Blindside (Michael Bennett) Read online

  She immediately started to pack up her iPad and slip it into her purse.

  I leaned back in the chair and let her think I didn’t care. Finally I said, “Are you going back to your apartment above the casket warehouse?” That one caught her by surprise. Now she knew I was serious. I had to keep going. “I’m not looking to cause you any grief. I’m just looking for a missing girl. That’s it. I swear to God.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I’m a good Catholic. My grandfather is even a priest.” I waited. That one usually killed with a slightly older group. I had no idea how millennials viewed Catholicism. They sure didn’t care much about cops one way or the other.

  “What’s the name of the girl you’re looking for?”

  “Natalie Lunden. I just want to make sure she’s safe.”

  “So you’re really not looking to arrest anyone?”

  “I didn’t say that. If Natalie is being held somewhere against her will, then whoever took her has to pay the price. As well versed as you are in criminal procedure, you probably understand the street law as well.”

  She settled back into her chair. “I haven’t seen Natalie in almost a month.”

  “No one has. Her mother’s frantic.” I didn’t know if Jennifer knew who Natalie’s father was.

  Jennifer looked around the room quickly. She was suddenly jumpy.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Another one of my friends is missing. He’s not answering his phone or anything.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Tommy Payne.”

  She didn’t know her friend was dead. I wasn’t sure this was the right time to tell her, but I couldn’t build any kind of trust by starting out with a lie.

  “I’m afraid your friend Tommy is dead.”

  She looked stricken. She choked back some tears and managed to ask me a couple of questions. Just simple ones. The kind a family member of a murder victim usually asks. “How?” “When?” “Are there any suspects?” I answered all of them quickly, and she seemed to handle it reasonably well.

  I gave her some time to gather her thoughts. She pulled a tissue from her designer purse and blew her nose. She sniffled for a little while until she was ready to talk. Then she leaned in across the table and said in a very clear and determined voice, “Is there anything I can do to help you catch whoever killed Tommy?”

  “I’m not the detective on the homicide. I’m just looking for Natalie. But I can think of something that will help both me and the homicide detective.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell me about Estonia.”

  CHAPTER 41

  I PULLED OUT a small notebook and settled in to hear Jennifer Chang’s story. Like most people about to talk to the police, she paused for a moment. She looked around the room as if she was conducting countersurveillance.

  She said, “If Natalie’s in Estonia, she’s with a hacker named Henry.”

  “Henry.”

  “His real name is Endrik. Endrik Laar. Henry’s just the Anglicized version of his name he prefers. I’m pretty sure he’s from Estonia originally. He’s there now, at any rate.”

  “Who is he? What’s he look like?”

  Jennifer thought about it for a moment. These computer people didn’t just spout off. They considered questions and the best way to answer. Finally she said, “I guess Henry is about thirty. He’s a little on the short side. Not even five eight. He used to be as skinny as a rail, but now he’s muscular. I mean absolutely ripped. Part of it is because he trains with some former Olympian from Germany. Part of it is steroids. I think that’s what changed his personality. He used to be the typical funny, nice, young computer guy. But he’s changed.”

  “How so?”

  “It started with his moods. As he brought in more and more money, it was like he realized how much power he had. Then he hired people specifically as enforcers. They were the ones who kept all the programmers from talking to the police. I think it’s worked pretty well. To my knowledge, he’s never been arrested.”

  “Why would Natalie be with Henry? Are they an item?”

  “That’s a complicated question. Henry had relationships with all three of the female programmers during the time I worked with him, here in New York. A girl from Latvia named Svetlana. Natalie. And me.” She stared at me to see if I was shocked or would offer any judgment.

  I said, “I remember what it’s like to be young. I don’t care about any consensual relationship. But I am trying to get a handle on if Natalie was forcibly taken or ran away to be with her boyfriend.”

  Jennifer said, “It’s hard to say. Natalie was into Henry for a while. When we first started working with him, we thought we were doing something special. Exposing secrets. Forcing businesses to admit when they were cheating people. But pretty quickly Henry figured out the real money was in essentially blackmailing retailers. He’d knock out their website for an hour, then tell them to pay some outrageous sum or he’d knock out the website for three days.”

  “But he couldn’t knock it out permanently.”

  Jennifer gave me a flat stare. “Amazon does more than six hundred million dollars in sales a day. Do you think if some hacker who proved he could knock them offline asked for five million dollars to leave them alone they wouldn’t go for it? Henry does it all the time. And by setting up his bank accounts in money havens like Belize, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands, it makes it impossible to find him.”

  I put down the pad and crossed my legs. “What is Natalie like?”

  “Nice girl. Very close with her mother. When you told me her mom hadn’t heard from her I knew something was wrong.”

  “Is she a hacker, too? Does she enjoy cracking systems?”

  “We all enjoy breaking security systems. She is more into creating the algorithms than actually cracking the systems. She never seemed to care about money, either.”

  “Do you think she’s in trouble?”

  Jennifer didn’t have to think about this one. She looked me right in the eye and said, “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 42

  ALICE AND JANOS stepped through the door of Brew. They didn’t try to hide or be subtle. No one knew them. Their rough plan involved waiting until Jennifer and the cop left and then somehow luring them to a secluded area. Eliminate both of them. Then flee.

  What the plan lacked in details it made up for in boldness.

  Alice said to Janos, “You shoot the cop. Don’t hesitate once we get them outside. He doesn’t look like someone you want to screw with. I’ll deal with Jennifer.”

  Now, as she stood by the front door of the coffeehouse, she took a moment to appreciate Jennifer completely. It wasn’t just that she was pretty and stylish. This girl was dead-on smart. Alice would see what all those brains did for her with a wire around her throat.

  She and the cop looked like they were talking pleasantly. The tiny tables left little room for anything but a cup of coffee.

  She thought about Henry, too. He shared the same superior attitude as Jennifer. Alice wondered how he’d react once he heard that Jennifer was dead. She had a story to cover herself and Janos. She liked the idea of that Estonian asshole mourning over his lost Asian love.

  Alice let her eyes scan the rest of the coffeehouse. It seemed like a lot of students. The place was wedged between City College and Columbia University. There was no shortage of smart young people to frequent a hipster coffeehouse like this.

  She noticed everyone had a computer. Most people didn’t appear to be casually browsing Facebook, either. They had their noses buried in screens and were tapping away at keyboards.

  Oscar had been right. This place was a hangout for hackers.

  Alice looked at the line to order next to the counter. She wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.

  She glanced down the counter until her eyes fell on two men. They were both grinning at her.

  At almost the same time she saw them, Alice heard Janos exclaim, “Oh, shit.”r />
  It was the two crazy Dutchmen who worked for Henry. Her text to Henry must’ve had more of an effect than she thought.

  Then she saw both men slip off their stools. A moment later, she saw the guns in their hands.

  CHAPTER 43

  AS I DIGESTED Jennifer’s words, I looked up, and again I noticed the two men at the counter, the ones dressed like Europeans. One was tall with his blond hair tight and neat. Both of them were in decent shape, if dressed a little oddly.

  I’d noted that their eyes had followed me as I walked in. Now I noticed they were smiling at a couple who’d just stepped in the front door.

  Something wasn’t right about it. I couldn’t put my finger on it immediately. The shorter of the two men, a guy about thirty-five with long, stringy hair, put his hand behind his back. It was a common movement and normally wouldn’t draw notice. But I was on alert. And, to me, it was the definition of a furtive movement.

  I took a moment to inspect the couple who had just entered. A man and a woman dressed in dark, casual clothes. There was nothing unusual about them, except for the fact that an unknown couple had entered Thomas Payne’s building the night he was killed. And been with him in the train station. I kicked myself for not requesting a copy of the surveillance footage from Ed Arris.

  Once the two of them noticed the men at the bar there was a distinct, silent confrontation.

  Then the men at the counter drew guns.

  I acted completely out of instinct, as if one of my own children were sitting at the table with me. I dove out of my seat, scooping up Jennifer Chang on the way. We landed hard on the polished floor and slid a few feet into another table.

  I would’ve heard the cursing and comments of the people we had bumped into except the screams of the people near the counter drowned them out.

  I didn’t have to look up to see what was happening. This wasn’t the eighties. New Yorkers were not used to guns coming out inside coffeehouses. A wave of panic swept over the small place.

  The screams were completely masked by the sound of the first gunshots.

  CHAPTER 44

  IN THAT SECOND before Alice could react, but after she’d seen the Dutchmen, Christoph and Ollie, she froze. It wasn’t fear. It was shock. And confusion. There was no reason for those two psychopaths to be here. Unless Henry had decided to cancel their contracts permanently.

  Alice heard Janos mumble, “What the hell?” She felt him move as he reached for his gun. In an instant, her plan fell apart. She had relied on her plans for almost a decade. Her strength in this business was that she was a planner. Most of the people working for criminals like Henry gave little thought to their jobs. Point them in the right direction and they killed someone.

  Now she wondered if plans were worth it. Christoph and Ollie never planned anything, and now they had the drop on her and Janos.

  Christoph had some kind of 9mm pistol. Ollie had a machine pistol. It looked like an old-style MAC-10. It was funny what raced through her mind in this moment of shock. Of course, it was Ollie who didn’t hesitate.

  He flicked his head to move his stringy hair out of his eyes, something Alice had seen him do a thousand times. It gave Janos a moment to step from behind Alice and bring his own pistol into play.

  As the two men maneuvered to get off their first shot, Alice heard the wave of terror in the coffeehouse. It started with the cop sweeping Jennifer off her seat and onto the floor. Then people started screaming almost immediately. The distressed reactions began at the counter and seemed to work around the room in a counterclockwise motion.

  Her ears were already stinging from the screams when Ollie and Janos fired, almost simultaneously. The sound of Janos’s pistol next to her ear was painful. It was probably the closest she’d ever been to a gun going off without any warning.

  Suddenly it was as if her head had been plunged underwater. Sounds were muffled and garbled. But she could feel each shot. The concussions jolted her.

  Janos’s pistol had a deeper, solid report. Ollie’s machine pistol had a higher pitch that sounded like a typewriter. A typewriter that never ran out of bullets. At least it felt like that to Alice. It probably felt like that to anyone who’d ever been shot at.

  Dishes crashed to the floor. There was a mad dash for the take-out door at the end of the counter.

  Alice felt the limitations of her knife and garrote when everyone else had a gun. For the first time she noticed a small sign above the register that said gun-free zone. no firearms allowed in this business.

  A barista in a white T-shirt staggered away from the two Dutch killers. A red splotch spread across his upper chest.

  At least one of Janos’s bullets flew wide. Alice dove to one side, looking for cover. A couple of overturned tables near the door were her only chance.

  Everything was happening way too fast.

  CHAPTER 45

  MY HEAD WAS swimming. That’s the feeling I got when I heard gunshots. At least that’s what I told myself. More likely it was just fear. But a detective with the NYPD couldn’t generally admit to being afraid of anything.

  At the moment, I wasn’t afraid—I was terrified. I was lying on top of Jennifer Chang. She probably still wasn’t certain what was going on. I’m sure she wasn’t happy about a large man lying on top of her, but I thought that would be the best way of keeping her from being harmed.

  Like many gunfights, this one had started with a couple of shots traded back and forth. The difference was that unlike most gunfights, the trickle of shots had turned into a flood. From three different guns.

  Now everyone around us was panicking. They started to shove and run, knocking over chairs and tables as they rushed for the exit at the other side of the room.

  I lifted my head, then scooted in front of Jennifer and peeked over our table. All I could focus on was the guy with long hair holding the trigger of a MAC-10. I couldn’t believe the number of rounds being spewed out from the small machine pistol.

  One of the staff members, a young man with long hair held in a man bun, took a round right in the chest. He kept walking in a daze, then tumbled onto the floor just past the counter. A female patron lay a few feet from him. The gaping hole in her face leaked blood onto the shiny flooring.

  A huge stack of dishes tumbled off a table somewhere. The crashing sound competed with the gunfire. It added to the hysteria. This was exactly what gunfighters counted on. They wanted chaos all around them so it would be harder to identify them later. Eyewitness testimony was notoriously shaky and, contrary to what most people would think, not the best evidence to convict someone.

  I pulled my Glock but was hesitant to fire. I didn’t want to attract gunfire back to me with so many civilians huddled close by. That included Jennifer Chang, who was now on her knees and sobbing.

  I risked looking at the main door. The woman had edged over to kneel behind a pileup of overturned tables by the door.

  The man she had come in with crouched with his right arm extended. He was actually trying to aim during the exchange of gunfire. It had to be tough, with bullets whizzing past him from a machine gun and another pistol.

  Then the man by the door went down. I think it was two shots from the pistol shooter at the counter. The rounds caught him just below the neck, in his upper chest. Both impacts staggered him. He shuffled back until he bumped into the frame of the door.

  The glass in the door, which had already been penetrated by a couple of bullets, shattered as soon as he bumped it.

  As the man stood there a moment, three rounds from the machine pistol struck him. All three rounds caught him at just about the center mass of his chest. He dropped the pistol, then tumbled out the door that now had no glass in it. His feet dangled over the bottom of the door and his body lay on the sidewalk.

  The long-haired man with the machine pistol slipped another magazine through the grip of the gun.

  Just then, Jennifer stood up and tried to make it to the door.

  CHAPTER 46

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nbsp; ALICE HAD JUST found a little safety behind the tables when she turned back to Janos. Janos was hit. He backed away a few steps until he bumped into the door. The glass in the door just fell out of the frame and tinkled onto the ground.

  Everything seemed to freeze. The shooting stopped. Alice could hear only the screams. The two Dutchmen stared at Janos.

  Then Ollie fired a stream of bullets into Janos’s chest.

  Her friend and partner collapsed through the door. His legs extended across the bottom of the doorframe. His dropped pistol spun on the floor until it was a few feet from Alice. She looked up at the grinning killers, then scanned the room. She couldn’t see where the cop and Jennifer Chang had ended up.

  This was it. She and Janos used to joke that it didn’t matter if they saved money or took serious risks because they knew they would die young. There was no one in this line of work who didn’t die prematurely.

  She made a calculation quickly in her head, whether she had enough money in the bank to take care of her grandmother for the rest of her life. Not that there was anything Alice could do about it now.

  She made up her mind.

  She lunged out from behind the tables and grabbed Janos’s pistol with her right hand. As she was slipping back behind cover, both of the Dutchmen opened fire again, splintering the tables easily.

  A sharp pain radiated up her arm. It was what she imagined someone having a heart attack might feel. She looked down at her left forearm. Blood leaked out of a wound almost at her elbow. Her first bullet wound. Now she was pissed.

  She spun to the opposite end of the tables. The movement surprised the Dutch killers. They had been expecting her to pop out from the side closest to them. She could see the surprise on their faces as she fired three quick shots.

  Both men started to dive out of the line of fire. She lost sight of them completely.