Hardbingers rj-10 Read online

  No… he'd felt what he'd felt, sensed what he'd sensed. But it was gone now.

  It almost seemed as if someone or something was teasing him.

  The Oculus laid back and hoped that whoever it was would return. And soon.

  They needed him.

  15

  Whoa, Jack thought as Zeklos downed his sixth shot of Cuervo Gold in twenty minutes. Either he's a competition drinker or he's got sorrows to drown.

  Jack figured on the latter.

  He'd slipped in and situated himself with his back to the weasel and the rest of the room, but opposite an ancient Miller High Life sign. It showed a red witch drinking a beer as she rode a crescent moon. He'd chosen this particular sign because it was mirrored, allowing him to watch without being seen as he nursed a beer.

  Wasted subterfuge, it seemed. Zeklos sat with his head down, his attention fixed on his drinking. Only time he'd look up was to signal for another. Jack probably could have sat one stool away and never been recognized. Didn't speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him. A good indication that he wasn't a regular.

  Six shots seemed to do it for the guy. He rose, tossed a few bills onto the bar, and made for the door. Not exactly staggering, but definitely weaving. Jack gave him a minute, then followed.

  He spotted him going back the way he'd come. Heading for the warehouse? No, he stayed on Columbia and kept going until he came to a cluster of three row houses standing alone midblock; any neighboring buildings had been demolished. Zeklos stopped at a narrow door on the end unit, keyed it open, and stepped inside.

  Jack crossed to the far side of the street and watched to see if a light came on. It did: second-floor window on the left.

  Okay. He strolled back across the street, fishing his lock-picking kit out of a pocket. He'd brought it along in case he had to bypass a lock or two to get to Cailin. Lucky thing. Though it hadn't been necessary then, it would come in handy now.

  He stepped up to the door, glanced around—no one in sight—then checked out the lock.

  And groaned.

  A Medco Maxum. The place must have been ripped off in the past and someone opted for extra security. These were bitches to pick. Even with a gun it would take him a lot of fiddling before he got it open—if he got it open—and all that time he'd be exposed to whoever passed by.

  The units to his right each had a fire escape fixed to the front, but not this one. Had to have one somewhere. City code demanded it for buildings three stories and up. He walked around the left side and found it: a classic cage-and-diagonal-ladder model. Less light back here too. Perfect.

  He couldn't haul down the sliding lower ladder—the racket would wake the dead—so he examined the wall under the escape. The building was brick and old. Somewhere in time someone had decided to paint it green. A lot of that had chipped off, leaving the original red peeking through. Gave it a real Christmasy feel.

  Finally he found what he needed: A slightly protruding brick at knee level.

  He wedged the outside sole of his boot atop the tiny ledge and leaped. His hands found the railing. Slowly, carefully, quietly he pulled himself up to where he could climb over the top into the cage.

  That done, he peeked through the window and found an empty bedroom, lights out. The illumination leaking from the hall showed a single dresser and an unmade bed. Jack tested the lower sash and smiled when it rose. He eased it up, slipped inside as quickly as he could, and shut the window. Cold air would give him away.

  He pulled the Glock from the small of his back and held it at the ready. His plan was simple: Get the drop on Zeklos and see what info he could squeeze out of him.

  He peeked around the doorjamb and found the man in question sitting at his kitchen table. Tears ran down his cheeks. He'd positioned the muzzle of his silenced H-K under his chin. A finger trembled on the trigger.

  Jack leaped into the room and grabbed the barrel, angling it away. The weapon discharged. Plaster puffed and a silver-dollar-size pock appeared in the wall.

  He snatched the pistol from Zeklos's fingers. The little guy looked up at Jack, stunned at first, then recognition dawning in his tequila-glazed eyes.

  "You!"

  Baring his Nutty Professor teeth he leaped at Jack with fingers curved into claws. Jack delivered a hard palm jab to his solar plexus. Zeklos gasped, lost his balance, fell back into his kitchen chair. For an instant Jack thought he was going to come back at him, but instead he doubled over and vomited. Once. Twice.

  Swell.

  The reek of bile and partially digested tequila filling the air was almost as bad as Julio's latest cologne.

  While the guy was dry-heaving, Jack popped the magazine from the H-K and ejected the chambered round.

  Once the heaving stopped, Jack pulled a chair opposite him—not too close—and sat.

  "So, Mister Zeklos. What makes you want to try some do-it-yourself brain surgery?"

  Zeklos raised a sweaty face the color of lemon sorbet and gave him a wide-eyed stare.

  "How do you know my name?"

  This was the first time Jack had heard him speak. The accent jarred him. Some sort of East European thing slipped through the booze slur, but Jack couldn't place it any closer than that.

  "I'm psychic. There, see? I've answered your question, now you answer mine."

  "What have I to live for? I am going to be kicked out of MV because they do not think I deserve to be called yeniceri."

  "Yeni-whatti?"

  But Zeklos was in his own little world.

  "My life is a cabbage roll. No-no. My life is tripe soup. Last year I lose my fathers and now this. MV is my world, my family. Without it I have nothing. No place to go, nothing to do. Damn Miller! Damn him!"

  Dissension in the ranks… good to know.

  "It is all your fault!" His voice rose as he glared at Jack and rubbed the burn marks on his neck. "I am in disgrace now! I am mowing the grass of life."

  What?

  "All because of you!" Color was returning to his face. "You make me look the fool and now they say I am not yeniceri!"

  That word again.

  "Yeniceri—what's that?"

  Zeklos leaned back and clammed. He seemed to realize he'd said something he shouldn't have.

  Jack nodded. "Okay. You don't want to explain, fine. But then tell me how you three wound up in that basement tonight."

  Zeklos shook his head.

  Jack raised his Glock. "Hey, I've got a gun and you don't. 1 ask, you answer."

  Zeklos sneered. "You wish to kill me? Be my visitor."

  It took Jack an extra second or two to figure out the "visitor" bit.

  Yeah, kind of hard to threaten to kill a guy who'd been in the process of offing himself. Not much leverage here.

  "How about I not kill you? Like maybe start with a kneecap or two?"

  Zeklos paled but shook his head. Undersized and funny looking, yeah, but the little guy had guts.

  Which left Jack in a bit of a quandary. He could follow through with his threat but didn't think he had the stomach for it. Wouldn't be the first time he'd kneecapped someone, but that had been a mix of personal with business. This was neither. This was…

  What the hell was this?

  Jack wasn't sure. He'd wound up here because Zeklos and his buddies hadn't let matters slide after their downtown dance. Jack's curiosity had been piqued before that, but he could have lived without knowing any more about them. Now he was interested. Very much so.

  But whatever the situation, Jack decided it wouldn't be a bad thing to have this cashiered yeni-something available as a potential resource.

  Rising, Jack grabbed the H-K and stuck it behind his belt. Taking it served a double purpose. It took away Zeklos's suicide tool—of course his backup was somewhere around or he could have a good length of rope stashed anywhere—and gave Jack an excuse for a return visit.

  "I'm going to borrow this for a while. Be cool. I'll get it back to you when you're in a better mood."

  "Do n
ot come back. You disarm me, you embarrass me, you loose my bowels, and you make fun of my teeth. You are a terrible man and I do not ever wish again to see you."

  "Yeah, it's been a rough night, hasn't it," Jack said as he backed toward the door—couldn't see any reason not to take the stairs down to the street. "But we all have those."

  He stopped as his fingers closed on the knob.

  "At least tell me one thing, okay? Those curlicues that the jerk in the cellar was drawing all over the girl. What did they mean?"

  Zeklos stared at him. "Was blueprint."

  "Blueprint for what?"

  "For cuts they would make."

  Jack had been afraid of that.

  16

  As the credits began to roll, Jack stopped The Big Lebowski disc and turned off the TV. He was about halfway through a chronological Coen brothers festival. He'd seen them all before but had never realized how many of their films featured Steve Buscemi.

  He rose, stretched, wandered to the window. He stared down at the still and silent street three stories below his brownstone apartment. Nothing happening down there. Too late and too cold.

  But as he was turning away he saw what looked like a puff of smoke drift into the cone of light beneath one of the streetlamps across the street. It dissipated so quickly he wasn't sure he'd really seen it. So he waited. A few seconds later another faint white cloud drifted into the light, and he realized it wasn't smoke. It was breath.

  Someone was standing in the shadow of the tree directly across the street from his apartment.

  Jack squinted through the window, wishing it were cleaner. He made out a silhouette that looked male. But beyond that…

  He couldn't say for sure what the guy was doing there, but Jack sensed he was watching… watching Jack's windows.

  One of those guys in the black suits? Had he picked up another transponder at Zeklos's place?

  He clenched his teeth. His apartment was his sanctum. Fewer than half a dozen people knew where he lived. If they'd followed him home…

  No. Couldn't have. The only physical contact he'd had with Zeklos was a single gut punch. He'd stayed a couple of feet away during the rest of his visit.

  And then the figure moved, turning and walking out of the shadow into the cone of light. Jack couldn't see his face but knew by the way he walked—he was using a cane but didn't seem to be leaning on it—and by the slight stoop of his shoulders that he was old. And big. Anything beyond that was hidden by his homburg and bulky overcoat—both dark brown instead of black.

  Jack watched until he was out of sight.

  What the hell? Jack had never seen that old dude before, but he knew—didn't know how, but sure as hell knew—that he'd been watching these windows.

  SATURDAY

  1

  Jack felt pretty decent as he stepped through the Isher Sports Shop's front door. Livelier physically and lighter mentally than he had in weeks. The clear, bright morning sky and brisk air didn't hurt, but he had to give the credit to yesterday. It had been a tonic. Cost him a few thou, but well worth it.

  Back in the game.

  He wended his way through Isher's towering, overstuffed shelves where dust collected like snow on a glacier. Probably because the stock rarely moved and never turned over. Abe's real business was conducted from the basement, so he didn't spend much time prettying up the teetering farrago of objects to be struck and objects with which to strike them and protective equipment to protect the strikers from being struck.

  He found Abe in his usual spot behind the rear counter.

  "Brought you a surprise," he said as he approached.

  With a flourish he placed a bag of chips on the scarred wooden counter.

  "iVu?" Abe said. "Doritos? What for?"

  Abe wore his unfailing attire: black pants and a bulging white half-sleeve shirt. Jack was waiting for the day when one of the buttons popped off. Be cool if a chicken materialized and gobbled it in midair.

  "Breakfast."

  Abe's eyebrows lifted toward the bare expanse of his upper scalp. His expression shifted between shocked and offended as he placed a pudgy, short-fingered hand over his heart.

  "Doritos you call breakfast?"

  Jack hid a smile. Time for their ritualistic dance.

  "Sure. Breakfast is just the first meal of the day. Break… fast. You break your fast." Jack nodded toward Abe's belly. "Although in your case, fasting might be an alien concept."

  Abe shook a finger. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. French toast is breakfast. An Entenmann's Brownie Crumb Ring is breakfast. A bagel and a schmear is breakfast. Doritos are not breakfast."

  "Never know till you try."

  Jack held the bag out to him. Abe stared as if it contained decayed human body parts.

  "It's open already. A half-eaten bag you bring me?"

  Jack had bought it with the intention of opening it here, but he'd started sampling on the way over.

  "Not half. Only a quarter or so." He shook the bag. "Come on. One."

  Abe took it and read the logo as he pulled out a chip.

  "Nu? A 'Wow' Dorito? I've heard of these."

  He held the yellow-orange chip between thumb and forefinger, examining it like a philatelist contemplating an addition to his collection.

  "They've been around for years," Jack said as he grabbed a couple and crunched them. He reached for the morning's Post. He wanted to check for any news about last night's goings-on downtown.

  "Really, Abe, they taste surprisingly like the real thing. I mean, considering they're fat free and all."

  Abe made a face. "Fat free, shmat free. Always with the no fat."

  "For you, not for me. I don't worry about fat, but we've got to watch out for that sputtering ticker of yours."

  "It's not sputtering!" He looked offended again. "It never sputters."

  "Yeah, but it will be." Jack reached across the counter and patted the ample belly. "And maybe fat free can shrink this."

  Abe looked down at the vast expanse of his white shirt and pointed to the orange smear of Dorito dust left by Jack's fingers.

  "Oy, now look what you've done."

  "First of the day," Jack said. Abe tended to keep a record of his daily food intake on his shirt. "It'll have company soon enough."

  He crushed a broken chip and let the crumbs fall to the counter. A blue-feathered streak appeared and immediately began pecking at them.

  "See? Parabellum likes them, and parakeets don't have to worry about bulging waistlines."

  Abe shook his head. "I don't know. It says here it contains Olestra."

  "Yeah. Instead of fat. That's why they call it 'Wow.'"

  "I hear they call it 'Wow' because that's what you say on your many trips to the bathroom later."

  Jack gave a dismissive wave. "Trash talk from the food nazis. But even if true, think of it as a bonus: Reduce your cholesterol and cure your constipation problem in one swell foop."

  "I don't have a constipation problem."

  "And you won't have to worry about one if you eat these."

  Abe stared at his chip, then at his pet.

  "Oy. Parabellum doesn't have a constipation problem either. Just the opposite already. Now—"

  "Stop stalling and try it."

  "Well, maybe just one." He shoved the whole chip into his mouth and chewed slowly, thoughtfully. "Not bad." He wiggled his fingers toward the bag. "But I can't give an educated opinion after just one. I'll have to try another."

  They shared the bag, crunching as they started in on the papers.

  Jack said, "Have you seen anything about three shot-up bodies down in the financial district?"

  Abe read every New York paper, plus a few from Washington and Boston.

  "I should ask how you know such a thing and the papers don't?"

  Jack told him the story from its start in Julio's to its end in Red Hook.

  "Such a busy night. No wonder you're Mister Sunshine."

  "I've never been M
ister Sunshine."

  "This is true."

  "The thing is, I've got this feeling it's not over with those guys—and I don't mean the dead oxygen wasters."

  "Because you don't know their game?"

  "Bull's-eye. Being bugged like that creeped me out. Got a way I can keep it from happening again?"

  "Just the thing."

  He slipped off his stool and stepped into the storage closet behind the counter. Jack heard rummaging noises and a few words he assumed to be Yiddish curses. Then, red-faced and puffing, Abe returned to his stool. He placed something that looked like an undersized radio/cassette player on the counter.

  "Here. A TD-seventeen. Not a state-of-the-art sweeper, but just what you need. Detects any RF signal between one and a thousand megahertz."

  Jack picked up the little black box, fiddled with the aerial and the sensitivity dial. Looked simple enough.

  "Great. Put it on my tab. How come you stock this up here instead of downstairs?"

  "Downstairs is crowded enough already. I should stock something legal downstairs?"

  Jack thought of something as he stuck the sweeper in his pocket.

  "Last night… the little guy called himself a yennasari or something like that. Any idea what he was talking about?"

  Abe frowned. "Doesn't ring a bell."

  That increased Jack's frustration. He needed some sort of handle on these guys. Abe had a degree in anthropology and a minor in languages. If he didn't know…

  "Unless he was using a form of janissary."

  "Who can say? What's a janissary?"

  "The janissaries were bodyguards of the Turkish sultan, his household troops back in the day of the Ottoman Empire. If I remember correctly, they were started in the fourteenth century. The Turks began conscripting Christian boys from the Balkans, converting them to Islam, and training them as soldiers. These became janissaries."

  Jack shook his head. "These guys weren't Turkish. Not even close."

  Abe rolled his eyes. "The janissaries were disbanded already. Back in the eighteen hundreds. But it's become a generic term for any sort of elite military force. How come you don't know this?"