Shedrow (9 page)

Chet returned home from his meeting by the train tracks, lachrymose and regretful. Before exiting his car, he looked into the rear view mirror to be sure his eyes were dry before he went into the house. Chet regretted many things, but mostly he lamented the loss of an earlier time, a time more youthful and more virtuous.

“Hey, John,” Chet said when he saw his son on the couch. “Where’s your mother?”

“Don’t know.”

Chet’s son John had finally graduated from the New York Military Academy, one term late. In a few weeks he would move to a freshman dorm room at Rutgers University. Since he had been home, there had been a lot of tension between Chet and his wife, resulting in some heated arguments. Chet had ignored the pleas from his wife to keep his voice down, so that it wouldn’t echo through the heating grates when he yelled, which he did more often than not. Chet knew that John had a habit of eavesdropping in the hallway down from
their bedroom, but it never seemed to curtail his outbursts.

Chet sometimes wondered if his son hated him. He wondered what John might say to his friends about him, as a group of them sat around the large, expansive swimming pool, or hung out in the custom-built recreation room Chet had constructed for his son many years back, in the hope that John and his friends would spend more time at home. Chet had always wanted to monitor their behavior. He feared drugs most of all, for he knew all too well how they could destroy a productive, youthful life.

“Dee! Dee, where are you?”

“Upstairs clean
ing
,” Delores shouted back. She spoke with the accent of a New Jersey native.

“What’s wrong now, Chet? You look terrible.”

“Maybe we should talk.” He motioned with a sideways nod and she followed him into the master bedroom. He closed the door behind her.

“You know, Dee, I really shouldn’t be discussing business with you.”

“Oh God, Chet, Please! Don’t make me just another goddamn mafia wife. You know I never talk.” As she spoke, she was constantly brushing her hair back with both hands.

“I’d be in some deep shit if you did, Dee.”

“Look, Chet, I know there’s trouble. For God’s sake, you’ve been hoarding cash like a friggin squirrel. What the hell
is
wrong? And that nervous tic is back. Your eye is twitching right now. Do you realize that?” As she spoke, she looked down at her sweater and began to pick at it, as if retrieving small insects and flicking them onto the floor.

Chet usually kept up a good front. Few knew the extent of his nefarious dealings, only that he seemed to have built a small empire from waste management and land holdings, and parlayed that into a successful thoroughbred racing stable. But in building the horse business, he had leveraged himself to such an extent that he was bleeding cash from the foundation businesses. Any real cash flow he had now stemmed from his illegal activities, and that too was under great pressure as he borrowed from various sources what he was now unable to pay back.

“They met with me again,” he confessed to Delores. “They’ve got this plan, you see. They think if I, you know, make the horse get s-s-sick or something, and God forbid the horse dies, well then we at least have the insurance money.”

“Get sick or something? Chet, what are you talking about!”

“I’m just saying, you know, things happen. These horses get sick all the time, or they get injured. Remember when that nice colt we had stepped into a woodchuck hole and boom, the next day he was d-d-dead. And that one wasn’t even insured, Dee. Thank God we’ve got insurance on this one, so if anything were ever to happen…”

“Chet, I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”

NEITHER DID JOHN PAWLEK, as he listened furtively down the hallway. As John heard his father glossing over the explanation for a crime that had not yet been committed, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was actually capable of killing Chiefly Endeavor. He reflected on his father’s history and expected he could. That thought sickened him as much as anything he had ever seen or heard about his father.

Three weeks later

Gianni drove into the parking garage under the Doctor’s Pavilion just after six o’clock in the morning. He had the day off—at least he had no scheduled surgery or patient visits. He often arrived early, even on days when his office was closed, to spend time on writing or case planning. He enjoyed the easy morning commute down the Saw Mill Parkway, before the traffic built. Depending on the season, he might see the sun rising off to his left, or the occasional pulse of headlights coming north. He liked the relative quiet of his office and the hospital before the stir of the first shift.

He parked his vehicle and walked to the elevator. As he pushed the elevator button, he saw a leather glove reaching towards his outstretched hand, then felt another gloved hand around his neck. In an instant, a blindfold was placed over his eyes, and the glove covered his mouth.

There appeared to be two men now, one on either side, dragging him away from the elevator, blindfolded, gagged, his arms aching
from being twisted behind his back. They pushed him against the side of a car and bound his hands tightly behind his back with duct tape. He heard the car door open, and he was shoved onto a bench seat in the rear of the vehicle. The two front doors then opened and closed, and the vehicle made a series of rapid turns on the ramps, then exited the garage.

The streets were still relatively quiet, and Gianni tried to imagine the route the vehicle was taking. There was no way of knowing, of course, though after several minutes, he thought he recognized the characteristic roar of cars passing side by side in a tunnel. Based on the time that had passed, he figured it was the Lincoln Tunnel and that he was headed to New Jersey.

Apart from the traffic noise and occasional muffled words from the front seat, Gianni heard nothing that gave him any inkling of his abductors’ intentions. A kidnapping for ransom, perhaps, but there were far better targets with much deeper pockets than his. He thought about Chet, and wondered if this could have anything to do with him. He fought off surges of nausea and tried to focus on slowing his heart rate. He estimated that about twenty minutes had passed before the vehicle stopped and the engine was turned off. The rear door opened, and a gruff voice said, “Sit up, Doc, we’re going to take a little walk.” He felt the gloved hands on his arms, pulling him up and out of the door.

“Walk,” another voice said, and the two men walked alongside, each of them holding one of Gianni’s biceps with a firm grip. When one of the men released his grip, Gianni thought he heard a garage door opening. He was pushed forward a few more steps, then forced onto a chair. The garage door closed, and when the blindfold was
removed, he squinted at the light, trying to focus on the two men.

There were no windows, the only light coming from a bare bulb in a ceiling fixture. The walls were all cinder block, except for the metal garage door that had been closed behind them. The room seemed like part of a warehouse, or one of those self-storage units. With the blindfold off, Gianni could see a hint of sunlight where the cinder blocks abutted a tin roof.

Gianni was seated at a metal table with his hands still bound behind his back. At one end of the table stood Sal Catroni. Unlike the other man, he wore no disguise. His longish hair was slicked back neatly, white at the sides, darker on top. His brow was furrowed in a scowl, amplifying the deep frown lines between his black-looking eyes. He held a revolver in front of his chest.

Catroni spoke first. “You know who I am?” he said.

Gianni shook his head.

“I’m Sal Catroni, of the Catroni family, and this here is Hector. Hector was a medic in the marines. He’s here to help you with some medical treatment.”

Hector stood at least six-two, all of it solid muscle. He wore a tight white dress shirt, its silk sleeves rolled neatly to the middle of his massive forearms. A ski mask, open at the forehead, concealed his face, and his closely cropped black hair stood mostly on end. It reminded Gianni of a 1960s style flat-top cut, only not as stiff.

“Hector has some tools for you, Doc,” Catroni said.

Hector opened a clean white linen cloth, the texture of a dishrag but with a starched white appearance. Inside were surgical instruments. Dr. Gianni instantly recognized them—there was a blade handle and several large #10 blades, the kind a surgeon would
use to make a long incision. It was not a delicate blade, but one meant to cut hard and fast through a lot of tissue with a single swipe. Next to the blades was a bone cutting forceps, which Gianni knew to be a Rongeurs forceps. Then there was a large pile of neatly folded gauze pads.

“Recognize those tools?” Catroni asked.

Gianni nodded.

“Well, Hector here is prepared to do a little surgery today.”

Catroni set his gun aside and cut the tape that bound Gianni’s hands, putting his left hand on the table beside the white cloth, and the other hand behind Gianni’s back, re-binding it tightly to the chair with duct tape.

“Now Dr. Gianni, Hector here is going to start with the tip of your ring finger, on your left hand. You are right-handed, aren’t you?”

“What the hell is this all about?” Gianni said. He tried not to appear flustered. Years of surgical training and interminable hours on call had left him with a coolness under pressure, evident even now.

Catroni continued to talk. “It’ll just be the tip, so he won’t need that bone cutter, not right off anyway. And of course, we do have a few questions to ask you along the way, and maybe a favor or two, as well.”

Hector struggled to put a pair of latex surgical gloves over his huge hands, then attached the blade to the handle with a dexterity that surprised Gianni, given the sheer size of his hands.

Hector said, “Hey, Sal, he’s got no ring on it, not even a fucking wedding band. You and Janice still married, Doc? Wouldn’t want anything to happen to her either, or would you? Hold still, now, so I only take the tip.”

Gianni thought the voice was vaguely familiar.

“You know, when we take a whole finger, we usually take the ring, too. How do you think Sal got that nice two karat diamond he’s wearing?” He laughed. “Got it off the finger of this fucking Jew who didn’t want to give us the money we had coming. Fucking ‘A’!”

He used one hand to reinforce Catroni’s grip on Gianni’s left hand, isolating the finger and then slicing cleanly through the tip, taking less than an eighth of an inch with the blade cut. The cut was so fast that Gianni barely registered any pain, but he screamed, his sangfroid suddenly gone, when he saw Hector reach for the bone cutter.

“Relax,” Hector said, “I just want to clip the nail end, so it’s nice and neat. I want it to be nice and neat.” He clipped the nail end square and flush with the amputated finger stump. Blood poured out from the cut skin and Gianni winced as Hector grabbed a clump of gauze and squeezed it over the bloody digit.

Catroni then untied Gianni’s right hand, and Gianni instinctively clenched the blood drenched gauze in an attempt to slow the bleeding.

“Look,” Hector said. “The doctor knows what to do for the bleeding.”

Catroni spoke next. “Now you know that will heal just fine in no time. It was only a sliver, after all. And once it does, why, you’ll be just as good a surgeon as you ever were, so we have no problem…yet. But the problems will begin when Hector has to do more. Because the next cut is on the next finger over, the middle finger, and just a little farther up. So this time Hector gets to use that bone cutter to clip a little bone, too. Then it’s on to the index finger, and a little
higher up still. So by the time we get around to the thumb, the whole thing pretty much goes, Doc.”

“You stupid bastards. I’ll bleed to death, so what the fuck does it matter? Go right ahead. I’m worth more dead than alive if my hands are useless.”

“No, no, Dr. Gianni, we wouldn’t let that happen. I told you, Hector here is a trained medic.”

Hector produced a thick elastic band, a tourniquet, and snapped it against Gianni’s arm like a slingshot, mocking him with each slap of the elastic. Gianni knew that the tourniquet could keep him alive. He also knew that left in place long enough, it could also cause him to lose whatever might be left of a mutilated hand, from prolonged lack of blood supply to the vulnerable fingers.

“They taught us in the Marines never to leave these on for too long, but…” Hector shrugged his shoulders, “What the hell, there’s a first time to try everything.”

“What do you want from me?” Gianni hoped to God it was something other than immediate answers to questions, something that would at least buy him some time. He prayed he might leave this ghastly room today, minus no more than one finger tip.

“You’re friends…partners actually, with Chet Pawlek, right?”

“I know him.”

“And you own part of that horse Chiefly Endeavor?”

“I kept two breeding rights when Chet bought out the partnership. They’re worth about $20,000 each. I’ll sign them over to you, that’s not a problem.”

“Doc, do I look like the kind of guy who would take a few fingers for a lousy 40K?”

Gianni said nothing.

“We want you to make sure your friend Pawlek kills the fucking horse. We’ve been to him directly, of course, and he’s been a little… shall we say, slow to come around.”

Gianni’s eyes narrowed in anger as he recalled that Chet had asked him some odd medical questions—veterinary questions, really—about certain viral illnesses and unexpected animal deaths.

Catroni continued. “Then we got to thinking, Hector and I did. We figure that big dumb son of a bitch Chester can probably still manage to count all his fucking money with no fingers at all left on his fat hands. But you…well your hands really mean something, I mean they’re worth something, aren’t they, Doc? So all we’re asking is that you show Chet your finger and tell him about our little plan for the rest of your hand…and for his too if necessary. Tell him what a good surgeon Hector here is.”

Hector smiled widely, displaying a row of overly white, artificial-looking teeth through the hole in the face mask.