“Some guy named Tony Girelli.”
“Never heard of him. Who is he?”
“Small-time thug with mob connections. That’s all I know.”
The tourist wearing the backpack was suddenly hovering over me. “It’s been more than two minutes,” he said.
I waved him off, focusing on Kevin. “It’s clear somebody is trying to frame me for Bell’s murder the same way they framed me for the ‘murder’ of Saxton Silvers. You have to find this Girelli,” I said, “and make sure he tells the police that it wasn’t me who hired him.”
“Where are you now?” asked Kevin.
“I’m…unavailable.”
“Don’t play games with me, Michael. You need a lawyer, and-well, I can’t leave you hanging now. I guess I’m it.”
“I thank you,” I said.
“And as your lawyer, my first piece of advice is to surrender peacefully tomorrow. Don’t make the police cuff you and haul you in. But if I call the D.A. tonight and tell her that we’ve got a deal, you can’t go back on it. I want you in my office at nine A.M. and we’ll go from there. You good with that?”
I paused, then said, “I think so.”
“No,” he said sharply. “No ‘I think so.’ A deal is a deal. Tell me now if you’re turning yourself in. Because if you’re not, they’re coming for you in squad cars.”
“If I do turn myself in, will I get bail?”
“I’d say yes. But it won’t be cheap.”
“How much?”
“You’re a rich Wall Street player. Could be a million.”
“What?”
“Easy, Michael. If we bond it out with collateral, you have to come up with only ten percent.”
“My life savings are gone, my wife’s divorcing me, and I can’t even get my credit cards to work. How am I going to bond out a million dollars?”
“It might take a few days, but we’ll work it out.”
It was unfathomable-me sitting in jail while Ivy was on the run in New York. But this way I could at least keep the cops at bay for the next twelve hours.
“All right,” I said. “Call the D.A. and tell her I’ll turn myself in.”
“Good decision. I’ll see you in my office at nine.”
“See you,” I said.
The kid snatched his cell from my hand as soon as I hung up, and he was gone before I could thank him. Several lanes of light traffic cruised north on Eighth Avenue. I honestly had no idea where to go. I had the key to Papa’s hotel room, but going there wasn’t exactly in keeping with Ivy’s advice-Run! Ivy was at the top of my list of concerns, but convincing anyone that she was in trouble wasn’t going to be easy, especially after a murder arrest. I had to make someone believe that I wasn’t crazy, and Kevin was my only choice-I had to get some face time with him while I still could.
I crossed Forty-ninth Street on my way to the subway station. I had the green light, but a delivery van came flying out of the twenty-four-hour parking garage on the corner. It barreled down on me like a heat-seeking missile, as if determined to T-bone me in the crosswalk. The van cut me off, then screeched to a halt, stopping half in and half out of the crosswalk. I was about to cuss out the maniac driver when the rear doors flew open. Two men jumped out and grabbed me. I tried to resist, but these thugs were amazingly strong, and they had me. They threw me in the back of the van and slammed the doors shut.
“Don’t move,” the man with the gun said.
I tried not to panic as the van sped away.
44
I HAD NO CLUE WHERE WE WERE HEADED. OR WHO HAD ME.
Or what they intended to do with me.
I was alone in the back of a commercial van, seated on the metal floor with my knees drawn up to my chest and my back to the side panel. There were no windows, and the only source of light in the cargo area was a dim sliver glowing at the edges of the closed door that led to the cockpit. It was so dark that my abductors hadn’t bothered to blindfold me. They hadn’t even bound my hands; the rear doors were padlocked, making escape impossible. My head was near a wheel well, and the tires whined on the pavement below me.
I knew that Forty-ninth Street was one-way, east to west, so I deduced that the first left turn we’d made was onto Ninth Avenue, headed south. I was trying to track our travels in my mental map of Manhattan, but a series of turns confused me, until the sound of the tires changed dramatically. Noise came not just from the wheel well but from all directions. I surmised that we were inside the Lincoln Tunnel headed for New Jersey, but I wouldn’t have bet my life on it. Then again, maybe I already had.
Is that bag what I think it is?
My eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but it was the odor that I had noticed first. It was coming from a green plastic bag-much larger than a garbage bag-on the other side of the van. Other than me, it was the only thing in the cargo area. I squinted, trying to focus, but my sense of smell dominated. It was like burned meat. Two thoughts ran through my mind.
Don’t look inside.
Look inside.
I moved closer to the bag, trying not to inhale. The odor made me think of that guy who’d burned a hundred-dollar bill at Sal’s Place, and of the incendiary package that had nearly set me ablaze in the elevator. Most of all, however, I was thinking how much the bag resembled a body bag, and how the burned meat smelled not quite like any other meat I’d smelled before.
Open it.
It wasn’t perverse curiosity that drove me; it was the need to defend myself. I was certain that there was a body inside and that it was not going to be pretty. I needed to know what I was up against with these guys-maybe I’d even find a knife or a tool of some sort that would make these thugs sorry they hadn’t bound my hands.
I tugged at the zipper on the bag, but it was open only six inches when the odor overwhelmed me. I was suddenly nauseous.
The van stopped. I heard men talking in the cockpit, and their voices traveled with the sound of their footfalls around the outside of the van to the rear doors. The engine cut off, but I heard another one running-a motor of some kind, but it was hard to tell if it was another vehicle or something else. I heard more voices, then the rattling of the padlock. The rear doors swung open. The lighting was only slightly better now than it had been, but to my dilated pupils, it was blinding. I heard laughter.
“I see you met our friend Tony,” one of the men said.
More laughter, and I couldn’t help shutting them up with what I’d learned.
“Tony Girelli?” I said.
“Whoa, Mr. Wall Street has been doing his homework.”
The men climbed into the van and came toward me. Two guys restrained me and pulled my arms behind my back. Another bound my wrists and blindfolded me.
“Yeah,” he said, knotting the blindfold behind my head, “poor Tony Girelli got some bad sushi at the Rink Bar today.”
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.