“Eddie, you have to move if you’re gonna make it in time,” said Jimmy.
I held up my hand. “Give me a second. There’s no point unless your man here is going to play ball.”
Tony leaned back in his seat and folded his arms. He wasn’t going to say another word. I guessed correctly at the reason for his silence.
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You got busted and the DA offered you a deal, right? Guys like you don’t testify for the cops. I knew there had to be a reason why you agreed to be a witness. Tell me—how much coke did they bust you with?”
The lights from the chandeliers seemed to soak into Tony’s suit. He rocked back and forth in his chair.
“Not much, half a kilo. If I don’t cooperate and give evidence like a good citizen, I go down. I got no choice.”
I hadn’t foreseen this. Four million dollars didn’t matter to Tony G. You can’t be rich in prison, and even if I’d brought double that amount, it wouldn’t have changed his mind. I thought about his situation and came up with a solution. I took some paper and wrote down a few lines before flipping the page around and pushing it under the aura of Tony’s suit.
“You say
that
in court whenever you’re asked a question and you’ll be fine. Your plea bargain deal is normally a standard agreement. I know it by heart. Say this and only this and you can’t be prosecuted.”
Tony read over the lines.
“This all I gotta say?”
“That’s all. I give you my word this will work.”
Jimmy’s hand appeared on Tony’s shoulder.
“Do it, Tony. I’ll see you get a good split from the cash Eddie brought in. And if it all goes wrong, I’ll take care of your family. But it won’t. If Eddie says something will work—that’s it. It’ll work. Eddie’s like my brother; his word is my word.”
Tony nodded and got up. “Okay, Eddie, but if it don’t work, I’ll kill you. You know that, right?”
I stood and shook hands with Tony. “If that happens, you’ll have to get in line. Look, I need to see the photos. Something else is going down, and I can’t figure it out. The photos might help.”
“They’re at home. It’s an hour-and-a-half drive each way.”
“I need them, but I don’t have time to wait. You’ll need to bring them to court later.”
“How am I going to give ’em to you, then?”
“You a religious man, Tony? I’m not. Why don’t you give me some religion?”
Tony got the message.
Jimmy looked confused. “Hang on a second. If we get Amy out in time, you don’t have to go back to court, Eddie.”
My shoulders dropped. If I got Amy out, I would make that call then.
I followed Anthony and Frankie to the back of the restaurant and through the swinging doors to the kitchen. The kitchen looked big enough to serve a restaurant twice the size of Jimmy’s. A long, central stainless-steel work surface separated the pass from the four industrial-sized stoves. I’d met Anthony before, when he was just a kid sitting on his mother’s knee. If Jimmy trusted him on a job like this, then the kid must have been talented. Anthony opened the door to the walk-in freezer and I followed him and Frankie inside. Our breath came in long white gasps of frosted air. Frankie began moving boxes of packaged meat from the far right-hand corner and soon revealed a secret door. We found ourselves in a small storeroom. The shelves on either side of the room were filled to the ceiling with guns of all sizes, bags of coke, and bundles of cash wrapped in cellophane.
Anthony and Frankie lifted a long steel bar each. The bars had a hook at one end. They placed the hooks into recessed holes on either side of an iron sewer cover that sat in the middle of the room. With effort, they lifted the cover to reveal a steel ladder leading into the sewer.
“You got to be kidding me,” I said.
“It’s the only way to travel,” said Frankie, lifting a flashlight from the shelf.
Anthony lifted a bag from the floor, handed me a flashlight, and together we climbed into the dark, stinking tunnel, which was unexpectedly dry. I hit the flashlight, but the beam penetrated only about fifty feet into the gloom.
We turned left, then right at two crossroads, and then, after a minute of following the tunnel straight, Anthony stopped at another steel ladder on the wall. Frankie climbed up and knocked on the cover. Within seconds, the tunnel became flooded with light from above as an Asian man removed the cover and offered Frankie a hand up.
We stood in another storeroom of another kitchen. From the Chinese characters printed on the boxes, and the smell of garlic, ginger, and lemongrass, I guessed we were in an Asian restaurant. The man who had helped us from the sewer gestured that we should follow him, and we walked through a narrow corridor to a loading bay and an alley beyond. In the loading bay were the three Ninjas Jimmy had asked for: three black, Kawasaki Ninja 650 motorcycles with riders revving the engines. We were each given a helmet, and I watched Anthony climb onto the back of the first bike.
“This is the quickest way to travel, Eddie. A car can’t make it there and back in the time you got. Sammy Wong is our courier. We sometimes move around the city this way. It’s discreet and fast,” said Anthony.
“Not to mention dangerous,” I said.
“Relax, will ya? These guys are pros. Just do what they tell you and you’ll be fine.”
I squeezed the helmet over my head, climbed onto the back of the last motorcycle, and tapped the driver on the shoulder.
“It’s my first time riding a motorcycle,” I shouted.
“Me too,” said the driver.
Everyone laughed apart from me.
“My name’s Eddie. Don’t kill me,” I said.
“I’m Tao. No promises, man.”
I wrapped my hands tightly around Tao’s waist. He gunned the engine, and we burst down the loading bay ramp and turned right into the alley.
The alley was maybe four hundred feet long, but we seemed to cover that distance in around three seconds as I felt my stomach slam into my back and I heard myself screaming into my helmet.
Anthony’s bike took point, and I wondered when it was going to brake as it rapidly approached the end of the alley. It didn’t slow down at all. The bike continued to accelerate toward the main street. I didn’t have to wonder what the driver was doing for very long. Instead of braking, the bike sped up, skipped through the traffic lanes, and disappeared into the early-morning shadows of the alley on the other side of the street.
“Holy shit,” I said.
The street ahead looked busy; cars and bicycles darted from left to right across our intended path and beyond them, right to left. I heard Tao’s excited scream as our bike fired out of the alley like a four-hundred-pound missile straight into four lanes of New York traffic. The bike weaved and braked and accelerated as the traffic swirled around us from both sides.
I shut my eyes and prayed to God I made it through this.
My chest pushed into Tao’s back as he hit the brakes hard, and my nose filled with the smell of the brake discs smoking with the effort. I opened my eyes and saw a black Ford Taurus skidding toward us from the left, its driver thumping the horn in panic. We were about to be T-boned.
“Lean back,” I heard Tao shout, and our helmets crashed together. My back burned with pain as I used every muscle I had to force my torso backward against our terrible momentum. Then I realized what Tao was trying to do—he let go of one brake, the back brake, and the motorcycle tipped forward onto the front wheel. Tao leaned to his right and the whole bike spun around ninety degrees before the back wheel smacked into the side of the Taurus, stopping the bike dead and keeping us upright and alive.
The back wheel rebounded off the side of the Ford and was already spinning with vicious acceleration as it hit the street and we shot forward, spun around the Taurus in a cloud of tire smoke, and were then quickly swallowed by the thick shadows of the alley.
From Wong’s loading bay, it took only nine minutes of hell for us to pass the courthouse. The bikes must have hit upward of one hundred miles an hour at times. We powered through the streets and ducked into the alleys, avoiding both traffic cameras and the cops.
Anthony’s bike slowed up ahead as we reached our destination—Severn Towers, a new apartment building only a few blocks from the courthouse. We pulled up beside a blue Transit van in the underground parking lot. I must have been holding on too tightly. I felt as though somebody had worked on my thighs with a blow torch as I struggled to get my legs to move enough to let me get off the bike.
Twenty-seven minutes left until I had to meet the Russians outside Jimmy’s restaurant.
“We’ll wait around the corner,” said Tao as the bikes moved quietly out of the lot. Even for a workday, the lot looked particularly empty with only a half dozen cars dotted around the basement. I called Jimmy from my disposable cell.
“We’re here. What’s the exact location?”
“Give me a sec. Okay, Albie says the best his guy can do is tell you the current location of the cell phone. That’s Severn Towers. The GPS isn’t too good when the cell phone is way above ground level. Best guess is that the phone is more than five floors up.”
“Jimmy, this building is pretty big, maybe thirty stories. I’m going to need more.”
“You’ll have to wait for the guys to call in from Sheepshead Bay. I’ll call you as soon as I have a solid.”
He hung up.
A tall, wolf-lean man in a black T-shirt and black pants got out of the blue van and shook Anthony’s hand. He then offered a hand to Frankie, who merely nodded. The man nodded back. He kept his hair in a military buzz cut. Veins stood out on his thick arms, and I guessed he could snap a thick neck pretty easily.
“What took you so long? The Lizard’s been waiting,” said the man.
Anthony laughed and introduced me.
“Eddie, this here is the Lizard. It’s his show now.”
I shook hands with him. He had a grip like a boa constrictor. Despite his heavily muscled physique, he moved gracefully, almost like a dancer.
“We got access all the way up to the twenty-fifth floor. After that, we’re in difficulty. The stairs only go up to a barred steel gate on the twenty-fifth. The gate is key-code entry only. The elevator over here is also key-coded for the top floors. If your daughter is up there, then we can’t do anything without that code. If I blow the door, they’ll hear it and they could kill her. Just pray she’s on one of the lower floors. Frankie, there’s an art gallery across the street. You think you can get on the roof and give the Lizard some eyes on this place?” said Lizard, and I smiled as he referred to himself again in third person.
“Sure,” said Frankie.
The Lizard handed Frankie a pair of binoculars and a cell phone.
“Conference call is marked on the phone. I’ll put you on speaker. Be quick, Frankie,” said the Lizard as Frankie jogged out of the lot and across the street.
Anthony dumped his bag on the ground, unzipped it, and removed a twelve-gauge sawed-off shotgun and a box of shells.
“You don’t need to go in there, you know. We can handle it,” he said.
“I’m coming with you,” I said. “Give me a piece.”
“Bad idea,” said the Lizard as he opened the back doors of the van and unlocked a steel box that lay on the floor. He removed an assault rifle from the box and began checking it. The weapon was short and black with the magazine protruding from the shoulder stock.
“That looks new,” I said.
“Oh, it’s new,” said the Lizard, nodding and smiling.
I moved around the van so I could talk to Anthony quietly.
“Who is this guy?” I said.
“He’s an ex-marine. His cousin worked for Jimmy. When the Lizard came back from Iraq and started looking for work, his cousin set up a meeting. Believe me. This guy we can trust. He’s a one-man army. If anybody can get your little girl out of that apartment, it’s Billy over here.”
“Billy,” I repeated. “So how come he’s called the Lizard? And how come Frankie wouldn’t go near him?”
Anthony slipped red shells into the sawed-off and hung his head for a moment.
“Truth is, lot of the guys are afraid of him. Billy likes lizards. He’s got a big tattoo of a lizard on his back, and he keeps all sorts of snakes and shit at his house in Queens; he’s even got a pair of Komodo dragons in his yard. But that ain’t the only reason. When we need something from a guy who won’t give it up, we call the Lizard. You know how some of those reptile things shed their skin when they grow bigger? Well, that’s Billy’s specialty. If the guy won’t talk, Billy starts peeling the guy like a friggin’ banana and then he feeds the skin to his pets—scares the shit out of everybody. Personally, I like him. I just make sure I stay the hell away from his freakin’ house in Queens.”
A vibration came from the Lizard’s phone. He answered and put the call on speaker, but I didn’t listen. Jimmy was calling me.
“We got the address from one of the guys in the warehouse,” said Jimmy. “It’s the top floor. Penthouse. You’re in the right place. Don’t worry. Those guys in the Bay didn’t get a chance to call anybody, and they won’t be making any calls anytime soon. My guys will clean up real good. Professional. So even if the Russians do go back to that warehouse, they won’t know their guys got creamed in there. You better head back here soon. You only got twenty minutes before you meet the Russians. I’ll be waiting outside Wong’s for you, bub,” he said, then hung up.
My legs gave way, and I fell to my knees. Amy was on the top floor, behind the security gate that we couldn’t bypass. I swore and clenched my fists. My hand felt wet. I’d opened up the cut on my palm.
“She’s in the penthouse,” I said.
“Frankie? Did you get that? Penthouse,” said the Lizard.
Frankie’s voice came over the speaker:
“Got it. I’m looking at it right now. Blinds are open in the living room. I got four guys in the apartment. Two on the couch to the right of the front door, one in the kitchen, and one lyin’ on a chair with a newspaper. There’s a rifle leaning against the left-hand wall. I see a girl in the kitchen, she’s blond, maybe thirties. She’s tossing a butterfly knife around. I don’t see nobody else. There are three bedrooms on the right. Two of ’em got their doors open; one bedroom door is closed. Bathroom looks like it’s just off the kitchen. That’s it. I don’t see no little girl.”