“Good idea,” I said, in a high-pitched half-whisper. Ian had landed on top of the bag, so I bent to roll him over when something ricocheted off the ground by his shoulder. A second later, I heard the crack of another gunshot.
Shooter’s a couple hundred yards away, give or take, the voice said.
I tugged on the strap, hoping to yank it off his body by sheer force, when a third bullet bounced off the ground next to my foot. I felt tiny daggers of splintered asphalt pepper my ankle through the thin black sock I had on.
Forget the money. Run.
I didn’t need to be told twice and broke into a full sprint for my car. That’s when the bullets started coming in bunches. They were bouncing all around me. I heard one zip past my head so close I reached up and expected to feel blood in my hair, or a ragged mess of dangling flesh where my earlobe used to be, but everything appeared to be intact.
The voice tried to assure me that if the shooter really wanted to hit me, I’d be in the same position as Ian right now, but I was no longer paying attention. I had tunnel vision for the driver’s side door of my 2016 Audi A3, terrified that its silver finish would erupt in an explosion as the shooter hit the gas tank. The voice calmly explained how that kind of thing only happened in the movies, but my all-encompassing panic was having none of that logical nonsense.
I hit the door without slowing down, so hard my hip actually pinned it shut for a brief instant as I tried to pull the handle open. Once I got inside I stared at the six keys on my keychain as if they were relics from a lost civilization, their purpose a mystery to me.
Then the back, left window exploded and everything snapped into place. I jammed the key into the ignition, started the engine and floored the gas pedal so hard I almost jumped the curb across the street pulling out of the lot. I swerved at the last second to stay on the road and watched the speedometer needle climb past sixty. The wind coming in through my shattered window swirled the mess of broken glass around my backseat and floor. I reflexively pressed the button on my armrest that would roll the back window up, then made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh but came out more like a nervous bark when I realized there was nothing left to roll up.
Tires squealing, I pulled onto the main road without applying the brakes. I fully expected one of the handful of cars parked in the shoulder to come to life, its headlights piercing the night, and begin to give chase.
None did.
At the first traffic light, I turned left on red. The car approaching from the other way honked, but we weren’t close to colliding. He was just pissed.
There was no plan, no destination. I was zigzagging, trying to make myself more difficult to follow, even though I had yet to spot a single suspicious vehicle or individual tracking me since I fled the airport. To my anxiety-riddled mind, Trish’s people were everywhere. The hole in Ian’s head didn’t do much to assuage my paranoia.
It wasn’t until the third or fourth random turn that I passed a street I recognized and got my bearings. That grounded me and stopped all of the synapses in my brain from firing at once, allowing rationality and intelligence to take over. My next two turns were more deliberate.
By the time I passed the Gare du Nord train station, I knew exactly where I was going. But I couldn’t go alone. I pulled out my phone and started to dial, then stopped and stared at the screen. Reflected in the glass, behind the white numbers and the digital keypad, Trish stared back at me. Waiting for me to make a call or send a text, so she could take a peek at my next move. I blinked and she was replaced by Ian’s lifeless face, dark red blood oozing from the wreckage the hollow point left behind, his brown skin already turning ashen. I let go of the wheel, took the phone in both hands, snapped it in two and tossed the pieces out the window.
I opened the center console and pulled out Sergei’s phone from the top compartment, praying Joey would pick up despite not recognizing the number.
“Who’s this?” he said when he answered.
“Joey, it’s me,” I said. Although shouted is probably more accurate.
“Rick? Why’d you switch up your number? Shit, you got five-oh problems? How long they been listening in?”
“No five-oh, but I’ve got problems. I’ll explain later. Right now, I need you to do something for me.”
Joey never hesitated, never gave it a second thought. When I was done going over everything, he simply said, “You’re going to need one more.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Leon’s was a small club on the outer edge of Brussels’s red-light district. Two blocks past where prostitutes stopped patrolling the streets and the beat cops working the overnight shift started.
Situated between a cigar shop and a pawn shop, the only way anyone knew that the entertainment inside was of the adult variety was by word of mouth. Fortunately for Leon White, that word was strong and the club was packed most nights, even on a Wednesday. I parked in the only open spot on the street by the entrance, right in front of a fire hydrant. There was no line, but just inside the front door a bouncer with a goatee and a chest the size of my refrigerator stepped in front of me as I walked past the ticket booth toward the doorway into the club’s main room. He had to shout to be heard over the thumping bass of the ’90s dance pop the DJ was spinning. A remix of Madonna’s “Justify My Love,” which came standard on every strip club playlist.
“Ten euro cover,” he said, putting his hand on my chest. I thought about grabbing his pinkie and snapping it but decided to avoid making a scene. For now, anyway.
“I’m not here for the show,” I said. “I just need to see your boss. Tell him it’s Rick Carter.”
“Is he expecting you?”
I took out my wallet and removed two hundred-dollar bills. “No,” I said, holding them up. He thought about it for maybe half a beat, then the hand came off my chest and snatched the money.
“Wait here,” he said, and disappeared into the club. From behind the glass of the ticket booth, a twenty-year-old human tattoo with a dozen facial piercings watched me with an almost insulting lack of interest.
“Long day?” I asked. She continued observing me the way a kid on Christmas regards a new pair of socks. Her expression didn’t change when a gray-haired man in a cheap three-piece suit came up and paid his admission, so at least I knew it wasn’t just me that she found boring. As the old guy pushed through the curtain into the club, the bouncer with the goatee sidled past him.
“Arms out, palms up,” he told me. I obliged. He removed my Glock and tucked it into the waistband of his pants against his lower back. The two spare clips he pocketed. Finding nothing else he said, “Follow me.”
The curtain opened onto a small, narrow set of three steps that led to the club floor. Multicolored stage lights flashed above the DJ booth in the far corner, where a young Korean man was focused on queuing up the next track while protected from the riffraff below by three high, plexiglass walls. Not that the crowd looked like it was filled with much riff or raff. For the most part, it was middle-aged white guys hiding from their families. They fed dollar bills to the G-stringed dancer on the main stage or the ones patrolling the floor the way parents feed dollar bills into change machines for their kids at arcades on the Jersey Shore boardwalk. A few pods of younger men getting an early start to the weekend dotted the scene.
It wasn’t a total sausage fest, though. There was a blonde sitting right by the main stage, getting what amounted to her own show from a dancer wearing six-inch heels and nothing else, and one table that featured a pair of twenty-something girls deep in conversation. They might have been a couple, or they might have just been best friends who thought hitting a strip club would make for a great story the next time they got together with the rest of the gals.
Either way, I didn’t care. I had my eye on the table just past them. More specifically, the empty beer bottle on top of it. I snatched it as we walked by and held it against the back of my leg. If the bouncer turned around I’d have been screwed, but he never did. Not until we got to the door just beyond the main stage, anyway. He opened it and held his arm out for me to go in ahead of him. I took a quick mental snapshot of the scene on the other side—
Leon seated behind a desk against the far wall, typing on a computer. White suit, red shirt, what little hair he had slick and glistening with Brill cream. Marcus, his bodyguard, standing just inside the doorway to my left, waiting for us. Sunglasses on, because of course they were. I’d never seen him without them, even though we’d never met anytime other than the dead of night. He had a cigarette in his mouth and was reaching for it with his right hand.
—then I gripped the beer bottle by the neck and smashed it against the doorframe. The bottom half of the bottle shattered, leaving a jagged, broken rim still connected to the neck, which did an excellent job of slicing open the goateed bouncer’s cheek in three places. He screamed and slapped his hand against the flaps of flesh, which quickly sent rivulets of blood pouring through his fingers.
Under normal circumstances, I never would have been able to move a man of his size. But he was shocked and disoriented, so when I shoved him toward Marcus he went with no resistance whatsoever. As he fell, I pulled my gun from the back of his pants. Marcus was able to dodge the full weight of his body as he barreled into him, but it bought me enough time to fire a shot into the bodyguard’s shoulder. Fortunately, I was only a few feet away, so aiming was more of a formality.
Marcus screamed—a little higher-pitched than the bouncer—and reached under his jacket for his own weapon as blood soaked one side of his shirt. Before he could draw it, I swung the Glock in a wide, arcing uppercut that caught him under the chin and sent him sprawling onto the couch behind him, next to where Mr. Goatee had landed. I put a bullet in each of their knees before either could get up. When I took Marcus’s gun from him and tucked it into my waistband, he was too busy bleeding and crying to offer any resistance.
All this happened in the space of maybe five seconds. Not long, but plenty of time for Leon to reach into his desk drawer. Inside was either a gun or a button that would summon more security. I didn’t care to find out which, so I put two bullets through the front of the desk, into the drawer just below the one he was fishing around in. He gave a small yelp, like a dog after its tail is stepped on, and withdrew his empty hand.
I covered the distance between us in three steps, grabbed the back of his head and drove his face into the computer keyboard before he could reach back in. The impact sent little plastic letter keys flying in all directions. When he came up, there was half a “K” stuck to his forehead. I slapped it away and put the barrel of my gun in its place.
“Hands up,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. He obliged. Behind me I could hear the moans and cries of Marcus and the bouncer. There didn’t appear to be any panic or commotion coming from the club, but that wouldn’t last. Even with the bass thumping and the general din of a bar at night, someone had to have heard the shots and the screams. They might not have recognized them for what they were, but if they had just a tiny bit of curiosity in them, then I’d have to make my exit far sooner than anticipated. “Stay,” I said to Leon. His eyes told me that wouldn’t be a problem.
