The Chessman (32 page)

Westlow looked back up at the floor display. “Don’t leap over a terrace this high up, Agent Cady.”

Chapter 41

R
udy Ciolino—aka the Coordinator—was knee-deep in blottoed accountants.

Codename Smith had already darted to the bathroom for a second sweaty purge into the shitter, and Jones was draped over Hartzell’s settee as though he had no vertebrae, unfocused eyes hidden behind drooping lids. Ciolino thought they’d have to shoot the security guard. The guard had phoned Hartzell’s suite a half-dozen times to no avail before shaking his head. St. Nick took over on his own cell phone, pressing redial through five attempts flipping over to voicemail. He hit pay dirt on the sixth ring. Nick cut through Smith’s drunken fog by ordering him to buzz them up or face the fact that he’d be swallowing his own dick long before the night was over.

“’Zin there.” Jones sloshed an arm in the general direction of the hallway. “Ta bed.”

“No, they’re not
zin
there, you drunk fuck!”

Ciolino remembered Hartzell buying drinks all night in their private box at the ball game. He now realized why Hartzell had the bartender vary up the cocktails: to cause the alcohol to take its maximum toll on the bean counters. Ciolino was lucky he’d turned down a lion’s share of the mixed drinks himself. He’d not wanted to spoil an Olympic-level performance with Loni later in the evening. But Hartzell had intended to get the two live-ins fully soused so he and his daughter could give them the slip and then rat-fuck Fiorella and company at the NY AG first thing Monday morning.

“They must’ve snuck out one of the side entrances downstairs,” Nick offered.

“Those are alarmed, used for emergencies.”

Ciolino squinted from the accountant on the couch to St. Nick to the tall man who stood motionless, waiting, his back to the window. It began to sink in how truly fucked he was. St. Nick was one of Fiorella’s top enforcers. He bent adversaries to Fiorella’s will. But the tall man, he was Fiorella’s assassin—and among other assignments, he dealt with the hard-cores who refused to bend. The tall man had been flawless with Gottlieb and Kellervick. Drake Hartzell wasn’t the tall man’s “shit,” so he leaned quietly against the glass window, arms folded across his chest, taking in the show. However, the thought sparked through Ciolino’s brain like a bolt of lightning that if the tall man made a phone call to apprise Fiorella of their current dilemma, Hartzell seeking out the authorities and his subsequent disappearing act, it would instantaneously become the tall man’s “shit.”

Fiorella would want all tie-backs swiftly eliminated. Fiorella would be immoveable on that issue. If Ciolino himself was not the one in the pinch, that would be the word-for-word advice that he’d offer the man who ran Chicago. For starters, everyone in the apartment would have to die, and probably that buck-toothed security guard who had been at the front desk when the tall man brought in a removal team.

They say a man can shine at any given task if he devotes ten thousand hours to it. The tall man had logged the hours and was exceptionally good at
his
given task. Or, more explicitly, his calling.
I’ll only have one chance
, Ciolino thought to himself. If the tall man took out his phone to contact Fiorella, Ciolino would draw his Heckler & Koch and shoot the man right in the face. Twice. Without hesitation. He wouldn’t have time to lobby St. Nick ahead of this action, but Nick would understand if Ciolino walked him through his rationale after the fact.

“Then they left through the basement garage,” Nick said, drawing Ciolino back into the present debacle.

Something nibbled at the back of Ciolino’s mind. He looked at Nick as the thought sank in. Ciolino turned and dashed into the den and tore open Hartzell’s key drawer. He ran his hand over the items, then through them, and then yanked the drawer out of the desk, spilled the contents onto the floor, and raked through the bits and pieces with a dress shoe. He thought back to the helicopter tour of Manhattan that he and Loni had taken the previous week.

“Not the garage,” Ciolino said to St. Nick and the tall man who stood inside the office doorway, silently watching him. “The roof.”

Chapter 42

L
ike candy from a baby.

Hartzell was fully aware of his shit-eating grin as he pumped Kerry Evans’ hand and stared at the JetRanger atop the helicopter pad with unconditional love. Not until this evening had he realized how beautiful a bird the JetRanger was—a truly remarkable piece of equipment—an extraordinary deus ex machina.

“LaGuardia, huh, Drake?”

“And don’t spare the horses.”

“Hey, Lucy,” the pilot said, winking at Hartzell’s daughter. “The rain stopped. Almost no wind. A beautiful night for a flight.”

“A splendid night for a flight, Kerry.”

Kerry Evans stood about six-three with a face like a ruggedly aging Ken doll; a hint of gray dusted the brown hair at his temples. Evans was central casting’s version of a helicopter pilot and he knew it. The flyboy was on his third divorce and hit on anything in a skirt.

“So when do I get to take you for a personal spin above Manhattan, Lucy?”

“You free next Saturday?”

“I am now.”

“It’s a date.”

Like candy from a baby
, Hartzell thought again as he helped Lucy up into the passenger area of the JetRanger helicopter, delighted to discover a package in the shape of a cigar box sitting atop his seat. His and Lucy’s new identities. It just kept getting better and better.

Vince and David were going to be deep in the tank all day Saturday with killer hangovers. The coup de grace had been the several Long Island Iced Teas he’d pushed on the two men. Those shots of vodka, gin, tequila, and rum could really sneak up on you if you weren’t counting. Hartzell had left a note for the accountants stuck on the refrigerator, informing them that he and Lucy were busy helping a painter friend of hers set up a gallery showing. He wrote that they’d be back by eight that evening and, if the two weren’t still a tad green behind the gills, he’d love to bring them to Le Cirque or perhaps even Sarabeth’s for a late dinner. Hartzell buckled his shoulder harness in place, checked that Lucy did the same, and did his best to wipe the absurd smile off his face. He figured that by ten o’clock Saturday evening Vince or David would place an awkward call to the Coordinator. By midnight, the Coordinator’s knickers would be in such a hellacious twist his balls would turn bright blue.

In a few days, and from an ocean away, Hartzell would monitor the news via the Internet and the cable channels as Duilio “Leo” Fiorella began on his heretofore unforeseen trek through the bowels of the United States’ criminal justice system. And once Fiorella’s permanent residence had been firmly established by the courts, Hartzell would unearth a means for something simple like, say, an anonymous card to worm its way through the various tiers of concrete and steel to reach the new abode of the imprisoned mob boss. Nothing incriminating, of course. Hartzell would give it immense thought on his and Lucy’s upcoming flight across the pond; perhaps an unsigned postcard from the Mediterranean coastline would suffice. Fiorella would know exactly who had sent it.

Hartzell watched as Evans, meticulous as ever, walked through his pre-takeoff sweep of the controls—a range check of the transmitter, a visual peek at the blades, a verification that all throttle functions were properly working. And even though Evans had recently landed, he proceeded through his mental checklist of these and a half-dozen other items. The rugged Ken doll was a first-class helicopter pilot. Hartzell would never have feared a crash should Kerry truly have taken his daughter for a
personal spin
above Manhattan in the JetRanger. Simply terrible of Lucy to tease poor Kerry regarding a date she’d never keep. However, when the time came, as it inevitably would, that meager detail would make the pilot’s testimony all the more believable.

Evans turned back toward the Hartzells and shot them his signature thumbs-up, indicating all systems go, when a thunderclap burst the night. Dark crimson splashed across the windshield. Evans convulsed forward, shoulders shaking, only the belt keeping him slumped upright in his seat. The poor man’s face, now shattered, a dripping pulp—never again to be compared with that of a Ken doll.

Hartzell jumped in his seat. Lucy climbed his arm in panic, her fingernails piercing his flesh. He looked across the body of the dead pilot. A tall man in black stood ten feet from the helipad. The end of his right arm extended into a pistol as though it were a natural appendage. The pistol now aimed at them, Hartzell and Lucy. Beyond the tall man, just outside the door to the roof of the skyscraper, stood St. Nick and the Coordinator.

The Coordinator was now the one sporting the shit-eating grin.

Chapter 43

T
hey hit Hartzell’s master suite hard.

Cady and Westlow had come out of the north stairwell, and they slid noiselessly along the wall until they reached the door to Hartzell’s penthouse. Cady slipped beneath the peephole and back up the other side of the door. They stood still a moment, listening. Cady reached across and touched the handle, was surprised to find it unlocked. He looked to Westlow, and was equally surprised to find a Beretta 92FS in his right hand, pointed down at the carpeting. Westlow sent him a
don’t ask
shrug.

Cady had committed to memory the images of the two men in the pictures Westlow had left for him at Strawberry Fields. Jund had earlier checked with his OCTF contact, but had come back with no hits linking them to the New York families, or to New Jersey. The dark-haired man, Westlow informed him, was Rudy Ciolino—Fiorella’s chief advisor. He also told Cady that Ciolino called the other man in the pictures—the bald guy who looked as though he’d been carved out of block by a deranged stonemason—St. Nick, no last name. Drake Hartzell was near the half-century mark, and tall. With a little luck, Hartzell’s daughter Lucy would be the only female inside the suite.

With that cast list in mind, Cady would force them all down on the floor. Fast. And cuff them. Let Jund make sense of it later. If Ciolino or the bald man resisted, or drew down, Cady had no qualms about dropping them on their asses. In an odd sense he was relieved that Westlow had pulled the Beretta out of thin air.

Cady swung in low with Westlow on his heels. They swept Hartzell’s living room—the size of a regulation tennis court, but empty. Cady veered right into the kitchen, jutted around a jungle of hanging pots and pans, and then rushed through another twenty yards of dining room. Both empty. He shot a quick glance out the dark windows before looking back across the suite at Westlow. Westlow had the Beretta aimed down the hallway and was quietly closing the door with his free hand. He tilted his head from Cady toward the foyer. Cady made it halfway across the living room before he heard the raucous splashing noise.

Inside the second guest bathroom they found a man in boxer shorts hobbled over the toilet, both seats up, a limp hand hanging onto the flusher. The man’s face gleamed with sweat; his blond hair looked like it had been combed with a pork chop. Cady could smell the alcohol as he stooped next to him. The man squinted up and bumbled incoherently. Worthless.

“Someone’s in the bedroom,” Westlow whispered from the doorframe.

Cady flushed the toilet and then turned on the sink faucet to cover his sounds. Although it was likely for naught—the blond man wasn’t going anywhere—Cady had the drunk flex-cuffed and on his side in the neighboring Jacuzzi in less than ten seconds, possibly shattering a rodeo record. He thought about shoving a washcloth in his mouth to keep him quiet, but feared the man would drown on his next wave of puke.

In the last room of Hartzell’s seventy-second-floor penthouse estate they found a second man rolling up clothing as if making giant snowballs and stuffing the handfuls into a leather suitcase that sat atop a king-sized bed. Cady had him in cuffs in another ten seconds while Westlow hung in the doorframe, guarding the hallway.

“Where did they go?”

The second man sat on the king-sized and said nothing. He too was intoxicated—easy to infer even though the man had stuffed his mouth with a tinful of Altoids. Cady looked at his face and noted the dilated pupils.

“Where are they?”

The second man remained silent. Cady shook his head, walked toward the bedroom window, and took out his phone to call Agent Preston.

Westlow looked back down the hallway, marched across the room, and then stuck four fingers deep into the flesh under the man’s jawbone and jerked him upward as though pulling a fish from the water by its gill. Loud farting sounds erupted as the man rose to his feet.

“Where are they?” Westlow repeated Cady’s question.

“The roof,” the man said, stretching on his tiptoes in hopes of freeing himself from Westlow’s grip. “They went to the roof.”

Chapter 44

T
he blue door blocking the ascension to the peak of the skyscraper looked as if it’d lost three rounds with Mike Tyson. It warped inward around the lock, never to shut properly again. Cady and Westlow stood on either side of the busted door, listening for sounds emanating from the stairwell. Cady gave the door a shove with two fingers and both men peered up the final stairway.

Two flights of steps, wide enough to accommodate an elephant, zigzagged upward to a double door leading onto the building’s top. The men crept upward, backs pressed against the black railing and guns held high until they reached the middle level. There they noticed how one of the doors had been propped open, made ready for any swift entrance or exit. R
OOF
A
CCESS
was lettered in black on the door facing them, the one that remained shut. Both men continued to slide slowly alongside the gray cement walls. A dull fluorescent light off the high wall kept the little-utilized access path to the roof dimly lit.

Cady pointed to a metal ladder fixed in place at the side of the access doors, which rose straight up to some kind of hatchway in the top of the enclosed stairwell. The idea of taking the high ground and coming out above the killers from Chicago flickered through his mind, but was dismissed at the sight of a padlock set in the hatch handle. Poking around up there trying to pop that lock could leave a guy completely exposed. Vulnerable. Dead.