Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol)

by Jerry Weber

  Your friends

  Attached to the note is a new address in Brooklyn for Vic to go to. Oh shit, Vic breaks out in a cold sweat. They will kill Karen the same as they did the people in the body bags. It is not thinkable that this is an idle threat; not with these people. I don’t dare call John. They may be watching me, and Karen will pay.

  With that Vic pulls to the side and rips out the camera buried in the ceiling of his truck and two more in the rear; he then throws away the special cell phone he had and opens the hood and rips out the GPS transmitter. He promptly chucks all of this into a refuse barrel next to him. Then he continues his trip to the new address in Brooklyn.

  Back in Wilkes-Barre, panic ensues. Gus hollers, “We don’t know what happened. He went through the tolls at the bridge and then everything went dead. We see a hand reaching for the camera, but we don’t know, in the dark, who it was. On top of that, Vic is not answering his cell phone. What the hell happened?”

  “We can alert the New York Police to look for the SUV, but he could be anywhere after crossing the bridge,” says John. Of course, the Brooklyn FBI probably has the wrong warehouse staked out. They will see no activity there. For the moment, John and his team are stymied.

  Vic is now at the new address in Brooklyn. This time he is escorted to another pier two blocks away. Vic is led into another abandoned warehouse on a pier. After he stops, Sam steps out of the shadows and Vic confronts him.

  “What have you done with Karen? I want to talk to her right now, or I don’t take your ‘package’ with me.”

  “Sure Vic,” as Sam hands Vic his cell where Vic hears an excited Karen telling him not to worry, they won’t hurt her if he does what they ask, this is followed by a dial tone.

  “Where is she?”

  “Not for you to worry about Vic, the Pocono Mountains is such a large area.”

  “Okay, I’ll take the package back, but when I send the all clear message I want Karen released unharmed.”

  “That’s the plan. We wouldn’t have it any other way. We do, after all want to continue doing business with you. But, after all that recently went down, we needed some insurance that you weren’t going to go off the reservation on us.”

  “Just don’t hurt her or I’ll …”

  “You’ll what? Listen Vic, just do your job and everything will be fine.”

  Petrified, Vic drives back towards Pennsylvania. This time he is being followed by Vinnie in a small black Toyota. He has no idea how this is going to play out, but he knows he has to keep going. The only chance for help is back in Duryea where he is on his, and hopefully Agent John’s turf.

  The Honeymoon Lodge, five miles from Canadensis, Pennsylvania, is situated in a remote, heavily wooded area. It is here that Karen is to be held in a small cabin at the end of a dirt lane. The resort has ten such cabins, but is closed for the season. They open for business after June first.

  Karen has her hands bound in front of her with plastic restraints. The two goons with her, Milt and Johnny, are enforcers from New York. They a waiting for her in the hallway of her apartment after her shift at the hospital.

  Karen had enough of a head start to enter her unit and get to her bathroom. But, the locked door was a no barrier for them. It only took a few kicks for the door to be broken down. They grabbed Karen, gagged and bound, unable to scream out or protest. With a gun in her ribs, she went quietly to the car.

  As they got close to the lodge Karen realized where she was, since her blindfold had slipped down. She knows, in this isolated spot, screaming will not help. She figures, the only chance is to get loose and try and outrun the two goons.

  If only I could get a head start. In this pitch dark I might have a chance, she thinks.

  Meanwhile, Vic is approaching his garage in Duryea. He has no way to warn John and Bob that he is being tailed by Vinnie. Bob is positioned in the shadows outside the garage and John remains inside waiting. Vic, upon pulling up, uses his remote to open the darkened garage and drives in.

  Vinnie was given orders to stop about a block from the garage and case the property for any unusual activity. But he is tired, and doesn’t see anything unusual, so he drives right up to the garage door behind Vic. The electric door is closing as Vinnie is parking when he suddenly sees a flashlight beam pointed at his face and hears, “FBI freeze.”

  Vinnie ducks, and gets off a shot in the direction of the light. Almost instantly, three more shots ring out and Vinnie slumps behind the steering wheel gasping his last. Bob runs over from his hiding place and is quickly joined by John.

  Victor, standing next to John, looks in and says, “It’s Vinnie, my contact. He is the one I always give the all-clear signal after I cremated the body and disposed of the ashes. That’s just the half of it John, they have Karen.”

  “What, how do you know?”

  Vic now relates his saga in New York, complete with talking to Karen. Victor excitedly says “The bigger problem is that Vinnie is the one to give the ‘release Karen message’ to his guys once I completed my mission here. I can’t even think what will happen to her when they don’t get an all-clear from Vinnie.”

  Now it’s John’s turn to be flustered. They search Vinnie and find his cell phone, but it has no numbers stored in the memory. They have no way of reaching out to Karen’s abductors by way of Vinnie’s phone.

  John says, “I just had no idea they would grab my niece for insurance on you going through with your job. Did I ever underestimate the reach of this gang, I am so sorry for my sloppiness here.”

  John rebounds quickly and asks, “Did you hear them say anything about where they are holding her?”

  “Sam just spoke in riddles about the Poconos being an awfully big place.”

  “He spoke the truth, there are hundreds of square miles between here and the Delaware River.”

  Karen is now locked away in a cabin with her two abductors.

  She says “Hey guys, I need to use the bathroom.”

  “Here Milt, take this beauty queen to the bathroom.”

  “I’d rather take her to the bedroom.”

  “Shut up, yells Johnny, no touching the merchandise on company time idiot!”

  “Sure,” says Milt, “but if we get the order to whack her, I may just have to use this little honeymoon cabin for my own party first.”

  That seals the deal for Karen, she needs to escape and fast. After being shoved into the bathroom by Milt, Karen locks the door. There is a window and she tries to nudge it open. At first it doesn’t move, then with a scraping noise it opens. Karen opens the faucet and flushes the toilet to make masking noises, while she forces the window toward its fully opened position. With a final crunching noise the old warped window is finally open.

  With her hands are still tied, Karen will have to dump herself out of the window head first. She will have no support to help break the fall. If she is caught she will have the bruises from the fall plus a likely beating from the goons to worry about. But, not liking any of her other options decides to go through with the escape.

  She lands on her back, fortunately on a soft lawn about five feet down. But the thump and continuous running water have attracted attention. “So much for a big head start,” she muses.

  Karen hears the banging on the flimsy bathroom door which will soon give way and allow her captors to pursue her. The only chance is to seek cover in the nearby woods. She will have to cover some distance in the thickets and hope to see either a road or house lights in the distance. She needs a target to run towards.

  Meanwhile Milt and Johnny having broken down the bathroom door realized Karen is gone.

  “Quick out the front door, Johnny yells.”

  Reaching the side of the cabin where the bathroom is located, they realize it’s pitch dark and they forgot their flashlight. Another minute is lost, allowing Karen to get out of earshot of the cabin. But, progress is slow as the brambles and thick underbrush are scratching her legs causing bleeding. Karen is running on adrenaline a
nd doesn’t even notice.

  John raced up to the Scranton Hill Section where Karen’s apartment is located. The local police are already there and have started to search the empty apartment. John figures, since the door frame is splintered, Karen was hold up here and overheard them mention the name which she wrote with lipstick “Honeymoon Lodge” on the inside of the closet door. Good thinking, because if she used the mirror or someplace more prominent they would have seen the message and erased it.

  John made a quick call to the State Police for the location of “Honeymoon Lodge” in the Poconos. It turns out there are two. One is far over in Hazleton off Route 80 and the other is in Canadensis, closer to Scranton. John barks, “Tell the Hazleton barracks to check out their lodge, and have the Mount Pocono barracks checkout the Canadensis one. I’d put my money on Canadensis. It’s closer. Have a chopper pick me up on the roof of the CMC hospital.”

  Meanwhile, the chase is on for Karen. Fortunately, Milt and Johnny are big city boys, not deer hunters. They could much easier catch you in a five story tenement in New York than here. But, Karen isn’t home free. With her hands still bound Karen can make only slow progress, and the terrain has turned marshy. The escape and search went on for twenty minutes. Tiring, Karen leans on a branch; it cracks, dumping her onto the ground.

  “What was that noise, Milt?”

  “I don’t know, but it came from over by that swamp.”

  The two goons head towards the swamp. Just when Karen was trying to be quiet, a raccoon scampers in front of her and she screams.

  “Now we got her!”

  The two hurry over towards Karen finding her on the ground.

  “You caused us a lot of trouble little lady, now we are going to cause some for you,” seethes Johnny.

  They roughly yank Karen out of her hiding place and march her back towards the cabin. Back at the cabin everyone is panting from the walk when Johnny sees a message on his cell.

  It’s Sam, “Vinnie didn’t give us a signal and we can’t raise him on his cell. Whack the girl and get back to the City and lay low.”

  “You heard the orders Milt, let’s do it.”

  They had one chance to get away clean, but the thugs didn’t know it. Time was not on their side. They should have executed Karen and cleared out ASAP. But Milt wants his party with Karen first. Johnny, sensing danger, wants to split, but Milt says just ten minutes. He takes the bloodied Karen into the bedroom cutting loose her hands. She protests and bucks, but he again rams his gun into her ribs. He then ties her hands and feet to the bedposts. Karen spits in Milt’s face. He just smiles and wipes it off. Milt begins ripping her clothes off and then removes his own. This is the moment he has been waiting for since he first laid eyes on her.

  “Freeze FBI!” Johnny, knowing they have the drop on him surrenders. But, Milt goes for his pistol and comes out shooting. He goes down with one shot to the head. Standing on the porch with his service pistol out is FBI Agent John Flaherty, who just landed ten minutes earlier and then jumped into a State Police car for the short drive to the resort.

  He persuaded the state police to let him go in first and try to save his niece. Had Karen not escaped, and Milt not let his hormones run wild, Karen could have been executed and the killers been safely on their way back to New York. That was way too close.

  CHAPTER 37

  Celebration

  At a family party at Karen’s parents’ house, there was much to celebrate. Uncle John had secured immunity for Victor in return for his testimony against the Dellveccio Family. The surviving kidnapper of Karen, Johnny, was cooperating with the FBI. He named several names of family operators, but most importantly, named Sam Gianetti, the lawyer as his boss. In addition, Sam was named by Victor as his contact that financed and controlled the illegal crematory. This was a coup, as Gianetti was the highest member of the Dellveccio family to be indicted in anyone’s memory. To get “capos” indicted at all was a rare occurrence for law enforcement. Even more importantly, the illegal cremation operation was closed early. Letters went out to all crematory owners and manufactures to be suspicious and report any attempts of being approached concerning illegal activities.

  Sitting in the corner of the dining room is Aunt Sophie. She is the one person not smiling and celebrating at the family party. Sophie is not so sure that everything is over with the mob. She knew a friend from Queens, New York, who once told her that the mob does not forgive or forget. They have a long memory and punish people who are either traitors or failures in their ventures. Wasn’t this what their recent cremation scheme with Victor was all about anyway? It was vengeance for people who screwed up. Sophie knew that if they could grab and nearly kill her niece once, they were capable of finishing the job. She needed a plan, but didn’t even think of telling her fears to Agent John; he would just think her just another crazed old crank. No, Sophie needed proof, but how to find it?

  Agent John also learned a lesson—to not underestimate the mob as they got way too close to his niece for comfort. However, he didn’t feel that there would be anymore reaction from the mob in Pennsylvania, because the Dellveccio’s didn’t need any more legal trouble. He would be proven right on that scenario, but wrong on the theory of “Murphy’s Law”; if something can go wrong it probably will. Anyway the party ended on a high note and all were happy that a good future awaited the soon to be wed couple.

  CHAPTER 38

  The Unraveling

  Back in New York, things were not going well for Sam. Both he and Sal are under indictment by the Feds. Sal has already been reprimanded and demoted for his sloppy supervision of the two soldiers that kidnapped Karen. Carlo, the family Don, was not about to take this embarrassment lightly. However for Sam, the golden boy who had the brains and education to lead the family into a new generation, his dream was crushed. Sam was now an anathema to Carlo.

  In retrospect, Carlo thought it crazy to trust this cremation scheme to an operator who was an outsider and over a hundred miles from the City. The function of destroying bodies that they had eliminated was too serious of an endeavor to handle it the way Sam did. Carlo now had to find lawyers to defend his people, and possibly replace them when they went to prison. It was particularly galling to have to hire a lawyer to defend your lawyer. Carlo so much wished he were back in the much simpler and better ‘olden days’.

  Sam is livid and depressed at the same time. He goes from first in line to head the family to an indicted felon. Worse, there is this kid Victor, who is about to skate out of all of this as if it never happened and he had nothing to do with it.

  Sam can’t get his mind around these facts. He is at home drinking and getting angrier by the minute. Worst debacle the family had in ten years, and he is the fall guy for it. Oh, it was fine when the bodies were disappearing and everyone was ‘fat, dumb, and happy’. But to think that little weasel in Pennsylvania is riding high, and I may be going to prison. … The more Sam thought about it, the more he started screaming, “Retribution is mine and mine alone!” He was going to get even, and he was going to do it personally.

  Sam knew that Carlo had written off “operation firestop”, and would take his losses. He further knew Carlo would not risk any more assets trying to get even with Victor. Sam alone was going back to Duryea.

  CHAPTER 39

  Duryea

  It is Friday evening, Vic and Karen are together in the funeral home apartment. They have been repainting and decorating the downstairs to be more inviting to the clientele. Upstairs they are making a nest for themselves, as Victor finally has something to live for. No more, excess drinking, gambling, or lying around feeling lethargic. This was a new day and thanks to Karen and her Uncle John, Vic would be around to celebrate it.

  The fall night was cold and blustery, and the couple turned in early. Vic thought he heard a noise downstairs. He listened, but not hearing anything else he rolled over and went back to sleep. Suddenly, he and Karen are staring down the barrel of Sam’s Glock pistol. Sam was standin
g at the foot of the bed in his black trench coat with a look of cold rage.

  “You two lovebirds have ruined my life and now you are going to pay.”

  Vic stammers, “Wait a minute, I was trapped.”

  “Sure you were and this little niece of Agent John. Well, we are going to have a going away party tonight, just the three of us. Get your coats on. We are going for a little ride.”

  “Where?”

  “You know; the crematory.”

  Vic drove his Suburban, Karen rode shotgun, and Sam sat in the back.

  “Drive straight to the garage, or you two will be missing what little brains you have.”

  Vic and Karen are the most frightened they have ever been. The atmosphere was a lot more toxic than any other threats or the kidnapping of Karen. Vic’s adrenaline is pumping, but he knows that to get shot in the back by being brave won’t help.

  Sam screams, “Open the garage door and drive in.”

  Vic, thinking fast, wants to say he doesn’t have the opener, but it is hanging on the sun visor right above him, so he complies and drives in. The lights from the headlights of Vic’s SUV cast an eerie glow inside.

  Pointing the gun at Vic Sam bellows, “Get out and walk over in front of the retort!”

  Vic does what he is told.

  “Now open the doors!

  Vic pushed the open button and the hydraulically powered door slid up, revealing the cavernous space of the fire chamber.

  “Get in!” Sam orders.

  “You can’t.”

  “Shut up, I said crawl in or I execute you here on the spot. That would give me almost as much pleasure as standing here with your girlfriend as I start the retort and listen to you die inside.”