Money to Burn

by James Grippando

  Girelli’s radar was at full alert. He’d gone on rides like this before-to warehouses and body shops in Queens-but never as the guest of honor. But he wasn’t worried. Girelli was packing a fully loaded Beretta 9 mm pistol, and Jason Wald was a dolt. That was two strikes against the home team, and the game wasn’t even under way.

  “Glad you could make it, Tony.”

  Girelli turned, unable to see the man standing off to the side in the shadows, but the distinctive accent was enough to give him pause. Two against one was no problem, unless one of the two was who he thought it was.

  The silhouette took a half step forward, and then, with the flick of his lighter, he removed himself from the dark. Girelli’s pulse raced, his fears confirmed by the instantly recognizable face-or more specifically, by that deformed right ear.

  The last person Girelli wanted to see tonight was Ian Burn.

  36

  I WASTED THE RIDE BACK FROM LONG ISLAND. I SHOULD HAVE PUT the top down on the Mini Cooper, cranked up just enough heat to take off the chill, and felt the wind on my face as the lights of Manhattan and the world’s most recognizable skyline swallowed me up. When I bought my convertible, I had signed a contract stating that I would drive it 90 percent of the time with the roof open. It was a marketing joke, but the way things were going, I wondered if they might actually sue me.

  Yes, I was sweating the small stuff-like where the hell I was going to sleep tonight.

  The Saxton Silvers parking garage was my destination, mainly because it was free and I still hadn’t straightened out my cash flow. To get there, I had to pass the firm’s main entrance on Seventh Avenue. Television crews, photographers, and a phalanx of other people crowded the sidewalk outside the revolving doors, and a line of double-parked media vans hugged the curb. A small but vocal group of demonstrators marched in a circle in the middle of all this. Anger was all over their faces, even angrier words on their handmade signs:

  CROOKS!

  SCREW YOUR BONUS. WHERE’S MY PENSION?

  I was suddenly thinking of Ivy again and that day we’d stumbled into the FTAA riots in Miami. I rounded the block and pulled into the garage.

  My Mini made a funny noise when I shut off the engine. To me, it definitely sounded like the carburetor, except that I hadn’t owned a car with a carburetor since I dumped the 1975 Monte Carlo after B-school. That was how much I knew about auto mechanics.

  Apparently, about as much as I knew about Ivy.

  Mallory had been right: Over the last four years I’d fooled myself into thinking that I had moved on, but I hadn’t. Perhaps my reaction now should have been one of sheer joy: Ivy is alive! There was some of that, to be sure. But it was much more complicated.

  Why did you run, Ivy?

  The funny noise in my engine stopped, but I remained in my car, thinking. I still hadn’t resolved the small things, but now it was the big stuff that consumed me. My personal portfolio had vanished into cyberspace. Saxton Silvers stock had dropped 90 percent in value. The FBI seemed to think that I was the traitor who’d used Chuck Bell and the power of FNN to bring down my own firm. Bell was now dead, and I was apparently being blamed for that, too. To top it all off, my wife was divorcing me over a dead woman who-suddenly-was no longer dead.

  The timing of it all made me consider a dark possibility: What if Ivy didn’t share the joy I felt over a potential reunion? What if she had come back from the dead, so to speak, only to visit on Michael Cantella a fate worse than death?

  Couldn’t be. Or could it?

  My thoughts drifted back four years to our sailing trip and the dream I had told her about-the one about riding my bicycle on a dark highway, getting run off the road, and rushing my injured dog Tippy to the DQ. The gist of that strange dream had actually happened: A week before our trip, a black SUV had knocked me into a ravine and left me for dead. Afterward-and this was the reason for the nightmares-I wondered if the driver had been a Wall Street loser with a score to settle.

  It’s only gonna get worse. That had been the warning from the anti-FTAA demonstrator who pulled me from the taxi in Miami. I had always wondered if he was really just talking about corporate greed. Was it possible that the same maniac had followed us to the Bahamas and played some role in Ivy’s disappearance? Again, I had to ask:

  Why did you come back, Ivy?

  Were the last few days payback for ruining her life? Did she finally emerge from hiding only to move my money into an offshore account and make me out as the villain behind the destruction of Saxton Silvers? Did she also destroy my marriage? Was she done with me yet? Those were terrible thoughts about a woman I loved. But with four years to plan it, Ivy was definitely smart enough to implement such a scheme, and with her birthday-orene52/25enero-at the root of my passwords, I had to consider the possibility. And after all, I couldn’t shake the memory that, in my dream, the hit-and-run driver of the SUV had been Ivy.

  Stop it. Ivy would never-

  My phone rang. It was Eric Volke. He and our CEO had spent the last twelve hours at the New York Federal Reserve in downtown Manhattan, in a room once used to cash coupons on Treasury bills. On the other side of the table had been the masters of the world’s biggest economy-the Federal Reserve chairman, the secretary of the treasury, the New York Fed chief, and the Securities and Exchange Commission chief.

  Eric was calling from his limo. “Meet me at my house in thirty minutes,” he told me. “It’s important.”

  He hung up before I could ask what it was about.

  But I already knew.

  37

  IAN BURN STARED OUT OVER THE FLAME OF HIS BUTANE LIGHTER.

  His fascination with fire was logical enough, given his surname. It was bogus, of course. So was the name Ian, an acronym for “Islamic Armed Nation,” a terrorist organization that Burn supplied with the tools of the trade-detonators, explosives, and munitions of all sorts. He had an especially reliable source of white phosphorous. He was paid with Saudi oil profits that poured into a certain American hedge fund run by Jason Wald’s uncle. “Burn” was a nickname he’d earned by torching anyone who got in his way. Only once had a job blown up in his face-literally. Working with napalm was dangerous stuff. Burn had a grotesque scar on his neck and a melted right ear to prove it, but even that mishap had unfolded true to the old playground adage: “You should have seen the other guy.” It amazed Burn how so many people had never even heard of fifth-and sixth-degree burns, as if the always-fatal flame that caused complete destruction of muscle and bone didn’t belong in a class by itself.

  “I’m not the enemy,” said Girelli, but his voice betrayed him, cracking with fear.

  Burn capped his lighter, extinguishing the flame. Another thug jumped out from behind a tall stack of tires, and two more emerged from behind a canvas tarp. Before Girelli could react, there was a gun at this head. They forced him into a wooden chair and tied him to it with a heavy-duty extension cord that wrapped around his body several times.

  Burn stepped closer and dropped a handful of eight-by-ten photographs on the concrete floor in front of Girelli. Wald switched on a snake light and aimed the beam at the photos.

  “Jason shot these from his uncle’s building,” said Burn.

  Immediately upon seeing the close-ups of the woman seated at the table in front of Prometheus-Vanessa-he knew he was in trouble.

  “You lied,” said Burn. “And some very important people are extremely angry.”

  Girelli stood firm. “That’s not who you think it is.”

  “Really?” said Burn. He took a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and dropped it on the photo at Girelli’s feet. “A hundred bucks says you’re lying.”

  Girelli knew the routine, and he forced a nervous smile. “Come on. Let’s not play this game.”

  “You’re right. You aren’t worth a hundred bucks.” But he wasn’t smiling. He never smiled.

  Burn tucked the bill back into his pocket, then grabbed a paint can from beneath the work bench. The can had no
lid on it, and beside it were the remnants of several Styrofoam coolers that had been chopped to pieces-a ready source of polystyrene. Burn pulled on a pair of thermal gloves, then grabbed a paint stick and stirred the sticky mixture inside the can as he approached Girelli. The consistency was near perfect, but for Girelli’s benefit he dropped another chunk of Styrofoam into the can and let it dissolve. He stirred slowly, making sure that Girelli could smell the gasoline. And the benzene. Most of the amateur pyromaniacs on the Internet simply dissolved Styrofoam in gasoline, which basically created a sticky gel that burned. Add benzene-available from chemical companies if you had phony credentials-and voilà: You had essentially the same “super napalm” used by the U.S. military in Vietnam.

  “This burns at about a thousand degrees centigrade,” said Burn.

  He lifted the stick from the can. A big glob of gel clung to it. Burn held it over Girelli’s head and let the gel slowly drizzle down onto Girelli’s hair.

  “Ever seen the pictures of the napalm girl from ’Nam, Tony?”

  The goo ran down Girelli’s forehead, swallowed the bridge of his nose, moving at a lavalike pace until it covered his right eye.

  “That shit stings!” Girelli shouted. “Get it off!”

  Burn scooped a second glob from the can and again held the stick over Girelli’s head. This one oozed over his left ear and down his neck.

  “Not a pretty sight, that napalm girl,” said Burn. “Clothes burned off, running down the street naked, her burned flesh ready to fall from her body.”

  Girelli’s hair was soaked with gel, the right side of his face completely covered.

  “This gel sticks to your skin,” said Burn, “and you can’t get it off. It just keeps burning and burning, hotter and hotter.”

  “Okay, okay!” Girelli shouted. “It was her!”

  Burn dropped the stick onto the concrete floor and set the can aside. “That’s a problem, Tony. Because you were supposed to get rid of her four years ago.”

  Wald said, “He told us he did get rid of her.”

  Burn pulled a stick match from his pocket.

  “Don’t burn me!” Girelli shouted.

  Burn struck the match, but he held it away from the gel. “Why’d you lie to us, Tony?”

  Girelli’s voice raced with fear. “I thought she was dead! I really did!”

  Wald said, “You told us you shot her. You said you took her from the sailboat, did the job, and fed her to the sharks.”

  “She was dead!” Girelli shouted. “That’s all that mattered. You wanted her dead so-”

  “So you told us what we wanted to hear,” said Wald.

  Burn dropped the match. It fell onto the glob on the floor, igniting it instantly. The fire produced a black, noxious smoke. Above them was a huge overhead fan that normally sucked out car exhaust. One of Wald’s thugs switched it on to keep them all from suffocating.

  “Why did you lie?” asked Burn.

  “I thought she was dead, I really did.”

  “Did you work with her? Did you help fake her death and let her run?”

  “No, no! I swear, I thought the bitch was dead. I just needed the money, and the only way to collect my fee was to say I shot her before the shark got her.”

  The homemade napalm continued to burn near Girelli’s feet. It was close enough to make him sweat, and he was peering out nervously with the eye that wasn’t covered in goo.

  “Tony, Tony,” said Burn, shaking his head. “What are we gonna do with you?”

  “Get this shit out of my eyes. It’s killing me! Please, just give me another chance!”

  “Hey, now there’s an idea,” said Burn.

  “Yeah,” Wald joined in. “We let Tony live if he does the job right this time.”

  “I’ll do it for free,” said Girelli. “Just don’t burn me, dude.”

  “Brilliant,” said Burn, and then he glanced at Wald. “Why don’t you and your buddies beat it so Tony and I can work out the details.”

  Wald smiled as he reached for his car keys and climbed into his Lamborghini. The garage door opened, and he pulled out. Three other men walked out after the car, and the door closed automatically again.

  Burn watched the fire at Girelli’s feet, which had grown hotter with the shot of fresh air.

  “I can do this right,” said Girelli. “No bullshit this time.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” said Burn.

  “Just let me live, and I will get the job done. I swear I will. She’ll wish I had done her four years ago.”

  “Unfortunately, the decision is not up to me. But I can get an answer pretty quickly.”

  Burn pulled a sealed envelope from inside his coat pocket. It was a delivery package that opened with a zip tab-just like the one he’d sent to Michael Cantella.

  “Open your mouth,” said Burn.

  Girelli hesitated, then complied.

  “Bite down,” said Burn as he placed the envelope between Girelli’s teeth.

  His mouth closed with obvious reluctance, but he had no choice. The envelope was firmly in place. The thick gel continued to run down Girelli’s face and gathered on the flat side of the envelope.

  “Now,” said Burn as he reached for the tab, “let’s see what the boss man thinks of your smart idea.”

  38

  “IT’S OVER,” SAID ERIC.

  It was after nine P.M., just the two of us in the first-floor study of his Tudor-style mansion in Rye, New York. I say Rye, but the Haute Living feature story said that the ten-acre estate actually spanned three towns and had five addresses, putting his annual property tax bill somewhere north of $300,000-all worth it, no doubt, if you and your wife needed nine bedrooms, twelve bathrooms, two swimming pools, a clay tennis court, a putting green modeled after the famous twelfth hole at Augusta, a collection of beehives, and three large paddocks. Throw in a river running through the wooded backyard and a trout-stocked private lake, and life had to be good. Most of the time.

  Eric was standing at the credenza between a pair of Tiffany lamps, pouring himself a scotch on the rocks. I was seated on the camelback couch.

  “Over?” I said.

  I’d driven there thinking I had some explaining to do about my arrest at Rockefeller Center, never thinking that it would be “over” before I even started talking. I almost didn’t care; it seemed almost certain that Ivy was alive-and nothing mattered more. “It was all a misunderstanding,” I said. “You can’t fire me for that.”

  He turned and shook his head. “I meant us-the whole firm.”

  His voice shook, and as he laid his hand atop his favorite Remington bronze, I caught a glimpse of his face in the unflattering light of a halogen spot that was intended to illuminate the sculpture. In the past three days, he had aged ten years. He took a long drink, then went to the framed memento on the cherry-paneled wall: his very first paycheck from his days as a broker with Saxton Silvers, which he pointed out every time I came over. It was flanked on one side by the first bottle of wine produced by the vineyard he owned in Napa Valley and on the other side by a Forbes article about WhiteSands, the investment management firm he’d founded and taken public to the tune of a nine-figure personal profit.

  The check was for two weeks’ pay: six hundred dollars.

  “This firm survived the Civil War,” he said, “two world wars, the Great Depression, a currency crisis, and the destruction of our headquarters on nine/eleven. Two members of the Silvers family even survived Auschwitz. And now it’s over.”

  “What do you mean over?”

  “There will be no bailout from the Fed,” he said. “The short sellers won: Saxton Silvers is filing for bankruptcy tomorrow morning.”

  “But you said the deadline was Sunday.”

  “That was when we had merger talks going with the Bank of New World. Those broke down this morning. I’ve been speed-dialing Louis Kendahl all day. That prick wouldn’t even take my calls.”

  Kendahl was the CEO of New World, the largest commerc
ial bank in the country.

  “I even tried him at home,” said Eric. “The machine picked up three times, and on the fourth his wife answered. I stressed how important it was. Do you know what she told me? She said: ‘If Louis wanted to speak with you, he would have called you back.’”

  Ouch, I thought.

  Eric walked across his study, leaned on the edge of his desk, and looked around. “Damn,” he said, the exquisite furnishings of home apparently having triggered a work-related thought. “I can’t believe I just spent a million one renovating the executive suite.”

  My sentiment exactly-even before the subprime shit had hit the fan.

  “A lot of good memories,” he said, his gaze drifting back toward the Saxton Silvers paycheck on the wall. “All of them good, really. Except one.”

  He was looking at me now, and of course he meant the outing in the Bahamas, where Ivy disappeared.

  “All but one,” I agreed.

  “I should never have let-”

  “Don’t go there,” I said. There was no need for anyone to start taking the blame now. “You didn’t let Ivy and me go off on our own. We just went.”

  He poured himself another scotch. “Do you ever wonder if she…”

  I waited, hanging on his open thought. I wondered if he had intuited-or heard-something.

  “If she’s alive?” I said, finishing for him.

  He nearly dropped his glass. “No, not if she’s alive. I was going to say…she came into your life so all of a sudden. Then vanished. Did you ever wonder if that’s all she was ever meant to be?”

  He was starting to sound like Kevin, and it didn’t seem like the time to start the conversation that Ivy was indeed alive.

  The phone on his desk rang. He went to it, seemingly glad for the interruption, as if he had never intended the conversation to get this personal.

  “This is the call I’ve been waiting for,” he said as he put on his headset.