it.
I checked my phone again. Lilly and I truly hadn’t spoken since that day on the beach in Singapore, but for whatever reason, I had yet to delete her from the number one slot on my speed-dial list. One touch of the screen and we’d be connected, but just the thought of calling her to find out what she’d done with $60 billion had that Lady Antebellum song playing in my head again, albeit my own version of it:
I put the phone away before I could do something stupid. Barber and his fellow BOS executives had been careful to reveal very little about the internal investigation, but Lilly clearly had some serious explaining to do. I was dying to hear her take on Gerry Collins and the pipeline of cash to Cushman Investment by way of BOS/Singapore.
A dark SUV screeched to a sudden stop in front of me at the curb. Had I taken one more step, my toes would have been ground beef.
“Watch it!” I shouted, slapping the fender.
The rear door on the passenger side flew open. Before I could react, someone on the crowded sidewalk pushed me from behind, and I fell inside as the door slammed shut. The vehicle sped away, my head snapped back against the headrest, and the muzzle of a pistol was at the base of my skull.
“Don’t move,” a man said.
It was a big American SUV, the kind with a third row of seating in the back, and the man was directly behind me. “What-” I started to say, but he jammed the muzzle forward, silencing me.
“Don’t say a word.”
His voice was like a snake hissing in my ear. My eyes darted toward the driver. I noted the heavy black beard and white turban, but he could have been a Westerner in disguise. Dark-tinted windows dashed any hope that someone on the sidewalk would notice my plight and call the cops. The traffic light changed, the SUV continued through the busy square, and straight ahead I spotted an enormous billboard that said W ICKED.
“Eyes forward,” he said, and I took the warning to heart. The ride was surreal, the glow of a billion colorful lights ahead and the cold sensation of gun metal at the back of my head. The north face of One Times Square was approaching, the building famous for the dropping of the New Year’s Eve ball, and I could see both the FOX News Astrovision Screen and the even larger ABC SuperSign at Forty-fourth Street. It made me wonder if I was going to be on the evening news-and if I’d be alive to see it.
“This message is for your girlfriend,” the man said. “Our patience is at an end. It’s time to see the money. Cough it up, or you will both end up like Gerry Collins. Do you understand?”
This was the second time the name Collins had come up in the span of an hour. There was no mistaking what money this thug was talking about, but I had a burning need for more information, even at the risk of playing dumb.
“What money?”
In the blur of an instant the muzzle slid across the back of my head, and with a muffled pop a silenced projectile whizzed below my ear. Gunpowder and the hot gases of a muzzle blast stung my neck as the bullet buried itself in the back of the passenger seat in front of me. Before I could react the gun was back in place, pressed against my head.
“The next one will be much more than a flesh wound,” he said. “Do you understand?”
I wasn’t nearly stupid enough to think it would matter that Lilly was no longer my girlfriend.
My right ear was ringing, and it was even worse when I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
The SUV stopped. We were in the Fashion District, just beyond Mustang Sally’s Saloon, a place I’d visited one night after seeing the Knicks get thumped at the Garden. The SUV was at the corner, perpendicular to the yawning entrance to the Twenty-eighth Street subway station. I felt the man’s breath on the back of my neck as he delivered his final warning.
“Don’t even think about calling the cops,” he said in a chilling whisper, “or the next bullet is in your brain. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“Now get out and walk straight into the subway. Don’t stop and don’t look back, or I’ll put a bullet in you.”
I heard the mechanical release of the child lock, and the gun slid away from my head. I pushed open the door and stepped onto the sidewalk. The SUV pulled away so quickly that the door closed itself. I was tempted to glance over my shoulder and get a tag number, but the convincing threat of a bullet with my name on it kept me in check. The subway entrance was directly down the side street, less than thirty yards away from the curb at Seventh Avenue. I started walking and was thinking of Lilly, my hand shaking as I checked the welt on my neck. I wondered what secrets Lilly was hiding, and it occurred to me that there was definitely one thing more dangerous than knowing where the Cushman money was:
That warning echoed in my mind with each step down the stairwell, louder and louder as the sound of Midtown traffic yielded to the rumble of an approaching train.
4
I emerged from the subway in TriBeca, a few blocks from my apartment. The northbound train would have taken me to the Midtown office, but word was probably out that I was officially the first FA to get slapped down by Joe Barber, and the last thing I needed was to return to work with the burn marks of muzzle blast on my neck, as if I’d spent the lunch hour trying to shoot myself-and missed. Talk about unbearable.
I was making light of it, but I was pretty shaken. I stopped on the sidewalk to examine my neck and lower jaw in a plate glass window. Nothing serious, but it was plenty ugly-a red, black, and purple combination of a bruise, a burn, and a scrape. Somewhere in my closet was one of those black mock turtlenecks that Steve Jobs had made acceptable, if not exactly fashionable. That was just what the doctor ordered, at least until I decided what to do. It would have been easy to lose all perspective, and I reminded myself that people got assaulted at gunpoint every day in New York. Some of those victims were close friends of mine. It wasn’t fun, but it was important to keep your wits about you. The most troubling part was that I’d been warned not to contact the police, and this had the feel of something that was bound to get bigger. The trick was to figure out who was in the best position to help me.
It was chilly in the shadows of Tribeca’s iron-facade architecture of another century, and after a brush with death and a ride on the subway, the fresh air felt good on my face. The Irish immigrants who built the Romanesque Revival-style gem near the Franklin Street subway station could hardly have imagined that, someday, a four- bedroom apartment there would go for 12 million bucks-no extra charge for the quaint cobblestone street. Hell, it had even given my boss sticker shock. My much smaller condo was down the street. I passed a flower shop and a Jewish bakery on the way. Across the street was a coffeehouse with free Wifi for people who didn’t mind sharing personal information with every two-bit hacker in Manhattan. The familiar haunts of my old neighborhood were comforting. Singapore had never felt anything like home, and if my assault had happened there, I might have been too shaken to think straight.
