A few minutes later, he walked away from Nathan's and headed for the boardwalk that ran along Brighton Beach. He noticed two large, tough-looking men lounging against a wall, wearing identical black leather coats. Aware that they'd fallen in behind him, he kept walking as he'd been told when he had called the number his former employer had sent him to arrange a meeting with Nadya Malovo's faux cousin, Boris Kazanov. "He'll tell you where and when. Just listen to what he has to say and let Nadya know," he was told.

For the millionth time, Knight second-guessed himself for telling Grale about Malovo. He'd orginally thought that he would inform Grale that she was in town, working for the feds, and had mentioned Kane, and then remove himself as her attorney.

But Grale had other ideas. "I cannot force you to stay on as her attorney or report on what she says," he said, "but you've seen the evidence against her; you know she has committed great evil and it is in her to do more. I can't do anything about her at the moment, but ridding the world of Kazanov would be a blow for righteousness."

Grale had not told him what he had planned for Kazanov, but he was sure it wouldn't be pleasant. It has to be better than what he's done to Kane, he thought, shuddering at the image of the insane former mayoral candidate. However, now he wasn't sure who would win a confrontation between Kazanov, his henchmen, and Grale, especially after seeing the size and demeanor of the men who were following him. He suspected that if Grale lost, Kazanov wouldn't think too kindly of the man who set him up.

Although he had been aware of Grale's vigilante activities when he lived with the Mole People, Knight had never committed any illegal acts, much less murder. He knew that others went with Grale on some of his hunting forays, but he'd never been asked to partic.i.p.ate. Until now.

"I understand that this form of justice isn't in you," Grale said. "But perhaps if I recount some of his past deeds, you'll feel better when he is gone." His friend had then gone on to describe several of the brutal, s.a.d.i.s.tic murders allegedly committed by the vicious Russian hit man until Knight was sick to his stomach and agreed to go ahead with the meeting. "But that's as far as I'll go and-" he began to say.

Grale had interrupted with a smile, his eyes bright with antic.i.p.ation of the meeting. "I wouldn't ask you to do more, brother," he said. "This is between me and one of the Evil One's minions."

When Knight called the number he'd been given by Malovo, a man with a heavily accented Russian voice answered, "Da?"

Knight responded as he had been instructed. "Nadya Malovo wishes to send her greetings to her cousin Boris," he said.

There was a moment's hesitation on the other end of the line and then another voice-this one deeper, rougher, and somehow more malevolent-spoke. "Who are you?" he asked gruffly.

"Um, I'm Nadya's attorney, am I speaking to Boris?" he'd replied.

Instead of answering, the man had given him an order. "In two nights, go to Nathan's in Coney Island," he'd said. "Buy a hot dog and fries and then walk down the boardwalk toward Coney Island Avenue. You will see two men, my men, but do not be alarmed. They will follow you ... for your protection." Knight could have sworn that the man chuckled when he said those last few words, then added, "The b.i.t.c.h's 'cousin' will contact you when he is sure you haven't been followed."

"Okay, I-" Knight started to reply.

"No more talk," the man snarled. "And, Mr. Attorney ..."

"Yes?"

"If this is a trick, your client's cousin will slit you open like a hog and eat your liver as you watch." Then the phone went dead.

The thought of being slit open and cannibalized was foremost in his mind as he approached a particularly dark area of the boardwalk where the lights on the path seemed to have been removed. Knight remembered how he had once read that the Brighton Beach area was also known as Little Odessa for its large number of Russian immigrants. The article had also noted that it was the New York home of the Russian Mafia, which it claimed was more violent than the worst street gang.

As he moved into the dark area of the boardwalk, Knight noticed that although it was a pleasant night for early spring, just a little cool with a slight ocean breeze, there were no strolling couples, or joggers, or anyone else coming toward him. Glancing behind, he could not see anyone following beyond the two hulking figures of Kazanov's men. He was alone.

Suddenly, a dark shadow separated itself from the stone wall on his left. A man larger than either of the two behind him stood in front, blocking his way. He could just make out the man's scarred and brutal face in the light of the half moon that had risen out to sea; his nose looked like a misshapen potato, bright feral eyes gleamed beneath heavy brows, and his breath stank when he opened his mouth to speak.

"Mr. Attorney," the man sneered. "What word do you bring me from my 'cousin' Nadya?"

"I ... I ...," Knight stammered, suddenly weak in the knees. He'd never felt such a palpable presence of evil before and his only thought was to escape. Where's Grale? Why am I alone? His terror threatened to consume him.

"'I ... I ... I ..., '" Kazanov mimicked. "Come, little mouse, before the cat swallows you or you p.i.s.s in your pants, what did she say? Or do I have to cut the words out of your mouth?" As he spoke, the Russian pulled a long, wicked-looking straight razor from his coat.

Somehow, Knight managed to squeak out the words he'd been told to say. "The Halloween party this year will be in the Village. And your cousin hopes you will bring the family."

Kazanov furrowed his brow and then laughed loudly but without humor. "Tell my cousin that we will be happy to attend," he said. "However, we will need a.s.surances that our traveling expenses will be covered. Do you understand?"

Knight nodded. "Yes, I'll tell her and-"

Out of the gloom behind Kazanov's men, a voice spoke. "Booger hong-ree," it said. "'Pare some change, misters?"

Kazanov snarled. "Beat it, you piece of c.r.a.p."

"By St. Peter, this poproshika smells like rotting meat," one of the men gasped as he and his comrade turned to face the large shadow that had materialized behind them. "Get away, sc.u.m."

In spite of his fear, Knight smiled slightly and even welcomed the stench of the Walking Booger, though he wondered what one man-even one as large as this one-could do against three. He quickly learned when with surprising speed, Booger stepped toward one of Kazanov's men and with one hand around his throat, lifted him off the ground like he was a bag of cotton. He then dropped the man to the boardwalk, where he lay choking and clawing at air, his larynx having been crushed by the immense hand of Booger.

The second of Kazanov's men moved to attack Booger but suddenly an arrow appeared in his back, and then another and another. He too fell to the boardwalk; he shuddered once and died in a pool of blood.

"You set me up! You die," Kazanov growled, and began to move toward Knight with his razor. But Knight felt himself lifted off his feet and tossed to the sand beyond the boardwalk.

It was now Kazanov facing off with Booger, who was as large as the Russian and fifty pounds heavier. But Booger had no intention of engaging him. Instead, he left that fight for the man who jumped to the boardwalk from behind the wall.

"Kazanov, your evil is at an end!" David Grale shouted.

The Russian whirled to face the new threat. "So, I will have to kill three now," he spat.

"You won't be killing anyone," Grale replied. "And don't worry about my friends, I am all that is needed to send your soul to h.e.l.l, from whence it came."

"I will slit your throat and pull your beating heart from it, ghoul!" Kazanov screamed, and lunged at Grale, slashing with his razor.

Lying in terror on the sand, at first Knight wondered why Booger merely watched his friend being attacked by the much larger man. But then he was reminded of his own feeble attempts to ward off Grale when they first met.

The Russian found himself cutting at air as his opponent moved easily beyond his reach. Ducking and weaving, Grale moved in quickly, slashing with his own crescent-shaped blade. He cut-an arm, a leg, across the big man's face-before Kazanov could react except to grunt in pain.

After several minutes of this, Kazanov stood panting, weaving slightly, now holding his razor as if to ward off another attack. "I will pay you beyond your wildest dreams to go," he offered.

"My wildest dreams are to see you and your kind gone from the world," Grale said. "In case you are wondering, you are experiencing what the Chinese call death by a thousand cuts. Your evil blood is draining from your body, and the more you exert yourself, the faster the Reaper approaches and the time of your returning to your master arrives."

Kazanov stumbled a bit forward, then caught himself. He seemed spent, his arm with the razor dropping to his side. He stumbled a bit more toward Grale, as if on his last legs, but it was a trick. Fiercely, he slashed at the robed opponent in front of him. "Die, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" he screamed.

The move nearly caught Grale as the razor cut through a sleeve of his robe. But it was not fast enough. The attack threw Kazanov's balance off and he fell to his knees.

As quick as a panther, Grale jumped behind him and, with one swift movement, cut the killer's throat from ear to ear. Kazanov dropped his razor and his hands went to his neck as though he could stop the blood that spurted from his arteries and veins. There was a gurgling sound as blood poured down his windpipe, and then he collapsed, his body twitching.

Grale stood for a moment over his opponent before bending over and wiping his blade on Kazanov's coat. Standing back up, he announced, "Thus another evil leaves the world."

Looking over at Knight, who was slowly picking himself up, he smiled, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. "Are you okay?" he inquired.

Knight shook his head and then leaned over and retched. When he finished, he looked again at Kazanov and then Grale. "This was revenge, not justice."

Grale looked back for a moment and then nodded. "You're right," he said. "But I'll leave the niceties of bringing evil men into courts, trying them, sending them to prison, and then letting them out again a few years later to brutalize and butcher more innocent people to the legal system." He then turned to Booger, who'd stood motionless the whole time. "Ready to go, my friend?" he asked.

The giant nodded. "Booger hong-ree."

Grale smiled. "So am I. What do you say we go get a hot dog at Nathan's?"

Booger smiled. "Yum, 'ot dog and fries."

"Sure, a hot dog and fries. You deserve it. Going to join us, Bruce?" Grale asked. "My treat."

Knight looked up at the stars and then shook his head. "No. I seem to have lost my appet.i.te. I'm just going to go home."

"Sweet dreams," Grale replied. Then he and Booger walked off toward the bright lights of Coney Island.

16.

"TAKING GILGAMESH OUT FOR A WALK, BABE," MARLENE called out over her shoulder as her 150-pound presa canario guard dog bounded around her legs like a puppy. When Karp didn't answer, she turned around to where he was sitting on the couch in the living room of their loft, apparently lost in thought. "Butch?"

Karp looked up suddenly as if he'd been dreaming. "What?"

"Dog. Walk," Marlene replied, holding up a leash.

"Oh, uh, no, thanks," he said absently, then pointed at the papers on the coffee table in front of him. "I want to look these over again."

Marlene sighed inwardly. She knew he was referring to the detective investigative reports, known as DD-5s, from the murder of David Ellis, which included the shooting of ADA Kenny Katz and subsequent killing of the shooter, Kathryn Boole, by one of the Reverend C. G. Westlund's bodyguards, Frank Bernsen.

What a week it had been for the media. First there were the shootings in front of the courthouse, which had been followed by a whirlwind of stories and editorials, some of which had even blamed her husband's insistence that the Ellises be tried for fostering the environment that pushed Kathryn Boole over the edge. Of course, Westlund had picked up on the theme and run with it.

The shootings had been followed two days later by the bizarre killings of a notorious Russian hit man, Boris Kazanov, and two of his known a.s.sociates on the boardwalk along Brighton Beach. According to the medical examiner's report, Kazanov had been cut dozens of times, none of them fatal, "but enough to cause the victim to lose a significant amount of blood while still living." The fatal wound had nearly severed his head.

If that hadn't been weird enough, one of the other victims-a man with a rap sheet as long as he was tall-had suffered a broken neck and crushed larynx. The coroner's report had noted bruising on the victim's neck, "consistent with finger and thumb marks left by a human hand ... a very large human hand." And, perhaps the oddest death of the three, the last victim had been pierced by three arrows, "any one of which would have been fatal," according to the ME.

Curious, Marlene had called Butch's cousin Ivgeny Karchovski, a Russian gangster living in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach, to ask if he might know something about the murders that the newspapers weren't reporting. Although involved in illegal activites, especially smuggling Eastern Bloc and Russian immigrants into the country and bootleg caviar and furs, Karchovski did not deal in drugs, weapons, or prost.i.tution, which made him okay in her book. He carried on his business quietly and without bloodshed unless threatened, at which point the former Russian Army colonel could be quite ruthless with his compet.i.tors.

"If it was a gang hit, no one is taking responsibility for it," Ivgeny told her. "It is good riddance though to a brutal monster, but it would take some-how do you Americans say ... gonads to take on Kazanov and his men. To be honest, I think he must have p.i.s.sed off a madman to have met such a fate."

Marlene had told her husband what his cousin said, but his response had been, "It's the Brooklyn DAO's problem." It was an atypically short retort for him, but she understood that his mind was on the shooting-and Westlund.

Obviously the trial had been postponed. One of the defendants was dead; the other, Nonie Ellis, who remained out on bail, had been hospitalized for acute depression and was basically incommunicado. And the lead prosecutor had suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder.

Katz had been fortunate that the bullet had pa.s.sed through his shoulder, nicking bone but missing the major blood vessels and nerves. He'd been released from the hospital two days after the shooting, and although he'd been ordered home for several more days' bed rest, he'd appeared in the office that afternoon ready to discuss how to proceed. But that still had not been decided.

Marlene knew that Butch was torn over what to do. The legal justification behind the original reckless-manslaughter charge still applied to Nonie Ellis. But her husband was a compa.s.sionate man who believed in tempering justice with mercy, and it grieved him that the woman had not only lost her son but now her husband.

What to do about Nonie Ellis wasn't the only aspect of the shootings that troubled her husband. On the surface, Boole's actions appeared to confirm Gilbert Murrow's fears. A mentally unhinged follower of Westlund had snapped and acted upon his virulent rhetoric.

However, Butch thought there was more behind it. "I understand why she chose to shoot at Guma and Katz, and then me," he'd told her earlier that evening. "Westlund has pretty much painted us as devils incarnate to his followers. But her first target was Ellis, and that bothers me. Apparently, she must have heard that he planned to plead guilty, and I guess I can see that Boole would view that as a denunciation of her guru. But was that enough to scream 'Judas' and gun David down in front of a courthouse in broad daylight and then start blasting away at us? I wonder if Westlund and his henchmen were aware that David Ellis was going to give a Q & A statement." He'd tapped the yellow legal pad he always carried with him when dissecting the facts surrounding a case. "I'd give a year's salary to know what Ellis was going to say."

According to the police reports, Boole had not left any written or verbal statements to indicate her thinking in the hours and days before she acted. She lived in a small apartment near the Avenue A building and apparently didn't have a computer, so there were no e-mails, nor were there handwritten notes. "The apartment was clean," Fulton had told Karp, "almost too clean, but the homicide guys got there pretty d.a.m.n quick and sealed it off. No one would have had time to sanitize it."

"At least not after the shooting," Karp added.

Karp had been particularly incensed that Westlund had profited from Boole's death. She apparently owned the building that housed the End of Days Reformation Church of Jesus Christ Resurrected, as well as the preacher's living quarters, and she'd left it all to him, in addition to the rest of her estate.

"Well, wasn't that convenient for him," Marlene said. "A win-win. The trial goes away, maybe. David Ellis is dead so whatever he was going to say went with him to the grave, and so does the opportunity to ask Boole, a middle-aged widow with no prior record, why she decided to commit murder. To top it all off, he gets her building, which has to be worth a ton, plus her money."

"And a life insurance policy made out to him," Karp added, clenching his jaw. "And where'd she get the gun? It was unregistered, with no fingerprints on it except for hers."

Westlund's bodyguard Frank Bernsen had been arrested at the scene. But as he'd claimed immediately after the shooting, he had a concealed-weapons license and had acted to prevent Boole from shooting Karp. The police reports bore out his version of events: that after shooting Ellis and Katz, Boole had turned her gun on Karp; when, after first lowering it, she'd raised it again as if to fire, Bernsen shot first.

Initial reports had not turned up much on Bernsen. He'd apparently served in the military and had a few misdemeanor a.s.saults and a DUI, but no felonies-which would have prevented him from getting a concealed-weapons permit-and no prison time.

Marlene was glad that Bernsen had pulled the trigger, or she might have been a widow. But she knew that didn't make her husband feel any better about the woman's death.

There was even less on Westlund than Bernsen. All they knew was that he was originally from West Virginia and had worked as a coal miner until apparently deciding to become a minister. His "divinity degree" was of the mail-order variety, but there were no laws against that.

"You think he was behind it," Marlene said before Gilgamesh let her know that it was time to go out for his last walk of the night.

"Believing someone is factually guilty of a crime doesn't mean I have the evidence to do anything about it," he'd replied, citing the mantra of his office. "But someday, I'd like nothing better than to make that son of a b.i.t.c.h pay for this."

"We'll be back in a half hour," Marlene said, but her husband had already gone back to looking at the DD-5s, so she opened the door and took the elevator down to the street-level exit.

As she left the building with Gilgamesh and turned north to walk up Crosby, Marlene became aware that a shadowy figure on the other side of the street was walking in the same direction. She paused when the person began to cross.

"Marlene Ciampi?" a woman's voice inquired. She was dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt that shadowed her face.

Marlene looked down at Gilgamesh, who was attentive and watching the stranger, but he wasn't growling or giving any other signal that he sensed danger. She decided to go with her dog's intuition.

"Yes," she replied. "And who are you?"

The woman stopped between two cars parked next to the curb near where Marlene stood. She looked up and down the block and then pulled back the hood of her sweatshirt. "My name is Nonie Ellis," she said. "I believe you know who I am."

Marlene's jaw dropped. "I thought you were in-"

"In the hospital." Ellis finished the sentence. "I was. They let me out this evening."

"Why-"

"Am I talking to you? Because I think there are some things your husband should know about C. G. Westlund."

Marlene pointed to her loft building. "Apparently you know where we live," she said. "Butch-my husband-is upstairs. Why don't you come talk to him yourself?"

Ellis shook her head. "I'm scared," she replied. "I think Westlund got Kathryn Boole to kill my husband. But I'm not going to testify against him. You can investigate what I tell you, and I hope you and your husband can do something with it. But when we're done talking, I'm leaving town."

"I'm pretty sure the terms of your bail require you to remain in the city," Marlene noted.

"It does, but I don't care," Ellis replied. "I'm going."

"My husband would see that you're placed in protective custody," Marlene argued. "You'd be safe."