James PATTERSON - The Big Bad Wolf

There was an improbable murder story told about the Wolf that had made its way into police lore, and then spread quickly from Washington to New York to London and to Moscow. No one knew if it was true, but it was never officially disproved, and it was consistent with other outrageous incidents in the Russian gangster’s life.

According to the story, the Wolf had gone to the high-security supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, on a Sunday night in early summer. He had bought his way inside to meet with the Italian mobster and don, Augustino ‘Little Gus’ Palumbo. Prior to this visit, the Wolf had a reputation for being impulsive and sometimes lacking patience. Even so, he had been steadily planning this meeting with ‘Little Gus’ Palumbo for nearly two years.

He and Palumbo met in the Security Housing Unit of the prison where the New York gangster had been incarcerated for seven years. The purpose of the meeting was to reach an arrangement to unite the East Coast’s Palumbo family with the Red Mafiya, thereby forming one of the most powerful and ruthless crime syndicates in the world. Nothing like it had ever been attempted. Palumbo was said to be skeptical, but agreed to the meeting just to see if the Russian could get inside Florence Prison – and then manage to get out again.

From the moment that they met, the Russian was respectful of the sixty-six-year-old don. He bowed his head slightly as they shook hands and appeared almost shy, contrary to his reputation.

‘There’s to be no physical contact,’ the captain of the guards spoke from the intercom into the room. His name was Larry Ladove and he was the one who had been paid $75,000 to arrange the meeting. The Wolf ignored Captain Ladove’s order. ‘Under the circumstances, you look well,’ he said to Little Gus. ‘Very well indeed.’

The Italian smiled thinly. He had a small body, but it was tight and hard. ‘I exercise three times a day, every day. I almost never have liquor, though not by choice. I eat well, and not by choice, either.’

The Wolf smiled, then said, ‘It sounds like you don’t expect to be here for your full sentence.’

Palumbo coughed out a laugh. ‘That’s a good bet. Three life sentences served concurrently? The discipline’s in my nature, though. The future? Who can know for sure about these things?’

‘Who can know? One time I escaped from a gulag on the Arctic Circle. I told a cop in Moscow, “I spent time in a gulag, you think you can scare me?” What else do you do in here? Besides exercise and eat Healthy Choice?’

‘I try to take care of my business back in New York. Sometimes, I play chess with a sick madman down the hall. He used to be in the FBI.’

‘Kyle Craig,’ said the Wolf. ‘You think he’s crazy like they say?’

‘Yeah, totally. So tell me, boss, pakhan , how can this alliance you suggest work? I am a man of discipline and careful planning, in spite of these humbling circumstances. From what I’m told, you’re reckless. Hands-on. You involve yourself with even the smallest operations. Extortion, prostitution, stolen cars. How can this work between us?’

The Wolf finally smiled, then shook his head. ‘I am hands-on, as you say. But I’m not reckless, not at all. It’s all about the money, no? The bling-bling? Let me tell you a secret that no one else knows. This will surprise you, and maybe prove my point.’

The Wolf leaned forward. He whispered his secret, and the Italian’s eyes suddenly widened with fear. With stunning quickness, the Wolf grabbed Little Gus’s head. He twisted it powerfully, and the gangster’s neck broke with a loud, clear snap.

‘Maybe I am a little reckless,’ said the Wolf. Then he turned to the camera in the room. He spoke to Captain Ladove of the guards. ‘Oh, I forgot, no touching. Now let me out of here.’

The next morning, Augustino Palumbo was found dead in his cell. Nearly every bone in his body had been broken. In the Moscow underworld, this symbolic kind of murder was known as zamochit . It signified complete and total dominance by the attacker. The Wolf was boldly stating that he was now the Godfather.

The Phipps Plaza shopping mall in Atlanta was a showy montage of pink granite floors, sweeping bronze staircases, gilded Napoleonic design and lighting that sparkled like halogen spotlights. A man and a woman watched the target – ‘Mom’ – as she left Nike Town with sneakers and whatnot, for her three daughters, packed under one arm.

‘She is very pretty. I see why the Wolf likes her. She reminds me of Claudia Schiffer,’ said the male observer. ‘You see the resemblance?’

‘Everybody reminds you of Claudia Schiffer, Slava. Don’t lose her. Don’t lose your pretty little Claudia, or the Wolf will have you for breakfast.’

The abduction team, ‘the Couple’, was dressed expensively, and that made it easy for them to blend in at Phipps Plaza, in the Buckhead section of Atlanta. At eleven in the morning, Phipps wasn’t very crowded, and that could be a problem.

It helped that their target was rushing about in a world of her own, a tight little cocoon of mindless activity, buzzing in and out of Gucci, Caswell-Massey, Nike Town, then Gapkids and Parisian (to see her personal shopper, Gina), without paying the slightest attention to who was around her in any of the stores. She worked from an at-a-glance leather diary and made her appointed rounds in a quick, efficient, practiced manner, buying faded jeans for Gwynne, a leather dop-kit for Brendan, Nike diving watches for Meredith and Brigid, a Halloween wreath at Williams-Sonoma. She even made an appointment at Carter-Barnes to get her hair done.

The target had style, and also a pleasant smile for the salespeople who waited on her in the toney stores. She held doors for those coming up behind her, even men, who bent over backward to thank the attractive blonde. ‘Mom’ was sexy in the wholesome, clean-cut way of many upscale American suburban women. And she did resemble the supermodel Claudia Schiffer. That was her undoing.

According to the job’s specs, Mrs Elizabeth Connelly was the mother of three girls; she was a graduate of Vassar, class of ’87, with what she called, ‘a degree in art history that is practically worthless in the real world – whatever that is – but invaluable to me’. She’d been a reporter for the Washington Post and the Atlanta-Constitution before she was married. She was thirty-seven, though she didn’t look much more than thirty. She had her hair in a velvet barrette that morning, wore a short-sleeved turtleneck crocheted top, slim-fitting slacks. She was bright, religious – but sane about it – tough when she needed to be, at least according to the specs.

Well, she would need to be tough soon. Mrs Elizabeth Connelly was about to be abducted. She had been ‘purchased‘, and she was probably the most expensive item for sale that morning at Phipps Plaza.

The price – $150,000.

Lizzie Connelly felt light-headed and she wondered if her quirky blood sugar was acting up again.

She made a mental note to pick up Trudie Styler’s cookbook – she kind of admired Trudie, who was co-founder of the Rainforest Foundation as well as Sting’s wife. She seriously doubted she would get through this day with her head still screwed on straight, not twisted around like the poor little girl in the Exorcist , which she’d just seen again with her girlfriends. Linda Blair… wasn’t that the actress’s name? Lizzie was pretty sure it was. Oh, who cared. What difference did trivia make?