Prek waited a couple of beats as the couple got closer. “It’s him. Hell, he has his arm around her. How close is the guy coming from the back?”
Neri checked again. “About two hundred yards.”
Prek picked up a rag from the dash and soaked it with a hefty slug of the Ultane anesthetic, which they were going to use to take down Pia. He shot a look at Genti, and Genti nodded back.
“Okay, go!”
Just as Pia and Will came alongside the van, the three masked men leaped out, Prek and Genti from either side of the front, Neri from the back. Neri stepped around from the back of the van as Will McKinley stood stock-still in front of him, his mouth open wide. Neri pointed the gun at Will’s head and a fraction of a second later Will reacted by turning toward Pia, who’d let out a scream. Neri fired, sending a nine-millimeter bullet into the side of Will’s head. Simultaneously Genti grabbed Pia in a crushing bear hug while Prek slapped the Ultane-soaked rag over her face. Almost immediately the fight went out of Pia, and she lost consciousness.
Neri ran around to the front of the van and got into the driver’s seat while Genti dragged Pia to the back of the van and pulled her inside. As Prek ran to help Genti, he caught sight of Neri’s spent casing. He picked it up from the sidewalk just before jumping into the van behind Genti and slamming the doors shut behind him. Neri already had the engine started, and the moment he heard Prek’s “Go!” he accelerated from the curb, made a rapid U-turn, and headed north on Haven Avenue. The hit-and-snatch had taken about seven seconds.
There were three witnesses who saw everything and eight more who heard the gunshot and saw the van drive away. One of the witnesses had his own reasons for not wanting to talk to the police that evening so he kept right on walking as if nothing had happened. The second was a male med student who had been walking back to the dorm, twenty yards behind Pia and Will. He had watched in horror as the raid unfolded. At first he thought he might be watching a movie being filmed, but it was dark and there were no cameras. And the blood coming from the shooting victim’s head was very real. He called 911 and tried desperately to remember what, if anything, he’d learned in the past two years about gunshot victims.
The third witness was George. He’d seen Will and Pia before the event and had stopped, waiting for them to come to him. He was relieved to see Pia, but his relief was short-lived. In the next second he saw the men leap from the van, shoot Will, and snatch Pia. It happened so quickly he didn’t have a chance to move. He blinked, as if blinking would reset the scene back to when Pia and Will were walking toward him. But it didn’t. It was only then that he ran forward to where the other student was kneeling over Will McKinley’s body.
Inside the van, Prek used a prepared syringe to give the barely conscious Pia an injection of Valium, enough to knock her out completely.
“Don’t drive too fast,” he yelled ahead to Neri. “Keep it steady.” Prek and Genti then struggled to roll Pia up in a threadbare carpet. It wasn’t easy in the rocking and swaying van.
Neri’s hands were shaking, and it was all he could do to stop himself from throwing up. The mark had looked right at him. Neri blinked rapidly and concentrated so he wouldn’t drive right off the road.
“And, Neri,” Prek said.
“What?”
“Good job.”
On a quiet side street just north of the George Washington Bridge, Neri pulled over behind the waiting dark blue van, and the men quickly transferred their cargo. With that done, Prek returned to the driver’s seat with Genti riding shotgun. Neri was told to keep a watch on Pia.
Abandoning the white van, Prek drove ahead to where he could get on the Henry Hudson Parkway to loop around and get onto the George Washington Bridge, heading over to New Jersey. As they expected, the bridge was chockablock with rush-hour traffic. But the crew didn’t mind in the slightest. The hit-and-snatch had been flawless, and they were giddy with their success. It was, as Prek said, a tribute to the Albanian mob tradition.
“I even got this,” Prek said proudly, as he pulled Neri’s bullet casing from his pocket and held it up. “Are we good, or what?” He then handed his cell to Genti and told him to text Buda that the operation went smooth as silk.
53.
BELMONT SECTION OF THE BRONX NEW YORK CITY MARCH 25, 2011, 8:05 P.M.
Aleksander Buda had been happy to get the text from Prek. He’d been mildly concerned about the operation even though it was a relatively simple job. But he knew from sore experience that “shit could happen.” Be that as it may, the pesky girl was unconscious in the back of the van, and they were on their way to the agreed-upon location, Buda’s summer home, and the boyfriend was dead. The white van they had used had been abandoned. Now the only suspense that remained was the fate of the girl.
Buda was confident Pia Grazdani wasn’t connected with any of the prominent Albanian mafia crews in the immediate area; he would have heard the name, which he knew was undoubtedly Albanian. The problem was that if she was related to anyone in a crew, anywhere up and down the East Coast and as far west as Detroit, custom dictated that she be accorded a degree of protection. Even so, Buda had debated with himself whether or not he would have been justified in simply disposing of the girl at the same time as her friend. It would have been neat and efficient. She’d certainly become a serious pain in the ass, especially having somehow, on her own, figured out the polonium issue. But Albanian mob bloodbaths had been fought over even less of a provocation. Buda had decided he had to be sure.
A cautious man, Buda had made it a point to investigate Pia Grazdani in a discreet manner. He was known to the FBI, of course, and he knew how the FBI loved patterns and didn’t believe in coincidences. If the head of one Albanian crew, like himself, suddenly called all the other local heads in quick succession, Buda knew there was a good chance the feds would find out about it and come snooping around.
So Buda had sent live emissaries to crews in Queens and Staten Island and asked one associate to call a crew in Pennsylvania just in case. Manhattan and Brooklyn had also been dealt with, and since he controlled the Bronx, that was covered. He’d received negative reports all the way around, even from Detroit. There was no connected Grazdani. The future was not looking promising for the girl.
But there was one unit left unchecked: Berti Ristani’s crew based in Weehawken, New Jersey. Ristani was a particularly nasty customer, willing to do just about anything to make a name for himself. Buda realized he hadn’t seen the guy in a year. He thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make the visit himself for political reasons in addition to providing an alibi for tonight, just in case. Buda grabbed his car keys and set out for Weehawken. He knew he didn’t need to call ahead. Ristani could always be found in the same place.
54.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER NEW YORK CITY MARCH 25, 2011, 8:31 P.M.
Detective Captain Lou Soldano was frustrated. He was standing inside the taped-off area of the street that marked the McKinley crime scene. A full crime-scene unit had combed the area for clues, but none were to be found. They hadn’t even found the shell casing from the gun that was used to shoot the student. All they had was a shopping bag with a device one of the techs identified as a Geiger counter that the woman had been carrying when she was abducted.
Officers were taking statements from witnesses, hoping to get information on the perpetrators and on the van they had used. The reports he’d heard were wildly contradictory, from the men’s heights to their clothing. One witness swore that only two men had been involved, while all the others claimed three. The one thing they agreed on was that all the men had been wearing ski masks. The van was described consistently as dirty white, but they had nothing on the make or license plate.
George Wilson had given the most detailed account, and even told Lou something important and most likely
