“You shut the fuck up and sign those fucking things and think how lucky you are that you got to pay us back before this whole
thing turns to
shit
,” Todora said through clenched teeth.
Graham started signing. When he finished, Todora nodded to the big man in the doorway. The big man crossed the room, gripped
Graham’s upper arm, and raised him up out of his seat, propelling him toward the door.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Graham said, pleading. “This can all still work out. I’ve got it handled.”
“You and that TV shit?” Todora said across the room as his man dragged Graham from their presence. “Good you like it. ’Cause
you’re gonna be getting a lot of face time.”
The sound of Graham faded and the three men in the monitor returned to their meals as if nothing had happened.
“Wow,” Casey said, standing up and pointing at the computer, thinking of all the crude comments about her. “You’re going to
edit that stuff, right?”
“Of course,” Jake said, touching her shoulder. “Trust me, I’m not going to embarrass you with his crap.”
“I still helped set that sick bastard free.”
“He’ll turn up.”
G
RAHAM SIGNALED for Ralph to hurry his ass up and the Lexus crunched some broken glass as it shuddered to a halt in front of
him on the street.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Graham said, throwing himself into the front seat and crouching down behind the dash.
“Everything okay?” Ralph asked, his own head swiveling from side to side now as he squealed away from the curb. With his right
hand he felt for the gun under his arm.
“No, it’s not,” Graham said, looking back over the seat through the rear glass for signs of their being followed. “We’re fucked.
Haven’t you heard?”
Ralph accelerated, checking his mirrors and slowing only to check the traffic before running the red lights. They reached
the on-ramp and he floored it. The engine whined and Graham almost fell into Ralph’s lap as he swerved out into the stream
of traffic between two tractor trailers. Ralph surged through the traffic as if someone was hot on their tail, never slowing
except when his radar detector signaled a speed trap up ahead.
“Okay, Ralph,” Graham said as they raced along. “Get me out of here. Just get me out.”
Ralph cast him a look.
“If they’re going to have someone kill me, how do they do it?” Graham started and then paused. “How would they do it?”
“You mean right now? Today? Or sometime later?” Ralph asked, checking the mirror and blowing through a gap between two cars.
“I don’t think they put these things off.”
Ralph shrugged. “They didn’t get you coming out.”
“I’m thinking to avoid the mess in front of their own place.”
“I haven’t seen anyone on us,” Ralph said, checking behind them again. “You sure about this?”
“I know people, Ralph,” Graham said. “They are going to kill me if I let them, if
you
let them. So?”
Ralph nodded and said, “They’ll wait someplace they know you’ll go.”
“My Rochester office,” Graham said. “The house in Mendan.”
“Right, so you don’t go there.”
“But
you
have to.”
Ralph nodded his head.
“There’s a safe in the master bedroom closet,” Graham said. “I’ve got some cash. There’re a couple suitcases on a shelf in
there. Put some clothes in one and take all the money. There’s a black felt bag of diamonds, too. Make sure you get that.”
Ralph nodded without comment and they rode in silence for a few minutes.
“I’ll take you to my hotel room,” Ralph said. “It’ll take a little longer, but they won’t think to look for you. It’s not
exactly five stars, but you’ll be safe there while I get everything. I’ll have the pilots file a flight plan to Philly then
do an equipment landing in Ithaca so no one can waylay us at the Rochester airport. We can drive down to Ithaca and meet them
without giving anyone a heads-up that that’s where we’ll be getting on. We can change the flight plan from there to—”
“London,” Graham said. “You’ll get us new passports and we can travel by train to Zurich.”
Ralph raised his eyebrows. “We coming back?”
“When it’s safe,” Graham said. “I’ll defer to you on that.”
Ralph made a face. “Maybe not for a long time.”
“You need anything?” Graham asked.
Ralph patted his prosthetic leg with one hand and patted the gun under his arm with the other. “Got everything I need here
and here.”
“Good,” Graham said.
Ralph reached up under the cuff of the pants on the fake leg and slipped something free from the hardware. “Take this. It’s
a thirty-eight, easy to use. Just cock it with your thumb and pull the trigger. Nothing to it.”
Graham took the black gun and turned it over in his hand with a snort. “I’m not going to need this.”
Ralph glanced at him and nodded before turning his attention back to the road. “I hope that’s true.”
G
RAHAM SPENT the next several hours holed up in Ralph’s room, burning up the phone and computer lines, moving as much money
as he could get his hands on to an offshore bank in the Cayman Islands. Later, he could move it from there to Switzerland,
leaving not a single trace for anyone. He’d rather not have had this kind of wrench thrown into his plans, but his heart raced
with the excitement of tricking people like Todora and Napoli, knowing his life hung in the balance but also that he was so
much smarter than them. He imagined it was the feeling tightrope walkers had when they danced across a wire spanning two buildings,
unafraid because of the level of their skill but excited by the flirt with death.
The room phone beside the bed rang and Graham stared at it.
He fondled the .38 in the front pocket of his jacket. With his free hand he picked up his cell and dialed Ralph.
“Anything doing?” he asked.
“I was just going to call you,” Ralph said. “I’m about five minutes out.”
“You’ve got everything?”
“Everything.”
“Meet you in front,” Graham said.
The hotel phone kept ringing.
Ralph stayed silent for a moment, then he said, “Well, you just wait till you see me pull in. You can see the entrance from
my window. Probably overkill, but let’s keep it safe until Zurich.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Graham said.
Ralph hung up.
Graham used the bathroom and when he came out, he pulled aside the curtain to watch the entrance. The sun was down and except
for a slice of deep orange to the south, the sky had gone purple like a bad bruise. Graham felt a wave of relief when the
Lexus came into view, slowed, and pulled up to the front of the hotel. He let the curtain drop, but a flash of something caught
his eye and he pulled it back again.
A blue pickup truck jumped the curb from the street and cut Ralph off from the lobby drive-through. Ralph T-boned the pickup
in a crunch of metal and glass and threw the Lexus into reverse. But before he could get up any steam, a black Suburban rocketed
into the drive and slammed into the back of the car. Two men hopped out and gunfire erupted as they sprayed the Lexus with
bullets from compact Mac-10 machine guns.
Graham stared, frozen as the man on the driver’s side of the Lexus flung open the door and yanked Ralph’s bloody body out
onto the pavement. He placed the gun to Ralph’s ear and fired a single round, blasting the pavement with a crimson spray that
jerked Graham to life. He bolted and threw open the door, sprinting down the hall toward the stairwell in the back, smashing
it open, and setting off a fire alarm.
He leaped down the stairs, taking four or five at a time and twisting his ankle on the concrete landing. A stab of pain shot
through him, but he never slowed down. He burst out the fire door and into the twilight, cutting through some parked cars
and heading away from the hotel toward the railroad tracks. He clutched the .38, withdrawing it from his pocket. The pain
in his ankle made him gasp and tears streamed down his face, but he never stopped.
When he reached the tracks, he heard a shout back by the hotel but never looked. His foot caught the edge of a railroad tie
and spilled him to the gravel, splitting his lip on the metal rail and breaking a tooth. He scrambled to his feet, grateful
for the deep shadows. The prison, its forty-foot wall capped by glass towers, loomed up ahead like a castle. When he reached
the road, he peered down over the concrete bank holding the Owasco River in its course, wondering if it was deep enough to
jump into and swim to freedom and deciding that it wasn’t.
He chanced a look back and his spirits soared. Only empty tracks, their shiny rails casting off the glow from nearby streetlights.
He straightened, pausing a moment to catch his breath and study the length of the street that ran past the front of the prison
from the center of town. He knew that in less than a mile he’d be beyond the town and lost in a labyrinth of woods and farmland
of the upstate countryside. He started up the hill leading out of town, gimping along on the sidewalk, entering the shamble
of homes on the bad side of town where the vacant houses, wrecked cars, and overgrown lawns offered cover of their own. His
hands trembled and he jammed them into his pant pockets, one hand still gripping the gun.
A sudden shout made him look back over his shoulder. Just beyond the prison, a man had rounded the corner of Curly’s Restaurant
on foot and now ran his way at a full sprint. A second figure shot out from the railroad tracks and joined the chase.
Graham turned and did his best, running like a cripple, swinging his leg in a wide arc, his ankle excruciating. He heard the
zip of a bullet in the same instant that he heard the roar of the gunshot. Instinctively, he spun around and pointed Ralph’s
snub-nose at the approaching shapes, firing until the pin clicked as it struck the empty casings. The men dove and rolled
in opposite directions before springing into crouching positions and firing back.
Graham felt as though he’d been struck with a baseball bat in the shoulder. The impact of the bullet spun him around and the
.38 clattered to the street. He kept going, so scared now that he felt a warm rush down the inside of his leg and found one
corner of his brain hoping that it was pee instead of blood. At the top of the hill he saw the decrepit tavern and heard a
gust of laughter burst from his throat as though it were all just a goofy dream. The next shot sent him flying forward, shattering
his hip bone and making him scream. He spun off the sidewalk and into the street, slamming facedown into the gritty pavement,
tasting small stones.
The whine of an engine came at him like another bullet, up the hill, tires screeching as it skidded to a stop beside him and
filling the air with the smell of burned rubber. Graham covered his head, his mind fresh with the vision of the Suburban that
brought Ralph to his end. He heard the door fly open and squeezed his eyes tight.
“Hurry up and get the fuck in!”
Graham blinked and raised his head. A rusty maroon Buick with a white ragtop sat belching fumes from a broken pipe. A dark
figure sat in the driver’s seat, barely illuminated in the glow of the dashboard lights. Gunfire erupted again and a slug
whacked the open car door beside his head.
In a surge of adrenaline, Graham scrabbled up into the car, dragging his ass in with the strength of his arms and chest. The
gunfire continued, and with the door hanging open the driver mashed the gas pedal and they took off over the hill. A bullet
smashed through the back glass and punched a hole in the radio, sending out a small spray of sparks. The man beside him whooped
with something other than fear. The car swerved, glancing a telephone pole that slammed the wild door shut.
Graham cowered in the seat with his head covered. Still they raced on out of town and then swerving wildly down country roads
until they came to a sudden stop. Graham raised his head, peeking over the seat into the empty night.
“They’re gone,” he said.
The driver chuckled softly and Graham sat back against the door, the pain in his hip and shoulder now coming back full force.
“Jesus,” Graham said, making out the features of the man in the shadows, his heart plunging. “Dwayne.”
“Never expected to see someone so repulsive and so utterly sick, did you?” Dwayne said, his smile glowing in the dashboard
lights, his breath growing heavy. “That’s what you said about me, right? On TV? For everybody to hear?”
Graham turned and grabbed for the handle to his door, his fingers searching but finding only the stem of where the handle
had once been. Dwayne laughed, showing him the handle before dropping it to the floor between his legs.
Graham turned to attack and saw from the corner of his eye Dwayne swinging a short length of pipe. Graham collapsed, faceup
on the front seat, his eyes open and seeing, but unable to move.
“You got a pretty face,” Dwayne said softly.
T
HE WEATHER’S NICE,” Jake said. “Would you like to walk to dinner? We could go through the park.”
“That would be nice,” she said, stepping out of the network building and onto the sidewalk.
New York City bustled with the rush-hour crowd. They turned down a side street and crossed Central Park West. Jake led her
through a twisting maze of paths, deep into the trees. Wrought-iron lampposts were the only thing that gave away their location.
Otherwise, she could have been deep in a north Texas forest. They climbed steadily uphill and Casey listened to the twittering
of various birds disturb the soft rustle of leaves. After another turn, they began to see other couples and families with
small children and the woods became gardens and carefully cut shrubs until the path opened up on the stone outlook of Belvedere
Castle.
They climbed the steps and stood with their hands braced atop the ramparts, looking out over the treetops and the water and
the green fields in the distance.
“They found him,” Jake said. “I didn’t know when I should tell you, and I feel bad saying this, but I didn’t want to upset
you before the interview. I know that sounds kind of selfish.”