Monday afternoon, Manhattan
“Pull over here,” Taylor called from the backseat of the cab as the driver turned onto Crosby Street. The taxi pulled over to the curb between a delivery van and a battered pickup truck. The driver reached over to stop the meter.
“Wait,” she said. The driver turned and gave her a questioning look. “Just sit here a second.”
She leaned forward and stared out the windshield, scanning the block in front of her building. There were no uniformed officers to be seen, and no obvious plainclothes officers. She looked as far to the left and right as she could without seeing anyone who looked like a cop.
“Okay, thanks,” she said after a couple of minutes, folding a twenty in half and handing it up to the driver.
She climbed out of the taxi into a biting wind and walked quickly down the block. She checked behind her nervously as she walked, trying to stay calm.
Once inside her loft apartment, she slipped around quietly from one room to the next to make sure she was alone. She’d had the locks changed, but she had to make sure.
Then she went to her bedroom, to the large closet that had been built into the room during the loft conversion. The closet was huge by New York standards, a real luxury and one of the reasons she bought the place. Lining the back wall of the closet was a series of shelves piled high with boxes and clothes.
She went to the far right-hand corner of the closet, to the top shelf, and felt around a stack of boxes. Behind the stack, pressed up against the wall, completely hidden from view, was a black plastic case. She pulled the case out from behind the boxes, her hands shaking, and carried it over to the bed.
She set the case down and stared at it.
She hadn’t seen it in years, not since she’d unpacked it after buying the loft and quickly hiding it in the closet.
Taylor reached down and unsnapped the two latches and opened the case. She heard herself suck in a sharp intake of breath as the lid came up.
Inside the case, lying in custom-fitted foam mold, was a world-class, competition .22-caliber Hammerli-Walther Model 203. It was the pistol Jack would have taken to the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
If he’d lived …
Taylor stared at it for what felt like a long time. It was the only thing she had left of her brother’s, and she couldn’t remember exactly how she wound up with it. Probably, she dimly recalled, it was because no one else could bear to take it and she couldn’t bear to throw it away.
Jack had loved the pistol, and he had taught her how to use it.
She carefully pulled the gun out of the case and examined it. The blueing was a little worn, the grip dull with a couple of minor scratches. She pried one of the magazines out of the foam and turned it upside down. The cartridges were still there. She wondered if they were still good, but then pushed that thought from her head. This was Manhattan; simply having a pistol was a felony. It’s not like she could go down to the corner market and buy another box of bullets.
She slid the magazine into the gun, then opened her purse.
If she dumped most of the junk out, she could just fit the pistol into her bag.
As she pulled out her cell phone, it went off. Startled, she fumbled to open it. On the screen was another number she didn’t recognize. She hit the connect button and held the phone to her ear without saying anything.
She listened to the silence for a long time before it was broken.
“You should have heard her scream,” a voice said. Michael’s voice. “It was exquisite.”
Taylor felt dizzy again. She grabbed the headboard with her free hand to steady herself. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then spoke.
“I’ve been waiting for your call,” she said softly, evenly.
“I sliced off her clit with an X-Acto knife,” he whispered.
Taylor reached over and picked up the pistol. It felt solid, heavy in her hand.
“And I’m next,” she said. “Right?”
He laughed. My God, she thought, the son of a bitch is actually laughing at me.
“Oh yes,” he said. “You’re next. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”
Taylor gritted her teeth, hard. “Listen to me, you disgust-ing fuck. You’re not laying a finger on me. Remember? I’m the one with the bag. I’m the one with the hundred thousand in small bills. I’m your ticket out of here.”
“You mean there was actually money in that bag?” He sounded almost incredulous.
She stood up, the cell phone in one hand, pistol in the other. “Hell, yes, you sick perverted pile of dog snot. And I’m through making deals with you. I’m the one calling the shots now. Here’s how it’s going to go down. If you want to get out of here alive, you’ll take the money and disappear.
I’m buying my life back for a hundred thousand dollars and I want you out of it. That’s the deal. If you don’t take it, I’m coming after you. I’m coming after you and I’m going to kill you, I’m going to cook you, and I’m going to fucking eat you. Understand?”
There was a long silence over the phone. “My, my,” he said finally. “I’ve never heard you talk like this before. It’s kind of arousing.”
“Make a choice,” Taylor said. “You got one shot to live.
Take it or leave it.”
“This is a side of you I’ve never seen before,” he said.
“You’re running out of time, Michael,” she snapped.
“Make up your mind. Yes or no.”
“Okay,” he said. “Cool your jets. It’s a deal. But this time, I’m not running if you’re not alone. I spot a cop or another of those FBI pricks, then I’m just going to kill you before they take me out. We both go down together.”
“Where do we meet?” Taylor demanded. “Let’s get this over with now.”
“No,” Michael said. “Not in the daytime. Tonight.”
“All right,” Taylor said. “You call me at nine o’clock tonight. Don’t be late.”
She hit the disconnect button and flipped the phone closed.
Taylor looked down at the pistol in her hand. She wasn’t shaking anymore.
Hank Powell stripped off his booties, mask, and latex gloves, then stepped outside the front door of Brett Silverman’s brownstone and walked quickly down the steps to the sidewalk. He needed air, fresh air, and he needed it badly.
He’d never seen anything like this. Horrible didn’t even begin to describe what he’d seen upstairs. He didn’t even want to begin to think about what the victim had gone through.
One of the plainclothes NYPD Homicide detectives walked up to him as he leaned against a cast-iron fence that ran the width of the property. “You okay?” he asked.
Hank looked up at him. “Yeah, just got a little light-headed.
I’m okay.”
The detective pulled out a cigarette pack and held it out to him. “No, thanks,” Hank said. “Gave ‘em up years ago.”
The cop nodded toward the murder scene. “Be a good day to start again. You ever seen anything like that?”
Hank shook his head.
“We had a uniform actually throw up in there. Guy’d never seen a homicide scene before.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Hank winced. “Imagine that being your first one.”
Hank’s cell phone went off. He pulled it out of his coat pocket and flipped it open.
“Powell,” he said. “What? What the hell are you talking about? Goddamn it, you were supposed to be watching her!”
The detective watched as Hank Powell’s face grew red and-even in the cold, heavy wind coming off the Hudson River a few blocks away-his forehead broke out in a sweat.
“Well, when the hell did it-” Hank paced a few feet away.
“All right, damn it, look, get out an APB or whatever the hell you can do. Send a squad car to her building. She’ll probably go there first. We’ve got to find her, and quick.”
Hank flipped the phone shut. “Everything okay?” the detective asked.
“I’ve got to go,” Hank said. “It’s hit the fan.”
He spotted Joyce Parelli coming out of the brownstone and ran up the stairs to meet her. She, too, looked drawn and shaken.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Taylor Robinson’s disappeared.”
“Christ almighty!” she snapped, her eyes widening. “How the fuck did they lose her?”
“C’mon, let’s head for her place.”
Joyce followed as Hank started for the corner of Tenth Avenue and Twenty-fourth, where Joyce had left the car earlier.
As they walked, Hank pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.
“C’mon, damn it, answer! Taylor, pick up the phone.”
Taylor Robinson stopped in the entranceway of her building and stared out through the dingy glass. It looked clear outside, as far as she could tell. She walked outside, past a building almost completely covered in a rainbow of graffiti, up to the corner. She flagged down a cab and climbed in. As she did, she looked out the back window of the taxi.
An NYPD blue-and-white squealed to a stop in front of her building. Two cops jumped out and ran to the front door.
The taxi pulled away. “Where to, lady?” an older, dark-haired driver asked.
“East Side. East Sixty-second.”
“Which block?”
“All the way over. The Bentley Hotel.”
“Oh, yeah. I know it.”
Taylor tried to sink into the seat. As the taxi pulled to a stop at a light, her cell phone went off again. She flipped it open, recognized the number as Hank Powell’s, and hit the button to send the call to voice mail.
Right now, she didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Twenty-five minutes later, the cab pulled up in front of the Bentley, a small boutique hotel where Delaney amp; Associates had an account. Inside, she tracked down her contact in the sales department and arranged for a room to be held in Joan Delaney’s name, hinting that some big celebrity author was coming into town and didn’t want to be noticed. Taylor took the key and went upstairs.
They gave her a tenth-floor room looking east. She locked the door and opened the draperies. The room looked out on the Queensboro Bridge, the traffic streaming across it in a continuous line as the afternoon rush hour approached. Taylor lay down on the bed and tried to relax. She mentally calculated how much sleep she’d had since Michael called her Thursday afternoon. An hour here, a couple of hours there …
She felt numb all over, numb and brittle. She felt herself dozing in and out for a while, then suddenly realized she was getting chilled. She kicked off her shoes and pulled back the covers, then eased under the blanket, staring out at the city lights as the sun went slowly down.
Soon, she drifted off.
When her cell phone went off again, she awoke with a start. She felt a sharp spike of panic. Where was she? Outside the window, the brilliant scatter of lights off the bridge and the surrounding buildings looked like gun bursts. She fumbled for the phone, hit the connect button.
“Yes,” she said, trying to sound awake.
“Am I late?” Michael’s voice sounded relaxed, professional, far too calm for the circumstances.
Taylor looked at the clock. “No.”
“So where are you?” he asked.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “No dice. You just tell me where to meet you.”
He sighed. “All right, but you don’t have to be so paranoid.
We have a deal in place. This will all be over within a couple of hours.”
“Let’s skip the small talk, Michael. Just tell me where I need to go.”
Silence punctuated by static was all she heard for a few moments. “Okay,” he finally said, “ever heard of Pier 57?”
Taylor squinted in the dim light. “Down on the West Side?
That abandoned pier where they locked up the protesters?”
“That’s it. Go to West Fifteenth and the West Side Highway. Get out directly in front of the building. Facing the front, you’ll walk to your left. On the left side of the building, you’ll find a place in the chain-link fence where you can peel the fence back. Go through there, then you’ll see a door to your right that’s been yanked off its hinges. It’ll be dark, so be careful. Come through that door and onto the pier. It’ll be like you’re inside this massive garage. Just stand there.
I’ll be waiting.”
“Isn’t it kind of creepy down there at night? Aren’t you afraid of running into security?”
Michael laughed. “What security? It’s an abandoned bus garage on a pier. They check it a couple times a night.
That’s it.”
“It’ll take me a while.”
“I’ll wait. And remember, Taylor. Come alone. I see you with anybody else, then I’m taking out you and as many of them as I can before I go.”
“I know that Michael. I know that.”
“Just remember, and-”
Taylor closed her phone and went to the bathroom to rinse off her face. She needed to be completely awake for this.
Pier 57, Taylor thought with a twinge, was only about ten or twelve blocks away from Brett Silverman’s brownstone.
Obviously, Michael had become familiar with the area.
It had been years since Taylor had been down to this part of the city. Over a decade ago, about the time Taylor moved to Manhattan, developers moved in and began revitalizing an area that had been run-down for decades. Many of the old piers had been restored and were now restaurants, art galleries, even a golf course and bowling alleys. But there were still pockets of the Hudson River waterfront that were empty and desolate.
As the taxi pulled to a halt in front of the massive, multistory pier that had once been a depot for cruise liners from around the world, Taylor realized that Michael had found the perfect place to disappear. A few short blocks away, the sidewalks were filled with people enjoying a night out, even on a cold late-winter night like this. Eight or nine blocks to the north, literally thousands of people might be at the Chelsea Piers complex.
But not here. “Hey, lady,” the driver said, turning around.
“You sure you want out here?”
Taylor nervously stuffed some cash into the cab’s money tray. “Yes,” she answered. “I’m sure.”
She held the canvas bag tightly in her left hand as she exited the taxi, then pulled her purse tighter around her right shoulder. She felt the weight of the pistol as it bumped against her side.
The cab pulled away, its taillights shrinking as it disappeared into the darkness. The streets weren’t totally dark; an orange, sulfurous glow from the streetlights filled the air.
She smelled the dank, organic odor of the river wafting in from a hundred feet or so way. A traffic light at the intersection of West Fifteenth and the West Side Highway blinked a piercing yellow.
She stood in front of a hulking, dilapidated building that had been an MTA bus depot when the cruise liners stopped coming, but had recently gained an infamous reputation as
“Little Guantanamo” during the Republican convention of 2004, when rumor had it that the Republican National Com-mittee leased the structure and then loaned it to the police as a holding facility for arrested protesters. Jutting from the street out more than seven hundred feet into the Hudson River, it was filthy and decrepit, as well as full of toxic chemicals leaked from the buses and asbestos falling from the decayed structures. Pier 57 was no place anyone would want to go.
Which, Taylor surmised, was precisely why Michael had picked it.
She stood there a moment, mustering her will, and then walked to her left, under the broken letters on the building that spelled out DEPARTMENT OF MARINE amp; AVIATION, CITY OF NEW YORK. At the left front corner of the building, a chain-link fence topped by razor wire kept pedestrians from actually going out onto the pier. She stepped close to it, walking into the shadows, squinting hard to see where she was going.
She got to the fence and looked at it closely, then reached out and touched the metal. It was cold and wet, either from condensation or slime; she couldn’t tell which. Her senses seemed heightened, as if she were suddenly aware of every sensation around her. The wind picked up off the river. Behind her, she heard a distant siren. From a window somewhere nearby, loud hip-hop blared.
She tugged at the fence, gently at first, then harder. Near one of the metal fence poles, the chain link peeled up like the edge of a tin of sardines. She felt her heart pounding in her chest. Ahead of her, she heard something splash in the river, then water lapping against the rotting poles jutting up from the river.
Taylor pulled the chain link up from the asphalt as hard as she could, then ducked under it. A few feet down the building, in the dim light she saw the outline of a metal door. She stepped over to it quickly and saw that it had been torn loose from its hinges, then propped loosely back in the doorway.
She reached out, touched the metal doorknob. It, too, felt slimy and cold. She shuddered, wished that she’d worn gloves. Her hands were stiff and cold now, as well as filthy.
She pulled the door away from the door frame with a loud, painful screech of rusty metal on rusty metal. The door clanged as it spun around on one edge and slammed into the edge of the frame.
Taylor froze, terrified. She could turn around, run for the street, head for the light, scream her head off and hope someone heard.
No, she thought. No, this has to end.
Taylor stepped through the metal doorway, her senses instantly assaulted by the dank smell of mold and dust mixed with the metallic chemical stink of grease, spilled fuel, decades of rust and rot. She took a few steps and paused, listening, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness.
She still held the canvas bag in her left hand. It seemed to grow heavier now. She instinctively reached into her shoulder bag with her right hand and caressed the wooden grip of the pistol.
She stood there for what seemed like a long time. The only sounds were the lapping of the river against the sides of the pier and the distant din of traffic. She heard no sound inside the building.
But she knew he was there. She could feel him, sense him.
She debated calling out his name and chose to remain silent.
Her eyes were dilating; she could see the dark outline of shapes now-columns, windows, a wall to her right a few feet away, and farther down that wall, a hallway.
Something scraped against the concrete. She jerked toward the sound.
There was a snapping sound, then light. It was painfully bright, directly in her eyes. She turned her head away, squinting.
And there he was.
Michael stepped out from behind a column perhaps fifteen feet away, with an electric lantern in his right hand. He leaned over and set the lantern on the concrete floor. Taylor forced herself to look at him, to focus. He had dyed his hair blond and grown a scraggly beard. He wore a torn T-shirt and a ripped denim jacket, with a filthy pair of jeans and a scuffed pair of motorcycle boots. He looked dirty, thinner. The wealthy, famous New York Times best-selling author had disappeared into the anonymous sea of New York City’s homeless.
“Hello, Taylor,” he said, his voice even, calm.
“Michael,” she answered.
“It’s good to see you,” he offered. “I’ve missed you.”
Taylor watched him silently. He took a step toward her, then a couple of steps to the side, as if circling her. “I’ve got your money,” she said. She swung the bag back and forth with her left arm like a pendulum, then let it go toward him.
It hit the concrete with a scraping sound that echoed through the building.
She saw him smile in the dim light as he bent down to the bag. He unzipped it, pulled it open, and looked inside.
“Wow,” he said softly.
“It’s over,” Taylor said. “Go now.”
He yanked the zipper, closing the bag with a jerking motion. He stood back up, his right arm behind him. “Well, there is one little bit of unfinished business,” he said.
When his right hand came back around in front, he was holding something dark, oblong. He flicked his wrist and a snapping sound rang out.
Then Taylor saw it. The weak light from the lantern glinted off the blade in a spark. Taylor felt a lump in her chest, somewhere deep down inside her, at her core. The blade was long, as long as his hand. He smiled as he held it.
“I had so much fun with her the other night,” Michael said. “She was the best of all. You’ll be even better.”
“Why did you have to pick her?”
His smile widened even further. “C’mon, it’s every writer’s fantasy, killing your editor.” He stood there for a moment, motionless. Then he took a step toward her.
“You didn’t really think I was going to let you leave here, did you? After the way you betrayed me? Left me? Surely you’re not that stupid.”
“No,” Taylor answered. “I’m not that stupid. I never imagined you’d keep your word.”
Taylor pulled her hand out of the purse, the Hammerli-Walther gripped tightly. She pointed it at Michael as his smile disappeared.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“This is over, Michael,” she said. “I’m going to get my phone out of my pocket and call the police. And you’re going to stand there while I do.”
His smile came back. “Oh,” he said, meanly, “your brother’s pistol. What was his name? Jack? Yes, Jack. The brother you killed.”
“Shut up, Michael. Just shut up.” Taylor reached inside her coat pocket for her cell phone. Michael took a step toward her. “Stay there,” she ordered.
He shook his head. “No, Taylor. I’m not going back to jail.
You’ll have to kill me.”
He started walking toward her, the knife held out in front of him. “Stop, Michael!” she barked. “Get back over there!”
He kept coming. She raised the pistol. “Stop!”
Ten feet away now …
“Stop! “
Two more steps. She sighted down the barrel, drew in a breath, as Jack had taught her, then let it out slowly and squeezed the trigger.
A sharp metallic crack erupted as the hammer hit the dead cartridge. Misfire.
She screamed, turned to run. He grunted, lunged for her.
She threw the pistol at him, missed, then swung her purse at him, hard. The leather strap caught his outstretched hand and got tangled in it. They both jerked away hard.
In the darkness, the knife fell, clattering on the concrete.
He was on her now. She held out her arms. He swung wide, caught the side of her head. Taylor went down on the concrete, her shoulders and back taking the brunt of the fall. She gasped as the breath was knocked partially out of her.
He jumped on her, furious, his eyes wide, grinning horribly. She threw up a leg, trying to kick between his legs, and missed. But it threw him off balance. He landed only partially on her.
She tried to roll away, but he was too fast, too strong. He grabbed her shoulders and slammed her into the hard floor, the back of her head snapping against the concrete. She heard a noise, a strange, ugly combination of a yelp and a moan, then realized the sound was coming from her.
He straddled her chest, his hands around her neck now, squeezing hard, like a vise on her throat. In the dim light, she saw him smile down at her, the light glinting off his teeth. She felt a rage inside her she’d never felt before, a rage so powerful that for a brief moment, it even overcame her fear. She fought and bucked and scratched at him, but he held on, smiling meanly down at her.
“Let go, baby,” he whispered. “Just let go.”
Taylor felt her vision dimming, sparkles tingling in her peripheral vision. A thought raced through her mind.
He’s actually going to do this!
She kicked her legs in the air as he sat on her chest, strangling her. She was flailing now, helplessly, uselessly. Then she felt her right foot hit something loose on the floor and she kicked involuntarily again, dragging whatever it was closer to her.
Her arms were slapping at him. Still he stayed on top of her. She brought her right arm down beside his leg, flapping like a child making snow angels.
Then she felt it. Her right hand brushed against it, her fingertips retaining just enough feeling and control to realize what her legs had kicked toward her.
The knife.
The handle was hard, cold. She felt it with her fingertips, just out of reach.
But her vision … She couldn’t breathe, her throat closed off, the sparkles. Couldn’t think. Can’t think anymore.
She squeezed her chest as hard as she could to raise him up just a hair, then kicked her legs, scraping her body just a little to the right.
Her fingers wrapped around the knife handle. In her hand now …
All going black.
She brought her arm up, then swung, wide and hard, the knife blade sparkling in the light as it slashed in slow motion across and in front of her, above her, at Michael.
He jumped back, loosening his grip on her throat. She sucked in a huge gulp of air as the thin line across the front of his neck widened into a pencil’s width.
“You fucking bitch!” he screamed. He let go of her completely and brought his hands to his neck, just as a spurt of oily, syrupy thick blood erupted in a shower across the front of his chest and onto Taylor.
He tried to jump to his feet, but stumbled and fell backward, landing on his hips on the hard concrete. She jerked upright, rubbing her neck with her left hand, the knife held tightly in her right.
She saw his face in the yellow lantern light as he looked down on his chest, blood pouring out of his neck. He glared up at her. “Jesus,” he squeaked. “Look what you did.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, her voice broken and choked. Her neck ached, the back of her head pounded. “But you were going to-”
His hands were clasped tightly around his own neck now, trying to staunch the rhythmic spurts. “Oh God,” he said, his voice softer, staring down at his own blood.
She scrambled to her hands and knees, trying to stand up but too weak. She crawled toward him. The blood had soaked the front of the T-shirt, his pants, the concrete floor in front of him. She moved toward him, her hands sliding in the wetness.
“Do something,” he said. “Do something.”
“Jesus, I don’t know what-”
Suddenly he rolled backward onto the concrete. Taylor crawled over to him, the knife still in her hand. She threw it as hard as she could away from them. It clattered on the floor somewhere behind the lantern.
She put her hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said.
The flow of blood had slowed, his body relaxing, as he stared up at her.
“I don’t feel good,” he said, almost childlike. His eyes drifted left and right, his eyelids fluttering.
His hands loosened from around his neck and slid to his side. Taylor Robinson took his hand in hers, on her knees next to him, as the light in his eyes dimmed.
“I just wanted them to remember me,” he whispered.
Taylor squeezed his hands, blood all over her now as well.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They will.”