Edmund rode the subway north to a section of the Bronx he’d never visited before. He got off the train on a windswept elevated platform. There was hardly anyone else around at eleven in the morning, just two men who had alighted at the station—one who had sat in Edmund’s car, another from the car behind his. Edmund left the station, walked down to the street, and stood by the exit. He checked his phone, and crossed and recrossed the street, looking for some sign of life.

Suddenly, a dark blue panel van drew up, and the back doors opened. A voice from within told Edmund to get in, and he did. The van drove away, and immediately Edmund’s arms were seized, tape was secured over his mouth, and a cloth bag was roughly forced over his head. His body was patted down, hands thrust into his armpits and groin. Then his clothes were removed, all of them, and he was left naked, bound, and gagged on the floor of the van, first as it rattled along the street and then, for what seemed like an age, parked someplace.

“Okay, Mr. Edmund Mathews, rich banker man from Greenwich, how did you get that phone number?” The voice came from the front of the van somewhere.

Edmund tried to talk but his mouth was taped shut. He mumbled and the voice said, “How rude of me. Let the man speak.”

The tape was ripped away crudely, and Edmund reeled from the shock.

“A friend of mine gave it to me. He wouldn’t say where he got it.”

“We’ll see. So what you want?”

Edmund laid out what he wanted. It didn’t take long, but he had to explain a couple of times the need for using polonium to effect the killings.

“Okay, this is what we do. You come to Middletown Road subway station, eleven tomorrow. Bring a deposit for me. As a gesture of goodwill. Say, fifty thousand dollars in Ben Franklin notes. Nonrefundable. Give the man back his clothes.”

Edmund’s arms and legs were freed, and he dressed quickly. The van moved again and stopped after a few minutes, and the doors opened. Edmund got out in a bleak parking lot behind an abandoned building. He figured out where he was, less than a half-mile from where he had been picked up, and he took the subway back to Manhattan.