Chapter 27: vintovka, rifle
Mid-town Manhattan, same afternoon
Fusco careened down the side street, weaving past double-parked cars and trucks jutting from the sides. They bounced over pavement gouged with potholes. Logan steadied himself in his seat with long arms spread wide to absorb the shocks. His head came perilously close to the roof with each bounce. Glass dangled from the spider-webbed window in back, shaking off and bouncing on the deck. It tumbled from the trunk and sprayed out behind them onto the rough black pavement.
Fusco kept glancing for the roof-lines, swinging way left with his good eye. If there was a sniper up there somewhere, he could still take another shot. And then he was at the end of the block, screeching around the corner, heading back for the diner. No one was going to target him, blow a hole through his car, and get away with it! He stomped on the gas and roared down the street to the next corner, screeching to a halt.
"Hey!" a voice boomed. From the right, at a full run, Reese. He pointed up over the top of their car to the roof of the diner. The men jumped out and ran with him, heading for the lot at the back of the diner. Reese had seen a figure on the roof and a thin long barrel, a rifle barrel, swinging up into view, then disappearing. Now they were both gone; he was getting away. Reese kept running, long legs pumping, Logan right behind, Fusco falling back.
Reese pointed toward the left, and Logan peeled off that way. Fusco ran behind him until they reached the diner wall, where he reached out a hand, bending forward to catch his breath. He looked up at Logan and motioned for him to stay next to him. And then he pulled his gun, pointing it to the sky. Weapons were not for Logan, but at least he could add his eyes to the search. The two scoured the perimeter, and then back up to the roof-line.
Meanwhile, Reese had headed right, to the back of the diner. Inside, he held up for a moment. People were sitting there inside – eating, chatting, unaware of anything going on outside. He swung his eyes around, searching for any hint of eyes giving themselves away. Nothing.
His face was set, eyes intense, striding forward on the upper deck where Logan had just been sitting. A waiter approached with a menu, but Reese ignored him, eyes focused over the top of him. The waiter looked confused for a moment, then must have thought Reese was there looking for companions at another table. Reese reached the edge of the step, glancing to the front where the glass doors were. He dropped down and moved left, threading past tables next to the booths lining the wall.
At the end of the line of booths was a gap, a space at the end of a long counter at the front of the diner. The waitstaff had a little alcove to stand in there. It ran back toward the kitchen and usually it was a busy spot. Reese leaned forward, peering into the long hallway. No one was there at first, but then a waiter carrying an order on steaming hot plates came his way down the hallway from the kitchen. He didn't pay any attention to Reese, but kept walking past him. Reese peered down the hallway again. He reached inside his jacket for his weapon, and slid it into his hand, then down to his belt line. He stepped into the hallway – then further down, stepping silently. There were voices ahead. Men and a woman, speaking Russian. So softly, though, he could barely pick out a few words – vysokiy muzhchina – a tall man. And vintovka, rifle.
The door to an office sat ajar ahead of him, and he could just see some movement inside. He reached for his badge and hid his weapon under the flap of his jacket.
"Detective Riley, NYPD," he said, as he slid the door open. Heads swung his way and one of the men jumped up. Reese stared him down.
"Easy. Take a seat," in his whisper-voice. The man slowly lowered himself into the seat as he stared at the badge, then at Reese.
"What you are doing here, Detective?" the other one asked, smiling with his face.
"Disturbance in the area. Gunshots fired. Just checking it out." Reese kept his eyes on the threesome.
"Really? Didn't hear nothing," desk-man spat out, his face stern. Then he looked over at the woman, a waitress, and shook a hand at her. "Get back to work!" he said, roughly. For a moment Reese could see her eyes flare at his tone, but she must have thought better of speaking.
Reese could see her turn, shoulders hunched, and then she slipped through the doorway and out of the room. Desk-man turned his eyes to Reese and jutted his jaw out, like he'd enjoyed that. Reese didn't take the bait. He glanced around the space for any sign of the rifle he'd seen on the roof, or any way to get up there. The two men watched him, and he didn't hurry himself. The wait seemed to bother the one behind the desk. There was something in his eyes that Reese had seen before - an easy slide into violence. It wouldn't take much. He'd seen that look before, on men who thought they'd had the upper hand. Reese stepped in close and turned his eyes down at desk-man, blue eyes steady. Slowly, in his whisper-voice:
"Mind if I take a look around?" The Russian scowled, and the veins on the side of his head began to swell. His fist started to clench on the right. Reese was ready - whatever he decided. Blue eyes steady. Then the Russian looked to the other man standing there and jabbed at him, then at Reese.
"Take him. Go ahead," he said with the heavy Russian accent. The younger man nodded and stepped forward toward Reese. He watched Reese slide his badge into a pocket, and noticed his other hand holding something under his jacket. He backed up and pushed the door open with his back, into the hall, glancing right. A moment later, he turned back to Reese.
"What you look for? Maybe I help you find it," he said, smiling at Reese with his face – but his eyes never changed. The two of them stood facing each other in the hallway, and Reese looked left first, the way he'd come. There was a waiter picking up food at the kitchen window. He barely glanced their way.
The waitress who'd been dismissed so harshly by desk-man was next in line at the kitchen window. She glanced up at Reese, her eyes blank, then back down at the order pad in her hand. She flipped pages back and forth as though checking for one of her orders, and then hollered at the cook inside, something in Russian Reese didn't get. When you don't use it, you lose it, he said to himself. It'd been a long time since he'd had to use any Russian, and he couldn't pull it in now.
The young Russian man was still waiting. Reese noticed he'd swung the office door open as if he were trying to block his way past it. So Reese moved up next to the door, peering around the edge into the gloom beyond.
"What's down there?" he asked, in his whisper-voice. The man stared at him for just a second, then shrugged.
"Store room for foods, potatoes, like that," he said. "And meat – cool – you understand?"
"I'll just check things out, and then I'll be out of your way. Looks like everything is OK here. Probably a mistake," he said. The younger man listened and then nodded his head in agreement. He let Reese pass, but kept his eyes on him as Reese walked back toward the end of the hallway. There was another door there, and he tried the knob. Inside, he groped for a switch to turn on the light.
"Light no work," the young Russian said, smiling. Reese took one half-step in and smelled vegetable smells – like sacks of potatoes and onions. He could see the back wall of the storeroom. Nothing to see in there. He turned around, heading back to the very end of the hallway, and there was a silver metal door. He pulled the handle, and cold mist tumbled out. It looked nearly empty inside. He shoved the door closed and looked around at the hallway, then turned back as though he was satisfied.
The young Russian waited for him, and Reese kept his eyes lowered as he walked forward toward the front of the diner.
"I get you a cup of coffee, Detective? Maybe one for the road?" he said, smiling at his command of American slang. Reese shook his head, then headed for the heavy glass doors at the front. He stepped through both sets, heading to the left and around the side – squeezing through an opening in a fence to the back. He expected to find Fusco and Logan there, watching for the sniper if he'd tried to run for it.
Inside, the two Russian men and the waitress stood together, watching Reese on the street on their security monitors. They watched him make his way on the sidewalk, then disappear for a moment as he squeezed through the fence. When he popped out again and back onto their monitor, he was joining two other men in the back. The waitress stabbed her finger out at Logan.
"Yest' vysokiy muzhchina." The two Russians nodded. There was the tall man.
Reese, Fusco and Logan hustled down the short stretch of road back to the street where they'd left the car. Reese leaned down to inspect the damage on the back window, the glass spider-webbed around a large hole punched through the middle. Chunks had vibrated free as Fusco'd pounded the car on the rough road. Even so, the window hadn't completely shattered. The broken glass hung like a curtain from the frame. Tough to see through it like this, though.
Reese went around to the passenger side and lowered himself on that seat, while Fusco brushed glass off the seat in the back behind Logan and hoisted himself in. Logan drove. Before he started the engine Logan looked over at Reese.
"So what happened back there?" Logan asked, as Reese noticed the mangled dashboard in front of his knees.
"You first," he said in his whisper-voice. "I heard the gunshot. Looks like you picked up some hardware," Reese said, fingering the hole in the dashboard. He took a look over Logan's shoulder, down the short stretch of road behind the diner. He could see most of the roof-line from here, empty now. Whoever was up there before, he'd escaped by the time they'd got there. Just the two Russian men and the waitress were left inside – and they weren't talking.
Logan looked back through the side-view mirror as he pulled out, heading back for the parking garage near their safe house. He started to tell the story of the scene in the diner, the green glow on the counter, his exchange with the waiter and waitress, and the way the whole thing went sideways after that.
Reese half-listened, but he was bending forward, picking at the mangled dashboard, as though he were searching for something. He reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a key-ring. Hanging down from it was a 3-inch green knurled cover, and they watched as he pressed a small button on its side and flicked his wrist. A shiny metal knife blade snicked open, and he began to probe the mangled hole in the dash with it. As he made small jabbing motions in the hole, he could feel and hear something metallic, and when he'd isolated where it was, he set about digging it out of the plastic.
By the time Logan finished his story, Reese had the metal-jacketed round in his hand. He held it up in his fingers and turned it around to look at it carefully. Then he dropped it into a pocket for later.
"Your turn, Reese," Logan said.
"Whoever was on the roof with the rifle was gone by the time we got there," he said.
"Not much time. He couldn't have gotten far," Fusco said. "No one came out the back."
Reese stayed silent the rest of the way, until they parked the car in the parking garage. Logan left the keys in the console between the front seats, and the three got out of the car.
"Glasses isn't gonna be happy with this," Fusco murmured, as he surveyed the car. He slammed his door closed. A few more chunks of glass jiggled free and dropped from the back window, tinkling down the side, onto the concrete. Fusco looked up at the two men and shrugged.