Money to Burn

I crossed Forty-ninth Street on my way to the subway station. I had the green light, but a delivery van came flying out of the twenty-four-hour parking garage on the corner. It barreled down on me like a heat-seeking missile, as if determined to T-bone me in the crosswalk. The van cut me off, then screeched to a halt, stopping half in and half out of the crosswalk. I was about to cuss out the maniac driver when the rear doors flew open. Two men jumped out and grabbed me. I tried to resist, but these thugs were amazingly strong, and they had me. They threw me in the back of the van and slammed the doors shut.

“Don’t move,” the man with the gun said.

I tried not to panic as the van sped away.

44

I HAD NO CLUE WHERE WE WERE HEADED. OR WHO HAD ME.

Or what they intended to do with me.

I was alone in the back of a commercial van, seated on the metal floor with my knees drawn up to my chest and my back to the side panel. There were no windows, and the only source of light in the cargo area was a dim sliver glowing at the edges of the closed door that led to the cockpit. It was so dark that my abductors hadn’t bothered to blindfold me. They hadn’t even bound my hands; the rear doors were padlocked, making escape impossible. My head was near a wheel well, and the tires whined on the pavement below me.

I knew that Forty-ninth Street was one-way, east to west, so I deduced that the first left turn we’d made was onto Ninth Avenue, headed south. I was trying to track our travels in my mental map of Manhattan, but a series of turns confused me, until the sound of the tires changed dramatically. Noise came not just from the wheel well but from all directions. I surmised that we were inside the Lincoln Tu

Is that bag what I think it is?

My eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but it was the odor that I had noticed first. It was coming from a green plastic bag-much larger than a garbage bag-on the other side of the van. Other than me, it was the only thing in the cargo area. I squinted, trying to focus, but my sense of smell dominated. It was like burned meat. Two thoughts ran through my mind.

Don’t look inside.

Look inside.

I moved closer to the bag, trying not to inhale. The odor made me think of that guy who’d burned a hundred-dollar bill at Sal’s Place, and of the incendiary package that had nearly set me ablaze in the elevator. Most of all, however, I was thinking how much the bag resembled a body bag, and how the burned meat smelled not quite like any other meat I’d smelled before.

Open it.

It wasn’t perverse curiosity that drove me; it was the need to defend myself. I was certain that there was a body inside and that it was not going to be pretty. I needed to know what I was up against with these guys-maybe I’d even find a knife or a tool of some sort that would make these thugs sorry they hadn’t bound my hands.

I tugged at the zipper on the bag, but it was open only six inches when the odor overwhelmed me. I was suddenly nauseous.

The van stopped. I heard men talking in the cockpit, and their voices traveled with the sound of their footfalls around the outside of the van to the rear doors. The engine cut off, but I heard another one ru

“I see you met our friend Tony,” one of the men said.

More laughter, and I couldn’t help shutting them up with what I’d learned.

“Tony Girelli?” I said.

“Whoa, Mr. Wall Street has been doing his homework.”

The men climbed into the van and came toward me. Two guys restrained me and pulled my arms behind my back. Another bound my wrists and blindfolded me.

“Yeah,” he said, knotting the blindfold behind my head, “poor Tony Girelli got some bad sushi at the Rink Bar today.”

That cracked up the rest of the crew, and the smell of bourbon breath now mixed with that of burned meat.

“Let’s walk,” the man said, but the goons practically lifted me out of the back of the van and onto a concrete floor. We walked about ten steps, and from the echoes I could tell we were in a spacious place. We stopped, and a noisy roll-down gate closed behind me. I was inside a big garage, or a warehouse.

This can’t be good.

Someone tugged at my blindfold, and it dropped to the floor. No one said a word during the short time it took for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting and focus on the two men in front of me. The sight startled me. A young, handsome man was hanging by his wrists from a chain. He’d been hoisted up by a pulley system that was used to lift car engines. He was naked from the waist up, the expression on his face one of utter terror. The other man-a guy with burns on the right side of his neck and a deformed right ear-looked at me with a familiar stare-the stare I’d seen last fall, sitting across the table from him at Sal’s Place.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The two thugs standing behind me snickered. The man’s cold stare was more than enough to silence me.

“The name’s Burn,” he said. Finally, he looked away and picked up a soup can from the floor, flicking something toward the hostage. A small glob of goo about the size of a silver dollar stuck to his bare chest. Then he struck a match and looked at me.

“Call Vanessa,” he said in an even tone.

“Who?” I asked.

Without expression, he brought the lit match to the glob on the prisoner’s chest. It burst into flame, and the screaming was unbearable. He kicked and writhed, crying out in pain for a long time-an eternity for him, no doubt. Finally it burned out. The man hung limp from his wrists, his chest and stomach heaving with exhaustion from the excruciating pain.

Burn flung another glob of goo at him. This one stuck to his stomach.

The prisoner groaned and sobbed at the mere thought of round two. “Please, no! Stop!”

Burn lit another match. “Call her,” he told me.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about!” I shouted.

“Vanessa,” he said, “your way-too-clever first wife. The one who ended your phone conversation by firing off her own gun just to make us think she’d been shot.”

Ivy hadn’t been shot. Thank God. But they were monitoring my cell, just as Ivy had feared.

“Why do you call her Vanessa?”

He flicked the flaming match at the glob on the prisoner’s stomach. It was the same horrific result-the screaming, the kicking, the smell of burning flesh. I looked away, unable to watch, and had my hands not been bound I would have covered my ears. The unbearable sounds and smell nearly brought me to my knees.

When the flame had finally burned out, the sadist walked toward me, the soup can in hand. He grabbed my T-shirt by the collar and ripped it down to my third rib. Then he flung the rest of the goo at my chest. It smelled of gasoline as it oozed down my sternum.

“Call her, and tell her to come and get you.”

“I don’t know how to reach her. I swear.”

His expression was like ice. He lit a match.

“I’m not lying!”

“Call her.”

“I don’t know how to reach her. I don’t. I really don’t.”

Burn stared into my eyes. It could have been the smell of the other man’s charred flesh in the air. Or the remains of Tony Girelli in the body bag. Or perhaps it was the burning match about to ignite the flammable goo all over my chest. Whatever it was, he seemed to believe me.

He blew out the match. Then he jutted his face just inches from mine. There was no bourbon on his breath. The leader of this group was stone-cold sober.