman planned to park near Columbus Circle and watch the exits from the interior of his van. Mount surveillance. Learn Carter’s routine. Confirm that routine the next day. Take the shot the day after.
Several miles to Gruzman’s south, Miguel hopped off the truck when it rolled to a stop, and thanked the Mexican driver.
‘Enjoy New York,’ the driver raised a gloved hand in parting and drove away in a cloud of fumes.
Miguel stretched and stifled a yawn. He was in New York. Near JFK. His ordeal was nearly ending. He was in a neighborhood called Springfield Gardens, in Queens. That’s what the trucker had said. Miguel went to search for a diner to have an early breakfast and plan the rest of his day.
Plan the rest of the five days, he told himself.
Luck favored Gruzman. He found a parking space that gave him a good view of the exits. He could also see the side of the glass-fronted building that was Carter’s office, if he craned his head.
He didn’t plan to crane his head or draw attention to himself in anyway. Not that anyone from the outside could see him. The van’s rear doors had dark windows which were one-way only. He settled in a bunk, drew out a pair of binos, set up a camera, kept a notepad ready, and waited.
Josef’s phone rang at seven am. It rang twice before Josef’s hand reached out from under the duvet and grabbed it. He was tempted to ignore the phone, but remembered Carter’s warning.
He stuck his head out and squinted blearily at the screen. He didn’t recognize the number. Very few people had his number. The caller must have got it from one of those few.
‘Josef,’ he stifled a yawn and then bolted upright, sleep disappearing, when the caller identified himself.
‘Navarro. Alphonse might have told you about me.’
It was eight am when Gruzman saw the group coming out of the exit. A large black man, and an equally large bearded man, were at the head of the group. An older man, handsome, followed them, laughing at something. Three women. Another man, blond, good-looking. And lastly Carter.
Carter was a step behind the group. Privalov’s notes had mentioned that Carter worked with a team. Those were his team members. Gruzman recognized some of the faces from the photographs on the company’s website.
Carter wasn’t joining in his friends’ laughter. He looked neither left, nor right, a distant expression on his face. The blond slapped his back and got a small smile in return.
Gruzman noted the time and the positioning of the men and women as they had exited. He waited for Carter and his people to disappear through the revolving door to their office and then drove away.
He would return, after switching to another van, and keep watch all day.
‘What did he want?’ Zeb asked Josef when the gangbanger called him at nine am and relayed the news.
‘Nothing. He asked me to tell Alphonse that he had reached America.’
‘Why couldn’t he do that himself?’
‘He didn’t have enough credit on his phone. He said he would not be making any more contact now.’
‘Did he say where he was staying? Or where he was heading?’
‘He said nothing else.’
Zeb hung up and held up a notepad to the twins. On it was Navarro’s number.
Werner tracked the phone to Vinegar Hill, in Brooklyn, and narrowed its location down to a block. Meghan brought up a map of the area when Zeb leaned over her shoulder. Low-rent apartment buildings, convenience stores, a car wash. ‘We can’t zero in on the exact building?’
‘Nope.’ She superimposed the phone’s possible location on the block. It looked like the phone could be anywhere in one of two buildings, each of which had three floors.
‘It’s a supercomputer isn’t it?’
‘It’s not a magician,’ she replied, straight-faced.
He moved to the glass front overlooking Columbus Avenue and gazed blindly at the traffic far down below. A brown-colored truck crawled forward, its trailer bending, almost curving, resembling an earthworm. An earthworm burrows. Something lurked at the edge of his mind. Why did I think of that? An earthworm? No. Burrows is significant.
He was moving to the elevator even before his mind had made the connection, snapping his fingers. ‘Roger.’
His friend got to his feet and joined him without uttering a word. They all knew that tone of his.
‘Where?’ Meghan wrapped her headset around her ears. Something was going to happen. She didn’t know what, but if Zeb spoke like that and moved like that, headsets were needed.
‘To Wakehill. To grab Navarro,’ he replied.
Gruzman spotted them as soon they exited the building. Carter and his friend. Moving purposefully. There were a few vehicles parked in front of the building, all of them delivery vehicles or cabs dropping or picking up people. The two men headed to a SUV that was next to a parking meter.
Gruzman had noticed that vehicle and had run its plates against a website in the dark net. He had run the plates of all parked vehicles. It was what he did. Careful. Methodical. Prepared. It was why he was so successful. And alive.
That particular SUV was registered to a security consulting firm in the building. The same firm that Carter ran. They probably park that vehicle in that same spot every day. They can drive out easily without any reversing or maneuvering.
Gruzman was on the opposite side of the Avenue, at an angle, behind them. Avenues were a hundred feet wide in New York. There were some exceptions. Lexington was seventy-five feet wide, while some sections of Madison Avenue had differing width. Columbus Avenue wasn’t an exception. Hundred-foot width. Gruzman was a hundred and twenty feet behind them. A distance at which he could take out a target’s head.
A plan started forming. He could either take out Carter as he left Central Park after his run, or, when he emerged from the building, during the day. Carter would be full of endorphins once he left the park. He would be alert. He would have his friends with him. Later in the day, when he came out of the office, was the better option.
Gruzman would have getaway vehicles stashed all across the city. He would have four vehicles in the immediate vicinity of the office. One on West 60th Street, another on West 58th Street, a third on Tenth Avenue, and the fourth on Eight Avenue. He would have more, on other blocks.
Take the shot from another van. That was easy to set up. The van mounted on the sidewalk, bearing the logo of some utility company. Cones around the van to cut off any foot traffic.
A bench in the rear of the van. The door slightly open, just wide enough to give him a clear sightline to the front of the office. Two silenced rounds. Maybe three, if Carter wasn’t alone. Three seconds to exit from the other side of the van.
Shout, Gunman, and point in a random direction. Yell, Shooter, and flee as if panicked. That was sure to get everyone on the street fleeing and adding to the chaos. Leave everything behind. The weapons, the brass. They didn’t matter.
Each getaway vehicle would be half a minute away at full run. Keep babbling, there’s a shooter. Wear a wig. Get to the first getaway vehicle and drive away. Change in the next getaway vehicle and drive away. Another wardrobe and vehicle change. This time dress up in a pin-stripe suit. Carry a briefcase and wear clear glasses. Drive to Penn and take a train to New Jersey and he would be free. It was doable. Gruzman would do it.
Most killers got caught not because they were bad shooters. It was because they didn’t plan well. Gruzman wasn’t most shooters.
This particular job was rushed. But even so, it was feasible. Gruzman had killed a soldier in another city, in similar conditions. He watched Carter climb into his SUV, blissfully unaware of how close death lurked. He waited till the vehicle disappeared and then he moved out. He didn’t make the mistake of following Carter. That would be a rookie mistake. Gruzman’s rookie days were long past.
He would watch one more day and take the shot the following day.