There were three witnesses who saw everything and eight more who heard the gunshot and saw the van drive away. One of the witnesses had his own reasons for not wanting to talk to the police that evening so he kept right on walking as if nothing had happened. The second was a male med student who had been walking back to the dorm, twenty yards behind Pia and Will. He had watched in horror as the raid unfolded. At first he thought he might be watching a movie being filmed, but it was dark and there were no cameras. And the blood coming from the shooting victim’s head was very real. He called 911 and tried desperately to remember what, if anything, he’d learned in the past two years about gunshot victims.

The third witness was George. He’d seen Will and Pia before the event and had stopped, waiting for them to come to him. He was relieved to see Pia, but his relief was short-lived. In the next second he saw the men leap from the van, shoot Will, and snatch Pia. It happened so quickly he didn’t have a chance to move. He blinked, as if blinking would reset the scene back to when Pia and Will were walking toward him. But it didn’t. It was only then that he ran forward to where the other student was kneeling over Will McKinley’s body.

Inside the van, Prek used a prepared syringe to give the barely conscious Pia an injection of Valium, enough to knock her out completely.

“Don’t drive too fast,” he yelled ahead to Neri. “Keep it steady.” Prek and Genti then struggled to roll Pia up in a threadbare carpet. It wasn’t easy in the rocking and swaying van.

Neri’s hands were shaking, and it was all he could do to stop himself from throwing up. The mark had looked right at him. Neri blinked rapidly and concentrated so he wouldn’t drive right off the road.

“And, Neri,” Prek said.

“What?”

“Good job.”

On a quiet side street just north of the George Washington Bridge, Neri pulled over behind the waiting dark blue van, and the men quickly transferred their cargo. With that done, Prek returned to the driver’s seat with Genti riding shotgun. Neri was told to keep a watch on Pia.

Abandoning the white van, Prek drove ahead to where he could get on the Henry Hudson Parkway to loop around and get onto the George Washington Bridge, heading over to New Jersey. As they expected, the bridge was chockablock with rush-hour traffic. But the crew didn’t mind in the slightest. The hit-and-snatch had been flawless, and they were giddy with their success. It was, as Prek said, a tribute to the Albanian mob tradition.