Syndication Rites td-122 Read online

"Plenty of time," Remo assured him.

  As Remo held up the bomb to the terrorist's eye, Sanchez carefully entered the time. When he took his finger away, the clock had begun to tick a three-minute countdown.

  "Now let me out," Eduardo Sanchez insisted, wriggling his arm back inside the car.

  Remo leaned in close to the terrorist's one visible eye. "Sorry." He smiled. "That was just a terrorist's promise. Besides, the Local Brotherhood of Clowns, Mimes and Tumblers would put my ass in a sling if I violated the sanctity of the clown car."

  With a gentle push, he slipped the bomb through the small triangular window. It bumped against several thrashing legs on its way down to the foot well.

  The small car began to shake like a can of paint in a hardware store mixer. Screams and muffled curses rose from out of the car's sweat-drenched interior.

  "I know one group of clowns who don't know the clown code," Remo warned. "I'm gonna have to report you to Bozo. And if you thought America was tyrannical, wait'll you see what he does with a seltzer bottle."

  And with that, he left the garage and its carload of terrified terrorists.

  The last image the horrified eye of Eduardo Sanchez saw before the window in front of him steamed up for the last time was the First Lady's grinning face. As the fog enveloped her image, votive candles surrounding her carefully coiffed hair in an ethereal nimbus, the soon-to-be-late Eduardo Sanchez had a sickening realization.

  "She is angry with us," the terrorist whined as her face faded forever from his sight. "I told you we should have sacrificed more chickens."

  WHEN REMO SLIPPED Out the front door of MIR headquarters, his cab was already slowing to a stop. He hopped into the back seat.

  In the rearview mirror, the driver noted the cruelly satisfied smile on his fare's face.

  "You ever wonder how they fit all those clowns into that little car in the circus?" Remo asked in satisfaction.

  The driver frowned confusion even as he began to drive down the winding street. "There is a trapdoor on the bottom of the car. The clowns climb up from beneath the floor."

  Remo snapped his fingers. "I knew there had to be some kind of trick," he said, his brow creasing. And as his fingers snapped, there came a muffled thud from somewhere far behind them. Remo alone felt the gentle rumble of earth beneath the cab.

  He felt good. For the moment, he had forgotten about the future. It was a feeling he could get used to.

  He settled back comfortably in the seat of the cab for the winding trip back to the airport.

  WHEN HE SAW the thin man leaving MIR headquarters, Corporal Rolando Rodriguez stopped dead. He loitered on the street corner near a group of rowdy drunks until the cab drove away. Tucking the small box he was carrying tightly under his arm, he hurried across the street to the rotted old building.

  The first thing Rodriguez did upon entering the garage was vomit. The walls were smeared with globs of flesh-like hurled meat. Eduardo Sanchez's car was curled apart at the top like a stubbed-out cigar. Twisted black metal sent threads of smoke into the fetid room.

  Rodriguez backed into the office. As he put his box down, the contents rattled. They were the new identifying pins. The ones designed by their leader. Had he not been sent to retrieve them, Rolando would be dead, too.

  With shaking hands, he found Sanchez's little black book and dialed the special number. When the woman answered, he felt his frightened breath catch.

  "iHola!" she said with quiet menace. In the background, a man spoke Spanish in slow, measured tones.

  "There has been a catastrophe!" Rodriguez wailed. "Many of the movimiento are dead." He quickly described the grisly scene in the garage.

  "Who did this?" she demanded once he was through. The white-hot rage roiling below the barely controlled surface threatened to crack the ice in her tone. So softly did she say the words that her Spanish accent seemed to disappear, lost in her swelling anger.

  "I don't know," Rodriguez cried. "A man. He was thin, with short hair. He wore a T-shirt. I couldn't really see that well. It was dark." Something suddenly came to him. "But his wrists were thick. Very thick. Like the trunk of a tree."

  There was a soft intake of air on the other end of the line. In the ensuing moment of silence, the muffled man's voice continued to drone in the background. When the woman finally spoke, there was fresh menace in her tone.

  "I've met him before," she snarled.

  Rodriguez was surprised. "What do you want me to do?"

  Her voice was perfectly level. "He is a threat to my goals. I will find him, then you will kill him." The oblivious man continued to drone continuously in the background as she slammed down the phone in Rolando's ear.

  Chapter 3

  Lippincott, Forsythe, Butler had been the most prestigious brokerage house on Wall Street since before the time horse-drawn surreys filled the muddy lane that would one day become the most famous financial district on Earth.

  Legend had it that an agent of LFB brokered the original purchase deal for the island of Manhattan between the Dutch governor general and the indigenous Indian tribe. It was a testament to the reputation of this distinguished old house that the story was not dismissed out of hand as apocryphal.

  The firm occupied one of the original Lippincott buildings in lower Manhattan. There were several. Pricey real estate was easy to come by to the family that had practically dived like lemmings over the side of the Mayflower in order to shout dibs over much of the new country.

  Over the years, the Lippincott family-along with its poorer millionaire relatives, the Butlers and Forsythes-had weathered all the financial storms of a young nation.

  It was a comfort of sorts to all who worked for the Lippincott family of corporations to know that the businesses for which they spent their days slaving would last long after they had passed from this realm into the next.

  Lawrence Fine was just the sort of employee to derive such solace. Whenever he passed through the opulent lobby and rode the gilded elevator up to the fourteenth floor, Lawrence marveled at his small role in financial history.

  The founding Lippincotts had worked in buildings on this very location. Of course the original structures had been replaced over the years, but beneath the tar and concrete of Manhattan was the same soil trod upon by builders of a commercial empire that had stretched across centuries. Atop that same hardpacked earth, future Lippincott generations would preside over financial markets yet to develop.

  There was history here. In a sense, the entire economic history of America. Lawrence Fine usually felt it as a palpable presence around him. Usually. But not this day.

  This day he found the lobby a garish distraction and the elevator a confining box pulled too far off the ground by too-slender cables. Why did it remind him of a coffin?

  On the fourteenth floor, Lawrence stepped into the recycled air of the main LFB offices. His head swam as he made his way down the hallway and into the rows of cubicles.

  In strategic locations around the floor, scrolling electronic boards kept track of the movements of the

  New York Stock Exchange. Company abbreviations and numbers ran across the long rectangular boxes from left to right, moving so quickly only a trained eye could see anything more than just an endless yellow blur. Lawrence Fine possessed such an eye.

  The scroll on one board was nearing the end of its repetitive cycle. Flashing quickly, it reached the Rs.

  Behind his wireless glasses, watery eyes took in the latest information. Although he had just come from the trading floor, information could change in a heartbeat.

  Pausing, Lawrence watched the latest data on the company that most concerned him fly by. When it did, he breathed a relieved sigh. Up a quarter point in the past ten minutes.

  Lawrence started through the cubicle aisle. His leather briefcase swung in alternate time to his pumping legs.

  Behind him, heads stuck out from cubicles. It was a morning ritual. The taunts trailed behind him. "Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk."

  "Soitenly
, Moe."

  "You had a hallucination. No, I had a hunk of pipe."

  The words were meant to be insulting. However, as usual he had no idea what they meant. This morning, Lawrence Fine didn't care. He had a very important meeting to get to.

  They had given him his own office while he was working with this special client. For the past three years, this had been a career goal, but thanks to the client he'd been given, Lawrence found himself missing his old cubicle.

  He stepped from the cubicle sea and into the adjacent hallway. The vague sick-building smell was replaced by an odor of rich wood and leather.

  Lawrence had only just stepped into the corridor when he caught sight of the man coming toward him.

  His heart sank.

  He didn't need this. Not today.

  It was Arthur Finch. Distantly related to the Butlers, Finch had been with the firm for only three months and had already moved from the cubicles to a small office. The privilege of breeding.

  Finch's face broke into a broad smile when he spied Lawrence coming toward him.

  "Hey, Moe, where'd you get the sunglasses?" LFB's latest management trainee called down the hall to Lawrence.

  Lawrence frowned at the non sequitur. He hardly ever knew what Finch was talking about.

  "I'm not wearing sunglasses."

  "Of course not, knucklehead," Finch smiled. They were side by side now. Finch was still wearing the same idiot's grin he had sported since the moment he learned Lawrence's name. He was the one who had inspired the taunts from the other workers during his three months of goofing off in the cubicles. When he'd left, the jokes had stayed. It was a quarter of a year later, and Lawrence still didn't want to admit that he hadn't the foggiest idea what everyone was laughing about.

  "Hey, I saw the Corleones a few minutes ago," Finch said, stopping Lawrence with a palm to the shoulder. With his forefinger, he pressed his nose to one side.

  "They're here already?" Lawrence asked anxiously.

  Finch nodded. "They brought a washtub full of cement. One of them wanted to know your shoe size."

  Lawrence tensed visibly. "You shouldn't make fun of them," he whispered.

  "Why? They can't hear me."

  "Please," Lawrence begged. "And they're not thugs." He pulled out a handkerchief, wiping sweat from his forehead.

  "Gee whiz, Larry, lighten up."

  Larry. All his life he'd been Lawrence. That had stopped the minute Finch showed up at the brokerage house.

  "Excuse me," Lawrence said. He stepped around Arthur Finch. Spine rigid, he marched down the hall. "If they try any funny stuff, start a pie fight and escape in the confusion," Finch called after him.

  Doing a quick one-legged shuffle, the Butler progeny backed up. Spinning, Arthur Finch marched merrily down the hall in the direction opposite the terrified Lawrence Fine.

  Lawrence arrived at his small office thirty seconds later. When he opened the door, his nostrils were assaulted by the sickeningly familiar mixture of noxious colognes.

  There were three men in the room. Two were huge mountains of flesh and muscle. They stood just inside the door. The third was an oily little man in a shiny blue suit. He sat in a chair before the tidy oak desk.

  "I'm not late, Mr. Sweet," Lawrence pleaded with the attorney as he pushed the door closed. He whimpered as he eyed the two behemoths.

  "Not to worry," Sol Sweet replied. "We're early."

  Lawrence breathed a sigh of relief. His briefcase a makeshift leather shield, he stepped past the two bodyguards and sank into his chair.

  "The stock's performing well." Sweet smiled as Lawrence settled his briefcase onto the blotter.

  In his element now, Lawrence Fine nodded. "I just checked the board. It's gone up another half point since I entered the building."

  "What about block trades?"

  "Not many now. But remember, it's only 9:00 a.m. And because of the nature of this, um, business, word of mouth is carrying us at the start. I'd say things are going very well. Better, in fact, than I predicted."

  "What about clearing and settlement? Has everything been ironed out?"

  Lawrence nodded. "Absolutely. We're a clearing corporation, as well. You chose LFB specifically because we were a large enough concern to handle all financial requirements and responsibilities."

  At this, Sweet flashed a row of barracuda teeth. "LFB was chosen, Larry, because its guiding principle has always been greed," the lawyer said. "Your founders ran guns to the Indians, as well as to the pilgrims. Their descendants backed the Colonies and the Crown during the Revolution. Their sons secretly swore allegiance to the North and South during the Civil War. LFB was even a clearinghouse for Nazi funds during the end of World War II. Don't think you can coast on prestige with us. This company is big, corrupt and well-connected. That's why we picked it."

  As he spoke, Sweet leaned across the desk. Lawrence Fine sat quietly as the man stabbed out a long-distance number on the touch tone. Sweet turned on the speakerphone.

  Lawrence realized the moment the voice came on the line that the phone call had been set up in advance. Otherwise, the man who spoke would never have answered.

  "Is that you, Sol?"

  It was a warm rasp. The overpronunciation of every word was familiar to Lawrence Fine. He had heard it on television a number of times. Always on the news.

  Don Anselmo Scubisci. The "Dandy Don" of the Manhattan Mafia. Although he was the one behind this operation, Lawrence had never actually spoken to the man before. When he heard the familiar voice, he felt his stomach clench.

  "Yes, Mr. Scubisci," the attorney replied. "I'm here with Larry Fine."

  "Lawrence!" Don Scubisci's voice enthused. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. How are you today?"

  "I'm-" Lawrence's voice was a barely detectable squeak. He cleared his throat. "I'm fine, Mr. Scubisci."

  "I'm so glad to hear that. I understand from Solly that you have been quite successful in your handling of our little business venture. The powers that be at LFB were wise to give you this assignment. I'm very pleased."

  Pride mixed with fear. "Thank you, Mr. Scubisci."

  "No, I thank you, Lawrence. I've been monitoring the situation from here. We are up two points since trading began this morning. Up overall for the week. Very nice."

  Sol leaned in to the speaker. "New Jersey helped, Mr. Scubisci," the attorney said. "Since the story hit the wire services today, we've been performing well. The discreet word we put out on the street has pushed the value up."

  "Excellent," Don Scubisci said. "Now, Sol, what about Raffair corporate headquarters?"

  "Renovations and remodeling are finally complete. We'll be up and running tomorrow. The day after at the latest."

  "And my office?"

  "Will be waiting for you, Mr. Scubisci."

  "Good, good," Don Scubisci said. "Sorry, but this is going to have to be a quick call, Lawrence. I have an appointment with my physical trainer in five minutes. I just wanted to call with a personal expression of gratitude for the long hours you've put into this for us. It's greatly appreciated. Keep in touch, Solly. Goodbye, gentlemen."

  The line went dead.

  Their business over, Sol stood. The two flanking bodyguards bundled in beside him.

  Lawrence Fine remained at his desk, holding his breath as he stared at the speaker. Until now, the man who was his de facto boss in this matter had stayed firmly in the abstract. But now...

  The way he studied the speaker, it was almost as if he expected the most notorious crime figure in modern New York history to come crawling out through the plastic mesh.

  "This is the last face-to-face we'll need for a while," Sol Sweet announced, breaking Fine's trance. "Now that Raffair HQ is set, we'll be transferring from our temporary digs. You can call down there if you need me."

  As the men turned for the door, Lawrence stood. "Um, I don't know if I should say this," the broker offered weakly. "But, um, I can get into a lot of trouble with the SEC if this thing
goes south."

  Sol's dead-fish eyes were flat. "Cold feet, Larry?"

  "No," Lawrence said hastily. "God, no. It's just that the, um, feds wouldn't be happy with any of this."

  What little spark of light that remained in them drained visibly from Sol Sweet's eyes. "Of course they wouldn't, Larry," the attorney said. "And please don't say feds. It doesn't sit well on your tongue. Besides, neither you nor any of us are gangsters."

  Lawrence squirmed. "Well, it's..." He dropped his voice low. "It's just that you mentioned something happening in New Jersey. I heard this morning about some drug raid that went bad. A bunch of federal agents were killed."

  It was the closest thing to a direct question Lawrence Fine dared ask. If there was a link, things here at LFB could be a lot worse than he'd imagined.

  Sol Sweet's answer was terse.

  "That's the price of doing business," the attorney said coldly. "Larry, your personal, ethically questionable Raffair stock has doubled in value in the last three days. If you're having any pangs of conscience, you should take them up with your checkbook."

  Their meeting at an end, he offered the LFB employee his back. Without a backward glance, the attorney and his small entourage left the office.

  Lawrence sank back into his chair. He closed his eyes.

  It was the phone call from Anselmo Scubisci that had rattled him. If he had been thinking more clearly, he never would have mentioned New Jersey. He shouldn't have said anything to the Mob lawyer. He should have just let it go.

  After a long time, Lawrence opened his eyes. He noticed his name plate was ajar. He hadn't seen before that it had been moved. Lawrence picked it up. The brass was cold.

  His given name had been crossed out. By the looks of it with a set of keys. In the narrow space above, the name "Larry" had been scratched into the brass.

  Larry Fine. For some reason, people loved to call him that. Lawrence had no idea why.

  He let the nameplate slip from his fingers. It struck the desk with a thud.

  Chapter 4

  Remo's flight was an hour away from landing at Boston's Logan International Airport when the commotion began. It came from the back of the plane.

  "Whadaya mean no more! Gimme a drink, now!"