James Grippando - Money to Burn

Girelli intended to keep it that way.

“Here you are, sir,” said the waiter.

Girelli squeezed the lemon and discreetly surveyed the crowd. Michael Cantella was nowhere to be seen, and in light of the disclosure of the e-mails at this afternoon’s court hearing, Girelli doubted that Cantella’s divorce lawyer would let him go to a secret meeting that was no longer a secret.

Wasting my damn time here.

The thought had barely registered when Girelli spotted a woman approaching the table referenced in the e-mail, the one right in front of the gold statue of Prometheus.

A tight smiled creased his lips.

Pay dirt.

I WAS AT STREET LEVEL, STANDING AT THE RAIL THAT SURROUNDED THE concrete hole in the ground at Rockefeller Center, looking down on the Rink Bar. Had it been December, I would have been crushed beneath a ninety-foot-tall Norway spruce and five miles of twinkling lights.

On reflection, I’d decided that Kevin might be right: The e-mails from “JBU” might all be a setup to help Mallory prove that I was having an affair. Might be right. It wasn’t enough to keep me from going to the Rink Bar at the designated time. It was enough, however, to make me take precautions.

Two reporters had hounded me all the way out of the courthouse, a constant peppering of questions about Saxton Silvers. I figured it was only going to get worse as the media buzz honed the link between me and the firm’s downfall. If I was going to the Rink Bar, I needed to be unrecognizable, but my suitcase full of socks and underwear didn’t offer much in the way of a disguise. I stopped by the Days Inn and borrowed Papa’s trench coat. The hem was frayed, the elbow was patched, and part of the lining was torn and hanging out of the sleeve. My guess was that he’d purchased it before I was born. He also loaned me a white golf cap with the red, white, and green Italian flag sewn onto it, his latest acquisition from Mulberry Street. It hadn’t been my intention, but I could have passed for a homeless guy.

The last two days had been nuts on every level-too crazy for me to give serious consideration to Mallory’s accusations. She was wrong: I did love her. But she was also right: I had not stopped loving Ivy. Maybe that kept me from loving Mallory enough. Love was Nothing if it wasn’t the truth, and in my case the truth was painful: nothing compared to what I had felt for Ivy. If that made me a bad person, I hoped Mallory would forgive me. But if Ivy was still alive, I hoped she would forgive me, too-and tell me who or what had made her vanish four years ago.

And why was she coming back now?

“Excuse me, but would you take our picture?”

A young woman wearing a University of Wisconsin sweatshirt was shoving a camera in my face. Her girlfriends were already posed at the rail.

“Sure,” I said.

I took a few steps back and aimed the zoom lens. I was facing east, toward the Fifth Avenue entrance, looking out over the top of the Rink Bar below us. Flags of the United Nations’ 192 member states encircled the rink area and flapped in the breeze. I zoomed in, then out-then in again.

“Tell us when,” the woman said.

I wasn’t focused on them. I zoomed in over their heads, peering between the flags of Japan and Jamaica. On the other side of the plaza, a man was standing in the second-story window above Dean & DeLuca. It was the perfect vantage point from which to look down into the Rink Bar. He was almost entirely concealed by the curtains he was standing behind, but I noticed him because of the camera with the long telephoto lens in his hands. This afternoon’s hearing had apparently expanded the media interest beyond me and Saxton Silvers to me and Mallory.

“Ready when you are,” the girls from Wisconsin said, but I was still focused on that photographer in the window. I saw him adjust his lens, and although I couldn’t be certain, he seemed to be shooting rapid-fire frames of the Rink Bar. I did a little triangulation in my head, and my gaze followed the aim of his lens. It was pointed in the direction of the statue of Prometheus-and then I froze.

A woman had taken a seat at the same table that I had shared with Ivy on our first date. She was alone.

And it was precisely four P.M.

Tony Girelli stared over the top of his menu.

He couldn’t be sure it was her. The stylish wide hat shaded her face, and her sunglasses were huge. At this hour and in the shadows of tall buildings, there was really no need for that much protection from the sun. And she had shown up at the right place at precisely the right time. He decided to give it a test.

“Vanessa!” he called out.

It was almost imperceptible, but Girelli definitely saw her flinch. He laid his menu aside and kept watching.

Finally she glanced in his direction. Girelli tightened his stare, and although her eyes were hidden behind the sunglasses, he sensed her fear. Girelli knew all the signs-the tightening of the expression, a leg gone restless, the posture suddenly rigid.

Without warning, she bolted from her chair and ran for the exit.

Girelli launched himself after her, pushing aside a waiter, two women at the bar, and everyone else in his way.

On impulse, I ran.

“Hey, give me back my camera!” the college girl shouted.

I was already at full speed, thinking only of getting to the bar’s exit at the top of the stairs on the other side of the plaza.

“Stop that guy!”

I could have tossed the stupid camera back at her, but I kept running, passing one flagpole after another, watching the commotion in the Rink Bar below as that man-whoever he was-bowled over tables, chairs, and people alike in pursuit of…

The thought that it might be Ivy had me flying on pure adrenaline. There was no denying that I had seen a woman take a seat at our table at four o’clock, watched her jump up and run, and saw another man chase after her.

My God, could it be?

She was halfway up the stairs, the man a few steps behind her, and I was approaching the top of the stairway from the opposite direction when someone screamed:

“A bomb! That man in the trench coat has a bomb!”

It was bedlam throughout the plaza.

Hundreds of tourists screamed and scattered, and the stairway was suddenly jammed with the surge of utter panic. I lost sight of the woman and the man in the ensuing stampede, and suddenly I was broadsided by what felt like a charging rhinoceros. My chest hit the sidewalk, and the air raced from my lungs. The moment was a blur, until I realized that I was pinned beneath two of New York’s finest.

“Don’t move!” a cop shouted.

“You got the wrong man!” I yelled back.

“You’re under arrest!”

My heart sank as the cold metal cuffs closed around my wrists.

MALLORY WAS ALONE IN THE BACKSEAT OF A TAXI, PEERING THROUGH the window as she drank from her go cup-a double vodka tonic she’d mixed before leaving her apartment. It wasn’t even dinnertime, but she would have liked nothing better than to crawl into bed and sleep till morning.

“You’re quite the piece of work,” she said quietly to her reflection in the glass.

Storefront after storefront raced by her, the driver catching every green light as they sped south on Fifth Avenue. She downed the rest of her drink, laid her head back on the headrest, and stared at the taxi’s tattered felt ceiling.

Today’s court hearing had gone exactly as planned. Her reaction to it was nothing like she’d expected. Accusing Michael of conspiring with a secret lover to hide assets left her with the uneasy feeling that “what goes around comes around,” and Mallory knew she wasn’t exactly standing on solid ground.

She’d met Nathaniel three months ago at the fitness studio. Mallory was serious about her workouts and didn’t make small talk with guys who grabbed an eyeful of her body. But one day her Pilates instructor had failed to show up, and Nathaniel was kind enough to share his and turn a private lesson into a semi-private. Nathaniel was good-pairing with him was almost like having two instructors. So she kept up the semi-privates for a couple of weeks, and by week three they were going for coffee afterward. By week four they were sleeping together. The man was fun in bed, but it wasn’t just that. He filled a need.