James Grippando - Money to Burn

“Do you have his number?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Eric, “let me give him a ring.”

He went back toward the office and dialed from the landline on the wall. I watched and listened as Eric left a message on the pilot’s voice mail.

“No answer?” I said as he returned.

“Uh-uh,” said Eric.

I glanced at Olivia. She had pretty much been a rock up until this point, but signs of stress were starting to show.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m getting a bad feeling,” she said.

“He’s only five minutes late,” said Eric. “I’m sure he’ll be here.”

“Try him again,” said Olivia. “Michael already lost his driver tonight. For a guy like Burn, pilots are no less expendable.”

Eric glanced at me, but I could hardly disagree.

“Wait a second,” he said, as he fumbled for the pilot’s business card in his wallet. “I dialed his office number. Let me try his cell.”

He went to the wall phone again and dialed.

BURN WAS MOTIONLESS, CROUCHED BEHIND THE SECOND ROW OF passenger seats inside the helicopter. Ivy was belted into the seat in front of him, her hands still cuffed, afraid to move or make a sound. Burn’s gun was pressed against the base of her skull.

Ivy’s phone lay in the seat beside Burn, and Cantella’s cell was still transmitting to it. The speaker was switched off, however, with Burn listening through earbuds. The attack on Ivy in the emergency room had filled Burn’s risk-taking quota for the evening, and it was important to eavesdrop now more than ever. Ivy’s mother seemed to be losing her nerve.

“I’m getting a bad feeling,” she said, her voice playing into Burn’s earbud.

“He’s only five minutes late,” said Volke. “I’m sure he’ll be here.”

Burn glanced toward the aisle to where the pilot lay on the floor-a dead heap, his neck broken.

Don’t bet on it, folks.

Burn peered out the window. The glass was tinted so dark that no one outside the helicopter could have possibly seen him. Still, he was cautious, raising his head up just enough to see out, not an inch more. The five-gallon fuel cans he’d filled were still in the corner, ready for use. The Sikorsky’s turbine engines used Jet A fuel, and Burn had filled two portable cans-more than enough to torch the entire building, let alone the helicopter and its passengers. His gaze drifted back toward the triangle of conversation near the maintenance office, and as he watched, a strange feeling came over him. Before tonight, he’d never set foot in this hangar, yet there was something eerily familiar about the situation, if not the setting. The cold concrete floor. The bright garage lights shining down. Two men. One woman. The situation growing increasingly tense, the woman on edge. And the smell of kerosene. It was on his hands-Jet A fuel was a derivative of kerosene-and the odor triggered memories. Kerosene was cheap and plentiful in Mumbai.

It was the preferred fuel for bride burning.

His sister’s screams were suddenly in his head, along with the indelible image of her husband and brother-in-law dousing her with kerosene and setting her afire in the garage. He hadn’t actually seen it happen, but her wounds had told the story. For five horrendous days in the hospital, Charu-her name meant “beautiful”-had managed to survive with burns covering 95 percent of her body. He never left her side, knowing what they had done to her. By the time she expired, he could see the men in that garage unleashing their unspeakable cruelty on a twenty-year-old woman from the Dhravi slum whose family was too poor to pay the expected dowry.

And all these years later, he could still see it.

“Wait a second,” said Volke, his voice transmitting through Burn’s earbud and drawing him back to his mission. “I dialed his office number. Let me try his cell.”

The words struck panic: The pilot’s cell!

Burn dived toward the body and snatched the phone from the pilot’s pocket. It made a slight chirp-the ring was just beginning-before he managed to remove the battery and kill the noise. He quickly went to the window and checked to see if Cantella and the others had heard the ring from inside the helicopter. He wasn’t sure. But it was time to make a move.

He removed the earbuds and switched off Ivy’s cell. Then he pressed the gun firmly to the side of Ivy’s head and, with the other hand, unfastened her seat belt.

“Stand up slowly,” he said, “and if you do exactly as you’re told, maybe the others will live.”

THE NOISE FROM INSIDE THE SIKORSKY MADE ME DO A DOUBLE TAKE. It sounded like a half ring from a cell phone after Eric dialed the pilot’s number. Eric and Olivia had heard it, too. The tinted glass was virtually opaque beneath the hangar lighting, making it impossible to see inside. Suddenly, the tinted glass door flew open. The sight of Ivy standing in the opening with a gun to her head-and Ian Burn behind her-sent chills down my spine.

“Nobody move,” said Burn.

The three of us froze.

Burn looked almost exactly the way I remembered him from our very first meeting at Sal’s Place. To hide the scar on his neck, he wore a black turtleneck beneath a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. A knit beanie covered the deformed right ear. The expression on his face was all business, no sign of panic. He nudged Ivy forward, and they stepped down from the helicopter to the concrete floor. I noticed that Ivy’s hands were fastened behind her back. More than that, I noticed the look in her eyes-a desperate need to tell me something.

I looked away, still wrestling with what Eric had told me back in the WhiteSands dining room-away from Olivia-about the woman I had married.

“You,” said Burn, speaking to Eric. “Step away from the others.”

As Eric moved closer to the hangar door, my phone rang-the cell that Ivy had given to me. It startled me, but I didn’t move. It was that funny double ring-the kind that announced a new voice-mail message. Somewhere between North Bergen and Somerset County a call had come through while my phone was either roaming or completely out of signal.

“Reach into your pocket slowly,” said Burn, “and take out the phone.”

I did as he told me.

“Who’s the voice mail from?”

I checked the display. The number was familiar, and it only took a moment for it to register in my mind. I’d seen it a dozen times just a few hours earlier at the Tonnelle Avenue motel, when scrolling through the call history on Mallory’s cell. The number was her friend Andrea.

And thanks to Ivy, I now knew that Andrea was FBI.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Apparently I was a lousy liar around loaded weapons; Burn clearly didn’t believe me.

“Put it on speaker and play the message,” he told me.

I retrieved the message and hit the speaker button. The message was almost ninety minutes old:

“Ivy, it’s Agent Henning. I tried your other cell and couldn’t reach you there either. I’m calling with a heads-up. After we talked, I checked all of my contacts to find out if Eric Volke had, in fact, told the FBI that Kyle McVee was behind the bear raid on Saxton Silvers and the murder of Chuck Bell. I know he claims to have informed everyone, but it turns out that he hasn’t said anything of the sort to anyone. He lied to you. So just be careful, and call me when you get this message.”

The message ended.

“That’s not true!” said Eric. “I did tell the FBI!”

Something was starting to smell rotten, and I was nowhere near Denmark.

“Quiet!” Burn shouted. “Put the phone on the floor and slide it over here. Slowly.”

Again, I obeyed.

“Now everybody hold still,” Burn said as he reached for his cell. “We have some distinguished guests to invite.”