The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

showers and hot plates. For cash, of course. Which aligned with Fisk’s interests. The Department had wanted him to get out of town and lie low until there was some closure in the leak case, meaning he was out of harm’s way from the Cartel. Fisk maintained that there was no better place for him than Manhattan, with its multitudes—on each block. Also he wanted to be here in order to work the leak case.
    Because he needed a name to rent this place, he’d chosen Reynolds. Common enough. The choice was also an homage to Scottie Reynolds, the leading scorer in Villanova basketball history. Fisk figured there was little risk that anyone would make the association: he himself had sunk a pair of free throws in the first varsity game he played at Villanova, the eighteenth game of the season during his sophomore year. At last check, his two points placed him in a twenty-three-way tie for 533rd place on the school’s all-time scoring list. Because he’d topped out at five-eleven and, mostly, because he was short on talent, he never made it into a second varsity game. Two points in a Division I game gave him celeb status in his rec league, though.
    He snapped on his trusty Pelican 7060—the compact, rechargeable mega-lumen tactical flashlights, popular in law enforcement. Pelicans retailed for about $150 apiece, which, if you asked cops, was a bargain. The 7060 featured a control switch on the barrel and a second one on the butt end so an officer could switch from low beam to high while tracking a perp, holding the light under his weapon or above his head. Fisk’s Pelican had become perhaps the most important home-furnishing element.
    The rooster’s crow was the default ring tone, evidently, on his latest prepaid cell phone, which sat on the pitted hardwood floor beside his new inflatable bed. Goddamn. With three rows of three giant app icons, the phone looked like a toy. Recognizing the number as an NYPD exchange, he hit answer and said, “Walker.” Kenny “Sky” Walker had been his favorite Knick as a kid.
    “Good morning, Detective Fisk,” came a familiar, grandmotherly voice. “It’s Sally in Chief Dubin’s office.”
    So much, thought Fisk, for his Walker alias, and the phone, notwithstanding the voiceprint and GPS scrambling apps on which he’d spent $29.98 and forty minutes of download time. He knew of four different electronic signal intelligence collection and analysis networks on which her mention of his name might raise the digitalequivalent of a red flag, if so desired by one of five hundred thousand people with the requisite clearance at seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies. Or by a single person at one of those agencies that the Cartel had gotten to. With that information, tracking him could be as simple for a hit man as using GPS.
    Here was the source of his paranoia: he knew too much about finding people like himself who did not want to be found. Fisk had never been a fan of karma.
    Fisk set the concern aside because a call of any sort from the Department at this hour almost certainly meant urgent business. “What’s up?” he asked.
    “The chief wants you to go to a meeting at eight thirty.”
    “Okay,” said Fisk.
    “At the New York Times .”
    Fisk wondered if Sally had called him in error. “A meeting at the Times ?”
    “On West Fortieth.”
    Times men referred to NYPD Intel as the NYKGB, and Fisk as Jeremy Badenov. Was Dubin, conscious of public image to a fault, offering him as a sacrificial lamb?
    “Any idea what this is about?” he asked Sally.
    “A homicide.”

CHAPTER 6
    F isk liked the printing house’s broad selection of exits—front, service/delivery, basement, and courtyard. Someone waiting outside in ambush had his chance of success reduced by 75 percent right off the bat. This morning, he chose the courtyard exit door, throwing a hip into the crash bar and drawing his Glock as he backed out.
    “Courtyard” was a euphemism for a two-hundred-square-foot patch of crumbling