He moved lightning fast — and yet there wasn’t a trace of emotion coming from him. He coolly tucked away the knife in his jacket, then bent down to whisper something in his victim’s ear.
I couldn’t hear it … but he definitely whispered in the dying man’s ear.
For the first time, I glanced over at Dwayne, who looked exactly as I felt. In complete shock. I could tell he hadn’t heard the killer’s whisper either.
What came next, though, everyone in Lombardo’s clearly heard.
The killer began walking toward the door to the kitchen when a man behind him shouted, “Freeze!”
I turned to see two men with guns drawn. Cops? If they were, they were out of uniform.
“I said, freeze!” the one repeated.
From twenty feet away they had the killer dead in their sights. At least that’s the way it looked.
Plates, silverware, and entire tables went crashing as people scrambled for their lives to get out of the way of whatever might happen next.
The killer stopped, turning to the two men and their guns. Sunglasses blocked his eyes.
He said nothing. He barely moved.
“Put your hands up slowly!” the second man barked. They certainly sounded like cops.
The killer just smiled. It was a sick, twisted grin that seemed tailor-made to the crime he’d just committed. His hands, however, remained at his sides.
“Put your fuckin’ hands up!” came the second warning.
My eyes pinballed back and forth between the killer and the two men. It was a standoff so far. But something had to give. Or someone. And everything, including the barrels of two guns, was pointing at the killer.
Suddenly his hands jolted up, but not before first taking a detour. As fast as you can say Travis Bickle, the killer reached into his jacket, removing two guns of his own.
You talkin’ to me? Are you talkin’ to me?
Who the fuck do you think you’re talkin’ to?
Dwayne’s reflexes were still there, and he dove to the floor. I was right behind him, closing my eyes as sheer pandemonium broke out above our heads. There were countless gunshots. People screaming.
People dying.
Finally, when it all stopped, when all I could hear were the horrified sobs and gasps of everyone down on the floor around me, I opened my eyes again.
And I nearly threw up.
There, in a pool of blood on the polished hardwood floor of the restaurant, was one freshly carved-out eyeball staring up at me.
Chapter 11
MY LEGS WERE rubbery and my stomach rolled as I slowly stood, gazing at a sea of overturned tables and chairs, smashed plates, scattered silverware and food. Shocked and bewildered, everyone was asking everyone else the same question.
“Are you okay?”
The answers were quickly drowned out by the piercing sound of sirens. I barely had time to grab my tape recorder as the New York police descended on the restaurant, blocking off all the exits and corralling us like sheep in the bar area.
Soon, everyone was asking a different question.
“Haven’t we been through enough already?”
A few ambitious cops fanned out among us, quickly trying to get as much information as they could before turning the investigation over to the detectives. What they didn’t want to get in return was lip and blowback from a high-class clientele that just wanted to get the hell out of there.
“Tough shit,” I actually overheard one officer say to some red-faced stuffed shirt complaining that he had to be at an important board meeting all the way downtown.
The officer’s anger made all the more sense as word got around fast that the two men who confronted the killer had indeed been off-duty cops. Their precinct, the nineteenth, was nearby and they had been grabbing a quick beer and hamburger at the bar after working the graveyard shift together.
Now they were dead.
How could that be? I had been there — and it almost hadn’t seemed possible. They had had the guy covered like white on rice!
Clearly the killer knew what he was doing, and that was the King Kong of understatements. As fast as lightning he’d taken down two of New York City’s finest, and not with lucky shots, either. I’m talking about dead center to their foreheads, twice over. The cops never knew what hit them.
Then — poof! — the killer was gone. He had apparently escaped unscathed through the kitchen and out a back door.
All told, he left behind three dead, four wounded, and dozens who were really, really shaken up about what they had just — unfortunately — witnessed.
Few more so than Dwayne Robinson, who now stood by my side. I almost felt like his bodyguard at this point. Or his sports agent. Someone there to take care of him.
“Here, drink this,” I said, handing him some Johnnie Walker Black that I grabbed from behind the bar. Technically, I was looting. Officially, I didn’t care.
“Thanks,” Dwayne mumbled, reaching for the glass. That’s when I saw that his hands were trembling badly. Is there a Valium in the house?
Or maybe it was his anxiety disorder kicking in. He had that look, like the restaurant walls were caving in on him. Better make that two Valium …
It didn’t help matters that people were beginning to recognize him. You didn’t need any poker skills, though, to read his body language. It basically screamed, Back off!
Unfortunately, one idiot couldn’t help himself. He walked right past Donald Trump, Orlando Bloom, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, heading straight for us.
“Hey, aren’t you Dwayne Robinson?” he asked, removing a slip of paper from inside his suit jacket. “Do you think maybe you could sign —”
“Now’s not really a good time,” I interrupted.
The guy turned to me, raising his tweezed eyebrows. He looked like a real slickster, maybe from Madison Avenue. “Who are you?” he asked.
Good question. Who was I to Dwayne Robinson at this moment? But the answer seemed to come easily. “I’m a friend of his,” I answered. Then I channeled my best tough-guy imitation. “And like I said, now’s not really a good time.”
I must have been convincing enough, because the guy backed off. He even mumbled, “Sorry.”
“Thanks,” Dwayne said again.
“You’re welcome. So what brings you here?” I said, and grinned so he’d know I was trying a joke to ease the tension. Not a good joke, just a joke.
Dwayne took a big gulp of the Johnnie Walker and finally managed to find his voice. “Man, I don’t know if I can do this,” he said. “How long do you think they’ll keep us here?”
It was another very good question. I was about to tell him I had no idea when some guy with a badge hooked to his belt stood on a chair and introduced himself as Detective Mark Ford. That was followed by a bit of good news, if you could call it that. He and his partner wanted to take statements from people according to how close they had been sitting to the initial murder.
“We’ll do this table by table,” he said. “As soon as you’re done, you can go.”
I glanced over at Dwayne, expecting him to be relieved at the news. We’d be among the first to be interviewed.
Except Dwayne wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. He’d just up and disappeared.
Gone.
Again.
Chapter 12
IT TOOK ANOTHER two hours before I finally got out of Lombardo’s. While I was being interviewed by one of the detectives, I kept waiting to be asked about Dwayne’s disappearance. The question never came. That probably explained how he was able to escape Lombardo’s undetected — there were just too many people for the police to control, too much commotion. It was truly a mob scene.
A prophetic choice of words, as I’d soon discover.
Anyway, the last thing I felt like doing later that night was go to a party, but Courtney wouldn’t take no for an answer, not even under the circumstances.
“You’re coming, and that’s that. You promised me,” she told me over
the phone. “Besides, you need to get your mind off what happened today. Compartmentalize, Nick. Just stuff it into a box for a little while.”
I had to chuckle. Compartmentalize? Stuff it into a box? That was Courtney at her best. And worst, I guess.
Since I first met her ten years ago at the National Magazine Awards banquet, I’ve yet to meet anyone who could — for lack of a better word — compartmentalize better than she could. Like any normal person she was shocked and horrified to hear what had happened at Lombardo’s that afternoon. But she was also a born and bred New Yorker and knew the importance of being able to get on with your life, no matter what had happened to you.
It wasn’t just talk with Courtney, either. Her younger brother had worked in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Ninety-seventh floor. And she had really loved him, too.
So at eight o’clock I walked into the white marble splendor that was Astor Hall in the New York Public Library. The party was a benefit for New York Smarts, a citywide tutoring program for grade-school students. Courtney was one of its board members and had purchased a table for ten on behalf of Citizen magazine. Good for her. Even better for the kids. A thousand dollars a plate can buy a lot of tutoring.
“There you are!” I heard over my shoulder. Courtney had found me where you can always find me at these types of events: the bar. “And I see you’ve discovered the house Scotch,” she said.
Indeed I had. It was a Laphroaig 15 Year Old, which happened to be my personal favorite. Courtney obviously had some pull with the event’s liquor committee.
“Thank you,” I said, tipping my glass. “I definitely needed this.”
“You’re welcome. Just try to leave a little for the other guests, if you can,” she said, deadpanning.
“Okay, but just a little.”
Courtney helped herself to one of the flutes of champagne that were being passed around. “Well, so much for being able to take your mind off today,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Lombardo’s is the talk of the party, Nick. Hell, it’s the talk of the city.”
I was hardly surprised.
The front page of the New York Post’s late edition had screamed, “DEATH DU JOUR!” Meanwhile, the local and cable news networks were having a field day. By the time they hit the airwaves with live feeds outside of Lombardo’s, they were able to report the identity of the first victim — the guy sitting next to Dwayne and me.
I could’ve sworn I knew him, and I was right.
His name was Vincent Marcozza, and he was the longtime lawyer — excuse me, consigliere — for reputed Brooklyn mob boss Eddie “The Prince” Pinero.
“Everyone’s convinced today was payback,” said Courtney. I nodded. “I guess.”
Eddie “The Prince” Pinero had been convicted the week before on criminal usury charges, otherwise known as loansharking at an interest rate that would make even your credit card company blush.
The case was the first time Vincent Marcozza — a legal heavyweight, in every sense of the word — had failed to spring his biggest client. But hey, even Bruce Cutler didn’t win every time on behalf of John Gotti.
But Marcozza’s performance in the trial had been heavily criticized by legal pundits. They said he’d been uncharacteristically sloppy and at times seemed ill prepared. As Jeffrey Toobin told Anderson Cooper on CNN, “Marcozza really took his eyes off the ball this time.”
His eyes, huh?
Courtney raised her champagne glass. Then she gave me that big blue-eyed wink of hers. “So here’s to you, Nick.”
“Me? For what?” I asked.
“For starters, being alive,” she said. “I had no idea you were such a magnet for danger these days. A girl could really get in trouble hanging around you.”
We clinked glasses, but what followed could only be described as an awkward silence between us. It was all due to the subtext of what she’d just said.
Which brings me back to the second thing you need to know about Courtney Sheppard.
I owe you that one, remember?
Chapter 13
THE PROBLEM BETWEEN us was as clear as the ten-carat diamond on her finger.
Courtney was engaged.
And not just to anybody, but to Thomas Ferramore, one of the wealthiest guys in New York. We’re talking loaded here. Super megabucks. A one-man stimulus package, if you will.
Ferramore owned commercial real estate, lots of it. He owned an airline. He owned over a dozen radio stations. Two soccer teams.
Oh yeah, and he owned Citizen magazine.
After their yearlong “whirlwind courtship” that rivaled the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Brangelina for boldfaced mentions in the gossip pages, the two of them were scheduled to be married this fall at the ultraposh San Sebastian Hotel here in the city. You guessed it. Ferramore owned that, too.
The whole thing promised to be the don’t-miss social event of the season. A real storybook wedding. Problem was, there’d been an unexpected chapter written. Only two people knew about it, and Thomas Ferramore wasn’t one of them.
The night before I left for Darfur, Courtney and I had slept together.
We immediately agreed that it was a one-time thing, a complete lapse in judgment due to our close working relationship over the years. And our friendship, platonic up until then. Sometimes histrionic, often hilarious.
“We can’t pretend it didn’t happen, nor do I want to,” she said the morning after. “But we have to act like it didn’t happen, Nick, okay? And that’s that.”
Compartmentalizing again.
But I suspected it wouldn’t be as easy as “that’s that.”
Sure enough, after her little toast to me, “it” was suddenly the big white elephant in the big white marble room of Astor Hall. We couldn’t ignore it, not until we at least had discussed it some more. As much as we might have tried, there was no way to stuff that elephant into a box.
More important, I didn’t want to. For better or worse, Courtney needed to know how I felt about her, and maybe it had taken getting shot at in Africa for me to fully understand that.
So I took a swig of my Laphroaig 15 Year Old Scotch, followed by a deep breath. Here goes, well, everything, I was thinking.
I turned to her. She was wearing a long black dress with a jewel neckline, her auburn hair elegantly pulled back behind her ears. Beautiful — and so, so sweet.
“Courtney, there’s something I need to —” “Uh-oh,” she interrupted.
Uh-oh?
But she wasn’t reading tea leaves. This had nothing to do with what I was about to say to her. Instead, Courtney was peering over my right shoulder. She’d seen someone, hadn’t she?
“We’ve got big trouble at twelve o’clock,” she announced.
Chapter 14
“HELLO, NICK,” I heard coming up behind me.
I turned to see Brenda Evans, the very blond, very attractive on-air stock market analyst for WFN — the World Financial — based here in New York. Her nickname, mainly among men, was the “Bull and Bear Babe.” I, however, knew Brenda by a different moniker.
My ex-girifriend.
“Hello, Brenda,” I said. Those two words were the first I’d spoken to her since she’d broken up with me a little less than a year ago. My next five words were a complete lie. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too, Nick,” she said. She was probably lying through those brilliantly white teeth of hers, but I couldn’t be sure. That’s how good she was.
As Brenda and Courtney quickly exchanged air kisses and pretended they liked each other, I realized Brenda wasn’t alone. With her was David Sorren, the all-powerful Manhattan district attorney, not to mention one of People magazine’s “25 Most Eligible Bachelors.”
“Hi,” he said to me, not waiting for Brenda to introduce us. “I’m David Sorren.”
“Of course you are,” I said jokingly. Jeez, he had shiny white teeth, too.
Beyond the
cover of People, I’d seen him on the news at least a hundred times, usually standing on the steps of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse touting the latest conviction of some bad guy. Now, with any luck, Sorren would be a complete prick in person so I could immediately hate him.
“And you’re Nick Daniels,” he said as we shook hands firmly. “I’m a big fan of your writing. In fact, I think you got robbed last year on the Pulitzer.”
So much for hating the guy.
“Well, as we runners-up say, it was an honor just to be nominated. But thanks,” I said.
“Don’t let him fool you — he cried for three days straight,” said Courtney, chiming in with one of her patented wisecracks. She began to introduce herself, but it was another case of someone who needed no introduction.
“Yes, hello, Courtney,” said Sorren, giving her the extrafriendly two-handed grasp direct from the Bill Clinton play-book. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for quite some time. I’m glad our paths have finally crossed.”
Courtney wasn’t born yesterday.
“You’re not just saying that so Citizen magazine will run a big puff piece on you after you announce your candidacy for mayor next week, right?” she said.
Sorren wasn’t born yesterday, either.
“Of course I am. Let me know if it works,” he answered with a wink. “In the meantime, congratulations on your recent engagement. Is Mr. Ferramore here?”
“No, he’s actually traveling on business,” said Courtney. “He’s in Europe. Home next week.”
Brenda promptly took back the reins of the conversation, another thing she was always good at.
“So, Nick, I understand you had quite the eventful afternoon,” she said. “That must have been terrible. I’m sorry you had to see it.”
I was about to ask how she knew I had been at Lombardo’s when I remembered that this was Brenda Evans, the dogged reporter. Her sources extended well beyond her Wall Street turf.
“Yes. It was terrible,” I said. “I’m sorry I was there, too.” I didn’t really have anything more I wanted to add. Thankfully, Courtney saved me. She turned to Sorren and instantly made like the investigative reporter she used to be.