The Equalizer (19 page)

“If she has to go to the bathroom, you accompany her. If she needs water, bring her a drink. Make her eat food. I do not want her malnourished.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kuzbec wondered how many women Bakar Daudov had seduced in this gothic house near the river. Right here in this very room. Probably dozens, and most of them against their will. Daudov walked over and looked down at the teenage girl. Kuzbec knew he would not touch Natalya. Even Daudov would not dare to take such a risk. The thought of it made Kuzbec smile to himself. No, the deadly killer would not dare, but
he
had.

Everyone believed Natalya's attacker on a dark New York street had been a member of some street gang. She had been in the wrong neighborhood, after all. The police were convinced it was a random rape and mugging. No one knew
he
had followed the girl. Had taken advantage of her disorientation. She had never seen his face. She had not described her attacker. She had said nothing at all.

Kuzbec remembered how her hair had smelled. Olive oil shampoo. Her skin had been soft. He had intended to strip her naked, but that didn't happen. He'd only had time to throw her to the ground, pull down her jeans, enter her from behind, violate her, and hit her in the face. Then he'd escaped into the night. Two weeks later, when she'd come into the club with her mother, she'd looked right at him without a flicker of recognition. She didn't know.

No one knew.

Daudov turned away from the bed and walked out of the room without speaking again to him. A key turned in the lock. Kuzbec also had a key in his pocket. The young man cursed his boss. Lucky the arrogant prick had the friendship of Borislav Kirov, or he might find a stiletto knife in his heart one night while
he
slept.

Kuzbec looked back at the girl. It would be so easy for him to take her. But the consequences would be dire. He could not blame an attack on some faceless intruder who had overpowered him. The place was like a fortress. Daudov had a private security force. No one could get in.

So he watched Natalya sleep with his own little secret close to his heart. There might be another time. He could wait. He would be patient. And if her mother continued to defy them, Bakar Daudov would give the order to dispose of Natalya.

Kuzbec would have his chance then.

 

CHAPTER 14

Manhattan Electronics was nestled between a dry cleaners and a Subway restaurant on Lexington Avenue just south of Fifty-second Street. McCall was not surprised to hear Brahms blasting from speakers when he walked into the store. It was small and jammed with electronic equipment, some of which looked as if it had been there since Bill Gates was tinkering in his garage. There were also Macs and the latest PCs and iPads and what looked like props from all seven Star Wars movies, only junkier, strewn on counters and piled up in corners. There was a long glass counter with newer stuff on display beneath it.

A young woman, rather erudite-looking to be working in this Dickensian establishment, McCall thought, walked over to him with a smile. She was dressed in black and wore Diane von Furstenberg dark tortoiseshell glasses hiding big brown eyes. She was petite with a knockout figure who looked like she should be having breakfast at Tiffany's.

“May I help you, sir?”

“If you can tell me the name of this Brahms rhapsody you will have renewed my faith in human endurance.”

Her smile broadened. “I know it has something to do with an Alto.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Almost two years.”

“Tell your boss if you hear one more Brahms symphony or concerto you'll tear your hair out. Tell him you want Maroon 5 or Usher or even some Judas Priest.”

“That would break his heart. Are you here to see him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“At some point.”

“He's in his office at the back.”

She pointed to a doorway at the very end of the long counter. McCall started walking toward it.

“But he really gets crabby if you disturb him while he's…”

“Tinkering,” McCall finished for her.

He walked around the counter and through the open doorway.

Beyond it was a cramped office that looked like a miniature version of the store, only more chaotic. Brahms was slumped at a cluttered desk with the guts of at least three laptops scattered on the scarred wood. Circuit boards, hard drives, optical drives, keyboards, pieces of soldered electronics that looked like they would fit into the heads of pins surrounded his pudgy hands. There was a small soldering kit in the middle of it all. McCall thought he was probably in his late fifties, but he'd always looked older. His hair was steel gray and stood out in every direction like he'd stuck his finger into a light socket. He had very gentle eyes. McCall had always thought he looked like George Costanza's dad on
Seinfeld
. He looked up.

“Robert McCall,” he said softly.

“That's the second time in twelve hours my name has been said with a kind of reverence.”

“It's fear.”

“You don't look very frightened.”

“My face hasn't had an expression on it in twenty-seven years. Hilda wiped them off at the wedding when she told me she'd given up oral sex. I think it was for Lent. Shhh!”

He raised a hand as a particular passage of Brahms thundered around them.

“You remember this piece?” he asked.

“I don't remember any of them, Brahms.”

“A haunting rhapsody for alto, male chorus and orchestra, based on three stanzas from an ode by Goethe, in which he described life as a pointless struggle against inevitable misery.”

“That's the optimistic Brahms I remember.”

“No one remembers me. That's why I'm still alive.
You
, on the other hand…”

He waggled his hand back and forth.

“I try not to be memorable. Sam Kinney called you.”

It was a statement.

Brahms shrugged. “Old spooks network. We like to stay in touch.”

McCall moved to the desk where Brahms was fitting together a couple of pieces of a fractured circuit board.

“Don't come any closer,” he said. “These flakes of silicone are delicate. I don't want you bumping into the desk.”

“That Brahms rhapsody is shaking the whole office.”

“I don't hear it. It's just a part of me. I can't make a mistake here.” He soldered two tiny electronic components together. “The real Brahms was a perfectionist. If he finished a piece and didn't like it, he destroyed it. Or he didn't finish it and left those works unpublished.” He patted a Mac that was on a table beside him with seemingly all of its innards intact. “That's why I search. There are gold nuggets to be found in little music shops in Berlin and Hamburg and Bremen, if you keep looking for the clues, digging until the dirt spills away and there it is, lying tied up in faded red ribbon beneath some Schimmel piano, pages of copy in the master's own handwriting.” Brahms glanced back up at him. “You look good for someone who took a blow to the head last night that would have killed an ox.”

McCall looked down at the explosion of circuitry on the desk.

“Where are the transistors?” he asked wryly.

“Actually, there
are
transistors in a computer. Also resistors, diodes, LEDs, capacitors, but you're not here for the Apple laptop course. What can I do for you?”

“I need a sophisticated piece of bugging equipment. Short range. Across a room, but there might be all kinds of ambient noise in the place and I want it filtered out.”

“What kind of a room?”

“A restaurant. I'll be at the bar at one end. Two people will be sitting in a booth at the other. A man and a woman.”

“I thought you were going to ask me something difficult.”

“I need you to be able to trace a cell phone call from the table.”

“How do you know anyone's going to make a call?”

“The man will make it. It won't be a long call. Probably fifteen seconds at the most. I need the location of the place he calls.”

“You want me patched into you at the same time?”

“Yes.”

“Who's at this mystery location?”

“A teenage girl. She was abducted last night.”

Brahms sat back, regarding him. Idly he picked up a micro-compressor and turned it over in his hand so that it jewelled in the light.

“The last time I checked, kidnapping is a federal offense. You should call the FBI.”

“This is something I have to do personally. A promise I made. As soon as I involve other people, the risk to the girl increases. I didn't want to involve you, but I can't do this alone. I'm putting your life at risk. These are nasty people.”

“And, God knows, we've never come up against any of those in our careers.”

“You can say no.”

Brahms looked back down. “You saved my life once upon a time,” he said quietly. He was examining his delicate work carefully. “I owe you a debt. Isn't that what you're collecting?”

“There
is
no debt. You do this for me or you don't.”

“You get a lot of refusals when you ask nicely?”

McCall smiled. “I don't usually ask nicely.”

Brahms got up from the desk and walked over to rows of small enclosed glass shelves. He opened them one after another, rummaging through more electronic components, but these were shinier and had government labels on them.

“Who's the kidnapper?” he asked.

“An enforcer named Bakar Daudov.”

“Daudov. Chechen name. Who does he work for?”

“Borislav Kirov, could also be Chechen. He manages a nightclub on the Lower East Side called Dolls.”

“Ask them if they need a piano player. I could do some moonlighting.”

“They might not want to hear Brahms.”

“I also play some mean ragtime. As a young man, Brahms played piano in restaurants, taverns, and brothels. He was quite the lad. Arthritis stopped me playing piano. But not putting wiretaps together.”

He returned to the desk and dropped some components onto it.

“When does this go down?”

“Four thirty this afternoon.”

“I'll be here in my office. You'll be able to talk to me using this.” He handed McCall a flesh-colored piece of putty. “No one will notice it in your ear.”

“Thanks, Brahms. If we had a debt, it's settled.”

“I wake up every morning and thank God for Katy Perry and Robert McCall. I listen to Hilda kvetch. I watch the
Today Show
. I like that Savannah Guthrie. If I were sixty years younger…” Brahms looked up at him again. “Our debt's not settled. It never will be. Come back in two hours.” McCall nodded, turned away. “This stuff is highly illegal, by the way. Unless you're in law enforcement or work for the FBI or Homeland Security. No showing it off.”

“I'll try to contain my enthusiasm.”

McCall walked out of the little office.

“Try to stay alive,” Brahms said.

He turned up the Brahms on the surround-sound system.

*   *   *

Katia walked into Bentleys and sat down at the first booth in the window. It was 4:25
P.M.
Sherry was already at her hostess station, setting out the dinner menus. McCall was behind the bar putting glasses up into their slots. Andrew Ladd had just ducked under the bar hatch and was tying on his black apron. The restaurant was more crowded than usual at this hour. Two servers were working seven tables, three of them holding loud, boisterous parties. Early dinner revelers. Through the restaurant window, McCall saw the Lexus pull up outside. Sully, the bouncer from Dolls, got out and opened the back door. Bakar Daudov stepped out, looked up and down the street, saw Katia sitting at the booth in the window, said something to Sully, and walked into Bentleys. Sully got back into the Lexus and sat there, engine idling.

Daudov smiled as Sherry came around the hostess station, waving the menus away. He slid into the booth opposite Katia. McCall had placed the small, silver bug he'd picked up from Brahms earlier in the afternoon under the table. Now, as he took two Chardonnay bottles out of a fridge and put them in the bar well, he held his breath. It was unlikely that Daudov would check under the table, but McCall could feel his stress level rising. But the enforcer just settled into the booth and looked across at Katia. She was very still. She appeared calm, but McCall knew the fear and frustration that was going on inside her. Daudov had all the emotion of a corpse. He didn't speak. She had called for this meeting. She would have to do all of the work.

McCall set more glasses up into their slots. “Laddie, would you mind getting the drinks order for booth one?”

“Sure.”

The young bartender ducked under the bar hatch and crossed the restaurant to the booth. McCall half turned away, but Daudov had not once even looked in his direction. McCall touched the putty-like earpiece in his ear, almost unconsciously. It was completely undetectable. He turned back and watched Laddie reach the booth.

“Can I get you folks some drinks?”

“Grey Goose vodka, double shot, straight up,” Daudov said. “Katia?”

She shook her head. McCall could hear every word, up close and personal, the ambience in the restaurant like white noise in the background. Brahms hadn't let him down. Ever.

Laddie moved back toward the bar. McCall continued to stack up glasses, not looking toward the booth. He didn't have to.

“I am here, Katia. You wanted to speak to me in person?” Daudov said cordially.

“You are a bastard,” she said, her voice very soft.

He smiled and his eyes hooded. “I have been called so much worse. I know you are upset. Emotion is clouding your judgment.”

“Natalya did not come home last night.”

“She is a strange child. She walks the streets at ungodly hours. It is a dangerous city.”