Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol) (18 page)

Chapter 34

Tested

Vic and Karen are together in her apartment in
Scranton. Ever since the start of all this craziness, Karen feels better
meeting Vic away from his place. But outside, in an old, beat-up, nondescript
van sits an average-looking guy in coveralls with a camera. Sonny has
dispatched Mike Gerulo one of his soldiers to shadow Vic trying to get some
more intel on him.

Karen and Vic are tense because they know that with
the retort being operational the main event is not far off.

Vic says, “I’m glad it’s almost over, but like any
book, you don’t know the ending until you get to the last chapter. For both of
us, I hope it’s a happy ending.”

“Yes Vic, but what will you do if this all blows over?
Go back to slacking off and looking for the next fast buck scheme?”

“Hey, that ain’t fair.”

“No, but it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Karen, I want to have a different life. But, I’m
just no good at anything. You have nursing; I have a failed funeral home.”

 “This is our home. We could stay here and
build a new life together.”

“How? I dig ditches or sell hamburgers?”

“No stupid, you become a
real
funeral
director and get your business back. You could even take the crematory as a
prize for all of this and make it financially successful.”

“Yah, maybe.”

“Look I’ll help, we could become a team. You know I
am interested in the funeral business; I always told you I want to help you.”

“I promise, if I live through this, you and I will
work as a team.”

“To be a respectable funeral director in a small
town, you might have to get married Vic.”

“Are you proposing to me? I accept! It would be
wonderful, if we both get that far.”

Chapter 35

                          
Trial Run     

It’s a Friday evening when Vic gets the call to
leave for a warehouse in Brooklyn. He checks in with John who has Gus activate
all of the electronics on Vic’s Suburban. They are depending on this to track
Vic without putting a tail on him. John feels this gang is too street-smart to
not discover that ploy. He also has the FBI field office in Brooklyn on
standby. They are given the address, but told not to get too close unless they
are called by John.

After two-and-a-half hours Vic is outside the
warehouse down by the docks. A garage door rolls up, and Vic is motioned in. He
is then led out the other end of the building by another black van through a
narrow dark alley.

After several turns he, and the escort van, approach
a second warehouse and again the door slowly opens and both vehicles drive in.
With no lights on two figures dressed in black motion Vic to stop. The back
doors of the Suburban are opened a pouch slid in and the doors bang shut. Vic
is motioned to back out and told to return to Duryea.

In five minutes it’s over. John asks Gus, “What did
you get?”

“Not much John, there was not enough light for
pictures, the only voice recorded is a muffled command for Vic to return to
Duryea.”

“Call New York office, see what they got.”

“They saw Vic’s van go in but it never returned, so
they later looked inside and the place was empty. I guess they lost Vic.”

“Tell New York to go home. We won’t need them
anymore tonight.”

John knows that the mob can be very elusive on their
own turf.

Just then, the phone rings and it’s Vic heading west
on Route 80; he is returning with the package; there were no snafus.

John meets Vic at the garage by entering from a back
door which is not visible from the street. They pull the pouch from the van and
unzip it. It’s a dead chimpanzee.

John tells Vic, “We’ve been set up. They know we are
watching and they did this as a safety check. If we swarm the place and you
don’t call them back, they will know it’s over for them and we will never see
them again.”

Vic is thinking,
Maybe that’s not so bad after
all.

John quickly adds, “But that doesn’t mean that they
won’t lie in wait and punish you later.”

“So what do we do?”

“We go on with business as usual, you pretend to do your
monkey cremation, dump these ashes I am giving you, and give them their
all-clear code.

“I will pull off all surveillance of this place and
wait. They will come to one of two conclusions; one that we were setting them
up forcing them to respond with a phony shipment. They will suspect the
operation is busted and not contact you anymore.

“The other scenario is that they figure whoever was
watching you was from a lower level agency like the fire marshal. After not
finding anything suspicious they gave up the surveillance. We hope they go with
the latter idea and try and ship you a real body in the future. We just have to
wait and see.”

Chapter 36

The Real Deal

Two weeks go by with no contact. But then on
Friday night Vic gets a call from Sam. “Hi Vic, everything alright in Duryea?”

“Yup, the last guy you sent was kind of small, not
like the one before. I guess people come in all shapes and sizes. The crematory
works fine and as I informed you the ashes were disposed of.” (The chimpanzee
was actually sent to a lab in Philadelphia for any forensic evidence it might
contain.)

“Okay Vic, you will be hearing from us.”

On the following Monday afternoon, Vinnie calls Vic
and tells him he wants him to leave for the same address at the docks in
Brooklyn he came to last time. It is now late afternoon when Vic gets the call
off to John that he will be on the move to New York. John has Gus fire up all
of the surveillance gear in the van. Plus, he alerts the Brooklyn Bureau to be
on the lookout. Let the games begin.

“Call us when you are free of the warehouse in
Brooklyn heading home, and I will meet you at the garage.”

“I’m with you,” answers Vic.

Vic is really excited. This could be the end of a
long bad dream. He really needs this to happen and be over.

When Vic pulls into the toll booth at the Verrazano narrows
bridge, he pays his toll and is handed a note by a shadowy guy standing next to
the toll house. Vic pulls off to the side of the road to read the note.

Vic,

We just want you to know that we have Karen. She is safe as
long as you complete your mission. Don’t call anyone or do anything out of the
ordinary or Karen will be in need of your services.

Your friends

Attached to the note is a new address in Brooklyn
for Vic to go to. Oh shit, Vic breaks out in a cold sweat. They will kill Karen
the same as they did the people in the body bags. It is not thinkable that this
is an idle threat; not with these people. I don’t dare call John. They may be
watching me, and Karen will pay.

With that Vic pulls to the side and rips out the
camera buried in the ceiling of his truck and two more in the rear; he then
throws away the special cell phone he had and opens the hood and rips out the
GPS transmitter. He promptly chucks all of this into a refuse barrel next to
him. Then he continues his trip to the new address in Brooklyn.

Back in Wilkes-Barre, panic ensues. Gus hollers, “We
don’t know what happened. He went through the tolls at the bridge and then
everything went dead. We see a hand reaching for the camera, but we don’t know,
in the dark, who it was. On top of that, Vic is not answering his cell phone.
What the hell happened?”

“We can alert the New York Police to look for the
SUV, but he could be anywhere after crossing the bridge,” says John. Of course,
the Brooklyn FBI probably has the wrong warehouse staked out. They will see no
activity there. For the moment, John and his team are stymied.

Vic is now at the new address in Brooklyn. This time
he is escorted to another pier two blocks away. Vic is led into another
abandoned warehouse on a pier. After he stops, Sam steps out of the shadows and
Vic confronts him.

“What have you done with Karen? I want to talk to
her right now, or I don’t take your ‘package’ with me.”

“Sure Vic,” as Sam hands Vic his cell where Vic
hears an excited Karen telling him not to worry, they won’t hurt her if he does
what they ask, this is followed by a dial tone.

“Where is she?”

“Not for you to worry about Vic, the Pocono Mountains
is such a large area.”

“Okay, I’ll take the package back, but when I send
the all clear message I want Karen released unharmed.”

“That’s the plan. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
We do, after all want to continue doing business with you. But, after all that
recently went down, we needed some insurance that you weren’t going to go off
the reservation on us.”

“Just don’t hurt her or I’ll …”

“You’ll what? Listen Vic, just do your job and
everything will be fine.”

Petrified, Vic drives back towards Pennsylvania.
This time he is being followed by Vinnie in a small black Toyota. He has no
idea how this is going to play out, but he knows he has to keep going. The only
chance for help is back in Duryea where he is on his, and hopefully Agent
John’s turf.

The Honeymoon Lodge, five miles from Canadensis,
Pennsylvania, is situated in a remote, heavily wooded area. It is here that
Karen is to be held in a small cabin at the end of a dirt lane. The resort has
ten such cabins, but is closed for the season. They open for business after
June first.

Karen has her hands bound in front of her with
plastic restraints. The two goons with her, Milt and Johnny, are enforcers from
New York. They a waiting for her in the hallway of her apartment after her
shift at the hospital.

Karen had enough of a head start to enter her unit
and get to her bathroom. But, the locked door was a no barrier for them. It
only took a few kicks for the door to be broken down. They grabbed Karen, gagged
and bound, unable to scream out or protest. With a gun in her ribs, she went
quietly to the car.

As they got close to the lodge Karen realized where
she was, since her blindfold had slipped down. She knows, in this isolated
spot, screaming will not help. She figures, the only chance is to get loose and
try and outrun the two goons.

If only I could get a head start. In this pitch
dark I might have a chance,
she thinks.

Meanwhile, Vic is approaching his garage in Duryea.
He has no way to warn John and Bob that he is being tailed by Vinnie. Bob is
positioned in the shadows outside the garage and John remains inside waiting.
Vic, upon pulling up, uses his remote to open the darkened garage and drives
in.

Vinnie was given orders to stop about a block from
the garage and case the property for any unusual activity. But he is tired, and
doesn’t see anything unusual, so he drives right up to the garage door behind
Vic. The electric door is closing as Vinnie is parking when he suddenly sees a
flashlight beam pointed at his face and hears, “FBI freeze.”

Vinnie ducks, and gets off a shot in the direction
of the light. Almost instantly, three more shots ring out and Vinnie slumps
behind the steering wheel gasping his last. Bob runs over from his hiding place
and is quickly joined by John.

Victor, standing next to John, looks in and says,
“It’s Vinnie, my contact. He is the one I always give the all-clear signal
after I cremated the body and disposed of the ashes. That’s just the half of it
John, they have Karen.”

“What, how do you know?”

Vic now relates his saga in New York, complete with
talking to Karen. Victor excitedly says “The bigger problem is that Vinnie is
the one to give the ‘release Karen message’ to his guys once I completed my
mission here. I can’t even think what will happen to her when they don’t get an
all-clear from Vinnie.”

Now it’s John’s turn to be flustered. They search
Vinnie and find his cell phone, but it has no numbers stored in the memory.
They have no way of reaching out to Karen’s abductors by way of Vinnie’s phone.

John says, “I just had no idea they would grab my
niece for insurance on you going through with your job. Did I ever
underestimate the reach of this gang, I am so sorry for my sloppiness here.”

John rebounds quickly and asks, “Did you hear them
say anything about where they are holding her?”

“Sam just spoke in riddles about the Poconos being
an awfully big place.”

“He spoke the truth, there are hundreds of square
miles between here and the Delaware River.”

Karen is now locked away in a cabin with her two
abductors.

She says “Hey guys, I need to use the bathroom.”

“Here Milt, take this beauty queen to the bathroom.”

“I’d rather take her to the bedroom.”

“Shut up, yells Johnny, no touching the merchandise
on company time idiot!”

“Sure,” says Milt, “but if we get the order to whack
her, I may just have to use this little honeymoon cabin for my own party
first.”

That seals the deal for Karen, she needs to escape
and fast. After being shoved into the bathroom by Milt, Karen locks the door.
There is a window and she tries to nudge it open. At first it doesn’t move,
then with a scraping noise it opens. Karen opens the faucet and flushes the
toilet to make masking noises, while she forces the window toward its fully
opened position. With a final crunching noise the old warped window is finally
open.

With her hands are still tied, Karen will have to
dump herself out of the window head first. She will have no support to help
break the fall. If she is caught she will have the bruises from the fall plus a
likely beating from the goons to worry about. But, not liking any of her other
options decides to go through with the escape.

She lands on her back, fortunately on a soft lawn
about five feet down. But the thump and continuous running water have attracted
attention. “So much for a big head start,” she muses.

Karen hears the banging on the flimsy bathroom door
which will soon give way and allow her captors to pursue her. The only chance
is to seek cover in the nearby woods. She will have to cover some distance in
the thickets and hope to see either a road or house lights in the distance. She
needs a target to run towards.

Meanwhile Milt and Johnny having broken down the
bathroom door realized Karen is gone.

“Quick out the front door, Johnny yells.”

Reaching the side of the cabin where the bathroom is
located, they realize it’s pitch dark and they forgot their flashlight. Another
minute is lost, allowing Karen to get out of earshot of the cabin. But,
progress is slow as the brambles and thick underbrush are scratching her legs
causing bleeding. Karen is running on adrenaline and doesn’t even notice.