Mickey squeezed his answer out through his fractured jaw. “Never saw him.”
“Would you recognize his voice?”
“No.”
The officer hesitated, almost bewildered. Of course he should recognize a voice…unless he was senile.
“What did he say to you?”
“Don’t remember.”
“What about his accent?”
“Cockney.”
Finally. At least the superintendent remembered something they could build on later. He pushed ahead.
“What were you doing on Azenby Road, sir?”
“Walking. Just walking.”
The officer watched Mickey’s eyes close, then shook his head while gazing down at the battered man, wondering why one of the top detectives in Metropolitan Police history had deteriorated so quickly in retirement. He thought again of his grandfather, and an answer appeared: Alzheimer’s. Perhaps he should call the superintendent’s wife, offer to help keep an eye on him; maybe even gather up some other officers and take turns. Clearly the old man shouldn’t be permitted to wander the streets alone.
The Russian was smart, Mickey thought as he listened to the officer’s footsteps fade toward the door. If they’d killed me, Peckham would’ve been swarming with police. No one gets away with murdering a retired superintendent. An assault case with no leads? Well, that’s an altogether different thing.
“Uncle Mickey’s hurt.”
The grim voice of Hixon Two followed a ringing that startled Gage and Faith as they sat on the couch near midnight watching the last embers in the fireplace turn dark.
“What is it?” Faith asked. “Jack? Did they take Jack back to the
ICU?”
Gage shook his head, then placed a hand on her arm.
“Will he be okay?” Gage asked Hixon Two.
Hixon Two took in a short breath, trying to maintain her soldier’s composure. “He’ll live. But they beat the bloody hell out of him.”
Gage covered the mouthpiece and turned to Faith. “Mickey’s been hurt.”
“Gravilov’s thugs,” Hixon Two continued. “Hammer and Britva. Ribs, right arm, right eye socket, jaw, a gash on his forehead.”
Gage winced at the image. “How did it-”
“He enjoyed the taste of work again, so he went out on his own.”
“I never should’ve-”
“Don’t blame yourself. He said you’d do that.”
“What was he thinking? These are dangerous people.”
“He was thinking that maybe he’d learn something that would help you. He started following Gravilov, but they led him into a trap. Azenby Road is a tiny street that dead ends at Warwick Gardens. He was trapped.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“He’s still under. They went in to find the source of internal bleeding and they’ll wire his jaw. I could tell he learned something, but they raced him into surgery before he could finish.”
Gage disconnected the call and remained sitting on the edge of the couch.
“Mickey thought he was invisible,” he told Faith, “like lost keys.” He felt himself well up. “I never should’ve gotten him into this.”
“It’s not your fault. The little jobs you gave him made him feel important, still useful in the world.”
Gage turned toward her. “But I always made sure somebody younger and stronger was with him.”
“He never realized it, did he?”
Gage shook his head. “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings…For something like this, he should’ve called me to come do it, not tried it himself.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to look stupid if he was wrong.”
“Sometimes it’s not worth being right.”
CHAPTER 48
H ixon Two called back early the next morning, catching Gage on the drive down the hill toward the flatlands and the Bay Bridge.
“He’s got a sparkle in his eye and is quite proud of himself.” The worry was gone from her voice.
“Wait till the painkillers wear off.”
“I don’t think it’ll make a difference.”
“Can he talk?”
“Yes, but he sounds like he has a lisping Chinese accent from a 1940s film. He kept saying he ‘crowsht a shirkle.’”
“Closed a circle? What’d he mean?”
“Get this.” She paused as she’d been instructed by Mickey to set Gage up for the surprise. “He spotted Gravilov coming out of Alla’s building three days ago.”
“Now that’s what I would call closing a circle.” The black hole left by Fitzhugh had been filled with Alla Tarasova. He paused, trying to visualize the possible orbits, then thought out loud. “Either she’s now Matson’s proxy or she’s got a separate deal with Gravilov. Maybe Slava is right, she and her father are working with Gravilov.”
But that was all step two. Step one was still Mickey.
“Do you think Gravilov had any idea why Mickey was following them? SatTek can’t be the only scam he’s got running.”
“No way to tell. They just beat him up and warned him not to talk. That’s it.”
After Hixon Two rang off, Gage found himself lost in circles. There were too many threads doubling back on each other, and he couldn’t get his head clear. He decided it was time to go beat on something. He cut off the freeway at the last exit before the bridge and headed east.
Twenty minutes later, Stymie Jackson came limping out of his East Oakland gym office. Gage had just slipped on his bag gloves. The sixty-eight-year-old former middleweight contender waved to Gage, then pulled up a stool next to the heavy bag.
“Where ya been?” he asked Gage. “You missed a few weeks.”
“A friend of mine is in a little trouble.”
Over thirty years since Stymie had first trained Gage for the police Olympics, he had learned never to ask Gage for details. He reached for the stopwatch hanging on a lanyard around his neck, and nodded.
Gage threw two left jabs and then a right uppercut that made the hundred-and-thirty-pound bag jump three inches.
“That’s it. Stick it. Jab, jab, power jab. Come on. Jab, jab, power jab. Step into it. Jab, jab, power jab.”
The word “trouble” echoed back. Gage then realized that there was something that had drawn him there. “My trouble” was the phrase Stymie always used to describe the day in the late fifties when he refused to take a fall in a fight. Chicago gangsters mangled his right leg as punishment, both for the money they’d lost and for not keeping his mouth shut. Stymie used to tell Gage: They was telling me that everybody’d be betting against me like crazy on the next fight expecting me to lose-and they’d let me win. The bad guys said it was for the good of the game. But their game really wasn’t boxing, it was something else.
Gage stopped punching. He wiped his brow with the backs of his bag gloves, then glanced around the empty
