The Mark Read online

  I stepped behind a pillar—just in case—and waited.

  The train stopped, the doors opened and I stepped inside. When the doors closed behind me and the car began to move, I knew I was alone. I took a deep breath and sat down.

  An elderly woman seated across the aisle eyed me with contempt, shaking her head with disdain. Could she know?

  Then I looked down and noticed the Penthouse still in my hands. I smiled, shrugged my shoulders and held the mag up for her to see.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Thought it was Newsweek.”

  13

  I t took everything Blanket and Charlie had not to turn around, to simply stare at the man following them. Blanket looked to his right, saw Charlie biting his lower lip, and knew they were thinking the exact same thing. Mere steps behind them was the most brutal and cold-hearted killer they had ever known, and for men in their profession they’d known every cutthroat, backstabbing, soulless bastard to walk the earth. But he was different. He scared the life out of two men who’d grown up frightened of nothing.

  The musty smell of the basement had grown all too familiar this morning. Blanket listened to the footsteps behind him, the enigma nearly silent. He’d only seen the man briefly—opening the front door to let him in—and was now doing his very best to hide his quickening heart rate and sweaty palms.

  “Almost there,” Charlie’s voice rang out. A pointless statement, Blanket thought, said just to see if the man would respond.

  “Watch your head,” said Blanket, ducking under a swinging bulb. He eyed Charlie again. They shared a smile.

  At the large door in the building’s sub-basement, Blanket rapped the code. The metal slot opened. A pair of eyes looked out at Blanket and Charlie, unimpressed. Then they caught sight of the man behind them. The eyes widened. The man behind the door whispered.

  “Is that…him?”

  Blanket nodded solemnly.

  The door swung inward. The three men entered. This ghost, whom powerful men like Michael DiForio called when they needed odds tipped in their favor, a man whom the shroud of death hovered over permanently, was mere inches behind them. That Michael had summoned him only underlined the severity of last night’s incident.

  As they entered the large conference room, a dozen men, none of whom had ever bowed to any man save Michael DiForio, stood, craning their necks for a better look. With no empty chairs available, Blanket and Charlie stood on either side of the door as it slammed shut. After a tense few moments, the men all sat down. Except Michael DiForio.

  “Welcome,” Michael said. “Glad you could make it on such short notice. Hope I didn’t interrupt your morning tennis game.”

  The man said nothing. For the first time Blanket was able to see him clearly.

  He stood a shade over six-four and looked slightly north of two hundred pounds. His brown hair was done in a Caesar cut, short bangs dripping over his forehead. He wore a black leather jacket—not frayed, but worn—and dark pants. Blanket estimated the man’s age in the early thirties. But his dark eyes were reminiscent of policemen who’d been on the beat far too long, men who’d seen the depths of hell and had sunk too far to ever return.

  “Michael,” the Ringer said. He bowed his head slightly, more a formality than out of respect. “I don’t imagine you called to talk trivialities.”

  DiForio grinned and said, “No, I didn’t. So let’s get right to business. You know, that’s what I’ve always liked about you. No bullshit. Cut right to the chase.”

  Blanket noticed Charlie fidgeting, his fingers clenching and unclenching. They were in the presence of a ghost of the New York underworld, a man whose past was well-documented, revered like a disturbing bedtime story, and feared to the point of paralysis.

  The Ringer had cut his teeth as a professional assassin at the tender age of fifteen. He worked as a contract man for low-level hoods, men who didn’t care if the job was a little sloppy, a little too bloody to keep under wraps. The Ringer killed with a vicious disregard for cleanliness or subtlety. His targets were drug dealers who skimmed profits, middlemen who didn’t deliver payments on time. Small-timers. Deaths the cops would pay little attention to. Lives that wouldn’t be missed. Barely into manhood, the Ringer was a minor leaguer with all the ruthless tools to make the majors.

  Once word spread of his brutal efficiency, the Ringer was given a healthy retainer to work exclusively for a single organization whose last mercenary for hire was found missing several vital organs and smeared across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. This new employer offered the Ringer his first meaningful assignment: the assassination of a rival organization’s consigliere, a power play that would have citywide ramifications.

  The Ringer ambushed the man at a trendy nightclub, killing three bodyguards in a spray of gunfire and smoke and blood. But somehow in the mayhem, the target survived. And for the first time, there was a living man who could identify the Ringer.

  Two days later, four armed men broke into the Ringer’s home, a fifth-floor brownstone on the lower east side. The shotgun blast that buckled the front door woke him and his wife, a struggling actress named Anne who was just a notch below gorgeous and talented enough to make the big-time.

  The Ringer killed one man before the assailants fired a second shot. Realizing they had little chance of outfighting three armed men, the Ringer took his bride and ran for the fire escape. Then a bullet caught him in the lower back. The assassins grabbed him by his numb legs, pulled them back inside. One held them at gunpoint while the others doused the apartment with gasoline and ripped out the gas pipe from the stove.

  The lead gunman leaned over the Ringer’s limp body and said, “This is your first and last lesson, asshole.” Then he put the barrel of the gun to Anne’s head and pulled the trigger.

  The Ringer took another bullet in the chest. One of the gunmen lit a cigarette, took a puff and offered it to the Ringer, who lay dying on the bedroom floor. Before leaving, the gunman tossed the lit cig into a puddle of gasoline.

  Your first and last lesson.

  As flames spread through the apartment, the Ringer managed to drag himself to the window, hurling his maimed body onto the fire escape. He tumbled down a flight of steps, then the apartment erupted in a massive fireball.

  Four weeks later, all of the assassins were dead, their body parts strewn throughout the city with the precision of discarded cigarette butts. All save one man. One man who’d survived the Ringer’s vengeance. One man who was never hunted down. And it was that man, the lone gunman who’d somehow escaped his rage, the man who’d sent a bullet crashing through his lover’s head, who kept the Ringer’s heart beating to this day.

  The Ringer was dead to the world. Another statistic for the FBI. Another record closed. Two charred bodies were found in the smoldering wreckage. One was Anne, the other a failed assassin. The authorities assumed the Ringer had been caught in the blast. Now, years later, his name and face were a mystery to everyone but those he killed for.

  But the Ringer’s soul, his lost love, was the driving force behind every murder. The picture of Anne he kept in his breast pocket.

  Right before climbing onto the fire escape, cradling his wife’s body in his arms, the Ringer managed to grab an old photograph from the dresser. The photo was of Anne, sitting on a sandy beach wearing a beautiful yellow dress, an orange sun dipping over the horizon. It was taken the first night of their honeymoon. As blood leaked from his body, the Ringer put this photo into his right breast pocket. The photo was his final memory of the woman he’d loved so dearly, the only memory left of her. Anne’s photo was his second heart, and it beat with the venomous blood of a man whose thirst for vengeance could never be quenched.

  He would never love again, never care for another soul, living every day only to avenge his lover’s death. And someday, everyone knew he would.

  This was the man standing two feet from Blanket.

  DiForio walked around the table. He held a newspaper in his hand. Blanket recognized the pictu
re on the front. Nobody had to say a word. As soon as the Ringer accepted the job, if he accepted the job, Henry Parker’s life was over.

  DiForio held the front page up for the Ringer to see, then handed it to him. The man didn’t even look at it.

  “Henry Parker,” DiForio said, “has something that belongs to me. A package with some important materials that I can’t afford to lose. I need you to bring it to me. And when that’s done, I want Parker to disappear.”

  The Ringer didn’t move. DiForio looked him over.

  “Don’t you need a notepad or something? Jot all this down?” Michael asked. The Ringer stared straight at DiForio. His eyes showed nothing.

  Michael continued. “We have one source rather close to the investigation. We know that the police haven’t found Parker yet and that they expect him to try and flee the city. Most major departure points are guarded—Port Authority, JFK, LaGuardia. They think there’s a possibility he got on the Path. You know, the train that goes to Jersey?”

  “He didn’t do that,” the man said.

  “Oh, no?” DiForio said, amused.

  “No,” the Ringer said, his voice monotone. “If Parker’s going to run, it’s not going to be across the Hudson. It’s going to be far, far away from here.”

  “How do you know that?” Michael asked.

  “Because that’s what I would do.” The Ringer thought for a moment. “Parker will need clothes and money. If he tries to use a credit card, the cops will be on him in no time. Get me his credit card numbers. There are too many variables the police can control that we can’t. They have more manpower. They’ve already started looking. We’re playing catch-up.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Hopefully Parker is as smart as his pedigree suggests. He’s not going to make stupid mistakes. With any luck, he’s already fled and we’re on even footing with the Department of Justice. Have the police started running taps yet?” DiForio looked at Blanket, who gulped, then spoke.

  “They, uh, yeah. They’ve got taps up and running to, let’s see…his girlfriend, this Mya Loverne broad who’s a Columbia law student and…”

  “Daughter of David Loverne. Where else?”

  “His parents’ house in Oregon.”

  “What else?”

  “Cell phone, too. Police couldn’t find one at his apartment, they assume he still has it. They’re keeping a tap in case he’s stupid enough to carry it around.”

  “He won’t. If he’s smart he’ll lose the cell phone,” the Ringer said. “Is that all?

  “For now, yeah.” The Ringer nodded.

  “Now, your price,” DiForio said. He fixed his tie and took a glass of water from the table. He put it to his lips but didn’t drink. The room was silent, half the eyes on the Ringer, the other half on DiForio.

  “I’m offering your usual fee,” Michael said. He hesitated a moment, took a small sip of water, then added, “Times two.”

  The Ringer shook his head. “Ten,” he said.

  DiForio whistled. “A million bucks. That’s a rich asking price to track down one hippie kid asshole.”

  “You wouldn’t have contacted me if Parker wasn’t threatening the sanctity of your organization,” the Ringer said derisively. “I’d be working against the police and federal government to find a man wanted for the murder of a New York police officer. The price is one million. That or nothing.”

  DiForio looked at the ceiling, as though consulting the God of asbestos, then looked back and said, “Let’s split the difference. Five hundred K.”

  Without warning, the Ringer turned, opened the door and left the room.

  “Don’t you walk out on me!” DiForio yelled. The Ringer ignored him and began to disappear down the corridor. “Hey, asshole, I didn’t say you could leave!”

  The Ringer turned around. His eyes held no interest in anything DiForio said.

  “Your time is almost up, Michael. You won’t find Henry Parker. At least not before the police do. And from the look in your eyes, I can tell you’d rather not have the police find this package.” Blanket watched as DiForio’s face reddened, his jaw muscles tightening.

  The Ringer turned to leave. Then Michael spoke.

  “I meant to ask you,” DiForio said, the faintest glimmer of a smile on his lips. “How’s your wife?”

  Blanket gasped. A hush fell over the room.

  The Ringer stopped dead in his tracks. Slowly the killer’s head dipped into shadow. When he turned around, even in the darkly lit hallway, Blanket could see that his eyes were burning fire, hatred he never knew a mortal man was capable of.

  Swiftly the Ringer stepped back into the meeting room. He whipped a pistol from his coat and pressed it to the base of Charlie’s neck. He took a moment to look at DiForio, then squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet into Charlie’s skull. The blast thundered around the small room as hands leapt to cover shattered eardrums. Charlie’s eyes flickered, his brain and skull sprayed against the wall like a bloody Rorschach.

  “Charlie!” Blanket yelled as his friend’s lifeless body slumped to the floor. He looked at the Ringer with murder in his eyes. The man returned the glare, icy cold, and Blanket looked away. The Ringer turned his gaze to DiForio, the smoking pistol tracing a straight line to the powerful man’s heart.

  “This entire room can die before you open your mouth again,” the Ringer said. “Now if you open your mouth and I don’t like what I hear, not only will this package disappear but I’ll hang the head of every miserable scum in this room from the tallest building in the city, and I’ll watch the sun roast your ugly faces every single day until all that’s left are your rotted, hollow skulls.”

  DiForio barely seemed to notice either this or the dead man slumped against the wall. Instead he smiled and tented his hands in front of him.

  “One million it is,” Michael said. “For that I want my package and Henry Parker. The package I want delivered without a scratch. Parker…his condition is entirely up to you.”

  The Ringer nodded slowly and stepped outside.

  14

  T he Ringer slipped into his black Ford and closed the door. He could feel the warm sun on his face. He sank deep into the leather seat, closed his eyes and began the process.

  His hand moved absently to his chest, stopping at the slim bulge in his shirt pocket. His fingers felt what lay beneath, pressed on it gently, making sure not to leave a mark or a dent. After so many years the photo was worn, faded around the edges, but the colors were still strong and vibrant. Just like his memory of Anne. The only woman he’d ever love in this lifetime.

  In his mind’s eye he could see her face, her stunning blue eyes. He could almost touch her, feeling the silky strands of her hair as she gazed at him with a happiness he never knew existed. Anne had accepted the life he’d chosen. A selfish life, but one he would have abandoned in a heartbeat if he knew its consequences.

  Breathing in, he could smell a hint of her favorite perfume, the acrid scent of sweat as they made love. Her soft moans and touches on his back, fingers tickling his senses, knowing just how to make him shiver. She was his first and his last. His only.

  Anne.

  Then agony ripped across his face as he saw blood splashed over his hands. Her eyes contorted into shock and then glazed over as she fell, dead, into his arms. His wails shook the walls as flames began to lick the ceiling. Cries that God himself must have heard. Cries that made the devil smile.

  He saw his wife’s killer in the darkness, the knitted hood obscuring his features. Hands pale, skin soft. A young man. Only his eyes and mouth were visible. Eyes the Ringer would never forget.

  His retribution was almost complete. There was only one man left.

  The Ringer opened his eyes and picked up the newspaper. He looked at the photo of Henry Parker. Just twenty-four. Already a killer. Just like him.

  In his mind’s eye the images slowly merged and became one, Henry’s face transposed as Anne’s killer. When he was finished, the shrouded
face of the man who’d killed his wife was replaced by Henry Parker.

  And now Parker was responsible for Anne’s death. A death waiting to be avenged. Hatred for this young man boiled up inside the Ringer. The tendons in his fingers tensed as he gripped the steering wheel, blood pounding in his temples.

  The Ringer started the car and pulled onto Seventh Avenue, away from the old church where he’d been summoned, whose recesses currently housed some of the most remorseless men ever to walk the earth.

  He cracked the window, let the breeze in.

  Removing a cell phone from his pocket, the Ringer dialed the first number on his list. He had lots of calls to make.

  He had a killer to find.

  15

  I rode the subway like a man about to go in for surgery: eyes wide open, fear coursing through my veins, waiting for someone to burst through the door bringing pain and suffering. Palms flat on my seat, I was ready to shove off and run at the first sign of a uniform. Paranoia was a trait I hadn’t been exposed to often—aside from an ill-advised pot binge my sophomore year—and it seemed to enjoy taking over my body. My leg stung like hell, but the blood flow seemed to have stopped.

  After a grueling sixteen-minute ride, I got off at the Union Square station and walked outside. The slight May breeze swirled around me. Demonstrators were chanting on bullhorns and holding well-made picket signs and L.L. Bean knapsacks, protesting corporate greed in style.

  Ordinarily I’d stop and watch for a few minutes, but I was more concerned with the other people watching them. The cops. Standing by, hands on their hips, observing the docile demonstration. Making sure the crowd of neo-hippies didn’t start tossing hemp bricks at the Virgin megastore.