The Getaway

EIGHT

The next morning, Wednesday, Archer stepped out onto Steinway Street from the west entrance to the subway, and started walking north up 34 Avenue. The sun was beating down, with no cloud cover or protective shade from the tall buildings of Manhattan, and Archer felt the intense heat on the back of his neck and arms as he walked up the street. He wore his sunglasses to protect his eyes from the white glare of the sun off the pavement, but he saw others passing him squinting as it temporarily blinded them. Looking down, he saw that some tarmac filler that had been packed into cracks in the sidewalk had started to melt, black and sticky. That was the way it went in New York City. Freezing cold in the winter, roasting hot in the summer.

He had come from Times Square, having slept in the hotel, and had spent much of the night letting the break-neck drive through the city fully sink in. Archer and Farrell had sat there in the car at Herald Square for a few further moments, then Farrell had asked him to take them back to Queens.

Archer was pissed.

He’d needed to drop his guard in order to let Farrell test him out, but no one put a gun to his head and escaped the consequences. It had taken a hell of a lot of willpower not to retaliate. The journey had taken about twenty minutes and Archer had pulled to a halt on the corner of 30 Avenue, under the subway line. They’d sat there for a moment, Archer trying to stay cool, thinking of the bigger picture, breathing slowly.

‘I own a gym,’ Farrell said, turning to him. ‘It’s on 38 Street, just past 34 Avenue. Meet me there tomorrow morning. 11 o’clock.’

Archer looked over at him. Farrell saw his expression.

‘Sorry about the gun, man. I needed to see how you were under pressure. You were good.’

Archer didn’t react. He didn’t move.

‘Eleven am. Trust me, you’ll want to be there. I’ll make all this worth your while.’

Archer had held his gaze, then stepped out. Farrell did the same and moved around the car. He climbed into the front seat and shut the door.

‘Eleven am,’ he’d repeated, through the wound-down window. ‘Don’t be late.’

And the car had sped off towards Ditmars Boulevard, disappearing out of sight.

The first thing Archer did next was go straight to his father’s apartment and get the 9mm Sig Sauer pistol. He couldn’t be shooting people, seeing as he was an English and not an American cop, but he needed a security measure, a bargaining tool, something to level the odds. He was angry at himself. Farrell had got the drop on him. He’d had to play along in order to gain their trust and get inside, but he hated being passive and was furious at himself for dropping his guard. But worst of all, he hated someone putting a gun to his head. That sure as hell wasn’t going to happen again.

He’d grabbed the Sig from its home in the nightstand and pulled the top-slide back an inch, seeing a bullet there in the chamber, confirming the weapon was loaded. He instantly felt calmer. Not all men were created equal, but Samuel Colt and his revolvers had made them so. He’d sat on the bed and breathed a sigh of relief, the gun in his hand.

Everything was OK. He’d passed the test.

He was in.

But it had been close. Razor-close. Way too close. If they’d hit one more red light or a pedestrian had decided to jaywalk, Archer would be with his father right now. The fire engine passing by had been a lucky break. He couldn’t count on getting that lucky again.

Regaining his composure, he’d grabbed a bag from the closet and tucked the Sig and two spare mags inside. He whipped around the apartment, grabbing anything that he figured he or his sister would want to keep, then walked out, locking the apartment and leaving for the last time. He wouldn’t come back here again. Farrell and his team now knew where this place was, and he didn’t fancy any more unexpected visits. He’d walked left and fast for the R train on Steinway and headed to the Marriott Hotel in Times Square, staying there for the rest of the day and all night, high up in his hotel room, the 9mm Sig hardly leaving his hand.

But the next day, having cleaned up and calmed down, Archer turned the corner on 34 Avenue and walked left down 38Street, the same street as his father’s apartment but three and a bit avenues west. He saw the sign to Farrell’s gym fifty yards up ahead, white lettering over a blue background. Astoria Sports Complex. Simple, and to the point. He approached the entrance and pulling open the door, ducked inside.

As he walked in, the air-conditioning blasted refreshing, frosty air into his face, cooling him and ruffling his hair. It was a couple of seconds of pure bliss, a brief moment’s escape from the baking heat outside; he moved through the cold air and walked into the gym. From where he was standing in the reception area, Archer could see straight away that the place was well-maintained. Straight ahead, he saw a swimming pool behind the windows of the reception desk. To the right of the pool were a series of separate designated lanes where swimmers were doing laps, and in the left corner some kids were playing in the water together with their parents. Behind them was another smaller pool, or maybe a Jacuzzi. Several people were in there, arms resting on the tiles, relaxing and chatting, taking a break from the merciless city heat.

To the right were two levels. Downstairs was the weight-room, lots of barbells, dumbbells and mirrors. He could see a load of guys in there working out, lifting weights, dance music pounding from speakers mounted on the walls around them. Upstairs, he could just see the tops of some people’s heads as they pedalled away on bikes. The machine room, he guessed, the two floors designed to separate the cardio bunnies and the meatheads. The place was clean and industrious, not the glamorous and expensive type of gym one would get in the city, but then again not the gritty and chalky basements you got at the other end of the scale. It was a legit business, a solid cover for Farrell, and Archer guessed it made him look good when he had to fill out his taxes.

The guy on the front desk had been sizing Archer up from the moment he walked in. He was in his mid-twenties, gelled-back hair, a diamond earring in his right earlobe and a tan that looked a little too golden to be real. He was wearing a white vest that was a size too small, making a statement, trying to show off the endeavours of his work in the room next door. He flashed a customary smile as Archer approached the desk, showing polished white teeth.

‘Looking to join?’ he asked.

Archer shook his head.

‘I’m looking for Farrell.’

The guy’s eyes narrowed. His courteous manner disappeared.

‘Who are you?’

‘A friend.’

Before the man could reply, Farrell appeared at the top of the stairs from the cardio room. He whistled down to the guy behind the counter and nodded. The guy with the earring saw this and pressed a button, looking back at Archer suspiciously. The turnstile to Archer’s right clicked, unlocking, and ignoring the guy behind the desk, Archer turned and passed through the turnstile, walking up the stairs to the second floor. When he reached the top of the stairs, Farrell didn’t bother with a greeting. He just turned, and walked off, Archer following him.

‘Gimme five more minutes,’ Farrell said, turning to him. ‘We’re just finishing up her workout.’

Looking around the level, Archer had guessed right. Up here there were lines of cycling and elliptical machines and stair-climbers, people in sports-wear on a few of them, working hard as they watched televisions mounted on the wall ahead. The air-conditioning was on full blast up here too, keeping the temperature nice and cool.

Past the lines of exercise equipment, Archer saw a martial arts cage had been set up across the level towards the wall. He saw Ortiz inside, gasping for air, drenched in sweat, her hands on her hips as she prowled around the black-fenced cage like an animal in captivity. She was wearing a black t-shirt, the sleeves jaggedly cut off, and white shorts, her feet bare, black four-ounce gloves on her hands. She paced around in large circles, recovering, but Archer saw her stop and stare at him when she realised he was here. Her face was cold. Another corner-man was standing beside her, an older guy with grey hair, grizzled and sinewy, looking like a former fighter who had been defeated by Father Time and had stepped outside the ring to corner up-and-comers instead. He was holding a bottle of water and he lifted it, Ortiz tipping her head to take a drink. She swilled and spat the liquid back out to the floor, still glaring at Archer. He got the message.

Farrell may have extended trust towards him, but she sure as hell hadn’t yet.

Farrell stepped back inside the cage, scooping up some red striking pads that had been left on the ground and hooking them over his forearms. The older guy with the water stepped outside the cage and moved to a timer, pressing a button. It beeped.

‘Let’s go!’ he said.

Farrell had the pads up, and Ortiz went to work.

Archer was expecting a spectacle, but she was truly vicious. From where he was standing he was surprised the pads didn’t burst considering the force she was hitting them with. She was exhaling sharply with every shot, so each strike was accompanied with a yell that made it more intimidating. Bambambam. She was working combos, firing elbows and kicks and fast punch sequences that were crisp, technical and brutally powerful. Farrell was knocked back every now and then by a blow that was really clean, especially her kicks where she torqued her hip and her shin crushed into the pad. Archer watched her work, and his memory flashed back to the street-fight on Monday night. He wondered if the guy she’d clinched and kneed in the face had woken up yet. He was probably still unconscious.

The workout upped in intensity as the five minutes went on, Ortiz’s stamina not dropping at all. She was in impressive shape. If anything, she actually gained momentum, her yells growing louder as she hammered violent combo after combo, strike after strike, into the pads Farrell had strapped to his arms. On the exercise equipment behind them, Archer noticed a couple of people turning at the noise, then looking away in the next instant, not wanting the woman in the cage to see them staring. After another minute or so, the buzzer sounded and the round ended.

‘Good job!’ the old guy outside called.

Farrell and Ortiz bumped fists, and she hunched over, catching her breath, drenched with sweat. Farrell nodded approvingly and stepped outside, pulling off the work-mitts and heading over to Archer.

‘She’s got a fight coming up?’ Archer asked, watching her recover from the workout.

Farrell shook his head. ‘No. Just staying sharp.’

Archer nodded, looking over at her inside the cage. She leaned back, hands on her hips, and glared over at him again, her chest heaving as she sucked in oxygen and as her body recovered from the exertion. She walked out of the side entrance to the cage which Farrell had opened, and the other trainer started pulling her gloves off. Farrell beckoned Archer to follow him and the two men walked over as the grey-haired corner-man pulled off the second glove. Ortiz grabbed the bottle of water resting on a chair with her white-wrapped hands and unscrewed the cap, drinking from it and sucking in gulps of oxygen.

‘What’s he doing here?’ she asked, panting, glaring at Archer, her accent Hispanic.

‘Both of you, come with me,’ Farrell said, headed for a side door and ignoring her question.

Archer didn’t move.

‘Ladies first,’ he said.

Ortiz stared at him, hostile, sweat dripping down her brow, the odd strand of hair from her corn-rows twisted and frizzed up in the air from the workout. Then she grabbed a white towel from a bench and wrapping it around her glistening shoulders, she followed her boyfriend towards the doorway, her t-shirt soaked with sweat.

Archer followed, but made sure to keep his distance.



The door opened onto a flight of stairs that led down through the back of the building. Farrell pushed open another door on the floor below, and walked ahead of them into a storage room.

No one was inside. The place was dimly lit, filled with brown boxes, some of them opened, containing white towels and t-shirts with the gym logo on the front. Farrell walked on, and pushed a stack of boxes out of the way at the end of the room on the right. He reached forward and pulled a second panel open on the wall, leading to another level. It was well-camouflaged, painted cream like the rest of the wall. Archer would never have guessed it was there. Farrell led the other two down the steps. Turning, Archer realised the older man, the corner-man, had followed them to the storage room, and had shut the secret door behind them. He heard the slide of the boxes being pushed back across the doorway, hiding it once again.

All three of them stood there in the red-brick tunnel, momentarily still, just a solitary light-bulb hanging from the ceiling providing light, the place old and damp and covered with cobwebs. Ahead of them Archer could see a thick metal door with a spin-dial lock, the kind seen on a bank vault. Farrell worked the dial three times. It clicked, and he reached for the handle, but suddenly turned, looking past his girlfriend at Archer.

‘You say a word to anyone about what you see in here, I’ll kill you. They’ll never find the body. Clear?’

Archer nodded, looking him in the eye.

Farrell looked back at him for a moment, then turned and opened the door.

This room was a basement, but unlike the storage room it wasn’t empty. There were a series of tables and chairs in the room, light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, the place gloomy and starkly lit. Across the room Regan and Tate were sitting at two tables in front of sewing machines, each machine purring as the men fed some dark fabric underneath, the needles hammering up and down the lengths of cloth. The two of them looked up as the trio entered, and Archer saw Regan glower under the white light from the bulb above.

‘What the hell is he doing here?’ he asked Farrell.

‘He’s joining us,’ Farrell said.

‘What? Are you crazy? Why?’

‘We went for a drive yesterday. He’s ten times better than Brown ever was. He’s solid.’

‘Who’s Brown?’ Archer asked, interrupting.

‘Our old driver,’ Farrell explained. ‘Unfortunately he had a medical condition.’

‘What?’

‘He couldn’t keep his mouth shut,’ Farrell said. ‘So Carmen shut it for him.’

Across the room, Regan went to argue but Farrell cut him off.

‘Save it, Bill. I don’t want to hear about it,’ he said.

Archer felt Regan’s gaze burning into him as the trio approached him and Tate. Up close, he saw that the cloth under the needle of each sewing machine belonged to two black jackets. Both of them were fully intact, no tears, no rips. It looked as if they were stitching something inside the cloth instead of mending it.

‘How’s it looking?’ Farrell asked Tate.

Tate paused in his work and lifted the black jacket from the machine, raising it upright on the table and grunting from the effort. It seemed heavy. He tapped the front twice with his free hand, and it gave two metallic thunks.

‘Solid,’ Tate said.

Farrell turned to Archer, pointing at the jacket.

‘Aramid and steel plates,’ he explained. ‘Body armour. That thing will stop a twelve gauge round, easy. Put that shit on with a bullet-proof helmet and no cop is ever going to stop you, not with their firepower. You ever see the North Hollywood shootout?’

Archer nodded. ‘I remember. 1997, right?’

‘That’s right. Two guys took on the entire Los Angeles Police Department outside a bank wearing that shit. The pigs shot over six hundred rounds at them and couldn’t put them down.’

‘What the hell do you need it for?’

Farrell paused a moment, then beckoned to his right.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

He moved to a door across the room, Ortiz following, the towel wrapped around her shoulders, taking mouthfuls of water from the plastic bottle as she walked. While Tate got back to work with the sewing machine, Regan was still glaring at Archer, contempt and a sneer on his face.

‘A*shole,’ he said.

‘Go for a nice walk yesterday?’ Archer replied, with a grin.

He saw the other man’s eyes narrow as he turned to follow Farrell and Ortiz into the side room to the right.

There was just a single table and four chairs under a light hanging from the ceiling in here, the walls and ceilings unadorned and unpainted, all dusty red brick and grey cement. There were a series of wide sheets of paper on the desk, harshly illuminated by the naked bulb above.

‘Shut the door,’ Farrell said.

Archer did so and glanced down at the sheets. He realised what they were.

Blueprints.

He looked closer. They were extensive floor plans, four pages stacked on top of each other which would mean four levels or floors. He examined the uppermost sheet. He saw designated seating areas, the boxes numbered from 1 to 428, around a central rectangular area. He saw four towers, A to D, on each corner.

And he saw the name of the building in the top right corner of the page. Gerry’s voice echoed in his head, three words, matching the three on the blueprint.

Madison Square Garden.

‘Take a seat,’ Farrell said.