“Vanessa?”
I pushed my hair out of my eyes and took off my sunglasses so that I could adjust my vision inside the car’s dark interior.
Across from me at the end of the car’s cabin was Marcus. His hands were bound in front of him in black plastic handcuffs. Another heavyset man sat next to him with a gun pressed into his side.
Suddenly both men took out black hoods and, putting them over our heads, ordered us not to talk as the car continued on to its destination.
CHAPTER 34
Nia
As the cab came to a screeching halt across the street from the Four Seasons, I saw a line of police cars, two ambulances, and a couple of local news trucks parked in front. I shoved some money over the seat at the driver and got out of the cab. Dodging cars, I quickly crossed the four lanes of traffic on Fifty-Seventh Street and saw Terrence pacing in front of the hotel as cops ran in and out of the building.
“Terrence!” I yelled through tears as I made my way over to him.
“Nia, it’s not pretty,” he said to me as I rushed onto the crowded sidewalk in front of the hotel, thinking my best friend was dead.
Just as I turned to ask Terrence this question, a line of officers began shouting to clear the sidewalk of onlookers who had gathered on both sides of the entrance. Terrence flashed his DA badge and took me inside the lobby, which had been cleared of all the guests. The elevator doors opened, and two paramedics came out with a body covered with a white sheet.
“Oh my God. Vanessa!” My hand flew up to cover my mouth. I tried to run over to the body, but Terrence held me back.
“It’s not what you think, Nia!” he said as I struggled against him. “It’s not Vanessa.”
As his words penetrated my thoughts, Terrence flashed his badge at the paramedics and walked over to look at the body. He lifted up the sheet. I braced myself before looking down. It was Laila with a single bullet hole in her forehead. Her face, once beautiful, was twisted into a macabre mask. Her eyes were wide open, displaying the paralyzed fear she must have felt in her last moments. Blood ran down her face and into her long streaked hair.
My mind raced. Had Vanessa killed Laila? How had she even known she was going to be at the hotel? Was she with Marcus? I didn’t want to believe that he would cheat on Vanessa after all they had been through, but what else could have happened?
“Who killed Laila?” I asked as Terrence lowered the sheet back over her face and the paramedics made their way out of the hotel to the waiting medical examiner’s truck.
“That’s what I want to ask this guy,” Terrence said, gesturing toward the elevator doors, which had just opened. The police escorted out a man on a stretcher. He was naked from the waist up with a swath of white gauze and tape across his shoulder and his rib cage. A paramedic trailed alongside, carrying an IV attached to a needle in the man’s arm. His other arm was handcuffed to the stretcher.
As the stretcher made its way across the lobby, the man raised his head and our eyes met.
It was Kareem.
Dazed by his wounds, Kareem didn’t speak as the police rolled him out the front door of the hotel to the waiting ambulance. As he hit the curb, news reporters, cameramen, and photographers surged forward, shouting questions and snapping pictures.
A police detective in a tired brown suit and faded yellow shirt walked back into the building and headed toward Terrence.
“Nice night for a murder, huh, Terrence?” the detective asked as he shook Terrence’s hand. “What brings the DA’s office out tonight?”
“A high-profile murder in one of the city’s best hotels always gets on our radar. You know the mayor’s going to be all over this one. What do you have so far, Detective?”
“Well, we need to do some forensics, but on the surface it looks like a lover’s spat. Found the vic naked in the bed, single gunshot wound to the head. The perpetrator, also naked, was sprawled out on the floor with two wounds, one in the shoulder and one in the lower back. Found one gun at the scene.”
The detective held up a dark blue NYPD evidence bag and pulled out a plastic bag with a nine-millimeter gun inside.
“Looks like they may have struggled over the gun and both got shot, but we’ll see what ballistics confirms.”
“No witnesses?” Terrence asked.
“We still need to take a bunch of statements from the hotel staff and some of the guests, but so far no one recalls anything unusual.”
“Thanks, Detective. Keep me posted.” Terrence steered me out of the lobby back out onto the street, and over to his waiting car.
“Do you think that detective was right?” I asked as he held the passenger side door open and I slipped into the front seat.
“I don’t know. We’ll see what the tests say, but that still doesn’t explain where Vanessa is and why she came to this hotel.”
“What if Diablo Negro was waiting for her here?” I closed my eyes, fearful that my friend had been abducted by the vicious cartel. Vanessa didn’t deserve this. She was just getting her life and her marriage back on track. Terrence reached across the seat of the car to grab my hand.
“She’s going to be OK, Nia. We’re going to find her. Let’s head back to the apartment and wait until she comes home.”
Just then my cell phone rang. I dug frantically in my bag, hoping it was Vanessa, but when I looked at the screen, I saw it was the office calling.
“Hello?” I answered abruptly, thinking it was probably just MJ checking in to see if we’d found Vanessa.
“Hey, Nia,” said MJ. “Did you find Vanessa?”
“No, not yet. Did she try to call the office?”
“No, but I have an idea about how you may be able to find her. Let me call you back.” When the line went dead, I told Terrence what MJ had said.
Terrence pulled the car over when MJ called back fifteen minutes later. I put the call on speaker so that he could hear the conversation.
“OK, I called over to Miki Woods’s office and spoke with one of the producers on Marcus and Vanessa’s new show that I’m friendly with. And he told me that as part of our production plans, they sometimes have the crews trail the subjects to capture them without knowing they’re being filmed so they act really natural. Sometimes they end up using the footage in the show or use it for focus-group testing. So the crew has been watching Vanessa and Marcus for a few days now, just catching them out running errands, nothing major or too invasive but—”
“MJ, did they have a crew on them tonight?” I asked, cutting him off.
“Yes, girl. The producer said that her team had just sent an update saying that they followed a limousine that had both Marcus and Vanessa in the back out to a warehouse in Rahway, New Jersey. They had to leave to head back to the city for another shoot.”
“MJ, you’re the best!” I exclaimed. “E-mail me the directions to the warehouse.”
“Already done, boss lady. Let me know what you find out.”
“Thanks, MJ!”
Terrence grabbed his cell phone after I hung up and put his own call on speaker as he whipped the car around in the middle of the street and headed across town to the Lincoln Tunnel.
“Lee Howard,” a deep gravelly voice growled when the call connected.
“Lee, it’s Terrence.”
“What’s up, man? Long time no hear now that you wear a suit for a living.” The voice chuckled on the other end of the line.
“Very funny, Lee. Look, I’ve got a possible hostage situation with a high-value target at a warehouse in Rahway, New Jersey. I believe they are being held by Diablo Negro.”
“Sounds like my kind of party,” Lee said, his deep voice perking up with interest.
“That’s exactly why I called you ex–Navy Seals guys instead of my boys in NYPD. I need a team with special–forces type experience. Who’s working tonight? I need your best cras
h team to meet me out there stat. They’re going to need to come in heavy, but we need the high-value targets alive. No mistakes.”
“No problem. I’ve got the perfect team. They’ve been pulling most of the antiterrorism raids throughout the tri-state but nothing much lately, so they’ll be happy to have some real fun for a change.”
“Again, brother. We need the targets alive, a husband and wife. I’ll share more details when you guys get there.”
“No problem. We’re on our way.” The phone line went dead.
CHAPTER 35
Vanessa
I shivered in the cold metal chair to which I was tied. Underneath the stifling hood, I struggled to regulate my breathing and stay calm and not panic. We had to make it out of here alive, and home to Damon.
I still wasn’t sure what was going on. Marcus and I had both been taken out of the car, but then we were separated. I had been relieved to see Marcus in the back of the car, but now I didn’t know who I had killed with Laila. But what about the text messages I saw between him and Laila? Had someone set me up?
I could hear a group of men standing around us, their voices, speaking in Spanish, echoed around the cavernous space. From the different tones of their voices, I imagined there were about five or six men in the room with us. Suddenly I heard heavy footsteps on the concrete floor heading in my direction. The hood was pulled roughly off my head. I shook my hair out of my eyes, squinted, and adjusted my eyes to the dim lighting in the warehouse.
The large space was also an airplane hangar. Two black SUVs and a small private jet were parked at the end of the room by the huge hangar doors. Several aisles of floor-to-ceiling metal shelves lined both sides of the space and stocked old, rusted shipping containers. The voices I had heard belonged to five men stationed around the room, each holding semiautomatic weapons, their arms folded in front of them. Suddenly the door to the plane opened, and the stairs lowered. Two men walked down the stairs and made their way toward a large metal table with a briefcase on top and two chairs set up in front of me. As the two men got closer, I saw that I knew one of them.
“John?” I said, looking into the face of Marcus’s new agent.
“Mrs. King, it’s always a pleasure to see you,” John said in the same pleasant tone he would use as if we were meeting in a conference room instead of a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. “Of course I wish it were under better circumstances.” He unbuttoned the jacket of his navy-blue suit and took a seat behind the table next to the other man, whom I didn’t recognize.
I took his age to be about sixty. He was tall and trim, and he wore an expensive gray suit, crisp white shirt, and a red silk tie. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed back. His face was a deep tan as if he spent a lot of time in the sun; he had dark black eyes and thin lips pressed into a tense line. He leaned over to John and said something in Spanish.
“Ah, yes, let us get started,” John said as he turned to one of the men. “Can you please ask Mr. King to join us?” The man jogged over to a door leading to an office and went inside. He walked Marcus into the room flanked by Bruce. As Marcus got closer, he looked over at me and tried to reach for me, but Bruce jabbed him sharply in the ribs with the butt of his gun and motioned for him to continue to the table.
Seeing that my husband was still alive and hadn’t been killed by these animals, I exhaled for a moment, but the aching pit in my stomach tightened. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out for him, certain that would only make our situation worse.
“Welcome, Mr. King,” John said as Marcus was led to the table, his hands still restrained by the plastic handcuffs in front of him.
“What the fuck is going on, John?” Marcus growled as he shook off Bruce and the other man holding him. “What are you doing with my wife? Whatever you want, you can get it from me and let her go!”
The man seated next to John leaned over again to whisper something in his ear.
“Well, it’s not quite that simple, you see. Because right now your wife could be wanted for murder, so it’s probably not a good idea for her to leave just yet.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Marcus barked, looking back and forth between me and John.
“Well, it seems that your wife, in a fit of jealous fury, shot and killed your former mistress this evening.”
Marcus whipped his head around to look at me. I dropped my head down, unable to meet his searching gaze.
“Oh, wait, there’s more. You see, it also appears that she shot Kareem as well, thinking it was you. But don’t you worry, he survived his injuries.”
“Vanessa, what is he talking about?” Marcus asked, desperate for my answer.
I looked up and explained that Alex had given me his phone, and I had seen some text messages saying that he and Laila were planning to meet at the hotel.
“But Vanessa, I have my phone. What are you talking about?” Marcus pleaded.
“But I saw the messages,” I said.
“No, actually Mrs. King, you didn’t see Marcus’s phone,” John said, interrupting. “What you saw was a duplicate phone that we loaded some messages onto so you would think your husband was meeting his former lover.”
“You son of a bitch!” Marcus tried to lunge at John, but the two men held on to him.
“Why, John?” I screamed at him as I strained against the ropes, almost toppling over the chair.
“Leverage, of course,” John said. “Now we’re the only ones that know that you were in that hotel room and pulled the trigger. And right now the only fingerprints that the police are going to find on the gun that you dropped at the scene will have Kareem’s prints on them, so unless we say otherwise, he’ll take the wrap for the murder you committed.”
“But what do you want? You’re already my agent,” Marcus spat out at him.
“It’s not what I want that matters,” John said as he turned to the man seated next to him. “At this point all that matters is what Mr. Quadron and Diablo Negro want.”
Both Marcus and I stiffened at the mention of Diablo Negro. All of a sudden it felt like I had ice water running through my veins. We had both heard of the infamous drug cartel, but I couldn’t fathom what they would want with us. Marcus never even used drugs in college, let alone now. My head was spinning.
Suddenly, the man, who up until now had spoken only Spanish to John, began to speak in English. His voice had a heavy Mexican accent as he started to explain why we were all here. He said Diablo Negro had first become involved with Kareem ten years ago when he and Marcus played together in college. Apparently, Kareem had in fact been involved with the cartel’s gambling business and agreed to shave points off games in exchange for money. But when their team went to the play-offs and he was supposed to throw the game, Kareem didn’t, and Diablo lost a lot of money. Ten million dollars to be exact. Well, after that night, some of their associates paid him a visit to explain the error of his ways, but Kareem ran out of his dorm room. When their colleagues tried to catch up with him, they struck Kareem with their car, ending his career. But while Kareem had paid for a portion of his crime, that still didn’t address the problem of the lost $10 million, to which 50 percent interest was added each week.
“And when you announced that Kareem was going to be your agent, he told us he’d found a way to pay us back,” said Mr. Quadron with a sliver of a smile across his cold, hard face.
“So Kareem used the money from my first contract to pay back the ten million dollars plus interest?” Marcus asked.
“Well, by then the ten million had turned into fifty million, so it just kept growing, and Kareem, seeing no other way, sold us half your contract.”
“What do you mean he sold you half my contract?”
“What I mean, Mr. King, is that for every dollar you earned since you started in the NBA, from your salary as a player to endorsements and business ventures, we’ve received half.�
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My mind was reeling to hear that Kareem had gotten us in bed with these monsters and given half of Marcus’s earnings over the years to these bloodsuckers.
“But he must have paid you off at some point,” Marcus said. “So why was he still paying you?”
“Certainly he repaid the original loss and interest, but once he gave us fifty percent of your earnings, we couldn’t imagine walking away from that kind of money. So we told him we’d like to continue our arrangement.”
“Then what happened?” Marcus asked. I could tell he was afraid of the answer.
“Well, that’s when you signed your one-hundred-fifty-million-dollar contract with the Gladiators, so Kareem decided he wanted out, but we paid his little girlfriend a visit that seemed to convince him that it was in his best interest to stay.”
“What girlfriend?”
“The little dancer, Kalinda, I think her name was. Such a pretty girl. It was a shame to see her pretty face and body carved up that way.”
I shivered in my chair, again remembering the newspaper descriptions of what had been done to that poor girl’s body. Like Nia had said, the stalker who ran the license plate on the car and thought he had seen Marcus had it all wrong. The girl’s murder had been a message to Kareem.
The man resumed his story and said that once Kareem was back in line, another snag in their lucrative arrangement arose when we got to New York and rumors started circulating that I wanted to find a new agent for Marcus.
“So meeting you was no accident, John,” I said, looking at the agent that had introduced himself to me at an NBA charity event in Phoenix that I hosted about a month before we moved to New York. I’d thought it was such good fortune that the Knight Sports Management Group had signed on at the last minute to be the title sponsor of our event. John had attended the event and chatted me up throughout the evening, planting the seeds of change.
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