That cracked up the rest of the crew, and the smell of bourbon breath now mixed with that of burned meat.
“Let’s walk,” the man said, but the goons practically lifted me out of the back of the van and onto a concrete floor. We walked about ten steps, and from the echoes I could tell we were in a spacious place. We stopped, and a noisy roll-down gate closed behind me. I was inside a big garage, or a warehouse.
This can’t be good.
Someone tugged at my blindfold, and it dropped to the floor. No one said a word during the short time it took for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting and focus on the two men in front of me. The sight startled me. A young, handsome man was hanging by his wrists from a chain. He’d been hoisted up by a pulley system that was used to lift car engines. He was naked from the waist up, the expression on his face one of utter terror. The other man-a guy with burns on the right side of his neck and a deformed right ear-looked at me with a familiar stare-the stare I’d seen last fall, sitting across the table from him at Sal’s Place.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The two thugs standing behind me snickered. The man’s cold stare was more than enough to silence me.
“The name’s Burn,” he said. Finally, he looked away and picked up a soup can from the floor, flicking something toward the hostage. A small glob of goo about the size of a silver dollar stuck to his bare chest. Then he struck a match and looked at me.
“Call Vanessa,” he said in an even tone.
“Who?” I asked.
Without expression, he brought the lit match to the glob on the prisoner’s chest. It burst into flame, and the screaming was unbearable. He kicked and writhed, crying out in pain for a long time-an eternity for him, no doubt. Finally it burned out. The man hung limp from his wrists, his chest and stomach heaving with exhaustion from the excruciating pain.
Burn flung another glob of goo at him. This one stuck to his stomach.
The prisoner groaned and sobbed at the mere thought of round two. “Please, no! Stop!”
Burn lit another match. “Call her,” he told me.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about!” I shouted.
“Vanessa,” he said, “your way-too-clever first wife. The one who ended your phone conversation by firing off her own gun just to make us think she’d been shot.”
Ivy hadn’t been shot. Thank God. But they were monitoring my cell, just as Ivy had feared.
“Why do you call her Vanessa?”
He flicked the flaming match at the glob on the prisoner’s stomach. It was the same horrific result-the screaming, the kicking, the smell of burning flesh. I looked away, unable to watch, and had my hands not been bound I would have covered my ears. The unbearable sounds and smell nearly brought me to my knees.
When the flame had finally burned out, the sadist walked toward me, the soup can in hand. He grabbed my T-shirt by the collar and ripped it down to my third rib. Then he flung the rest of the goo at my chest. It smelled of gasoline as it oozed down my sternum.
“Call her, and tell her to come and get you.”
“I don’t know how to reach her. I swear.”
His expression was like ice. He lit a match.
“I’m not lying!”
“Call her.”
“I don’t know how to reach her. I don’t. I really don’t.”
Burn stared into my eyes. It could have been the smell of the other man’s charred flesh in the air. Or the remains of Tony Girelli in the body bag. Or perhaps it was the burning match about to ignite the flammable goo all over my chest. Whatever it was, he seemed to believe me.
He blew out the match. Then he jutted his face just inches from mine. There was no bourbon on his breath. The leader of this group was stone-cold sober.
“If you go to the police,” he said, “we will find you. Talk to anyone, we will find you. The only exception is Vanessa. I want you to tell her exactly what you saw here tonight. Tell her you met Ian Burn, and that he has granted the two of you your final pass. Do you understand?”
I wasn’t sure why he kept using the name Vanessa, or what he meant by giving Ivy and me a pass, but I wasn’t going to push my luck by pressing for information. “I understand.”
Burn stepped away from me and gave a nod to one of his men. Before I could react, I felt the jab of a needle in my thigh and the cold pressure of an injection. The garage was starting to blur as the men walked me back to the van. The rear doors opened. Someone said something-he seemed to be talking to me-but my mind couldn’t process the words. I felt my feet leave the floor, but it was someone else’s doing. They shoved me into the back of the van like a dead animal. I lay there, motionless. I heard the engine start, and there was one more scream-far worse than the earlier ones. The doors closed, the van lurched forward, and then I heard nothing.
45
IT WAS STILL NIGHTTIME WHEN I WOKE ON THE SIDEWALK. MY T-shirt was ripped, but someone had cleaned the goo from my chest. Instinctively, I reached for my cell, but it was gone. I started to get up, then stopped.
Whoa, my head.
I moved slowly. Whatever Burn’s men had injected into my leg was still in my system, but I fought through it. I rose up on one knee, let my head adjust to going vertical, then climbed all the way to my feet. Slowly, things came into focus.
A quiet dead-end street. Red-brick apartment buildings rising up ten or twelve stories on either side. Tree roots pushing up slabs of the concrete sidewalk. Still in a fog, I walked toward the intersection, which was completely without traffic. I had no idea what time it was, but it had to be late. I looked up the street, and the familiar cantilever truss structure of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge told me where I was. A glance back at the green-and-white street sign at the intersection confirmed it: SUTTON PL. I was just a block from my apartment. Mallory’s apartment.
Then I heard that scream again-but only in my mind-and it hit me hard. The body count was now up to four: Rumsey, Bell, Girelli, and now this latest victim in the garage who had undoubtedly died a horrible death tonight. I had to call the police. There was a pay phone on the corner, and I could have just dialed 911 from there.
If you go to the police, we will find you.
The man who called himself Burn could not have made his warning any clearer. Even with the pending divorce, Mallory was still my wife, and I felt a sudden need to know that she was safe. And, admittedly, I was curious about Ivy’s warning-that she’d seen Mallory in a gay bar with another man-the operative word being gay.
Or were the operative words “another man”?
I ran up the street toward our apartment and breezed right past our night doorman in the lobby. He came after me. Mallory had obviously told him about the divorce.
“Where you headed, Mr. Cantella?”
I kept walking toward the elevator. “Personal emergency.”
“I’m going to have to call Mrs. Cantella.”
“You do that,” I said.
One of the elevator doors opened-the other one was still out of service from the flaming package-and I rode up to our apartment. I rang the bell, and the door opened about a foot, stopped by the chain.
“Go away, Michael.”
The voice startled me, and then I realized it was Mallory’s friend, Andrea.
“This is important,” I said.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning. Go away, or I will call the police.”
I realized how bad this looked-the husband on the receiving end of divorce papers showing up at the wife’s door in the middle of the night, just hours after the first court hearing. The ripped T-shirt probably didn’t help my case-powder blue at that, making me look like a cracked Easter egg.
“I got mugged,” I said. “They took my phone, my wallet, everything. I need to come in, call the police, and get some clothes-probably my passport, too, just so I have photo ID.”
The door closed, and I heard them talking inside, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The chain rattled, and the door opened all the way this time. As I entered, Andrea stepped in front of me, cutting me off. Had the expression on her face been any tougher, she probably would have qualified for Secret Service detail.