Money to Burn

by James Grippando

  In the shower of shiny glass pellets just beyond the exit, Ivy Layton-Vanessa-fell to the sidewalk.

  57

  THE SIGHT OF IVY GOING DOWN HIT ME LIKE HOT SHRAPNEL.

  One moment we were running at full speed, and the next it was a war zone. The noise was like firecrackers in a campfire. We were beyond the glass doors, but the exploding pellets of shattered glass caught up with us. The rest happened in a split second, but the image and sounds unfolded like slow motion. Several bullets slammed into Ivy’s back. Her body jerked forward, as if someone were knocking her to the ground with a hammer. I could actually hear the bullets pelting her-which struck me as odd. The jerking body was odd, too. Papa had told me that when people got shot, they dropped. Period. He’d seen it happen in World War II. Bodies weren’t knocked back, held up, or slammed against the wall like in the movies.

  Her Kevlar had changed everything.

  Ivy’s trench coat looked ordinary, but the lining was body armor. She’d worn it every spring for the past four years, and when the threat level went from orange to red, she practically lived in it. She’d removed it only for our embrace. Thank God she’d put it back on before Burn had burst into the waiting room and started shooting.

  “Roll!” she shouted.

  I dived to the ground and did exactly as told, landing on the grass at full speed and rolling like a log down a hill. I heard more shots from Burn and noticed two or three miniature explosions of dirt as we rolled toward a tree. We were safely behind the massive oak’s trunk when Ivy pulled a gun from her jacket and fired two quick shots back toward the emergency room.

  “There are people in there!” I said.

  “I’m hitting the roof, but Burn doesn’t know that. Now run!”

  She pivoted and fired two more shots from the other side of the tree trunk. I’d never seen her with a handgun, but she had obviously gotten serious training.

  “Run!” she told me.

  “Where?”

  “Get with Eric. He’ll keep you safe.”

  “I’m not leaving you here.”

  I heard sirens in the distance. The police were on the way.

  “If we’re still here when the cops arrive,” said Ivy, “they’ll arrest both of us. We’re sitting ducks in jail.”

  I didn’t have an answer to that.

  She grabbed the back of my neck and pulled my face toward hers. “I’ll run to the left,” she said. “You run right. I’ll find you. I promise.”

  I was thinking of that trip in the Bahamas four years earlier, when she’d promised I would never regret our decision to ditch the Saxton Silvers crowd and charter a sailboat.

  “I can’t-”

  She silenced me with a kiss-and I hoped it wasn’t good-bye for good.

  “Take my cell,” she said, pressing it into my hand. “McVee’s techies haven’t compromised it yet with their spyware. Speed-dial number one is my mother. Call her, and hook up with her and Eric. Then keep it on. I will call you. I promise.”

  There was that word again-promise.

  Then she turned, ran, and fired two more diversion shots toward the hospital as she disappeared into the dark shadows beneath the canopy of sprawling oaks. Burn returned fire in her direction. I ran the opposite way, clutching Ivy’s cell.

  I knew that Ivy wanted me to clear the area as quickly as possible, and the sirens told me that the police were getting close. But I needed to check on Nick. I zigzagged between parked cars until I came upon the Chevy. The driver’s-side door was unlocked, and when I opened it, Nick’s slumped body fell out of the front seat and onto the pavement.

  I couldn’t help but gasp at the sight of such a horrible, bloody mess at the base of his skull. There was another gaping hole in his forehead-a through-and-through bullet wound was what my years of watching CSI on television had taught me. No doubt about it, Nick was gone.

  With blood splatter everywhere-the seat, the steering wheel, the dash, the cracked windshield-I couldn’t have taken the car even if the thought had come to me. The truth is, it never even crossed my mind. Adrenaline took over, and I didn’t even slam the door shut. I turned and ran like an Olympian, crossing the parking lot in seconds, determined not to be chased down by Burn, the police, or anyone else who might be in pursuit. Block after block, I just kept going, heading away from River Road and major thoroughfares. Dusk had turned to night by the time I found a pay phone-I didn’t want the call traced to the cell Ivy had given me-and I stopped on the sidewalk outside a deli to dial 911.

  “A man’s been shot,” I said, breathless, “in the parking lot at Palisades Medical Center. The shooter’s name is Ian Burn. Six feet tall, dark complexion-maybe Indian decent-a bad scar on his right ear from a burn.” I continued to rattle off every distinguishing characteristic I could recall, and then wondered if the scar was on his left ear and not his right. The more I spoke, the more my thoughts scattered, and I shuddered to think what the recording of this call would sound like. I finished with a flurry: “He is an extremely dangerous professional killer. You have to find him!”

  I hung up and sprinted away. I was on Park Avenue, which bore as much resemblance to the Park Avenue as Rome, Georgia, did to its namesake. Just beyond Gunther’s Bargain Corner and directly across the street from a used-furniture store called the Tickled Pink Petunia was a twenty-four-hour Laundromat. I ducked inside and grabbed a chair in the corner away from the noisy machines where I could catch my breath. I was still recovering when I hit speed-dial number one on the cell Ivy had given me.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” said Olivia.

  She’d clearly assumed from the incoming number that the call was from her daughter.

  “It’s Michael,” I said, and then I told her about the string of mishaps that had landed Ivy’s cell with me. I was still processing the whole shoot-out myself, and the full impact of Nick’s death didn’t even hit me until I spoke of it.

  “Burn shot my driver dead,” I said, my voice quaking. “Nick’s got two little kids, for God’s sake.”

  She sighed so loudly that her voice crackled on the line. “Where is Burn now?”

  “I’m sure he ran. I guess someone dialed nine-one-one. Police were on their way. I called, too, just a minute ago.”

  “You what?”

  “Don’t worry. I used a pay phone. They now have Ian Burn’s name and a pretty good description of him.”

  “Michael, don’t take risks like that. I’m sure Ivy has already given all that information to her FBI contact.”

  “It doesn’t hurt for them to hear it twice.”

  “There’s an arrest warrant out for you,” she said. “For the tenth time: If the police haul you in, you’re dead. And now that you’ve called nine-one-one, patrol cars are probably in the neighborhood looking for you as we speak.”

  “I didn’t leave my name.”

  “Good. Just don’t make any more calls. We’re coming to get you.”

  “You and Ivy?”

  “No. Eric and me. Where are you?”

  I told her.

  “That’s in Guttenberg,” said Olivia. “Give us five minutes and we’ll pick you up in Eric’s car. Just stay right there.”

  Across the Laundromat was a young mother folding sheets while her two boys ran wild up and down the aisle. I thought of Nick’s widow, her two kids, and their college fund filled with worthless Saxton Silvers stock.

  “Don’t worry,” I said into the phone. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  58

  OLIVIA AND ERIC PICKED ME UP IN LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES. IN forty-five more, we were in central New Jersey-Somerset County, to be exact, one of the oldest and wealthiest in the United States. WhiteSands had moved there after its World Trade Center headquarters was destroyed on 9/11, one of many financial firms displaced by the sudden loss of the office-space equivalent of twenty-five Empire State Buildings. The firm had no plans to return to Manhattan, its current CEO rather liking the comfortable distance between himself and WhiteSands’ founder a
nd board chairman emeritus, Eric Volke.

  “Make a left here,” said Eric. It was his car, but I’d insisted on driving. Thirty years of chauffeured limousines had turned Eric into a terror on the highways.

  It felt like the country, but most of Somerset’s agricultural roots had been lost long ago to developers. We were actually on a dark private road owned by WhiteSands-still owned by them, despite the bankruptcy of its 49 percent shareholder, Saxton Silvers. In fact, no aspect of WhiteSands’ business was affected by the recent filing. Not its 2.3 million square feet of office space in Franklin. Not the 275 acres it owned inside the Princeton Forrestal Center. Not the billions of dollars’ worth of other real estate holdings throughout the United States and Europe. Not its seven hundred investment advisors with over $1.3 trillion in assets under management.

  And most important of all-at least for my immediate purposes-not the company helicopter and on-site heliport.

  “The pilot won’t be here for another forty minutes,” said Eric.

  I checked the time on the dash-nine-forty P.M.-and tried to remember the last time I’d eaten. “Is there food at the hangar?”

  There wasn’t, so Eric navigated our way into the complex and into the corporate cafeteria for something quick. We ate cold sandwiches in the corporate dining room, the flat screen playing on the wall. Pundits on CNN were analyzing the financial fallout from the failure of Saxton Silvers. The cast of losers included everyone from guys like Nick and his kids’ college fund to a group of Japanese banks that were out $1.5 billion. Somehow, I knew who would be all right, and who wouldn’t be.

  I switched to a local news station, where the breaking-news coverage was all about the emergency-room shooting in North Bergen. I was happy to hear that “miraculously, no one was injured,” but I was suddenly wondering if I would ever see Ivy again. Was she gone for good this time, another disappearing act? The reporter’s closing words jarred me loose from my thoughts.

  “The suspect escaped before police arrived,” she said into the camera, speaking from the parking lot outside the hospital, “and he remains at large. Anyone with information about this crime is encouraged to notify the police.”

  She signed off, and I nearly choked on my sandwich. “I told the nine-one-one operator who did it,” I said. “Why the hell don’t they have Ian Burn’s name and photograph all over the airwaves?”

  “Don’t take this personally,” said Olivia, “but maybe they’re waiting for a credible source before they send everyone looking for a Mumbai hit man with a french-fried ear.”

  Olivia excused herself for a bathroom break, leaving Eric and me alone in the dining room. He switched the station to FNN, where experts were saying that the ripple effects from Saxton Silvers and the subprime crisis could push the Dow as low as 10,000-a prediction “as lunatic as gas going up to four dollars a gallon,” shouted Chuck Bell’s replacement.

  I wrapped up the last few bites of my sandwich and opened a bottled water.

  “So what’s going to happen next?” I asked. “To Olivia and me, I mean.”

  Eric lowered the television volume. “We drive out to the hangar. The helicopter will get you into Martha’s Vineyard before midnight. My yacht’s ready to go as soon as you land. You should be on your way to Bermuda in a few hours. If it’s still not safe by the time you dock there, we’ll refuel and keep you moving.”

  “How long can that go on?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  I drank my water. “Is that what you told Ivy four years ago?”

  We exchanged glances. I hadn’t intended it as a barb exactly, but he did seem to take my meaning. I grabbed the remote and clicked off the television, making it clear that I needed to get to the root of it.

  “When we were in the emergency room,” I said, “Ivy told me about the corporate espionage she was doing for WhiteSands. She started to tell me why McVee wanted her dead, but the shooting started before she could finish.”

  Eric showed little reaction, his tone matter-of-fact. “She did a good job. That’s why McVee wants her dead.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Ivy didn’t just figure out what Ploutus was doing to manipulate the market for WhiteSands’ stock. She caught the mastermind himself red-handed. If we had gone to the D.A., the things she’d uncovered could have put Kyle McVee’s son in jail for a very long time.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the D.A.?”

  “We would have. Except that…”

  “He killed himself.”

  “Yes,” said Eric. “No one saw it coming. But he took his own life.”

  “McVee blames Ivy for that?”

  Eric gave me a sobering look. “He sure as hell doesn’t blame himself.”

  I was well aware that Marcus McVee had committed suicide. I’d seen the newspaper photographs of his Maserati parked on the waterfront in the Hamptons. I’d read the story of his body slumped over in the front seat, an empty liter of tequila on the floor and a half-empty bottle of Vicodin on the seat beside him. The autopsy confirmed that he’d washed down at least two dozen 500 milligram pills with the tequila. I was also aware-firsthand-of how the loss of his only son had changed the old man, turning Kyle McVee from simply aggressive to outright ruthless on Wall Street. But I’d had no idea how ruthless.

  “So long as Ivy was alive,” said Eric, “no one she loved was safe. We spoke on the phone on your wedding day. She told me about the SUV that ran you off the road. And the hired thug who roughed you up at the FTAA riot in Miami.”

  “I don’t understand. Usually when the mob or someone like that goes after your family, isn’t it because they want you to pay them money, or because they want you to forget that you were a witness to a crime? They want you to do something. What is it that McVee wanted Ivy to do?”

  “Suffer,” said Eric. “McVee was in agony over the death of his son. He wanted Ivy to agonize with the fear of something terrible happening to someone she loved-namely, you or her mother. So his thugs played with you. Ran you off the road with an SUV. Roughed you up in Miami. She knew eventually McVee would get bored with the game and step things up.”

  “Or maybe not,” I said. “The flaming envelope was more of the same, four years later.”

  “But he will tire of it-this we knew four years ago. Then he would kill Ivy. Or maybe he would kill you or her mother, let Ivy live with the sense of loss that she had forced him to live with. The SUV running you off the road could have killed you. That envelope could have killed you. The bottom line was clear: So long as Ivy was alive, someone was going to end up dead-either her, you, or her mother. Ivy knew it. And so did I. That was when I helped her disappear.”

  It was starting to make sense. But not entirely.

  “You’re the guy who hired Ivy,” I said. “Why would McVee want her blood but not yours?”

  “I guess he decided to wait for the right time and hit me where it really hurt. He brought down Saxton Silvers-assassinated it, in plain English, with his short selling.”

  “But he hasn’t put you in the poorhouse. You still have WhiteSands. There has to be more to this.”

  Our eyes locked-but not in an adversarial way. It was more like two men coming to an understanding that something needed to be said-probably should have been said a long time ago-and that things would never be the same between them once it was out there.

  Eric crossed the dining room to the doorway and checked the hallway, making sure that Olivia was not on her way back from the restroom. Then he closed the door, and the expression on his face was about as serious as I’d ever seen.

  “I never wanted to be the one to tell you this, Michael. But it’s time you knew the God’s honest truth about that woman you married.”

  59

  IVY HEARD IT ALL-EVERYTHING ERIC VOLKE TOLD MICHAEL IN THE seeming privacy of the WhiteSands’ corporate dining room.

  Ian Burn heard it, too.

  He dimmed the LCD on Ivy’s cell to conserve the battery. Her speakerphone
function was still activated, however, relaying every word that was uttered within range of the cell that Ivy had given Michael outside the emergency room in North Bergen. Ivy hadn’t morphed into one of those smartphone-aholics who carried both a BlackBerry and an iPhone in her purse. It was simply a matter of survival. When you spent every day of your life on the run, the thought of being trapped in a church or other hiding place with a cell that said No service was enough to make you carry two devices-each with a different provider.

  “Very impressive,” said Burn, admiring the technology. “A master smart phone programmed for remote activation of the speakerphone on a slave cell that goes everywhere Michael goes. And they have no idea that as long as the phone has a battery in it, we can hear every word they’re saying, even though it’s just sitting there. I have to confess,” said Burn, “your spyware is every bit as good as mine.”

  The white commercial van was parked less than a mile from WhiteSands’ headquarters, and Ivy was alone with Burn in the rear cargo compartment.

  “It’s really pretty basic,” said Ivy.

  And it wasn’t just about eavesdropping. Ivy’s spyware also had GPS tracking capability, enabling the master to follow the slave wherever the slave took his cell. Tracking Michael all the way from North Bergen to Somerset County had been a snap. It was so reliable that Burn had even felt comfortable stopping on the way for food. He was finishing off the last of the hand-stretched naan, a round flatbread that was a staple in northern India, but in the United States was mainly for rich folks who shopped in trendy grocery stores in places like Somerset County.