James Grippando

by Money to Burn

  “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.

  “What are you going to do with me?” asked Ivy.

  She was seated on the metal floor of the van, her back to the side panel. Her jaw felt slightly out of alignment from the left cross that Burn had delivered, and her ribs were still sore from the takedown to the pavement in the hospital parking lot. She worked at the plastic handcuffs that fastened her wrists behind her back, but there was no slack whatsoever.

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” said Burn.

  She knew his reputation, but she didn’t let her mind go there.

  “Let’s put it this way,” he said in an icy tone. “You will wish you really had been lost at sea and eaten by sharks.”

  Ivy was silent. There was nothing she could say. She should never have gone back toward the hospital in search of Michael. She should have kept running, just as she’d run for the past four years. In hindsight, seeing Michael face-to-face had probably been a mistake. Emotion had taken over, and even though splitting up outside the ER and heading off in opposite directions had been the correct tactical move, she’d doubled back in hope of finding him and escaping together. A silly romantic notion—and a complete blunder that had allowed Burn to capture her. And now he had hijacked her spyware as well. She wished now that she hadn’t given Michael her spare cell, though it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

  Suddenly, her mother’s voice was on the speaker. Olivia obviously had no idea that her words were being picked up by Michael’s cell and transmitted from the corporate dining room to Ivy’s phone a mile away.

  “We’d better get going,” Ivy heard her mother say.

  Burn also heard. “Let’s do what Mamma says,” he said to Ivy.

  One last time, Burn checked the tension on the cuffs beh
ind Ivy’s back. Satisfied, he moved to the van’s cockpit, placed Ivy’s phone on the dash, and climbed behind the wheel.

  “We’ll see you all there,” he said as he turned the ignition.

  60

  “WE’RE ALL SET,” SAID WALD, AS HE TUCKED AWAY HIS CELL PHONE.

  He was seated beside his uncle in the cabin of a Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma helicopter. They’d just touched down on a helipad in Somerset County after a short flight from Manhattan that had reduced the famous skyline to a blur of lights on the horizon. The whir of the rotors was almost down to nothing, making it unnecessary to use headsets or even raise their voices when talking.

  “Very good,” said McVee.

  It was his nephew’s second update of the night. The first had been within minutes of the shoot-out at the hospital: Ivy Layton wasn’t dead, but her run had come to an end. Burn had her at his mercy and under his control, and the death van was en route to an appropriate disposal site. McVee had been just fine with that—until the surprise phone call from Michael Cantella’s brother: “Michael knows it’s you,” he’d told McVee, “and if anything happens to him, me, or anyone in our family, the FBI is going to be all over you.”

  Wald glanced out the window at the rising moon, then back at his uncle.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  McVee’s expression tightened. “There are two ways to read that call from Cantella’s brother. One, he’s already gone to the FBI. Or two, it was a threat. A very serious threat.”

  “I understand, but—”

  “No ‘buts,’” said McVee. “If he’s already gone to the FBI, there’s nothing we can do about it. But if it’s a threat, and if we back away from it, extortion is right around the corner. The first payment is never enough to keep a blackmailer from telling the police what he knows. They keep coming back, and the price tag is always higher the next time. In this case, it’ll just keep going up and up until it’s out of sight—especially when Cantella and his brother get a better understanding of exactly how much we stand to profit from credit default swaps after Saxton Silvers’ bankruptcy.”

  Wald smiled. “A cool bonus that taking care of Ivy Layton is so profitable.”

  Remarks like that made it so clear to McVee that his nephew could never lead Ploutus. The kid always had everything backward. “Getting rid of Ivy Layton is the bonus on top of the business, genius.”

  “Huh?”

  “Even before she was in the picture I had plans to short sell an investment bank into oblivion. Ivy’s showing up just made it that much easier to decide Saxton Silvers should be first on the list.”

  “How much do we stand to make?”

  “More than you can fathom,” said McVee, “and it’s none of your business. Your job is to deal with the threat.”

  “Well, we’re all set. I spoke directly to Burn. There’s been a temporary stay of execution for Ivy Layton. He is to use her as bait.”

  “There’s no compromising on this point. My gut tells me that Cantella and his brother haven’t gone to the FBI yet, and I’m not about to pay them hush money for the rest of my days. Burn has to be prepared to eliminate all of them.”

  “The mother, too?”

  “She’s no innocent. Ivy never would have gotten away without her help. And something tells me it was the mother who taught Ivy all her tricks in the first place.”

  “Understood,” said Wald. “All of them. I’ll tell him it’s ‘as per Michael Cantella,’” he added, referring to the infamous e-mail.

  McVee unbuckled his seat belt, then stopped before rising. “Did you work out a price?”

  “He said you two already came to an understanding when you went for a ride in the limo.”

  “What understanding?”

  “At first I thought he was making a joke,” said Wald, “but he was serious. Something about the new line on our balance sheet: Money to Burn.”

  McVee almost smiled, recalling the conversation and his own play on words. He took Burn’s meaning: this job would cost so much that McVee would have to pay it quarterly, maybe even in annual installments. But it would be worth it.

  “Fine,” said McVee. “Money to Burn it is.”

  61

  WE ENTERED THE HANGAR THROUGH THE MAINTENANCE OFFICE, AND Eric switched on the overhead lights.

  At the end of a long private access road from the corporate training center, the WhiteSands heliport was one of two dozen heliports in Somerset County and one of about 365 statewide. Not all were equipped for nighttime landings and takeoffs, and some were little more than open space in a flat field of grass. As would be expected, the private facility at WhiteSands was equipped with far more amenities than it needed, including five separate hangars, each one large enough to accommodate a medium-size helicopter. We entered Hangar No. 3, which housed our ticket to escape—a pimped-out Sikorsky S76 that the head of WhiteSands’ Sovereign Fund Division “just had to have” after touring Malaysia in one with the sultan of Johor.

  “Hello?” said Eric, his voice echoing as he called out.

  The hangar was a gaping structure of corrugated steel, concrete block, and heavy, exposed metal beams. High-intensity lighting shone down from suspended luminaires, creating a ghostly pattern of perfectly round and evenly spaced pools of brightness across the polished concrete floor that surrounded the craft. Eric’s query had drawn no response—the hangar was completely still, no sign of anyone.

  “I guess our pilot’s not here yet,” said Eric.

  I walked toward the Sikorsky. It was Matterhorn white with dark blue and red accent stripes, and it looked almost new. Someone had expended untold hours of elbow grease on the wax finish. It was a habit I’d inherited from Papa, seeing an impressive piece of machinery and wondering not how much it cost or who the stuffed shirt was who got to use it, but rather, who was the average Joe who so proudly took care of it.

  “Do you have his number?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Eric, “let me give him a ring.”

  He went back toward the office and dialed from the landline on the wall. I watched and listened as Eric left a message on the pilot’s voice mail.

  “No answer?” I said as he returned.

  “Uh-uh,” said Eric.

  I glanced at Olivia. She had pretty much been a rock up until this point, but signs of stress were starting to show.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling,” she said.

  “He’s only five minutes late,” said Eric. “I’m sure he’ll be here.”

  “Try him again,” said Olivia. “Michael already lost his driver tonight. For a guy like Burn, pilots are no less expendable.”

  Eric glanced at me, but I could hardly disagree.

  “Wait a second,” he said, as he fumbled for the pilot’s business card in his wallet. “I dialed his office number. Let me try his cell.”

  He went to the wall phone again and dialed.

  62

  BURN WAS MOTIONLESS, CROUCHED BEHIND THE SECOND ROW OF passenger seats inside the helicopter. Ivy was belted into the seat in front of him, her hands still cuffed, afraid to move or make a sound. Burn’s gun was pressed against the base of her skull.

  Ivy’s phone lay in the seat beside Burn, and Cantella’s cell was still transmitting to it. The speaker was switched off, however, with Burn listening through earbuds. The attack on Ivy in the emergency room had filled Burn’s risk-taking quota for the evening, and it was important to eavesdrop now more than ever. Ivy’s mother seemed to be losing her nerve.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling,” she said, her voice playing into Burn’s earbud.

  “He’s only five minutes late,” said Volke. “I’m sure he’ll be here.”

  Burn glanced toward the aisle to where the pilot lay on the floor—a dead heap, his neck broken.

  Don’t bet on it, folks.

  Burn peered out the window. The glass was tinted so dark that no one outside the helicopter could have possibly seen hi
m. Still, he was cautious, raising his head up just enough to see out, not an inch more. The five-gallon fuel cans he’d filled were still in the corner, ready for use. The Sikorsky’s turbine engines used Jet A fuel, and Burn had filled two portable cans—more than enough to torch the entire building, let alone the helicopter and its passengers. His gaze drifted back toward the triangle of conversation near the maintenance office, and as he watched, a strange feeling came over him. Before tonight, he’d never set foot in this hangar, yet there was something eerily familiar about the situation, if not the setting. The cold concrete floor. The bright garage lights shining down. Two men. One woman. The situation growing increasingly tense, the woman on edge. And the smell of kerosene. It was on his hands—Jet A fuel was a derivative of kerosene—and the odor triggered memories. Kerosene was cheap and plentiful in Mumbai.

  It was the preferred fuel for bride burning.

  His sister’s screams were suddenly in his head, along with the indelible image of her husband and brother-in-law dousing her with kerosene and setting her afire in the garage. He hadn’t actually seen it happen, but her wounds had told the story. For five horrendous days in the hospital, Charu—her name meant “beautiful”—had managed to survive with burns covering 95 percent of her body. He never left her side, knowing what they had done to her. By the time she expired, he could see the men in that garage unleashing their unspeakable cruelty on a twenty-year-old woman from the Dhravi slum whose family was too poor to pay the expected dowry.

  And all these years later, he could still see it.

  “Wait a second,” said Volke, his voice transmitting through Burn’s earbud and drawing him back to his mission. “I dialed his office number. Let me try his cell.”