Michael Ledwidge: Alert

“Where are we?” I said.

“Brooklyn. Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. That’s Kingsborough Community College right there. We think he ran in there. Don’t worry, we’re on it. A dozen agents are on his tail. We’re going door-to-door.”

I immediately hopped the guardrail and started running across the parking lot.

“Mike, stop! What are you doing?” Emily yelled at my back. “You need a doctor.”

I didn’t have time to explain. I was probably still half in shock or something after the accident and beating, but wherever he was I had to find the crazy old evil prick. There was nothing this guy wouldn’t do to get away — no depths he wouldn’t stoop to. He had no qualms about killing another innocent person. I had to find him if it was the last thing I did.

I passed a guard shack and came down some steps and was running past a building when I noticed one of its doors was slightly open. I creaked it open some more, then I heard feet pounding on the stairs inside.

I ran in and up and got to the second floor just as the person left the stairwell onto the third floor. I was coming through the third floor’s swinging door into a dark hallway five seconds later when I felt something on my face, and a wire was tightening around my neck.

I was just able to get my hands in as the old bastard tightened the garrote. It was a steel wire, incredibly fine, like titanium dental floss. Blood squirted as it slid deep into the edges of my palms above my wrists.

I bulled back into him. We went through the swinging door into the stairwell and tumbled backwards, banging down the stairs. The garrote slackened as I fell on him on the landing, and I ripped the wire away from my neck with a hiss of breath.

I crawled to my feet, blood freely pouring from the cut meat of my palms. I turned as the old Russian was taking something out of his pocket. It was a straight razor.

Before he could cut me again, I kicked him in the right ear. I center-massed my size-11 Nunn Bush wingtip oxford right in his ear. Hard. I booted him like I never kicked anything in my life. His head slammed back at the crushing impact and bashed off the radiator with a low gong as the straight razor went flying.

As he was sitting there, stunned, I lifted him by his lapels with my bloody aching hands, yanked him up and off his feet, and with every nanoparticle of panicked strength I had in me, threw the evil old prick as hard as I could backwards down the next flight of stairs.

He was facedown when I got to him, his nose bleeding. I lifted him up again. I thought of all the people he had come a hair-breadth from wiping out, people like my kids. How he’d tried to kill me a split second before.

I was about to send him flying down the stairs again when Emily and two other agents came running up.

“Mike, we got him! You got him!” she said. “It’s over!”

It was around midnight when Emily and I arrived back at the Broad Street FBI building, across from the stock exchange. We were in the underground lot, and about half a dozen New York — office FBI guys were taking the old KGB bastard who’d just tried to kill me none too gently out of one of the other cars.

“Mike, you want to help book and interview this guy? You’re the one who found him,” Emily said.

“Nah, you guys take it,” I said, holding up my bandaged hands. “I’ve spent enough time with him. Believe me. Besides, I told Fabretti that I’d disappear before the reporters showed. He’s all yours. Tell the FBI they can’t say I never gave them anything.”

“You want me to drive you back to your apartment?”

“I’ll catch a cab. You need to debrief that snake.”

“You sure? You’ve been through hell today, Mike. It’s okay to have some help. Or at least some company.”

I went over and gave her a hug.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said in her ear. “You’ve done enough already, friend.”

I came up out of the ramp of the garage onto shadowed Broad Street. I made a drunk guy walking past in a suit laugh as I saluted the flag on the stock exchange and then the statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall. Then I proceeded to walk past Wall Street to Chinatown and then Little Italy until I found the Bowery.

It was a gorgeous night. It had rained a little as we were coming back from Brooklyn, but it was clear now. The neon signs in the bar windows and brake lights up the avenues were vivid as high-def against the night.

I walked through Nolita and smiled as I arrived at Astor Place, where I used to get New Wave haircuts with my buddies. Afterward we’d go to the pizza place on the corner, which had the greatest slices known to man. I remembered being a teenager, standing out on the plaza where the cube sculpture was, smoking cigarettes with my goofball friends, staring down the punk rockers as we tried to get girls’ phone numbers. The few numbers we’d scrape together we’d scrawl on scraps of paper and napkins and keep under our mattresses like precious medals.

All those years ago, I thought, smiling. It really was a wonder, like Emily had said. This city. How many ghosts? I wondered. How many memories and dreams and aspirations packed in and out of how many walls? Who knew what would happen tomorrow? But I was glad I’d been part of keeping this old wonder rolling for at least another day.

I went left on 14th Street to Union Square and walked through some skateboarders rolling around the empty farmers’ market and past the closed doors of the Barnes & Noble. I found Broadway and pushed north.

It was coming on 2:00 a.m. by the time I got to my building on West End Avenue and stepped off the elevator onto my floor.

I truly was bamboozled by all the noise coming from behind my closed apartment door. There was laughing and distinct whooping.

A party? I thought. Who was old enough to party till 2:00 a.m.? Seamus was too old, I thought as I turned the lock and pushed open the door.

“Michael! You’re home!” Mary Catherine said, standing there wide-eyed on the front-hall carpet, surrounded by the kids.

I stood there, stunned frozen, with my fingers still on the key in the lock.

How? I thought. Wasn’t she still in Ireland?

Then I wisely dispensed with all that and did the only sensible thing.

I let the door bang closed behind me as I slammed into Mary Catherine and hugged her for all I was worth.

“I love you, too,” she finally whispered in my ear.