by Stephen Frey
“No, you won’t,” he replied, his tone easing. She was so sweet—which was the whole problem. “I can’t let you do that.” He’d stolen a look in her checkbook last week when she was at work. The balance was a measly $440. Of course, that was twice what was in his account. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”
6
GOOD EVENING, MR. Casey.” Johnny’s polite greeting echoed eerily in the small back room of the warehouse. Bare cement walls, dim lighting, bone-chilling cold, a rusty metal conveyor in one corner, a stack of rotting boxes in another, and the stench of fish and mildew with every breath. A nasty place for a nasty job. It was perfect. “Sorry to put you out this way.”
“You’re not sorry for anything.”
Stephen Casey lay on his back, blindfolded and secured to a narrow piece of three-quarter-inch plywood suspended from the ceiling by four strong ropes. The plywood hung at an angle so his head was eighteen inches below his feet. He was much bigger than Johnny, but that didn’t matter at this point.
Marconi had made a crew of Lucchesi soldiers available to Johnny, even though killing Kyle McLean wasn’t sanctioned by the family council. Johnny had contacted the crew’s leader and ordered him and his men to go to the address on the crumpled yellow paper and pick up Casey. Using Lucchesi code—because he was on a cell phone—Johnny had instructed the leader to take Casey to this family-controlled warehouse, tie him up in a very specific way, and leave. The crew had followed Johnny’s orders to a tee. Casey was secured so tightly to the plank he could barely even move his toes. One thing about the men under Marconi’s command: they always carried out his orders exactly.
“What do you do now?” Johnny asked.
“Huh?”
Johnny was leaning against the wall ten feet from where Casey was hanging. Damn, it was cold in here. He moved closer so Casey could hear him better, watching Casey’s breath rise. “What do you do now?” he repeated, louder. The echoes were suddenly more noticeable, more ominous. “You were a city cop, but you retired from the force.” Marconi hadn’t told him what Casey did for a living now, just that Casey wasn’t a cop anymore. The guy didn’t look older than fifty, so he had to be doing something. Couldn’t just be sitting on his ass collecting a pension. “Where do you work now?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Calm down, Mr. Casey.”
“Calm down? You pricks break into my house, tie me up, blindfold me, throw me in the back of a truck, drag me to wherever this godforsaken place is, and you want me to calm down? Screw you.” Casey struggled furiously for a few moments, pulling frantically at the ropes binding his wrists and ankles beneath the plywood and straining at the rusty chain around his neck. Finally he gave up. “What do you want from me?” he asked, gasping. His struggle had only tightened the bindings.
“Tell me what you do.”
“Why you wanna know?”
“I just do.”
“I’m a damn security guard at a parts warehouse out at the airport.”
“Which one?”
“LaGuardia.”
“What airline?”
“Delta. What do you care?”
Johnny took another step forward, so he was only a few inches from Casey. “Why’d you quit the force?”
“I felt guilty, you know? I wanted to give somebody else a chance to risk their lives every day for fifty grand a year. Why the hell do you think I quit?” he said with a snarl. “I figured out crime does pay. I figured out it wasn’t worth getting shot at by you guys when you’re making twenty times what I am and ninety percent of the time you beat the rap anyway.” He hesitated. “And I wanted to be around for my grandkids,” he admitted. “I started thinking about not making it home one night. I started to get that bad feeling.”
Johnny heard the faint sound of water dripping somewhere. So cops got that premonition of peril, too. “How many grandkids you got?”
“Two.”
“How old?”
“Three and one.”
“Boys, girls?”
“What is this?” Casey demanded. “What do you guys want?”
“It’s just me here, Mr. Casey. Nobody else. The other men are gone. It’s just me and you.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
“You gonna kill me?” Casey asked, his tone turning less surly.
“Not if you give me what I want.”
“What’s that?”
“Information.”
“Screw you!” Casey shouted again, his bravado back in high gear. “I’m not telling you anything.”
So Casey was going to play tough guy. Which only made sense. He was an ex–New York City cop. He wasn’t used to being pushed around. He was used to doing the pushing. It wouldn’t matter, though, not one damn bit. Johnny had never failed to break anybody. Not using this technique.
“What information could I possibly have that you’d want?”
Johnny zipped the fleece he was wearing up to his chin, picked up a box of Saran Wrap off a stool, and moved close to Casey. Casey’s head was level with his knees. “I need to know about a man named Kyle McLean.” He let the echoes fade, gave his words time to sink in. “Is he alive?”
“I don’t know anybody by that name.” Casey suddenly shivered uncontrollably, and goose bumps rose up over his entire body. Marconi’s soldiers had stripped Casey to his boxers, and according to the thermometer on the wall, it was thirty-nine degrees in here. His clothes lay in a wet pile in the middle of a puddle next to the stack of boxes. “I swear it.”
“I’ve seen the police report,” Johnny shot back, his voice rising, taking on a hint of anger. “Don’t lie to me. I hate it when people lie to me.”
“Look, I don’t remember the guy. I was a cop for twenty-five years. I made a lot of arrests, filled out a lot of reports. I don’t remember all the names, you know?”
“Sure, sure, except Kyle McLean was related to you.” Casey’s head snapped toward Johnny despite the chain around his neck and the blindfold. “He was your nephew.” The obvious reaction of recognition a sure sign a nerve had been struck. “The report you filed says McLean accidentally drove his car off an East River pier one night a couple of years ago when he was drunk. And that he drowned. That jog your memory?”
Casey nodded as best he could. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Now I remember.” His teeth were chattering so hard it was difficult for him to speak. “Can I have a blanket or something? I’m freezing.”
“When we’re done,” Johnny answered, leaning down close. “When you’ve told me what I wanna know.”
“You already know everything I know. Kyle accidentally drove his car off a pier near where they used to keep that old battleship. He drowned.”
“Why would he do that?”
“They killed his girlfriend. He got stinking drunk and lost it. Couldn’t take being without her. Missed a turn, went over the edge.”
Johnny felt a familiar lump form quickly in his throat. He still hadn’t gotten over her. Never would. “Who killed his girlfriend?”
“The Lucchesi family. The Mafia.”
Johnny stood straight up and took a quick, involuntary step back. Then hunched over for a split second, like he’d been slammed in the stomach with a sharp punch. Angelo Marconi had left that little detail out. Unless this was an intricate dodge Casey was trying to pull. But the missile had landed too close to home, sounded too believable. How could Casey possibly have known he was being tortured tonight on direct orders from a Lucchesi boss? “Why would they kill his girlfriend?” Johnny asked, trying not to act like Casey’s response had hit him so hard.
“Kyle owed them money, I think. Yeah, that was it. Like almost a hundred grand. He borrowed it from them to pay for his mom’s operation. For my sister, Helen. She and her husband didn’t have insurance, didn’t have anywhere near that kind of cash. And the rest of us didn’t have the money, either. She would have died without surgery, so Kyle went to the mob for the money. They were his
only option.”
“Yeah, but why’d they kill his girlfriend?”
No answer.
“Mr. Casey!”
“Okay, okay, here’s how it went down. So they come looking for the VIG early, see, way before they’re supposed to. They want some big extra payment they’d never mentioned at the beginning, too. A processing fee, they call it. Kyle keeps telling them he can’t pay ’em yet, that it’s way earlier than the original deal. But they won’t stop coming around, won’t stop badgering him, won’t give him a break. It doesn’t make any sense, and Kyle gets pissed off at ’em one night in Brooklyn, really pissed off. Tells the main guy to go screw himself. Tells him he’s gonna turn the tables and come after him. So they off Kyle’s girlfriend to let him know they mean business.
“Now he’s going out of his mind because he feels so guilty and the main guy tells Kyle they’re gonna start killing his family next. Torture us before they kill us, too. Gouge out eyes with pens, pour acid on the wounds. Cut off body parts real slow. Real bad shit, you know? Helen first, then the rest of us. Yeah, well, Kyle can’t take it, would never be able to live with himself. And he knows they’re serious now, too. Like I said, he can’t handle being without his girl, either. They were tight, real tight. So he goes the only way out he can think of. He ends it.”
Johnny raised his hand slowly to his chest, feeling the two of hearts in his shirt pocket beneath the warm fleece. “Suicide?”
“Yeah, right, suicide. Now, will you please let me go?”
“But you told me a minute ago that McLean accidentally drove his car off that pier. That’s what your police report says, too.”
“I forgot. I’m sorry. Kyle didn’t want me to put suicide in the report. He didn’t want his mother to hear about that. He didn’t want his mother to think he murdered himself. He knew Helen wouldn’t have been able to handle it. So I doctored the report after Kyle killed himself.”
“Doctored it? Wasn’t that risky? Couldn’t doing something like that have gotten you kicked off the force?”
“I’m his uncle, for Christ’s sake. Kyle and I are close. I’m really like his older brother. I’d do anything for him.”
There it was. The mistake Johnny had been hoping for. Casey’s sliver of a brain hemorrhage. “If McLean’s dead, how can you still be close to him? How can you still be like an older brother to him?”
Casey went silent. The only sound in the room was water dripping. He wasn’t even shivering anymore.
“Answer the question, Mr. Casey.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
Johnny had always fantasized about being a trial lawyer as a kid. He loved watching Perry Mason black-and-white reruns after school on the old Zenith in his grandmother’s cramped living room. But there hadn’t been enough money for college, let alone law school. He still loved manipulating people into corners, though. “You just told me you’re still like his older brother. How could you still be like his older brother if he’s dead? How can you still be his uncle?”
“I…I don’t know. I was just talking. It was a figure of speech, just something you say. Kyle’s been dead for a couple of years. I was his uncle. That’s what I meant to say. I was his uncle. Okay?”
“We dug up his grave.” A bald-faced lie, but it sounded chillingly convincing in here. He knew McLean was supposed to have been buried, not cremated. And he knew what cemetery he was supposed to be buried in. “At St. George’s in Queens. Way in the back.” Johnny hesitated. “Guess what? No bones. Just an empty coffin.”
Casey’s teeth were suddenly chattering out of control again. “I’m so damn cold.”
“You gonna tell me the truth?” Johnny asked with a snarl.
“He’s dead. Dead, I swear it.”
Johnny opened the Saran Wrap box, pulled out a few feet of the razor-thin, transparent wrap, pressed the end of it to Casey’s forehead and began shrouding his face. Over his face and under the plywood, over his face and under the plywood. Again and again as Casey struggled futilely against the chain and ropes. Johnny was careful not to cover Casey’s nostrils as he wrapped. “One more chance, Mr. Casey,” Johnny warned when he was done, ripping the wrap off against the box’s jagged metal teeth, then tossing the box back toward the stool. “You gonna tell me the truth?”
No answer.
Johnny leaned down, picked up a bucket of ice water, and poured it slowly over Casey’s face, making certain some of it went down his nose. Instantly Casey started screaming, his cries muffled by the Saran Wrap. It was probably already over, but just for good measure Johnny picked up a second bucket and poured it over Casey’s face. Now the guy was really having a heart attack.
The technique was called waterboarding. Used by the feds to extract information from terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, it replicated the sensation of drowning perfectly. A friend of Johnny’s had told him about it. Also told him that when the agents had tried practicing against it—in case it was ever used on them—the average agent gave up in fourteen seconds. Johnny had used the technique six times before, and each victim had broken right away. He ripped the Saran Wrap from Casey’s mouth.
“I faked it okay I faked it!” Casey yelled. “I faked everything for Kyle, everything. I forged the accident report. Confirmed his death. I did it all. He was scared out of his mind they were gonna kill us all after they whacked his girlfriend. And they probably would have.”
“Where is he now?” Johnny demanded.
“I don’t know. I swear to God I don’t know. I think he left the city after the whole thing. I don’t know where he went. Nobody did. For all I know he’s really dead now.” Casey’s chest was heaving. “I don’t know what happened to him. As far as I know he hasn’t talked to any of us since that night. Not even Helen.”
It made sense that Casey wouldn’t know where McLean was. That was the whole reason McLean had done what he’d done. To cut all ties so nothing could lead Marconi to him. The obvious risk here was that if McLean and Casey were somehow still communicating, Casey could warn McLean that people were looking for him. And he could make his getaway.
“Don’t kill me,” Casey begged. “Please don’t kill me. I told you everything I know. I haven’t seen your face.”
“We’re not gonna kill you, Mr. Casey,” Johnny said in a tough tone, using “we” now because that was always scarier to a victim than “I.” “But we’ll be watching.” He’d get Casey’s phone records and check the numbers constantly to make certain he and McLean didn’t talk. “And we’re gonna keep watching. We find out you talk to Kyle McLean once, just once, and you’re a dead man. I mean it, a dead man. You understand me?”
“I understand, I understand. I swear it.”
Johnny started unfurling the Saran Wrap from around Casey’s face, then stopped. Making Casey think his suffering was over, then snatching away the awesome feeling of relief. “There’s a few more things I need to know. You give me answers I like, and I take this stuff off. You don’t, and, well, you know what happens.”
7
JACK STEPPED DOWN gingerly from the front seat of Bobby’s SUV, thinking about how Biff, the EMT, had pressed him several times at the stadium to sign a form saying he’d called for their assistance. But he hadn’t signed it. The whole reason Biff wanted that signature was so he and Harry could charge for their time. One thing Jack had learned over the years was that everybody was constantly trying to slip their fingers in your wallet. That life ultimately came down to one big, sometimes completely corrupt, chaotic grab for the dollar. Which was pretty damn discouraging when you really thought about it.
“Easy, Daddy,” Cheryl urged as they moved up the narrow, cracked path. “Walk slow.”
“I’m fine, Princess.”
“Let’s just get you in the house.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” he muttered, glancing up at the small ranch house he and Cheryl had lived in the past few years. Might as well call it the “coffin.” This was probably
where he was going to die. He’d been thinking about dying a lot lately, down to which room he’d collapse in. His bedroom or the living room, most likely, but maybe the kitchen. Maybe he’d keel over while he was fixing a sliced turkey sandwich for lunch one day. He loved sliced turkey sandwiches—though not nearly as much as he loved grilled hot dogs at a baseball game. “Let’s get me in the house.” He just prayed it wouldn’t happen in the bathroom. That would be the worst. Sprawled out stark naked after collapsing in the shower.
He hated this house, hated the entire neighborhood. The people were nice enough, but it was so damn boring and bland here. A few storm-ravaged palm trees, some scraggly bushes here and there, and a sea of almost identical ranch houses built on brown, burned-out lawns along a perfect grid of ramrod-straight, potholed streets that stretched east–west and north–south as far as you could see. There was no character to it. It wasn’t at all like the beautiful neighborhood he’d lived in on Long Island where the houses were big and different. Like the house he’d lived in back when he was with the Yankees. Back when he had some self-respect. But Cheryl’s mother had grabbed everything in the divorce—including his self-respect. And this place had been all he and Cheryl could afford. Barely, at that.
“Don’t worry about me, Princess.”
“I always worry about you, Daddy.”
“You want me to stay here tonight?” Bobby called, hustling up behind them. His SUV was still idling in the narrow driveway. “In case anything happens, I mean.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Jack said with a growl, catching Cheryl’s eye in the light of the porch lamp. Making it clear he didn’t want Bobby sticking around. “I just want to rest. I just want some peace and quiet.” He pulled out his keys and unlocked the front door. “Cheryl can take care of me by herself just fine.”
“Can I get anything for you from the store?” Bobby asked her. “Anything at all?”
“No, sweetheart, but thanks. I’ll call you in the morning,” she promised.
Jack limped inside, hesitating in the foyer so he could hear.
