Death Never Sleeps (25 page)

“I love it when you come in—and not just because you spend money. I know you love what you buy.”

As Michael called Dan to let him know they’d be leaving in a few minutes, he overheard Samantha speaking with Etheleen. “You know, nothing makes Michael as happy as when he’s here. No matter what kind of pressures he’s under, when he comes to your gallery, he’s smiling and happy again.”
As usual,
he thought,
she’s right
.

“Dan, we’ll meet you right outside on Broadway in three minutes.” Michael, ready to leave, turned back to Samantha and Etheleen. “Dan’s right downstairs waiting, so I think we’re going to take off for dinner. Thanks for everything, Etheleen. If you get tired of your own party, just head up to DaSilvano and join us for dinner.”

Michael and Samantha walked past the spirited cocktail crowd, the front desk, and the long-limbed models in their short, black cocktail dresses. They exited the gallery through the heavy glass door and waited until the elevator reached the gallery’s third floor. They entered the elevator, pressed the black “Lobby” button, and watched the overhead lights indicating they had reached the main floor.

Samantha exited first, followed closely by Michael as they walked through the small lobby and out through another set of heavy glass doors. Michael could see Dan in his car, sitting in the driver’s seat, looking in his rearview mirror. Michael figured he was looking out for a police car since he was parked below a No Parking sign.

As Michael looked to the rear of Dan’s car, however, he saw a familiar but eerie sight. It was a black Town Car, just like the one that followed him from the bank two days before. Although black Lincoln Town Cars were everywhere in New York, the driver of this one had the same black sunglasses as his recent pursuer. This time, however, there were two other passengers in the car, each looking more intimidating than the other.

Michael steered Samantha forward toward Dan’s car, trying to get them both inside to safety as quickly as possible. As he moved toward the car, he saw the three doors of the black car open and three hulking but surprisingly fast-moving men leave the vehicle, doors still open behind them, and race toward Michael and his wife.

Before he or Samantha could reach the car, they were all over him. The first one came between him and Samantha, causing Samantha to fall against the side of the car. They grabbed Michael by his arms. He heard someone say, “Come with us quietly so we don’t have to mess with your wife.”

Before he could say a word, he saw a bright white handkerchief cover his face, enveloping him like a parachute. A strong hand was pressing the handkerchief over his nose and mouth. He tried to breathe, but when he inhaled, he was afraid he would ingest the cloth and started to gag. In that instant, he felt something strange. A warm flush swept over his face and body like a gentle tidal wave. He tried to move, but none of his muscles reacted. Nothing was working. He was helpless and going down.

Chapter 45

6:30 p.m.

M
ichael had not yet opened his eyes. He was conscious, but he wasn’t sure he was alive.

His stomach hurt. His face burned. His eyes stung. On top of that, his heart was racing, and he felt too light and dizzy. Michael wasn’t sure he was attached to his body; it might be there, he thought, but he couldn’t feel anything. He heard sounds; men were speaking, and he could hear words but couldn’t understand them. There was the sensation of moving in a car, but time was a blur.

After what felt like an hour since he regained consciousness, Michael opened his eyes, and although he could perceive light and images, they didn’t register in his mind. It was like looking at abstract art but without being able to use your brain. He couldn’t conceive of ever having control of his senses and body again.

As more immeasurable time passed, some aspects of awareness seemed to slowly return. He began to comprehend isolated words, sometimes a phrase.

He knew now that he was alive but in trouble. He remembered the white handkerchief and trying to get to his car. The handkerchief must have had chloroform or something like that in it, he thought. Michael had seen it numerous times in the movies. Did people really do this sort of thing? These guys obviously did. He began to feel his arms and hands and realized they were securely bound. This wasn’t good.

“How ya doing, Michael?” the driver said. “Hey, our boy here is waking up,” he said, half turning in the driver’s seat to face Michael, who was seated in the right rear passenger seat. “Mr. Sharkey wanted me to extend his warmest greeting to you. He couldn’t come with us tonight, but we’ve got a little tape recording he made just for you.”

“Where’s my wife?” Michael could only remember trying to push Samantha into Dan’s car as he was being grabbed.

“Oh, your wife is fine. The driver, too. We don’t fuck around with innocent people, just cheats who don’t pay their debts.” The driver seemed to be the only one of the three thugs who was speaking.

Michael could see that he was in the backseat of the black Lincoln Town Car. As he began to regain his ability to focus, he could see and feel that his hands and arms, just below his elbows, were securely pressed against his side and wrapped in duct tape, which went around his arms and chest. Although he had regained some feeling, he couldn’t move.

“Are you guys crazy? Sharkey has a tape for me? The police can’t be far behind.”

With that, all three of the guys started laughing. The driver spoke again. “Yeah, the police are all looking for you, Michael. They’re looking all over the city for a black Lincoln Town Car. That’s like looking for a fuckin’ yellow taxi.”

Michael realized that, as stupid as they looked and sounded, their logic was pretty good. There had to be thousands of black Town Cars—the staple of the limo and livery services throughout the city.

“What’s this tape about?” Michael asked. “And where are we going?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Where we goin’? Where the fuck do you think we’re goin’? Out to fuckin’ dinner?” Michael realized the driver was another schizoid personality. One moment he spoke like a nearly normal human being, the next second he was a thug.

Finally, one of the others spoke up. The one sitting next to Michael in the backseat said, “Morty, play him the fuckin’ tape before we get there.”

Michael had read that it was advisable for kidnap victims to try to converse with their captors or do anything to at least humanize whatever interaction they could. Reading the
New York Times
over a blueberry muffin in the morning, the strategy made perfect sense. Sitting in the back of the car, while imprisoned in duct tape and surrounded by three demented animals, it all seemed ridiculous.

“So, Morty, you guys work for Mr. Sharkey?” Michael figured he still had nothing to lose; maybe he could find an angle.

“I work part-time for Mr. Sharkey, you know, stuff like this at night. In the daytime, I work for a funeral home in Brooklyn. That’s why they call me Morty, you know? Morty the Mortician. I drive the hearse. The jobs are alike, except on Mr. Sharkey’s jobs, the bodies are still breathing—in the beginning anyway. You know what I mean?”

Michael was beginning to feel his legs and feet. If the conversation wasn’t bad enough, when he leaned forward to look at his feet, what he saw made him shudder. When he looked down, he couldn’t see his feet. They were embedded in a large metal pan of concrete that took up nearly the entire floor below his seat area. The concrete had set. Michael could not get his feet to even wiggle.

Michael looked out his car window. He could see out but imagined it would be hard for others to see in due to the dark tinted windows. Michael recognized the Triborough Bridge. They were leaving Manhattan and heading toward Queens. Not good in the scheme of things generally, let alone in this situation.

He looked out at the people in passing cars and those walking in the streets, all of them going about their daily, routine activities, unaware that Michael was on his way to a planned extinction. He thought about how bizarre it was to the victims—whether in a carriage on their way to the guillotine, a cattle train to Nazi death camps, gazing at approaching clotheslines from a crashing airliner window, or in the backseat of a Mafia hit man’s car—to see the rest of the world going about the routine business of daily life.

Michael’s mind had wandered. He was jerked back to reality by the clicking of a microcassette recorder. Morty was about to play Sharkey’s message. “We call Mr. Sharkey ‘KK.’” With that everyone in the car, except Michael, began laughing and grunting.

“Why is that?” Michael asked.

“Because he’s the ‘cassette killer.’ Get it? KK?” They all broke up again, Morty almost swerving off the Grand Central Parkway.

Despite the fact that these three had total control over his remaining breathing moments, Michael felt the need to correct their spelling. “
Cassette
is spelled with a
c
, you assholes.”

Suddenly the goon in the backseat with him violently pushed Michael’s head into the passenger window. Morty became the momentary voice of reason. “Leave him.” Then, however, he turned on Michael. “Maybe we didn’t go to college, you little asshole, but
killer
has a fuckin’
k
in it. You know what else, you fuck? In fifteen minutes you’ll be fuckin’ dead, and we’ll be having a big juicy steak. Now shut your fuckin’ mouth and listen to Mr. Sharkey.” Morty pushed the “Play” button on the recorder.

Michael recognized Sharkey’s chilling voice, and although the language was familiar, the sound matched his appearance—corpse-like:

“Michael, my friend. I’m sorry things had to end this way, at least for you. You tried to fuck with me. That was a mistake. If you’d have lived as long as I have, you’d know all things end this way. It’s just a matter of how and timing. You thought you won at Peter Luger’s. Churchill or Hitler once said, ‘All victories are fleeting.’ You understand that now. You see, you always lose the final game. Good-bye, Michael.”

Morty quickly turned off the cassette player. “Hey, Lump, I told you Mr. Sharkey was good. He’s like a poet.”

Michael looked at his newly identified captor in the front passenger seat, who still had not spoken. “Your name is Lump?”

Lump turned around, looked at Michael, and said simply, “Shut the fuck up.”

Michael decided to push his already very bad luck. “You guys have to be kidding me. What’s his name?” Michael nodded toward the thug who just moments before nearly pushed his head through the window.

“I’m Nicky Bats. What’s it to you?”

Michael couldn’t resist. “Are you guys in some fucking gangster movie or what?” The car broke up with laughter. He had always been good at lightening up a situation and finding humor where there really was none. Michael knew, however, that it wouldn’t change what looked to be a voyage to the bottom of the sea, or at least the bottom of some pier in Queens.

The car had turned off the Grand Central Parkway and was now exiting the Whitestone Expressway, somewhere around Willets Point in Queens, a blue-collar neighborhood of old wooden houses, and boating and plumbing supply shops.

Michael knew his ride was coming to an end. He needed to try anything he could. “Listen, guys, I’ve got money. I can take care of you. Just let me out of this.”

Morty made eye contact with Michael as they both looked into the rearview mirror. “Hey, I’d like to help you, but if we turned on Mr. Sharkey, we’d all wind up in cement. Besides, Mr. Sharkey’s already got your money.”

Chapter 46

New York City

7:00 p.m.

“S
amantha, where exactly are you now?” Fletcher said as soon as she had told him what had happened.

Holding her cell phone tightly to her ear, Samantha looked up at the street signs, “I’m at the corner of Broadway and Spring Street. It’s just crazy here now, Fletcher. The cops have closed off both streets, and they’re diverting traffic away from the area.” She pressed her finger to her free ear to block out the clatter from the police radios and stared ahead at Deacon Dan’s car, its doors wide open and surrounded by marked and unmarked police cars. Uniformed officers and detectives swarmed the area, appearing to be questioning passersby.

“It had happened so fast. The whole thing took less than a minute from the time we stepped outside the building until their car took off—with Michael.”

“What have the police said about finding them?”

“They said that without a license plate number, it’s going to be tough—it was one of those black Lincoln Town Cars that all the livery drivers use. The detective told me that they’re going to look at area surveillance tapes, but it would take hours before they could hope to find anything of value on them. By then, Fletcher, it’ll be too late.”

“Samantha, listen to me, do you know anyone who knows Michael’s situation and would possibly have at least an educated guess on who might have kidnapped him? Anyone at all?”

“No, I don’t even know most of the people he’s been hanging out with now.” Her mind raced through the people she met at Alex’s funeral. “Fletcher, let me make a call. I’ll call you right back.” She dialed her sister-in-law.

Samantha imagined Donna lounging around her bedroom, trying to decide whether to eat dinner in or go out. She was relieved when Donna picked up on the first ring.

“Samantha, is that you?”

“Oh my God, Donna. Michael’s been kidnapped. We’re in the city. We were just leaving a gallery to go to dinner and these guys rushed out of a car; they covered his mouth with something and then, in a second, had him in their car. The police are here, but there are a million black Lincolns in the city. They’ll never find him. I’ve already called our police chief friend, Fletcher, but I don’t know what he can do; he’s in Connecticut. I can’t believe this is happening. They looked mean. They’re going to do something awful to Michael.”

“Okay, Samantha, try to stay calm. Do you want me to come to you?” Samantha was never close to Donna, but they had always gotten along.