Don't Blink (26 page)

“Hey — he’s good, and he’s fun to work with.”

The two women, both in their early forties, were done with their pre-op checklist, even twice testing the suction machines as they’d been clogging as of late. All in all, it was
business as usual, although they both knew that the man on the table, unconscious and breathing oxygen, was no ordinary patient.

“Do you believe all people deserve to be saved?” Anne finally asked.

Ruth looked over her shoulder to make sure the two of them were still alone with the infamous mob boss. They were. “Are you speaking medically or spiritually?” she asked. “It might make a difference in my answer.”

Anne shrugged. “Medically, I suppose.”

“I know what you’re saying, but a hospital isn’t a court-room. Know what I mean?”

“I do.
Still
.”

Ruth glanced down at D’zorio. “I’ll put it to you this way,” she said. “A guy like this puts my faith to the test. It’s righteous anger versus forgiveness.”

“Who wins?” asked Anne.

“Forgiveness, I suppose. Spiritually, all people can be saved.”

Anne nodded but there was little belief in her eyes. She could never say it out loud, but she was secretly hoping that Dr. Sassoon would have an off day, or at least not bring his “A” game to the table.

“What did you say?” asked Ruth.

Anne hadn’t said anything. She was too busy envisioning Dr. Sassoon “accidentally” leaving a sponge in D’zorio’s chest.

But she’d heard it, too. Someone had said something in the operating room.

Simultaneously, they both looked down at D’zorio on the table. His thin, bluish lips were moving. He was mumbling.

“What did he say?” asked Anne.

“I’m not sure,” said Ruth, leaning down toward his mouth. Anne joined her.

“Sorr —” said D’zorio, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Sorry.”

At least, that’s what the two heard.

“He’s confessing his sins,” said Anne.

“Or trying to,” said Ruth, walking over to the phone on the wall.

She called down to the staff chaplain’s office to see if D’zorio’s priest had arrived yet. They had been told he was on his way to administer the anointing of the sick, otherwise known as the mob boss’s last rites.

Apparently, D’zorio was starting without him.

Ruth was still waiting for someone in the chaplain’s office to pick up when the heart monitor alarm sounded.

“Oh, Christ!” said Anne, back at the table with D’zorio. “He’s flatlining!”

Ruth hung up the phone and ran out to where Dr. Sassoon had just finished scrubbing.

But it was too late. There would be no Pink Floyd played in the OR that afternoon. Joseph D’zorio had receded into death.

Like a distant ship’s smoke on the horizon
.

BRUNO TORENZI WAS steamrolling his way through the brush and branches, his hands clearing the way forward while his ears listened for anyone coming up behind him.

He was waiting for the explosion back on the train tracks, and with a quick glance at his watch he knew it wouldn’t be much longer. Any second now, really. It was so close to happening, he could practically hear the entire sequence in his head — a symphony of sounds, from the initial thunderous clap to the seemingly endless echo to the relentless squawking of every bird knocked off its perch within a square mile.

Finally, it came. The bomb, the echo, the birds … everything. Almost exactly as he’d imagined it would be.

But Torenzi didn’t stop and look back, not for a second. He had no interest in taking it all in. He didn’t feel the need.

He didn’t
feel
anything.

There was no glee, no satisfaction, and certainly no
remorse — not even the slightest twinge of guilt over the innocent little girl. She had flushed out her uncle as he’d planned. She’d served her purpose from his viewpoint. That was all there was to it.

As for the Rambo who’d crashed the party on the train, Torenzi still had no idea who he was. In hindsight, though, the guy must have known Daniels was wearing a bulletproof vest. There was no way his aim was that bad, the two shots he tagged Torenzi with being evidence of some skill on his part.

Speaking of not feeling anything …

Torenzi had yanked the black leather belt from his pants, making a tourniquet and cutting off the circulation directly below his shoulder. For now, his arm was as numb as rubber in December. Later, he’d tend to it. He’d dig out the bullets with the stiletto blade he kept strapped to his shin and then stitch himself up with a dime-store needle and thread, leaving two more scars on a body littered with them. No big deal. Just another day at the office.

As Hyman Roth said to Michael Corleone in
The Godfather: Part II
, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”

Now Torenzi’s business was done. Once again, he had won the game.

Finally, he emerged from the trees and saw the car waiting for him. Perfect timing. Things were going his way again — as they always did.

“Is he dead?” he heard as he approached the white Volvo S40.

Torenzi leaned down into the open window of the front passenger side. He smirked. “What do you think? You heard the explosion, didn’t you?”

Ian LaGrange smiled wide, his overly large mouth almost cartoonish. “Indeed I did,” he said. “Get in.”

The Volvo was parked on a deserted dead-end road, the only sign of life being two half-finished spec homes that were destined to stay that way because the builder had gone belly-up when the housing market had collapsed.

Torenzi yanked open the car door and stepped in. “Let’s go,” he said.

LaGrange motioned to Torenzi’s arm, the belt, and his bloodstained shirt beneath his jacket. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked.

“It’s nothing. There was someone else on the train.”

“Who?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’m the head of the Organized Crime Task Force,” said LaGrange. “What do
you
think?”

“He was most likely FBI.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No, but the bomb surely did,” said Torenzi. “What about D’zorio?”

“He didn’t make it.”

“Lucky break for you.”

LaGrange chuckled. “Better to be lucky than good.”

“Even better to be both,” said Torenzi, meaning every word of it. “You got the rest of my money?”

“Of course I do. In the trunk,” he answered with a throw of his head. “Gave you a little extra for all your troubles. You did a fine job.”

Torenzi didn’t say thank you. Instead, he was wondering why LaGrange still had the car in park.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked.

“There’s one other piece of business we need to take care of.”

“What’s that?”

“Me,” said the man outside the open car window.

How do you say
revenge
in Russian?

BRUNO TORENZI DIDN’T recognize the voice, but there was little doubt about the barrel of a gun jammed against the side of his head.

“Put your hands on the dashboard,” ordered Ivan Belova. “Slowly. Very, very slowly.”

Torenzi complied with disgust as LaGrange removed the keys from the ignition and opened the driver’s side door. “I’m sorry, Bruno,” he said before stepping out. “Remember the San Sebastian Hotel? You fucked up, you horny bastard.”

Belova, a better-dressed and slimmed-down version of Boris Yeltsin, kept his eyes squarely focused on Torenzi. He had no intention of giving the professional killer any opening. It was a lesson his two sons had learned the hard way at that hotel in Manhattan where they’d tried to run their scam on the Italian.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked in his heavy Russian
accent. He was the head of the Belova crime family, that’s who. They were the U.S. arm of Solntsevskaya Bratva, one of the most powerful crime families in Moscow.

“No,” answered Torenzi, who knew enough to keep looking straight ahead out the windshield.

“Those were my boys you killed in that hotel room, my flesh and blood,” he said with equal parts anger and despair. He was his own Molotov cocktail ready to explode.

Belova waited for some type of reaction from Torenzi. A look of surprise, maybe even regret. “Sorry” was a long shot, as was anything else approaching an apology — Belova had no delusions about that. Not that it would’ve made a difference. There was no changing his plans. No chance of mercy for the Italian killer.

Still, Belova never would’ve imagined the response he did get from the man.

“They were punks,” said Torenzi. “They had it coming.”

“Motherfucker!” yelled Belova, pulling back the hammer on his Makarov PM.

“Wait!” yelled LaGrange even louder. He was standing behind Belova.

“What?” asked Belova impatiently over his shoulder. He still wasn’t about to take his eyes off Torenzi. He knew how lethal this man could be.

“For Christ’s sake, not in the car,” said LaGrange. “Not unless you want to clean up afterward.”

Belova reluctantly nodded, reaching out with his free hand. He opened Torenzi’s door and backed up a few steps, just to be safe.

“Get out,” he said.

For the first time, Torenzi turned to Belova. But all he gave him was a quick glance as he stepped out of the car. LaGrange, on the other hand, received a glare that would have made even the devil stutter.

“How much?” asked Torenzi.
For how much did you sell me out?

LaGrange didn’t answer. He could only look down at the dirt beneath his feet.

Torenzi stared back at Belova now, unblinking. There was no plea for mercy, no begging for forgiveness.

“Turn around,” ordered Belova. “Let me see the horse’s ass.”

Torenzi shook his head adamantly. “No. You look at me when you do it,” he said.

With that, he linked his hands behind his back and dropped to his knees. As if that weren’t enough, he opened his mouth wide.

Sick and twisted to the bitter end.

Belova stepped forward, shoving the barrel of his Makarov PM straight back to Torenzi’s molars. He was the boss of his family; it had been more than a decade since he’d killed anyone himself. He was far more accustomed to giving the order, not seeing it through.

The result was a split second’s pause. A blink of the eye. The chance Torenzi was banking on, or at least hoping for.

Now!

Torenzi whipped his head to the side, forcing the gun against the inside of his cheek as a startled Belova pulled the trigger. The bullet blew a quarter-size hole in the hit man’s face, but only his flesh went flying, not his brains.

Falling backwards, Torenzi reached under his pant leg for
the stiletto strapped to his shin. With the grip clenched in his fingers he lunged for the Russian asshole, stabbing him so deep in his thigh that the tip of the blade struck bone.

Belova screamed in agony as he collapsed to the ground. The gun dropped from his hand. Torenzi scooped it up and fired straight into Belova’s throat before whipping his arm around at LaGrange for his second shot.

But LaGrange had other ideas.

He had already fired his Ruger SR9, the oversize trigger an easy squeeze in his large hands. The round caught Torenzi in the stomach, sending blood spurting out of his mouth as he keeled over on one side.

Stepping forward, LaGrange quickly pumped two more shots into Torenzi’s chest before waiting to see if yet another would be required.

It wasn’t.

Torenzi had slid onto his back, arms spread, the gun resting in the palm of his hand, never to be fired again. His eyes flickered as he drew a last breath, his chest heaving upward before slowly deflating.

Then he was gone, straight to hell.
Do not pass Go
.

“HELLO, MR. DANIELS, I’m Marie McCormick,” said my new nurse for the night. She came into my room at Lenox Hill Hospital with a welcome smile and an even more welcome cup filled with two Vicodin. This was my second hospital of the day. After finally being stitched up, I was being “kept for observation,” which I didn’t mind so much since my apartment was still a police crime scene.

“Boy, am I glad to see you, Marie,” I said.

Not just because of the good meds, either. The day nurse assigned to my room had all the charm and charisma of the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition. She was also a stickler for the rules. Visiting hours ended at 8:30 and at 8:31 she had shooed Courtney out as if she were a fox in a henhouse. How could anybody with a heart do that? Couldn’t she see how good Courtney and I were together? Heck, we were holding hands, and had been for half an hour.

Before I could tell Nurse Ratched where to shove her rules, Courtney announced she had to be somewhere anyway. “I’ve got to go put the finishing touches on something,” she said. “Sorry, Nick. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something kind of interesting. But I can’t tell you yet. I don’t want to jinx it.”

“So I’m a jinx, huh?”

It’s hardly what she meant, but it’s not like I could blame her or anyone else for thinking that, especially anyone who happened to tune in to the news.

Clearly, Nurse Marie had watched a little of the coverage before coming on duty.

“You’re what my aunt Peggy up in Boston calls a trouble magnet,” she joked, wrapping a blood pressure sleeve around my arm. “Of course, she should talk, the big dope. She’s been married and divorced three times to the biggest losers on the planet.”

My cracked ribs made it hurt to laugh but I couldn’t help it. Marie was my kind of woman. Down-to-earth and funny.

“Say, where’s that brave little niece of yours?” she asked. “I saw her being interviewed.”

“She’s back home safe with her mother,” I said. “Right where she should be.”

Agent Keller had personally driven her back to Weston. He certainly knew the way. For good measure he was spending the night — even though the Bureau had already assigned four agents to guard the house. “Just in case,” he said. “I owe Elizabeth.”

But if you ask me, I saw the way he’d looked at Kate when
she’d arrived at the train tracks with Courtney courtesy of a Connecticut state trooper. Turns out Keller’s a single guy.
Hey, you never know
.