James Grippando

by Money to Burn

  “And what business is that?”

  “You must have some inkling,” she said.

  There was a semblance of a smile on her face, a gentle understanding in her voice. But it was my most disquieting moment with Ivy so far—the sense that she knew what I knew, that she knew what I didn’t know, and that I had no idea how she knew any of it.

  “Tell me about Vanessa Hernandez,” I said.

  She didn’t hesitate in the least, didn’t even try feigning ignorance.

  “Vanessa Hernandez had no problems with her nose,” she said, showing me her profile. “It was Ivy Layton who insisted on getting the work done.”

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  Her smile faded. “I was born in Miami. My parents were undercover agents for the DEA. My mom was born in Colombia, so she played the go-between for wealthy American dealers trying to hook up with Colombian suppliers.”

  “Not exactly the Chilean schoolteacher and ex-pat engineer you told me about.”

  “It was the same cover story they told our neighbors in Miami. They were always headed off to another copper-mining project in Chile, when in reality they were infiltrating the cocaine cartel in Colombia. Anyway, when I was five years old, a job went bad in Bogotá. Their target figured out that my father was DEA. My mother watched them drag him out of the car, shoot him in the back of the head, and dump his body on the side of the road.”

  “I’m sorry. Your mother obviously escaped?”

  “Somehow she was able to convince them that she had no idea he was an undercover agent. They let her go.”

  “Did she stay with the DEA?”

  “For a while. But she hasn’t worked with them for years. She got into corporate security as a consultant.”

  “So…which way did Vanessa go?”

  “No interest in law enforcement. But when I grew up and went to business school, the world of corporate espionage intrigued me. I joined a huge corporate security firm and when I was twenty-nine years old, my mother got a call from an old friend on Wall Street. He needed a brainy young woman with guts to infiltrate a billion-dollar hedge fund. That fund was Ploutus Investments. The friend on Wall Street was Eric Volke. Vanessa got the assignment, and that’s when I became Ivy Layton.”

  I drew a deep breath, trying to get my arms around the whole thing. “Your mother knows Eric?”

  “Yes. She’s in a taxi right now, on her way to meet up with him. Eric promised me that he would keep the two of you safe while this plays out between me and McVee.”

  I paused again, still overwhelmed. “So when you and I met, you were doing corporate espionage for Saxton Silvers?”

  “No. Eric hired me for WhiteSands.”

  I knew WhiteSands. Sometimes its services complemented those of Saxton Silvers, and sometimes Eric was criticized for holding such a large ownership stake in a publicly traded company that, at least on the investment-management level, competed with Saxton Silvers for business.

  “But you were spying,” I said.

  ‘“Spying’ has such a negative connotation. Eric knew that someone was manipulating the stock of WhiteSands, and he was convinced that the man behind it was Kyle McVee at Ploutus. The basic MO was similar to what just happened to Saxton Silvers. McVee used FNN reporters to spread rumors about WhiteSands, and McVee’s hedge fund bought low on the negative rumors and sold high on the favorable ones. Eric suspected that McVee was behind it, but he couldn’t prove anything. My job was to expose his plot by going to work for Ploutus and reporting my findings back to Eric.”

  “Is that why McVee wanted you dead?”

  “That was only the beginning,” said Ivy.

  She suddenly stopped, and the expression on her face alarmed me.

  “Ivy?”

  “Holy shit,” she said.

  “What?”

  She was staring out the window into the parking lot. “Your driver.”

  “Nick?” I said as I turned and looked. His Chevy was about a hundred feet away, parked beneath a tree. The sun was setting and the streetlights had just flicked on; their glare at dusk made the weblike crack in the windshield all the more evident. Nick’s head was facedown on the steering wheel.

  “They got him,” said Ivy.

  56

  IAN BURN ENTERED THE EMERGENCY ROOM THROUGH THE AMBULANCE entrance. No one stopped him. He figured Cantella and Ivy were keeping an eye on the main entrance to the ER. By entering from the other side, where access was restricted, he would catch them off guard. He started down a maze of sterile corridors, guided by the signs marked WAITING ROOM. Ironic.

  He couldn’t wait to get there.

  Cantella’s limo driver had been a good source of information over the past few weeks. The tip about Cantella’s true destination had been Nick’s best yet. And his last. In an operation this big, Burn never kept people around after they were no longer needed. That held true even for the little guys—especially the little guys. It was always the housekeeper, the limo driver, or the bartender who ratted you out and sent you to prison. Nick had served his purpose and needed to go—though the cracked windshield and brain splatter were regrettable. His 9 mm Glock pistol had been too much firepower for such a close-range shot.

  “Excuse me, sir. Can I help you?”

  It was an elderly hospital volunteer. Nobody policed the halls of the “authorized personnel only” area like a seventy-year-old woman from Jersey who worked for free.

  Burn ignored her, picking up his pace. He had no time for delays. Six months of tracking Ivy Layton had taught him plenty about the way her mind worked. She felt safe in public places, and probably the last thing she expected was for Ian Burn to walk into a crowded waiting room and start shooting. It was a risky maneuver, even for Burn, but acting contrary to a target’s expectations was the key to success in his business. Reporting back to Kyle McVee that Ivy Layton had slipped away again was not an option.

  The gray-haired hospital volunteer came after him.

  “Sir, this area is restricted.”

  He knocked her to the floor and pushed through the double doors that led to the ER waiting room. The old woman’s scream turned heads and robbed Burn of the element of surprise, sending Ivy and Cantella running across the waiting room at full speed. The automatic glass exit doors parted, and Ivy was flying through the opening with Cantella on her heels when Burn spotted them. He raised his semi-automatic pistol and took aim. The sick, the injured, and the healthy alike scattered in every direction, screaming and diving for cover beneath the chairs and behind gurneys as Burn squeezed off six quick rounds. The echo off the tile floor and walls of painted cinder block sounded like cannon fire, and the shots shattered the glass doors as they closed. There was hysteria all around, but Burn’s focus was unshaken.

  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 and 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 t
he 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.”