professional hit men.
So
De Salvo was dead now, but whoever had helped him was still very much alive. Jack intended to find the source of the payoff money. He would start with the dead man’s employer, Fredo Mangella.
Jack walked down Mulberry Street, the main drag of New York’s shrunken Little Italy. The street was narrow but clean and colorful, with century-old brick buildings of six and eight stories, housing Italian restaurants, cafes, and gourmet pastry shops at street level. There were iron streetlamps and sidewalk tables with Campari umbrellas, but few tourists were around at this hour of the morning.
Most of the pedestrians were Asian, heading toward the streets around Mulberry, which belonged to Chinatown, a large area of Lower Manhattan that had grown even larger over the years with the influx of Asian immigrants, reduc-ing Little Italy to no more than a few blocks.
Morris had provided an exact address for Mangella’s chic new eatery, but Jack found the place difficult to miss.
Volare sat halfway down Mulberry, inside an old building that obviously had been gutted and reconstructed with a two-story-high facade of glass framed by gleaming chrome.
The restaurant wasn’t open, but Jack spotted a tall man entering through the front door. He wore sunglasses and a dark suit, had a pallid complexion, and wore his white-blond hair long, just past his shoulders.
Jack watched the place a few more minutes from across the street. Then he moved to enter the restaurant.
Volare’s interior was large and airy, with a ceiling high enough for an authentic Italian racing plane from the 1930s to be suspended above the perfectly placed tables.
On the ground floor, double doors to the kitchen were set in a shiny chrome wall beside an Art Deco chrome-plated bar. Jack spied an upper balcony with silver rails and a spiral staircase that flowed down to the main dining area.
There were no tables on the balcony, only a single door at the end of it.
For a moment no one appeared. Then a smiling woman exited the kitchen. “How can I help you?” she asked.
Elegant and waiflike, the thirty-something woman spoke with an unidentifiable European accent.
Jack forced a smile. “My name’s Jack Bello, of Gardenia Cheese in Vermont. I was wondering if I could speak with Mr. Mangella about sampling our excellent product?”
For the briefest second the woman glanced at the door on the balcony. “I’m afraid Mr. Mangella is quite busy.
Perhaps—”
“I’m only in town for the day, and I just need a moment of his time,” Jack insisted.
The woman’s smile faded, but she relented. “I’ll see what I can do. Wait here, Mr. Bello.”
She turned on her heels and walked through the kitchen doors. Jack immediately moved through the dining room and ascended the spiral staircase. He crossed the narrow balcony and paused at the door. Carefully he tried the knob, but it was locked. Then Jack pressed his ear against the door. He heard voices inside.
“The changeover has been made,” a man said. “I’m catching a noon flight to Milan, out of JFK.”
Jack strained to hear the other speaker’s reply, but the second voice was so soft and raspy, he couldn’t make out the words.
“Don’t worry,” the first man said. “I’ll stay in Europe indefinitely. My assets here will lose their value after this, so I don’t anticipate returning—”
A harsh cry rose from the dining room. “Hey, what the hell are you doing up there?”
Jack looked down and saw the bald man with gold teeth, the one in the cab who’d tried to murder him this morning.
The urge to shoot him was strong, but Jack had to play it smart. He was here for information, not revenge. So he tamped down his rage.
But the cold play was blown anyway. Gold Teeth recognized Jack, too.
“Dominick! Petey! We’ve got trouble,” he cried, reaching for the police special tucked in his belt.
Jack quickly turned and slammed his shoulder against the locked door. It broke inward, and he stumbled across the threshold into a tiny office with a cherrywood desk and Tiffany lamps.
Jack scanned the room for an escape route. There were no windows, only another door on an adjacent wall. Standing by that door was the pale man with the white-blond hair and the dark suit — the man Jack had spotted entering the restaurant a few minutes ago. His sunglasses were gone now; his strangely pinkish eyes blinked in surprise.
Behind an open laptop, an extremely portly man struggled to his feet, face flushed with outrage. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
Jack shifted his gaze to Fredo Mangella behind the desk. “My name is Jack Bauer. I’m an agent in the Counter Terrorist Unit. I need to speak with you—”
Jack heard clanging footsteps, as several men surged up the spiral staircase. He leveled his Glock at Mangella.
“Call your men off,” he demanded. “I’m not here to arrest you. I just want to ask you some questions.”
Fredo Mangella remained silent, considering Jack’s words. There was slight movement, a drawer opening.
Then a weapon appeared in the fat man’s hand.
Jack shot Fredo Mangella twice in the chest. As the restaurateur dropped back into his chair, the standing white-haired man pulled a.45 and aimed it at Jack.
Before he could fire, the door next to him opened, striking the Albino’s arm. His.45’s barrel dropped as the woman who’d greeted Jack appeared. She stepped forward, preventing Jack from getting a clean shot, then screamed when she saw the guns, screamed louder when she saw Mangella’s corpse flopped in the chair.
Jack heard the shouting voices of Mangella’s men. He slammed the broken door shut with a spinning kick, then pressed his back against the wall next to it.
“Don’t move,” he cried, trying again to draw a bead on the Albino.
But Jack couldn’t shoot. The pale man had curled his long arm around the woman’s throat and was using her as a shield.
“Pull the trigger and she dies,” he rasped, his.45 back up. “Throw your weapon onto the desk and step away from the door or you’ll die, and
Looking into the Albino’s ghostly eyes, Jack knew the man wasn’t bluffing. He tossed his Glock on the desk beside the laptop and raised his hands.
4. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10:00 A.M. AND 11:00 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
“Hang back, Leight, I don’t want them making us.”
For ninety minutes now, FBI Agent Jason Emmerick had been driving across the Jersey countryside, his twenty-six-year-old partner, Douglas Leight, at the wheel of their white Saturn.
“We’ve been following this Hummer since it left the airport,” complained Leight after they hit another bone- jarring bump. “If they didn’t make us, they’re blind.”
They were off the highway now, surrounded by trees and plowed fields, wooden fences and cows. The rural road was narrow and dusty and in disrepair.
“It may not matter, either way,” Emmerick said. An African American in his late forties with a lean, strong build, Emmerick was clad in pressed khakis and an Izod shirt, a navy-blue blazer over it. He reached into the blazer, his hand brushing the butt of his weapon as he pulled out a pack of Juicy Fruit. “Now that their precious package
