Don’t Blink

Then I heard it. Off in the distance, the sound of the cavalry. Police sirens. Beautiful sirens. Brison must have called for backup. Or maybe it was the doorman, who’d dialed 911 out on the street. Either way…

What are you going to do now, Zamboni?

Little did I know, he’d already done it.

Chapter 83

WOULD ZAMBRATTA TRY to shoot his way out of here?

Would he take the elevator back up to another floor, maybe even grab a hostage from one of the apartments? That wouldn’t be very hard to do.

I wondered if he could hear the approaching sirens. Even if he couldn’t, he had to know that staying put in the elevator wasn’t an option. It was his move, but he had to do something.

Clearly, Brison was on the same page.

He shouted at the closed door of the elevator, “You can’t stay in there, Zambratta! Come out, hands high.”

It was wishful thinking, I guess, but I couldn’t blame Brison for trying.

“You gave us too much time,” Brison continued, his voice growing more confident. “We’ve got men on every floor now. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly.

I’d been so wrapped up in the moment that I almost didn’t see it. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something on the monitor above me. It was the half screen that still had a picture – the revolving door at the entrance to the building.

The door was moving.

At first I thought it was Brison’s backup pushing their way in. The cavalry had arrived!

But, no – I could see only one person and he wasn’t in uniform. He was in a business suit.

Oh, shit! It’s someone who lives in the building, someone coming home. This is bad!

“Go back outside!” I was about to yell.

Then I changed my mind.

The man spi

“Brison!” I shouted instead, jumping up from the counter. “Behind you!”

It was too late, though.

It was Brison who had given Zambratta too much time. The killer had called in his own cavalry – his own backup.

How could I ever forget this man? It was the cold-blooded killer from Lombardo’s Steakhouse.

I watched in horror as he calmly pumped two bullets into Brison. Jesus, he was good with that gun of his.

To my left I could hear the elevator door finally opening. Zambratta strolled out.

“About time,” he muttered to his cohort.

The sirens in the background were getting closer, but they weren’t close enough as Zambratta walked right up to me.

“Police protection. Highly overrated, if you ask me,” he said, raising his gun to my face.

Chapter 84

I SLOWLY OPENED my eyes, kind of glad that I still had eyes to open. My lashes flickered like a silent movie. Everything was blurry. Even the voices around me seemed blurry, if that made any sense.

Where was I? Well, at least I was somewhere.

My head was killing me, and as I slowly reached up and felt along my hairline, I found a lump the size of a te

“Look who’s up,” someone said. “It’s Sleepin’ Beauty.”

All at once everything came into focus. I saw exactly where I was. I saw whom I was with. And I wished that I hadn’t seen any of it.

I was riding in the back of a stretch limousine, somewhere outside the city, judging from the speed of the vehicle. To make things a little worse, the car reeked of cigar smoke and gaudy aftershave.

To my right was Zambratta, and across from both of us, legs crossed and arms folded in satisfaction, was his boss. The boss.

Joseph D’zorio.

“Do you know who I am, Nick?” asked D’zorio. I was noticing that his ruddy complexion went well with his combed-back silver hair. The guy literally had a glow about him.

I nodded. “Yes, I know who you are.”

“Of course you do,” he said before cracking a smile. “But I bet you wish you didn’t right now. In fact, that’s your problem, isn’t it? You know me all too well.”

My shirt had been ripped open and there was no longer a panic button for me to press. Believe it or not, I was more concerned about something else.

Ever so casually I slid my hand over the pocket of my pants, feeling for the outline of the flash drive Monica Phalen had given me.

“Looking for this?” asked D’zorio.

He opened his clenched fist and I saw the flash drive nestled in the palm of his hand.

“I’m guessing, Nick, that you haven’t had the chance to see what’s on here.”

“No,” I said, “I haven’t seen it.”

“Neither have I. I imagine if we were to watch it together, we’d see things that we both already know.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Of course, what I don’t know is who else has seen what’s on here,” said D’zorio, tapping the flash drive with a knuckle.

I realized that this explained why I was still alive. It’s hard to get information out of a dead man.

“The only person who knows what’s on that drive was murdered,” I said. “On your orders, I’m sure. He was a good man, by the way.”

D’zorio rocked his head back and forth as if mulling things over. “You might be right,” he said. “Then again, you might be wrong. Maybe Derrick Phalen made more copies. What do you think, Carmine?”

Slouched back in the leather of the seat next to me, Zambratta shrugged. “It’s tough to say. But you can never be too sure with these things, no?”

“Is that why?” I asked D’zorio.

“Is that why what?” he asked back.

There was no point in playing dumb anymore. Regardless of what was on that flash drive and who else might have seen it, I knew more than enough on my own. “Is that why you framed Eddie Pinero instead of killing him outright? Less chance of retaliation? Because you can never be too sure?”

“No, that’s not it,” D’zorio said with a wave of his hand.

“Then what?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“Don’t be so sure. Try me.”

D’zorio let go with a laugh as the limo suddenly came to a stop, the tires skidding on top of what sounded like gravel. Wherever we had been heading, we were there.

“Sorry, Nick,” is all he said.

But it was the way he said it, with a sense of finality. Joseph D’zorio wasn’t saying that he wouldn’t tell me his secret.

He was saying good-bye.

Chapter 85

THE DOOR NEXT to me swung open with such force that I thought it might have been ripped from its hinges. D’zorio’s driver, who looked like he could bench-press New Jersey, said nothing as he waited for me to step out. Behind him I caught a glimpse of an abandoned warehouse, half burned to the ground. It had that look to it, anyway. Desolate and isolated. The kind of place where no one can hear you scream.

“Do you need some help getting out?” asked Zambratta. “Maybe a kick in the ass?”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

He pulled out his gun, jamming it hard against my head, just like he had in the alley by the pizza place.

“Actually, I do,” he said. “Your time has come.”

I swung one foot out of the limo, and then I stopped because of the sound I heard. An unexpected but quite wonderful sound.

Sirens.

D’zorio’s driver immediately slammed the door shut, nearly taking my leg off. Before I’d even landed in my seat he was back behind the wheel.

These sirens. They were real.

Real close, too. Not like the ones I had heard from the lobby of my building before Zambratta had knocked me senseless. It was as if this time the cavalry had snuck up from behind, turning the sirens on at the last possible moment. Surprise!

“Christ!” yelled Zambratta. “How?”

As in, how the hell could they have found us here?

Zambratta raised his fist to bang on the glass divider – “Let’s go!” – but D’zorio’s driver was already a step ahead. We peeled out so fast I couldn’t help but think back to that night on the run in Darfur.