James Grippando

by Money to Burn

  “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 commercial 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.

  I started toward the door, but he stopped me.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “This is why I invited you over. I want you to hear this.”

  I was confused, but I obliged by taking a chair by the fire-place as Eric answered the phone.

  “Agent Spear,” Eric said into his headset, “what can I do for you?”

  I did a double take. Spear was the lead FBI agent who had interrogated me in Eric’s office.

  Eric pushed a button on the phone that allowed him to use the headset without Spear knowing that the call was on speaker—or that I was in the room.

  “Thanks for making time to talk with me tonight,” said Spear. “I know you have a million things going on.”

  “A million and one now,” said Eric.

  “I’ll make this quick. I just have some follow-up on Michael Cantella. We subpoenaed his cell phone records for the night Chuck Bell was shot.”

  My chest tightened. It was intimidating to feel the power of the federal government in action.

  Eric was unfazed. “And?”

  “Interestingly enough,” said Spear, “Michael and you had a phone conversation just after midnight, not too long before the shooting.”

  The last few days had become a blur, and I had to think a moment before recalling that I’d spoken to Eric on my way back to the Hotel Mildew from the ATM.

  Eric said, “Michael and I have been in very close contact lately.”

  “Did you talk about Chuck Bell in that conversation?”

  “Could have.”

  “Did Michael say anything about Bell?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Do you remember anything at all about the conversation?”

  “Not really.”

  “All right,” said Spear. “Just wanted to plant the seed. When the dust settles with Saxton Silvers, we can talk more.”

  “You got it. Good night,” said Eric. He pushed the red button to end the call, then tossed his headset aside.

  I had a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball. “You lied,” I said.

  He stepped away from the desk and sat on the edge of the chair, facing me. “Like a rug,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I have a very specific memory of what you said that night. And it bothered me very much.”


  “What did I say?”

  “You were furious at Bell for suggesting on the air that you were his source. And you told me, ‘One way or another, I’m going to get a retraction out of that son of a bitch.’”

  “I didn’t mean violence. And I definitely didn’t mean I was going to kill him.”

  “Did you know that Bell had been subpoenaed before he was shot?”

  “Subpoenaed for what?”

  “To reveal the identity of his source.”

  “I wasn’t his source, Eric.”

  “I’m simply telling you what I’ve gathered from my conversations with the FBI. That’s what this latest follow-up was all about—and that’s why I wanted you to hear it with your own ears. Spear is convinced that you knew Bell had been subpoenaed. He thinks you wanted to stop him from revealing his source. One way or another.”

  It was a less-than-subtle underscoring of how well my own words fit with the FBI’s theory. “What are you really telling me, Eric?”

  He walked over from his desk and put his hand on my shoulder. “Two things,” he said. “One: That phone conversation you and I had is between us. No one—especially not the FBI—is going to know about it.”

  “You don’t have to protect me from anything,” I said.

  “Two,” he said, letting his promise stand. “Make no mistake: There is one thing far worse than being accused of killing Chuck Bell.”

  “What?”

  “Being the accused killer of Saxton Silvers. A few people will make money when this firm goes down. A lot more will lose money. A lot of money. Shareholders, creditors, employees—they all get wiped out in bankruptcy. One thing you can be sure of. Somewhere in that long line of losers is someone mad and crazy enough to blow you away—if they get the opportunity. You understand what I’m telling you?”

  I nodded, but he said it anyway, his expression deadly serious.

  “Don’t give them the opportunity.”

  39

  IVY LAYTON WAS ON THE RUN. THAT WAS NOTHING NEW.

  Running from one hiding place to another had become a way of life. What made tonight so different was the level of fear—a fear she hadn’t experienced since those terrifying days and nights in the Bahamas following the happiest day of her life. They had found her.

  Again.

  A bit of dust fell from the twilled linen cloth as Ivy climbed out from under it. The marble floor felt cold on her hands and knees.

  Ivy had spent two of the last four years in Italy, where there seemed to be a Catholic church on every corner. Confessionals had become her go-to hiding spots. Tonight, it was just her luck that she’d darted into an Episcopal church—no confessionals in the Anglican tradition. A beautiful damask that covered the altar inside the chantry chapel had served her needs in a pinch.

  St. Thomas Church is at Fifty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, a few blocks north of its more famous Catholic neighbor, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Ivy recognized the French High Gothic style, and everything but the length appeared to be of cathedral proportions. Her first thought had been to conceal herself behind the high altar, which was front and center in the traditional design. Halfway down the nave she found the chantry chapel in its own alcove. It would have been perfect for a small wedding—and the hollow space beneath the small altar was an excellent hiding spot.

  Ivy stepped cautiously from the chapel, her gaze sweeping across fifty rows of empty wooden pews in the church nave. Two hours earlier, when she’d rushed inside in a panic, the entrance doors had been unlocked and the chandeliers had been on. The vast interior was now dark, save for the indirect lighting on the sculptured stone wall behind the high altar. Hopefully lights off didn’t mean doors locked—as in Ivy spending the night.

  She turned away from the lighted altar and walked slowly toward the narthex, trying not to let her heels click on the inlaid marble floors as she passed by the World War II memorial. Just thinking about the close call at the Rink Bar made her pulse quicken. If not for the bomb scare, it would have been the end of the line. She probably could have been in Canada by now if she had just kept running, but she had taken enough risks for one night. Her next move, she decided, would be just a few blocks to the west. Her friend Phillip would give her something to eat and a place to sleep. He’d helped her more than any man since Michael, but the relationship was completely platonic. Phillip was gay, a bartender at Therapy. Michael’s new wife wasn’t the only one who thought a gay bar was a good place for a woman to hide.

  Lucky for Ivy that she had recognized Mallory before Mallory had recognized her.

  Or maybe not.

  Ivy pushed against the carved Archangel Gabriel on the heavy church door—the same door through which she’d run earlier. It was locked. She tried the one next to it, carved with the Archangel Michael—hoping that the name alone would bring good fortune. Locked, too. She put her shoulder into it, more out of frustration than an actual attempt at escape, only to discover the hard way that these old doors were made to last a millennium.

  Wonderful.

  The back of her neck tingled with goose bumps. That gut-wrenching fear was returning—not for herself, but for Michael. Now that she’d tipped her hand and they knew for certain that she was alive, she was not the only one in danger.

  Ivy returned to the cavernous nave of the church, her gaze drifting toward the dimly lit high altar. There had to be a way out, and she knew she would find it. Somehow she’d always managed to stay one step ahead of them.

  Her only worries were for Michael.

  She drew a deep breath, and since she was in a church, she figured a quick prayer couldn’t hurt. Then she reached for her cell and dialed Michael’s number.

  40

  “MICHAEL, IT’S ME.”

  I thought I was emotionally up to speed with the fact that Ivy was alive, but hearing her voice on the phone blew me away. People sometimes describe these moments in their lives as “time standing still,” but that must have happened only in movies from Papa’s generation. The feeling was the complete opposite for me. It was hard to fathom how so much of our past could be resurrected in a split second. Just those few words—Michael, it’s me—triggered a flood of memories, instantly bringing back all the things I had feared I was forgetting. Her laugh. Her touch. Her kiss. Even the smallest details of our first phone conversation, our first date, our first naked adventure were compressed into that nanosecond of joy, scores of emotional threads unraveling at warp speed and on parallel tracks that led straight to my heart.

  But the sense of urgency in her voice was unlike any I had ever heard.

  “Where are you?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  I was in my car driving back to Manhattan and was ready to go wherever she was.

  “Just listen, please,” she said. “We are in so much danger now that they know I’m alive. They might torture or even kill you to lure me out.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Just run!”

  “Wait! I need to see you.”

  “Michael, please!”

  An eighteen-wheeler flew past me in the next lane and nearly took the ragtop of my Mini Cooper with it. Tiny cars and the Cross Bronx Expressway were not a happy marriage.

  “If you won’t see me, then why did you come back?”

  “You know why. I told you.”

  Her response caught me by surprise. “When? How?”

  “My first warning.”

  “I never got any warning.”

  She hesitated, and I sensed her fear.

  “Michael, the first text message. Two weeks ago, right after I saw Mallory in that gay bar with another man.”

  “What?”

  “Are you saying you didn’t get the message that said ‘beware the naked bears’?”

  Naked bears? “I didn’t get anything like that.”

  “Shit!” she said, her tone even more urgent. “Then they must be intercepting your messages. They might even be li
stening right now! Michael, you have to run.”

  “I have to see you!”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Ivy, don’t do this to me!”

  “Don’t let yourself end up like Chuck Bell. Run!”

  “Ivy, please—”

  A loud crack on the line stopped me cold. It sounded like a gunshot.

  “Ivy?”

  The line was dead. My heart was in my throat.

  My God, Ivy!

  41

  MALLORY POURED HERSELF ANOTHER GLASS OF WINE, EMPTYING THE bottle. She needed a shoulder to lean on—even cry on a little—and she found it in her friend Andrea.

  “Let’s open another,” said Andrea.

  Mallory grabbed a key from a hook on the wall. “Here,” she said, sliding it down the bartop to Andrea. “Michael’s personal stash is locked up in the cellar.”

  “No offense, but do you really want to drink the good stuff in your condition?”

  “Yesh,” Mallory said, slurring. “And the bottles we don’t drink we can pour down the drain. Bottom’s up, Michael.”

  Andrea walked inside the climate-controlled cellar behind the bar, came out much too soon to have made an intelligent choice, and placed her selection on the bar.

  Mallory made a face. “Damn, girl. You picked the twenty-dollar bottle of Italian toilet water that Michael’s grandfather gave us for our first anniversary.”

  Mallory started to get up, but the effects of too much wine rushed to her head. She lowered herself back onto the bar stool, suddenly guilt-ridden. “Sorry, Papa. I shouldn’t take this out on you.”

  “You’re sloshed,” said Andrea.

  “I had a few glasses before you got here.”

  Andrea smiled as she came around the bar and cozied up. “Good. Now I get to hear all the secrets.”

  “You want to know a big one?”

  Andrea leaned in closer, her eyes eager. “How big?”

  “Huge,” said Mallory. “Get this: I think Michael’s first wife is still alive.”