I just kept trying and trying every hour on the hour for the rest of the day. Half the night, too.
I’d like to tell you I had big plans for that evening as a certified, very eligible bachelor living in Manhattan, but I hadn’t expected to be home for the weekend, let alone in the country. There were friends I could call but I wasn’t really in the mood to do anything.
As for the one person who maybe could’ve changed my mind about that, she was with her fiancé. Unfortunately, I happened to know that the future Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ferramore were guests of the mayor and fellow billionaire Mike Bloomberg at his home on the Upper East Side. Clearly my invitation had gotten lost in the mail.
So instead I ordered in a Hawaiian pizza, popped open a Heineken, and watched some TV. Flipping around the dial, I sampled a few minutes of Larry King and his suspenders, followed by the local ten o’clock news.
Then I landed on the ultimate of ironies.
Staring back at me beneath the brim of his cap pulled tight above those intense, fearless eyes I remembered was none other than Dwayne Robinson. The channel was ESPN Classic, rebroadcasting the game that had first put Dwayne on the map — a twenty-strikeout gem against the Oakland A’s on a very hot August night ten years ago.
Given my fruitless attempts that day to reach Robinson, I was tempted to switch the channel if only out of spite. I couldn’t, though. It truly was a classic game, and no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I always have to watch some of it again.
Apparently, I wasn’t alone.
Out of the blue, the phone rang next to me on the couch. “Private caller,” read the ID.
“Hello?” I answered.
There was no response, but I could tell someone was there, and it was more than just a gut feeling. Through the phone I could hear the same game I was watching.
“Dwayne?” I asked. “That you?”
It was my first thought. I mean, if I ever struck out twenty people, I’d be watching a replay of the game, too. Every chance I got!
But if it was Robinson he wasn’t answering.
I tried again. “That was an amazing night for you against Oakland. One for the history books. You’ll never forget it, right?”
After another silence there finally came a voice. His voice.
“Yes,” said Dwayne. “It was a special night. Almost seems like it wasn’t really me. Or that this isn’t me. I’m not exactly sure, Mr. Daniels.”
I drew a deep breath and exhaled. “It’s good to hear from you,” I said. “I was a little worried.”
“Yeah, I know you were trying to call. I’m sorry I —”
“No apologies necessary. I wanted to make sure you were all right, that’s all. You are all right, aren’t you?”
He sure didn’t sound like it. I could tell he’d been drinking — or doing something — but he wasn’t slurring his words. He sounded more depressed than drunk.
He left my question hanging.
“Dwayne, you still there?” I asked.
“I’m here.” He paused. It felt like a lifetime. “Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Sure. Absolutely,” I said. “Just tell me where.”
“Not now. Tomorrow.”
No, not tomorrow, right now! I wanted to yell.
This was no longer about finishing a sports interview, that much was pretty clear. There was something else going on. What the hell was it?
“Where are you now, Dwayne? Are you home? I can be there in ten minutes.”
“No, I’m tired, Nick. A little wasted, to tell the truth. I need to get some sleep.”
“But —”
“We’ll do it tomorrow. I promise. Believe me, I can keep a promise.”
I wanted to keep pressing, hopefully change his mind. Instead, I pulled back.
“Okay, how about we meet for breakfast?”
“I’ve got something to do in the morning. Let’s meet for lunch again,” he said.
We didn’t exactly have a great track record with lunches, but I didn’t want to point that out now.
“Sounds good, but on one condition,” I said.
“What’s that? What’s your condition for the interview?” he asked, and chuckled lightly.
It was simple, and it made all the sense in the world. “I choose the restaurant this time.”
Chapter 22
IT WAS A little before noon when I walked into Jimmy D’s Pub three blocks south of my apartment. Any self-respecting writer has a local bar that doubles as his second home. I read that in Pete Hamill’s memoir, so it must be true, right?
A couple of doors from Jimmy’s I gave a buck to a pan-handler I know named Reuben. Reuben’s a homeless man, nearly blind, unemployable. A quirk of mine is that I leave the house every morning with ten singles. I give them out on the streets until they’re gone. My father used to do the same thing with five singles when we would visit New York together. He didn’t think it was a big deal, and neither do I.
“Hey, Nick,” I heard from behind the bar as I grabbed a stool inside Jimmy’s. It wasn’t quite a chorus of people shouting “Norm!” on Cheers, but it was welcome just the same.
“Hey, Jimmy.”
Jimmy Dowd was the owner as well as his own daytime bartender. He poured a mean shot and could draw a clean pint of Guinness. I had no idea how his mixed drinks were because I’d never had one, let alone seen him make any. Jimmy’s was a pub for those who had only one decision to make with their liquor: straight up or on the rocks?
But I was holding off on either. At least until Dwayne Robinson arrived for our meeting.
Jimmy nodded when I told him as much, and the two of us chatted for a few minutes about the Yankees’ upcoming series against the Red Sox at Fenway. “We’ll take two of three,” predicted Jimmy. “As long as we pitch around Big Papi. Slumping or not, he always kills us!”
There were a lot of reasons why I liked hanging out at Jimmy D’s, not the least of which was Jimmy himself. He was a Vietnam vet who had made some money in stocks and decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of owning a pub. There was also the fact that three years ago Jimmy had saved my life one night. But that’s a story for another time.
The story now was Dwayne Robinson. I checked my watch — he was due any minute. Knowing that Jimmy, a Bronx native, shared the same passion for the Bombers that I did, I told him who I was waiting on.
“No shit, really?” he said, tossing back his head of jet-black hair with a surprised look. Then he summed up an entire city’s feeling with four words. “He broke my heart.”
We started comparing favorite Dwayne Robinson pitching performances. With lots to choose from, it wasn’t long before I lost track of the time.
“When was he supposed to meet you?” Jimmy finally asked, glancing at his watch.
“Noon,” I answered, doing the same.
Shit! It was twelve thirty. Here we go again!
I reached for my cell phone and dialed Robinson’s apartment. By the sixth ring I was about to hang up. That’s when I heard the beep of an incoming call. I hit the flash button to switch over to the other line, not bothering to check caller ID. I was sure it was Dwayne.
It was Courtney.
I dispensed with “Hello” and cut to the chase, my frustration leading the way like a bulldozer. “He didn’t show,” I said. “Dwayne Robinson screwed me again.”
“I know,” said Courtney.
I know?
“Are you near a television?” she asked.
I motioned for Jimmy to turn on the TV.
“What channel?” I asked her.
“Take your pick,” Courtney said. “I’m watching ESPN.” She didn’t say another word.
Chapter 23
“ESPN!” I SHOUTED to Jimmy.
He punched the remote, the picture came up, and within a few seconds my heart sank down into the floorboards.
A reporter was talking, the street scene behind him not giving too much away. I could see a cop car,
a bunch of people milling about.
But it was all summed up on the bottom of the screen in plain English.
DWAYNE ROBINSON IS DEAD.
The reporter was rambling on, but it was as if I’d gone deaf. Jimmy said something to me and I couldn’t process his words, either. I just kept staring at the TV screen in shock, getting numb all over.
The picture changed as a few words from the reporter finally began to sift into my ears.
Jump … building … apparent suicide … mystery man … now mystery death.
I snapped out of it to watch the TV screen fill with the shaky image from what looked like a handheld recorder. There was a hardwood floor — a hallway — and the pink slippers of the woman running with the camera. She was heading for a sliding-glass door off her living room.
Word for word, I could hear the reporter’s voice-over.
“What you’re about to see is dramatic home video shot by one of Dwayne Robinson’s neighbors right after she apparently heard the crash outside her apartment window. I must warn our viewing audience that this footage is very unsettling.”
The handheld camera finally stopped jumping around, the focus tightening from blurry to clear. Dwayne’s neighbor was shooting from her terrace high above the street below.
Dwayne Robinson’s six-foot-four body was sprawled face-down on the roof of a white van, the impact creating a crater of twisted and bent metal around him.
I went partially deaf again as the shot returned to the reporter standing on what was clearly the same street where Dwayne had lived.
And died.
“Guess he’s not coming,” Jimmy muttered, sounding as shaken up as I felt. “The poor son of a bitch. He blew us off again, huh, Nick.”
Part Two
THE SETUP MAN
Chapter 24
BRUNO TORENZI OPENED the door to his room at the San Sebastian Hotel overlooking Central Park and gave a head-to-toe gaze at the five-foot-ten-inch blonde standing before him in the hallway. She was wearing a shiny red cocktail dress with matching high heels and strands of gold jewelry.
“What’s your name?” he asked. “Your real name?”
“Anastasia,” she answered. Her Russian accent was almost as thick as his Italian. “What’s your real name?”
Torenzi ignored the question and simply turned around, walking back inside.
“Nice to meet you,” the blonde said, closing the door behind her. “I’ll call you Sebastian, then. Like the hotel?”
“I get the joke,” Bruno Torenzi called back to the girl.
Torenzi’s preference was for Italian girls, but the ones on this side of the Atlantic were like eating at the Olive Garden: you would never mistake the experience for a home-cooked meal. As for the American girls, they talked too much about themselves. And the Asians were too skinny for him, nothing to grab on to.
Thank God for the Russian girls. Or Polish, or Greek, for that matter.
“Take your clothes off,” said Torenzi, grabbing a beer from the minibar. There was no offer of anything for the girl.
“First things first,” she shot back. “Sebastian.”
“Sure,” he mumbled, walking over to an open black duffel bag perched on a round table in the corner. He pulled out a stack of cash. “Two thousand, right?” he asked, removing the rubber band holding the wad together.
“Not including gratuity,” said Anastasia, hoping the Italian man, the apparently rich Italian man, didn’t know the rules of the game.
Torenzi peeled off twenty crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and stuck out his hand. “I wasn’t born yesterday … Anastasia.”
She took the two thousand and thought that would be good — for a start.
Then she nuzzled up to his ear while sliding her hand down to the crotch of his black trousers. Nice material, Italian-made. “You know what Anastasia means?” she whispered through lips painted cherry red. “Means ‘flower of resurrection.’”
Torenzi took a swig of his beer. “Excellent. Now take off your clothes,” he repeated. “Forget about the history lessons.”
The big guy liked to be the boss and he was hardly the first, thought Anastasia as she reached for the zipper running down the back of her dress. Let him enjoy it while he still can.
The former governor of New York notwithstanding, most men know that two thousand dollars was a pretty good price to pay for a call girl. Meaning she better be pretty and she better be good.
Anastasia didn’t disappoint. As the cocktail dress slipped off her shoulders, her blue eyes and high cheekbones became all but an afterthought to the rest of her. There was no bra, no panties underneath the dress. Just all-natural, gravitydefying talent and beauty.
“You know what, Sebastian,” she purred. “I like you.”
Torenzi finally laughed and then he unbuttoned his dress shirt. When it came off, along with his white undershirt, Anastasia couldn’t help but stare. He was solid muscle, chiseled to perfection. But that wasn’t all.
“My God, what happened to you, honey?” she asked. She couldn’t help herself.
The better question would’ve been what hadn’t happened to Bruno Torenzi. His left shoulder and arm were riddled with the scars of a shotgun blast — black tarlike circles the size of nickels and quarters. Count them all up and you had a buck fifty in change.
His other shoulder bore the scar of a severe burn, a sixinch patch of leathery skin that had the texture of beef jerky left out to bake in the sun for a month.
There was more. On one side of his stomach were two stab wounds, the scars bubbled up from the flesh. Very hard to look at.
Torenzi glanced down at himself but said nothing. Certainly no explanation. All he did was remove his trousers and underwear and climb onto the bed.
Anastasia didn’t press it. As it was, she was beginning to feel sorry for the guy.
“Oh, I get it,” she said playfully, the back of her hand gently brushing across the curve of her breasts. “You’re one of those. A real tough guy, right?”
She had no idea.
Neither did the two men just now stepping off the elevator, heading for the hotel room. Her partners.
For a year, the three of them had had the perfect scam going, but they had overlooked one thing this time.
Even contract killers get horny sometimes.
Chapter 25
THE BELOVA BROTHERS, Viktor and Dmitry, pumped up on adrenaline and blow, arrived at room 1204 of the San Sebastian. They eyed the plush hallway around them to make sure they were alone.
“Our father wouldn’t approve,” said Dmitry. He always said that before they did a job. Always.
“Fuck him,” said Viktor, who thought he was sounding more American every day. “Fuck our father, Dmitry.”
A dozen or so times before, they had stood outside expensive hotel rooms all over Manhattan, breathing fast to the point of panting while flipping off the safety switches on their Yarygin PYa semiautomatic pistols. The Yarygin’s seventeenround double-column, single-feed magazine was a major reason why it was the standard Russian military-issue sidearm. But for Viktor and Dmitry it was the ultrasleek stainless-steel barrel that they loved. It felt sturdier than the old-school Makarov pistol, more reliable.
Not that they had ever had to pull the trigger during one of these jobs.
That was the beauty and the brilliance of the scam. Most of the time they caught their victims with their pants down.
More important, the johns were always too embarrassed to go to the police afterward.
These were men of some means, usually high-level executives traveling on business. They had reputations to protect. They had wives and children. Whatever was stolen from them wasn’t worth looking an NYPD detective in the eye and explaining, “I just got swindled by a prostitute and her two partners.”
And all it had taken was an ad in the back of 212 Magazine promising the highest-quality escort for the discerning gentleman. “From Russia with Love” read the headline.
I
t was good enough to entice somewhere around twelve men to date — not that Viktor and Dmitry were keeping track. They were too busy counting the laptops, gold Rolexes, Kiton suits, and cold hard cash.
The brothers traded quick nods. Everything was good. Anastasia had placed the swath of tape over the lock chamber, same as always. All they had to do was turn the handle and they could stroll right in — no muss, no fuss.
But where was the fun in that?
Instead, the two of them burst into the room like a couple of class 5 hurricanes. They immediately spotted Bruno Torenzi lying buck naked above the covers.
“Don’t move, motherfucker!” barked Viktor, taking advantage of one of the design features of New York’s better hotels: thick walls.
Torenzi’s confusion lasted only a second. He eyed Anastasia standing at the end of the bed. She confirmed what he already knew. It was a setup; she was the bait and he was today’s sucker.
Sure enough, she started to put her dress back on. “Duffel bag,” she announced. “Jackpot.”
Dmitry’s eyes moved off Torenzi and he walked over to the black duffel bag on the table in the corner. His smile grew as wide as Red Square at the sight of the cash inside.
Then the smile disappeared. It was gone. Totally gone.
“What the hell is this?”
Chapter 26
DMITRY REACHED DOWN into the duffel bag. He removed a gray rectangular block of C-4 explosive. A detonator wire was hanging from one end like a mouse’s tail. Next he pulled out an absolute beast of a handgun, the Model 500 Smith & Wesson Magnum. A box of .50-caliber cartridges followed.
This was one serious duffel bag.
Dmitry’s eyes narrowed to a suspicious squint as he looked back over at Torenzi. It was as if he’d just seen the second image in one of those optical illusion drawings.
This guy was naked, with the shiny barrels of two guns aimed directly at him. But he was completely calm and under control. Not a trace of fear.
Who is this guy? Is he connected? And why is it suddenly fucking hot in this room?