“Wait, wait … If you take off, I’ll lose the signal.”
The NYPD response vehicles were maybe five blocks away, the sirens increasing their pitch and ferocity with every passing second.
I started the car, waited to let the revs die down, and then gently pressed the accelerator. If I revved the car too much, I would flood the engine—I just needed it warm, loose, ready to take off.
“Oh Jesus, they’re coming,” said Holly.
She buried her head in the seat and slid down until her eyes met the bottom of the passenger window. Gill and two other men were in the lobby, kneeling over the big man.
The Lizard hadn’t taken off either. He was waiting to follow me. He leaned out of the van window and hocked his thumb at me. Roger was behind the wheel of that van and he was also pumping the gas.
“David,” I said.
The hollow plastic tinkle of fingers on keys grew in intensity.
“I’m downloading. Thirty percent … forty-one percent … Hold on.”
“David, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Nothing.
The sirens were close now.
Gill was in the revolving door, his right hand behind his back.
I nodded to the Lizard, floored the Honda, and pulled into the street. The dull, throaty noise from the van’s V-8 sounded behind me. I signaled, turned the corner, and headed deeper into the city as fast as I could.
“No, I’m almost done. Wait!”
“You get it?” I said, looking in the rearview mirror.
“I got it,” he said, removing the USB drive from his laptop.
We drove into Jersey, looped around the suburbs in crazy patterns. After thirty minutes I stopped the car, waited for the Lizard, Boo, and Roger.
“You think the DA will let me walk in exchange for this?” said David, holding up the flash drive.
“I’ll push it as hard as I can. You risked your life tonight. I won’t forget that. The feds will lean on Zader to get this data. It’s all we’ve got. I just hope they want it bad enough.”
We listened to the wheeze from the engine while the idea floated around.
“You think they can persuade him?” said David.
“I don’t know, but I sure hope so.”
I lied. I did know. Dell, no matter what kind of connections he had in New York, wouldn’t be able to sell the DA on a withdrawal for David. No way. They would want a full confession and jail time. Nothing else would satisfy Zader. Either I didn’t want to tell David, or I couldn’t. Whichever, I said nothing more. We’d made our play. The con had burned away the pretense with the firm. It was now open war. I’d already warned the Lizard to be on the lookout for the man with the Scream tattoo on his neck. When Roger, at the wheel of the CBS van, appeared in my rearview, I let him overtake and followed.
Weaving through the streets, keeping the van in my headlights, I thought of Christine. I was close to getting her out of this now. She and Amy just had to hang on for a little longer.
The sky had darkened and it was a full moon, bright and tinged with red. I imagined that when the cops arrived at the firm, Gerry would play it down, maybe tell them their man fell down the stairs. I knew Gerry Sinton wouldn’t want the cops looking into him or his security team. He would make no complaint about the Lizard beating the hell out of his guys.
Sinton would deal with it his own way. Now that he knew we were on to the money-laundering scheme, he would go all out on having us killed. He had to be careful. Nothing to link it back to him or the firm. But the pressure was on.
“Where’s the money gonna land?” I asked.
“Chase Manhattan at four-oh-five p.m. tomorrow. I’ve got the account number.”
I wondered what Gerry would do when the money hit the account. I knew what I would do if I were him. If Gerry was smart, he’d leave the money where it was, take whatever cash he had stashed already, and hitch a private plane to a nonextradition country.
Dell needed the account details and all the evidence to sink the firm before the money became available. His biggest hope was to secure the illegal funds. The amount of money recovered was where the real glory lay for Dell.
“How much money is there?”
“Enough to give Donald Trump heart palpitations. Close to eight,” said David.
“Eight million?” said Holly.
“No, eight billion,” said David.