Stone Cold

They unrolled the carpet and there was Paddy Conroy. He was apparently so weak from being bound up that they had to help him stand.

Manson shoved a gun in his sweating face. “What the hell is going on? Who the hell are you?”

“What’s going on is that my damn daughter screwed me.”

A smile eased across Manson’s face. “You’re Paddy Conroy?”

“No, I’m the king of Ireland, you dumb-shit.”

Manson shoved him across the van and Paddy hit the sidewall and slumped down. Manson got on the phone and relayed the news to Bagger.

The casino boss was delighted at getting ahold of his old nemesis, but he also didn’t like this abrupt change in the plan. No, he didn’t like it at all, because that meant A

“Bring him,” he instructed Mike.

Manson clicked off. “Now we go for a little ride. But first.”

The two men expertly searched Paddy for any surveillance devices.

A minute later the white van roared out of the garage, hit a hard left, sailed down an alleyway, turned right and slid to a stop behind three black SUVs parked there in a column.

Paddy was hustled by Mike Manson into the middle one. All three trucks fired up and sped out of the alley. One turned left, one right and the third went straight.

The vehicles reached main roads and Bagger’s plan quickly became evident. Everywhere there were motorcades of black SUVs carrying World Bank conference attendees to or from important events. Bagger’s three SUVs were readily absorbed into this crush of dignitaries and bureaucrats.

At ten-thirty that evening Bagger left his hotel with his men. They drove to a disused warehouse that Bagger’s men had located in a run-down industrial area in Virginia. There they waited until the black SUV with Paddy Conroy and Mike Manson pulled into the warehouse.

As soon as Bagger saw Paddy he walked over to him and belted him right in the mouth. Paddy fell back against the vehicle and then tried to get to Bagger, but Bagger’s men held him back.

“That was for the ten grand you stole from me. Been waiting a long time to pay you back on that one.”

Paddy spat blood out of his mouth. “Best ten grand I ever took.”

“Yeah, we’ll see how you feel about that in a few minutes. You got no idea how good I feel. You see, no A

He studied Paddy’s gray, gaunt features and his threadbare clothes.

“Looks like life’s been treating you real well. You sick, poor or both?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m insulted. I mean even you at the top of your game might not be good enough. You think it was smart coming after me wearing rags and looking like you’re knocking on the grave?”

Paddy looked around at the armed men surrounding him. “Right this minute, not particularly smart, no.”

Bagger sat down on a packing crate, his gaze never leaving Paddy’s face. “So A

“Like I said before, I guess I taught her too good.”

“You sure about that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe father and daughter got together to screw me. How about that theory?”

“My daughter hates my guts.”

“So you say.”

“So I know. But if you believed otherwise, why do the deal at all?”

“You know why. But now here you are and no A

“No clue, Jerry.”

Bagger stood slowly. “I think you can do better than that. So you and me are go

“I’m not in the chatting mood.”

Bagger took a serrated knife out of his jacket pocket and slipped on a plastic glove. “Oh, I can be pretty damn persuasive.” He looked at his men and nodded. A minute later, Paddy’s pants and underwear were off and Bagger was sizing up the man’s privates for cutting.

“I used this technique on a little asshole named Tony Wallace in Portugal after I chatted with the people he’d hired to run his mansion with my money. And let me tell you something, he talked and talked right before we beat his brains out. In fact, that was the way I was able to track down A

Paddy struggled against his captors, but they were too strong. As the knife came closer and closer to a spot no man would want a sharp instrument to be, Paddy cried out, “For Chrissakes, don’t! Just put a bullet in my brain.”

“Tell me where A

“If I did know do you think I’d be here, you idiot?”

Bagger slapped him across the face. “You show some respect.”

“Here’s my respect.” Paddy spat in his face. “That’s for Tammy.”

“Right, your old lady you left behind for me.”

“I was in jail on the night you murdered her, you bastard. Otherwise you’d have had to go through me to get to her. She was the only thing I ever loved in my whole life. And I swear to God above, before this was all over, I was pla

“Was that before or after I killed your daughter?”

“Any price I had to pay to get you, I was willing to do it,” Paddy screamed at him.

“But A

“Can’t blame her for turning the tables on me.”

“Since you were pla

“I’ll find some way to kill you, Jerry. I swear it.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. We crashed her house, and she recognized me right away. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Why are you doing this, Jerry? Why are you going to kill me? I didn’t do nothing to you.’ And you know what I told her? I said, because your chickenshit husband ripped me off and left you holding the bag. That’s how much he loved you, you dumb broad. And then I pumped a round right into her brain. Now, anything else you want to know about it before I start carving you up?”

“No, that’s about it,” a woman’s voice said.

They all turned as A

Bagger said, “How the hell did you get here?”

“I came with the FBI,” A

“Nobody could’ve followed my boys.”

“We didn’t tail them. We followed you. The place is surrounded, Jerry. You’ve got no way out.”

“Yeah? Working for the FBI now? Look, baby, you con me once, shame on you, con me twice, shit on me.” The man’s voice was confident, but his look was something less than that.

“She’s telling the truth, jerk-off,” Alex yelled. “So just lay your weapons down before you don’t have a choice in the matter.

“Kill ’em,” Bagger said.

A split second later doors on all sides of the warehouse burst open and two dozen men in body armor came barreling in, sub-machine guns in hand.

“FBI, put down your weapons. Now!”

Bagger dropped the knife and his men quickly put down their guns in the face of the overpowering show of federal force.

Bagger’s gaze went from A

“You do what you got to do, Jerry,” Paddy said as he hastily pulled his clothes back on.

Bagger looked at one of the FBI agents and immediately regained his swagger. “That bitch ripped me off for forty million. She bother mentioning that to you while she was playing snitch?”