by E. J. Simon
Today, nearly fifty-thousand people packed the stadium for the big holiday afternoon game with the Yanks’ bitter rival, the Boston Red Sox. An additional three million viewers sitting in their recliners in their family rooms and drinking beer and eating nachos at sports bars would be watching the big game on television. It was an exciting and festive atmosphere, Michael thought, as he greeted Sindy Steele, who was already seated on the aisle.
She greeted Michael with a peck on the cheek as she stood up, allowing him to take the inside seat on her left. For a brief instant, he thought it was odd that she didn’t simply move over and allow him to take the end seat. Maybe, he hoped, she felt he would be more protected with her on the aisle.
“Aren’t you a little hot?” Michael said, noticing her windbreaker, despite the ninety-degree temperature.
“I don’t know. It just feels a little breezy to me, I guess.” But Michael noticed that her attention seemed to be elsewhere. Her eyes canvassed the surrounding seats.
“Looking for someone?” he said.
She turned her attention back to him, grasping his arm. “Just you, Michael. Just you.”
As they rose for the national anthem, a man wearing a burgundy golf jacket and Yankee cap came down the aisle and settled into the seat directly behind him.
Chapter 81
Bronx, New York
At the end of three innings, the Yankees led the Red Sox 3-0.
Sindy Steele scanned the faces of the other spectators. Since she and Michael occupied the first two seats of the front row, she only had to look behind them and on their flanks. As they faced the playing field in front of them, the New York Yankee right fielder stood less than fifty feet away. The stadium crowd, always so diverse, was a difficult one in which to seek out potential problems. The only individual who caught her attention at all was the man seated directly behind Michael.
It was time, Sindy thought, to prepare. She reached into her right windbreaker pocket, felt for the subcompact Glock and gripped it with her index finger on the trigger. It was ready. She then placed her left hand into her left windbreaker pocket and massaged the smooth, surprisingly cool handle of the stiletto. If all went according to her plan, however, she would use neither of them. Then she reached below her windbreaker, into the pocket of her skin-tight jeans until she touched the small plastic wrapper containing the two cyanide capsules. She knew she’d only need one but brought the second in case the first became damaged or accidentally dropped. Using her fingers, just as she had practiced so many times, she slit open the top of the wrapper and pushed one of the capsules out and into her fingers. She glanced to her left at Michael. He was watching the game. She could feel the distance between them.
“Beer here, beer here,” the stadium vendor called out in his unmistakable New York accent. “Beer here, beer here.” Sindy turned around and could see that he was quickly approaching their aisle. She clutched Michael’s arm, tenderly, and said softly, “I’ll treat you. What could be better on a hot day than baseball and a cool beer?”
“Sure, thanks,” he answered, his attention riveted at the play on the field.
She got up to meet the vendor, who was serving the row of fans just one row behind them. She purchased two beers, and as she turned around to walk back to their seats, swiftly dropped a cyanide capsule in one of them. The natural white foam head on the beer covered up any reaction of the liquid to the lethal capsule.
Chapter 82
Bronx, New York
Despite an underlying tension, Michael settled comfortably into the convenient preoccupation of watching the game. He planned on suggesting to Sindy that they leave their seats around the sixth inning and dine at NY Steak within the stadium where they could talk.
The low roar of over forty-thousand people nearly obscured the ringing of his cell phone. Annoyed at the interruption, Michael nevertheless fumbled through his pockets until he found it. He looked first at the phone’s screen; it read “Private.” Tempted to ignore the call, his eyes focused on the red and white uniformed batter at home plate and the big Yankee pitcher beginning his windup, he pressed the green button on the cell and placed the phone against his right ear.
“Michael, your killer is with you now.” The voice was Alex’s.
Michael looked around him. He saw a group of men behind him, what appeared to be couples on his left, and Steele, twenty feet away, approaching with two beers in hand to his right side.
“Alex, Jesus, where are you? How are you doing this? Who is this guy, where’s he sitting?”
“Michael, it’s not a guy.”
“What do you mean, it’s not a guy?” Michael whispered, fearing the answer but apparently knowing it as he subtly turned his body to the left, away from Steele, and trying to do so without drawing her attention.
“It’s that woman you’ve been screwing around with—she’s there with you, isn’t she?” Alex’s voice was rising.
“Yeah, and the Yanks are up, three-nothing,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. He could feel her eyes on him.
Michael looked at Sindy approaching with the beers. He wondered whether she had brought her pistol with her to the game. It wouldn’t have been unusual since she usually carried it for his protection as part of her job.
She sat down in her seat, still holding the two beers, apparently waiting for him to get off the phone.
“Michael, I need to tell you something.”
“Hold on, I’ll be off in a second.” But just at that moment, Michael heard a strange sound coming through his phone. He looked at the screen; the connection was gone.
Michael looked back at Sindy. She held onto the beers. “Michael, I need to tell you something. In Paris, as I was leaving Rosen’s apartment, a woman entered. She had her own key.”
Michael was confused. Did he hear her correctly, he wondered? It came out of nowhere.
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” He reached for one of the beers. Sindy held them both away from him, just out of his reach.
“I didn’t tell you everything. I hid in a closet when I heard someone enter his apartment. Rosen had just gone out the window,”
“So? I don’t understand?” he said, thoroughly perplexed. The crowd cheered wildly in the background. Michael heard it but it sounded now like just background music to the main event that was happening between him and Sindy.
“It was your wife. She entered Bertrand Rosen’s apartment as I was trying to leave. She had a key. He was expecting her, Michael.”
As she spoke, he noticed that she held onto to both cups, watching his face, as though she was waiting for his response before allowing him to drink. He sensed the importance of the moment. He knew his words and his body language might have critical consequences. He suspected those consequences were in Sindy’s pocket. He looked for her Glock but, deep down, doubted whether even she was crazy enough to shoot him there in front of all these people in such close quarters. He thought about Alex’s words. And she was waiting for an answer.
“Sindy, why are you telling me this now? Why here? What’s going on? Are you telling me that Samantha was having an affair?”
She stared back in icy silence. “Does it make a difference to you? Does it matter that your wife was with Rosen?”
“Jesus, Sindy. Of course it makes a difference. But I need to find out what all this is about?”
“What do you mean, ‘find out what it’s about?’ What the hell do you think it was all about? She was fucking him.” She said, anger edging into her voice and contorting her face.
“Why didn’t you tell me before? I don’t understand what’s happening here,” he said, searching her face for clues. He looked around him for help, from what exactly he wasn’t sure, yet.
“I was trying to protect you. I wanted to deal with her first, to try and settle it with her. It didn’t work out the way I planned, so I’m telling you now.”
“Sindy, it’s all too fast. I need to digest this. What do you want from me r
ight now?”
And with that, she smiled, handed him the beer in her left hand, and whispered, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Chapter 83
Bronx, New York
Frank Cortese had a good seat to watch a game he barely understood—and the best seat to observe a murder he thought he could predict.
Watching Michael on his cell phone, Cortese knew something unexpected had occurred. He didn’t know who the caller was, or what was said, but he knew it had disturbed Michael. Up to that point, Steele had acted according to plan, but she now appeared to be in an intense discussion with Michael instead of doing her job. Why hadn’t she handed Michael his last drink?
He wasn’t used to scenes spiraling out of control.
According to Monsignor Petrucceli’s last call, Steele had turned on Michael and had agreed to poison him. Petrucceli had secretly instructed Cortese to then shoot her, using his silencer while the crowd was already preoccupied with a dying Michael Nicholas. Cortese would then lose himself in the commotion and slip out through the nearby stadium exit onto the street.
But something was wrong. He watched as Steele repeatedly withheld the poisoned drink. Cortese had to wait until Michael was either dead or in his final moments before shooting her through the back at the precise point where the bullets would be sure to penetrate her heart. His disguise would ensure that even if he were later spotted on surveillance cameras, his identity would not be revealed.
But just as Michael appeared to be finally taking the cup of beer from Steele, a roar erupted from the crowd. Everyone around them, including Michael, suddenly stood up, their eyes following the trajectory of the white baseball heading toward them, their hands reaching up, straining to catch the prized souvenir. As the ball came closer, seemingly headed directly to Cortese, the press of the crowd, reaching over him, jostling for position, nearly knocked him over. As he struggled to stay in his position in his seat, his hat and sunglasses fell to the ground.
Chapter 84
Bronx, New York
Sindy Steele watched the flight of the ball as Michael pulled his hand back, never taking the beer from her but instead leaping up in an effort to catch the ball heading for the seat directly behind him. She crouched down, protectively holding both cups of beer from the frenetic crowd around her. She watched Michael leap up and saw the ball carom off the straining hands reaching over the man seated behind him, she saw his sunglasses go flying and as he emerged from beneath the tangle of hands and arms, she recognized the man with eyes of different colors.
He was reaching into his pocket for his gun.
She knew now that the situation was not what it appeared to be; she had been deceived. The plot unfolding was different than the one that had been explained to her. They were going to kill her as soon as she murdered Michael. She had been set up. She dropped both beers and reached for her Glock.
Not confident she could outdraw or overpower Cortese, she decided her safest move was to jump over the three-foot wall and onto the field. He wouldn’t be brazen enough, she hoped, to shoot her once she was in full view of the police and the entire stadium crowd. She had only seconds to leap over the low wall before he would be able to aim and shoot.
She plunged over the concrete divider, landing onto the red clay warning track; she was in a crouch but on her feet when she saw, just a few feet away, the white pinstriped uniform with the blue “33” on the back of the Yankees right fielder, Nick Swisher.
Probably hearing the commotion from the stands behind him, Swisher turned around, at first startled, and then shook his head, smiling, and called out to her, “Oh man, what the heck are you doing out here?” Almost immediately, however, he appeared to focus on something behind her—Cortese—and his expression changed. Swisher began to holler and move away, “Hey lady, that guy’s got a gun.”
She knew she had no time to waste. She ran quickly, making sudden moves to the left and right as she sprinted toward a gate a hundred feet away along the first-base line. She could see NYPD officers with their guns drawn entering the field from all sides. She glanced back and saw Cortese in the outfield behind her. His gun was out, and he was looking right at her. She turned back around, and, running as fast as she could, she was getting closer to the exit. A blue tide of police officers were entering the field from her left and right sides. It was a race to see which came first: the gate, the police or a bullet in the back from Cortese.
She heard a thundering roar from the crowd cheering her on as she ran for her life. Then she heard loud pops as clumps of grass exploded around her. And then an eerie silence settled over the stadium. The pops continued, raising the grass all around her. She kept running, left, then right; then straight again for the gate.
She was almost there when she heard a series of loud explosions. She knew the NYPD had opened fire and waited for the first sign that she’d been shot.
Chapter 85
Westport, Connecticut
“Is she dead?” Fletcher asked.
Michael had barely sat down, this time in Mario’s private back room. He looked around him to see if anyone was within earshot, or worse, gunshot range. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Didn’t you see what happened?” Fletcher was either getting excited or he was beginning to panic.
But Michael was calm. “I just slipped out of there along with thousands of others who poured through the exits before the cops could close the gates. I figured it was best if I just left. That’s why I called you so we’d both get out and get home before anyone started asking questions.”
“Holy shit. What happened to her?” Fletcher’s mouth was still open in amazement. “You mean she could still be out there? On the loose?”
“Or dead. Or wounded in a hospital or an alley. I don’t know. I’ve tried her cell and it goes right to voicemail. At least the cops didn’t answer. She hasn’t tried me.” Michael recounted the details, beginning with the decision to meet Steele as they had planned for weeks, not wanting to signal his intentions by canceling their game appearance together, then ending with the frenzied gunfight in the outfield between Steele and the unknown man sitting behind him during the game.
The evening news came on the television monitor above the bar. Michael and Fletcher watched and listened as the news anchor reported the day’s event at the ballpark:
“A violent shooting occurred on the field at Yankee Stadium today. As fifty-thousand people watched from the stands and another three million at home, a man seated in the seats in right field reportedly attacked a woman seated nearby, chasing her onto the field while the game was in play. The attacker fired a series of bullets in her direction. The NYPD attempted to shoot the attacker but was hampered by the crowd that, in a near panic, stormed onto the field and out the exits for cover. Unofficial reports claim that at least one person was killed and another seriously injured. There has been no confirmation or official word yet from police spokesmen as to the identity of the victim or victims—or whether they had made any arrests.
“So we know one of them is dead. It’s odd that they wouldn’t have more details on who was shot or killed,” Fletcher said, his eyes narrowing as he struggled to figure out the unusual lack of information. “They must be having trouble sorting everything out with all the chaos that went on—or they want to keep someone they’re looking for wondering. And you’re sure you didn’t recognize the guy who went after her?”
“No, I hardly got a look at him. He was sitting behind me. Then when Ortiz hit the ball into the seats, all hell broke loose. Next thing I know, Sindy’s running away, she jumps over the right-field wall and onto the field, Swisher turns around, and this guy from behind me has a gun and he’s running after her and firing at her. I think he had a silencer because there was no noise and the gun looked like it had some kind of extension on the end of the barrel.”
Fletcher’s eyes widened. “He’s a pro. Michael, this guy was a professional. That’s why the cops are staying qui
et. They’re probably still trying to figure out what’s going down. Plus, we don’t know yet who got shot or arrested. The NYPD will probably try and talk to anyone who was seated anywhere near you guys in the stands. They’re going over video tapes from all the game cameras now.”
But Michael knew he had left out one important detail: his call from Alex.
“Fletcher, I’ve got something I have to tell you,” Michael looked around for the waiter, “but you’re going to need a stiff drink first.”
“OK, just give me a hint until I get the drink.”
Michael’s expression turned grave, “While I was watching the game, I received a phone call on my cell.”
Fletcher watching Michael closely said, “Yeah, who was it?”
“It was Alex.”
With his usual perfect timing, Tiger strolled up to their table. But before he could say a word, Fletcher pleaded, “A double Manhattan, as soon as you can.”
Chapter 86
Venice, Italy
Cardinal Lovallo took a sip of one of Harry’s Bar’s famous peach Bellinis.
“Let us pray he is alive.”
“We will know shortly.” Monsignor Petrucceli nervously checked his watch and glanced toward the entrance of the bar.
The cardinal, uncharacteristically silent, seemed to be searching Petrucceli’s face for a hopeful sign. But Petrucceli had nothing positive to offer yet. He sat, watching the door, waiting, and tried over and over, to analyze what little news they had been given about yesterday’s events.