James Grippando

by Money to Burn

  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.

  “The name’s Burn,” he said. Finally, he looked away and picked up a soup can from the floor, flicking something toward the hostage. A small glob of goo about the size of a silver dollar stuck to his bare chest. Then he struck a match and looked at me.

  “Call Vanessa,” he said in an even tone.

  “Who?” I asked.

  Without expression, he brought the lit match to the glob on the prisoner’s chest. It burst into flame, and the screaming was unbearable. He kicked and writhed, crying out in pain for a long time—an eternity for him, no doubt. Finally it burned out. The man hung limp from his wrists, his chest and stomach heaving with exhaustion from the excruciating pain.

  Burn flung another glob of goo at him. This one stuck to his stomach.

  The prisoner groaned and sobbed at the mere thought of round two. “Please, no! Stop!”

  Burn lit another match. “Call her,” he told me.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about!” I shouted.

  “Vanessa,” he said, “your way-too-clever first wife. The one who ended your phone conversation by firing off her own gun just to make us think she’d been shot.”

  Ivy hadn’t been shot. Thank God. But they were monitoring my cell, just as Ivy had feared.

  “Why do you call her Vanessa?”

  He flicked the flaming match at the glob on the prisoner’s stomach. It was the same horrific result—the screaming, the kicking, the smell of burning flesh. I looked away, unable to watch, and had my hands not been bound I would have covered my ears. The unbearable sounds and smell nearly brought me to my knees.

  When the flame had finally burned out, the sadist walked toward me, the soup can in hand. He grabbed my T-shirt by the collar and ripped it down to my third rib. Then he flung the rest of the goo at my chest. It smelled of gasoline as it oozed down my sternum.

  “Call her, and tell her to come and get you.”

  “I don’t know how to reach her. I swear.”

  His expression was like ice. He lit a match.

  “I’m not lying!”

  “Call her.”

  “I don’t know how to reach her. I don’t. I really don’t.”

  Burn stared into my eyes. It could have been the smell of the other man’s charred flesh in the air. Or the remains of Tony Girelli in the body bag. Or perhaps it was the burning match about to ignite the flammable goo all over my chest. Whatever it was, he seemed to believe me.

  He blew out the match. Then he jutted his face just inches from mine. There was no bourbon on his breath. The leader of this group was stone-cold sober.

  “If you go to the police,” he said, “we will find you. Talk to anyone, we will find you. The only exception is Vanessa. I want you to tell her exactly what you saw here t
onight. Tell her you met Ian Burn, and that he has granted the two of you your final pass. Do you understand?”

  I wasn’t sure why he kept using the name Vanessa, or what he meant by giving Ivy and me a pass, but I wasn’t going to push my luck by pressing for information. “I understand.”

  Burn stepped away from me and gave a nod to one of his men. Before I could react, I felt the jab of a needle in my thigh and the cold pressure of an injection. The garage was starting to blur as the men walked me back to the van. The rear doors opened. Someone said something—he seemed to be talking to me—but my mind couldn’t process the words. I felt my feet leave the floor, but it was someone else’s doing. They shoved me into the back of the van like a dead animal. I lay there, motionless. I heard the engine start, and there was one more scream—far worse than the earlier ones. The doors closed, the van lurched forward, and then I heard nothing.

  45

  IT WAS STILL NIGHTTIME WHEN I WOKE ON THE SIDEWALK. MY T-shirt was ripped, but someone had cleaned the goo from my chest. Instinctively, I reached for my cell, but it was gone. I started to get up, then stopped.

  Whoa, my head.

  I moved slowly. Whatever Burn’s men had injected into my leg was still in my system, but I fought through it. I rose up on one knee, let my head adjust to going vertical, then climbed all the way to my feet. Slowly, things came into focus.

  A quiet dead-end street. Red-brick apartment buildings rising up ten or twelve stories on either side. Tree roots pushing up slabs of the concrete sidewalk. Still in a fog, I walked toward the intersection, which was completely without traffic. I had no idea what time it was, but it had to be late. I looked up the street, and the familiar cantilever truss structure of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge told me where I was. A glance back at the green-and-white street sign at the intersection confirmed it: SUTTON PL. I was just a block from my apartment. Mallory’s apartment.

  Then I heard that scream again—but only in my mind—and it hit me hard. The body count was now up to four: Rumsey, Bell, Girelli, and now this latest victim in the garage who had undoubtedly died a horrible death tonight. I had to call the police. There was a pay phone on the corner, and I could have just dialed 911 from there.

  If you go to the police, we will find you.

  The man who called himself Burn could not have made his warning any clearer. Even with the pending divorce, Mallory was still my wife, and I felt a sudden need to know that she was safe. And, admittedly, I was curious about Ivy’s warning—that she’d seen Mallory in a gay bar with another man—the operative word being gay.

  Or were the operative words “another man”?

  I ran up the street toward our apartment and breezed right past our night doorman in the lobby. He came after me. Mallory had obviously told him about the divorce.

  “Where you headed, Mr. Cantella?”

  I kept walking toward the elevator. “Personal emergency.”

  “I’m going to have to call Mrs. Cantella.”

  “You do that,” I said.

  One of the elevator doors opened—the other one was still out of service from the flaming package—and I rode up to our apartment. I rang the bell, and the door opened about a foot, stopped by the chain.

  “Go away, Michael.”

  The voice startled me, and then I realized it was Mallory’s friend, Andrea.

  “This is important,” I said.

  “It’s one o’clock in the morning. Go away, or I will call the police.”

  I realized how bad this looked—the husband on the receiving end of divorce papers showing up at the wife’s door in the middle of the night, just hours after the first court hearing. The ripped T-shirt probably didn’t help my case—powder blue at that, making me look like a cracked Easter egg.

  “I got mugged,” I said. “They took my phone, my wallet, everything. I need to come in, call the police, and get some clothes—probably my passport, too, just so I have photo ID.”

  The door closed, and I heard them talking inside, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The chain rattled, and the door opened all the way this time. As I entered, Andrea stepped in front of me, cutting me off. Had the expression on her face been any tougher, she probably would have qualified for Secret Service detail.

  She held her cell in hand and said, “If you make one false move toward Mallory, I’m dialing nine-one-one.”

  “I’m not here to hurt anyone,” I said. “I actually want to make sure she’s safe.”

  “She’s fine. We’re watching a movie. Safe from what?”

  “Give me your phone, and you’ll find out.”

  She pulled back, clutching her phone, as if I’d just asked for her spleen.

  Mallory emerged from the TV room with our cordless landline. “Use this one.”

  It was the first time she’d made eye contact with me since filing for divorce. Maybe I was kidding myself, but I didn’t see contempt. I could tell she’d been drinking, however.

  Andrea took the phone and handed it to me. I punched 9–1–1.

  Mallory and her friend stood and listened as I told the dispatcher how the men had thrown me into a van, taken me to a garage that I believed was somewhere in New Jersey, and tortured another man before my eyes. I told her Tony Girelli was dead. I described Burn as best I could, and when I described the victim and what Burn had done to him, Mallory gasped and ran to the other room.

  “I’m routing this to a detective,” said the operator. “Is this the best number to reach you at?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Give me a number to call, and I’ll let you know.”

  She gave it to me along with an incident reference number. I hung up and gave the phone back to Andrea. She didn’t seem shocked by anything she’d just heard—definitely nowhere near as upset as Mallory.

  “I need to talk with my wife,” I told her.

  Andrea no longer had her finger on the domestic disturbance panic button, but she followed me into the TV room just in case. Mallory looked scared to death, seated on the couch, and part of me wanted to go to her and tell her that it would all be okay. Andrea sat beside her and squeezed her hand.

  “Mallory, can I talk to you alone for a minute?” I asked.

  She shook her head firmly. “No.”

  We were back to no-eye-contact mode. “Do you mind if I get a few things to take with me?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I desperately wanted a shower, but I had to settle for a quick stop in the bathroom to sponge away the lingering smell of gasoline from my chest. In the adjoining master bedroom I changed clothes in record time, losing the Wall Street look entirely, just blue jeans and light sweater. I grabbed my passport and a few other essentials, then returned to the TV room.

  “Mallory, there is something I have to say.”

  She didn’t answer. Andrea was still at her side on the couch, and she shot me a look that said, Say it and go.

  “I don’t blame you for wanting to leave me,” I said, trying my best to pretend that it was just me and Mallory in the room. “You deserve a man who loves you with all his heart. But your lawyer’s spin in the courtroom about those e-mails was completely wrong. I don’t have a lover, and I haven’t been plotting to hide any money from you.”

  I wanted to ask her about the man Ivy had seen her with, but putting her on the defensive and sounding like the jealous husband wasn’t going to help my immediate cause.

  “You came here to tell me that?” she said, her eyes cast downward.

  “No,” I said. “I wanted to share some things that will probably make you think I’m crazy. But I’m going to tell you anyway, because I want you to be safe.”

  “Stop scaring her,” said Andrea.

  “I’m not saying this to frighten you. Mallory, I’m going to be arrested for supposedly hiring a guy named Tony Girelli to shoot Chuck Bell. That’s probably going to happen tomorrow. It’s a frame-up, but that’s not even close to being the crazy part. Ivy is alive.”

&nb
sp; Mallory looked up, and I could read the expression on her face. She was screaming without words: I knew it!

  “She and I are both in a lot of danger,” I said. “I don’t know what it’s all about, but these are very bad people. They killed Chuck Bell. They’ve killed other people, including that guy I just called nine-one-one about. I’m afraid everyone I know might also be in danger. Possibly even you. I want you to get protection for yourself. Hire a bodyguard, go to the police. Promise me you’ll do that.”

  Her gaze was fixed on me now, her expression a blend of confusion and amazement.

  “Promise me, and I’ll go,” I said.

  “Go where?”

  I sighed at the size of the question. “Not sure,” I said. “They warned me not to call the police, so I guess I need to go someplace they can’t find me.”

  “You need to turn yourself in,” said Andrea. “If you’re being charged with the murder of Chuck Bell, that’s the only thing you can do.”

  “That’s the one thing I can’t do,” I said, “and not just because I’m innocent. I’ll be a sitting duck in a jail cell. After what I saw tonight, I have no doubt that these men will kill me just as soon as they realize I can’t help them find Ivy. I have to run.”

  I started toward the hallway, then stopped. “Mallory, I borrowed your cell, all right?”

  “You what?”

  I had taken it from the master bedroom. “They took my cell. They’d been monitoring my line anyway. I need yours.”

  “No!”

  “Mallory, I just watched a man get burned alive tonight, and I have to go back out onto the street after doing exactly what they warned me not to do—call the police. I need a cell. Help me that much.”

  “I said no.”

  Her anger was hard to comprehend, but suddenly I realized that in the past couple of days I had grossly overanalyzed everything—from Mallory’s high-school dating history to her anonymous support for abused children—in search of some past trauma that might explain our divorce. My wife was just done with me. I wasn’t saying it was her fault or mine, but it was time to stop soothing my Wall Street ego by holding everyone else accountable—her parents, an old lover, her first husband, her new friend Andrea—for my life.