“If there’s nothing more . . .” Win checked his watch and smiled at his favorite stewardess. “We still have thirty minutes before we land. You stay and watch our prisoner. I’m going into the bedroom for a little Mee time.”

Chapter 32

32

Big Cyndi met them at the Essex County Airport in Caldwell, New Jersey. She put Lex, the nurse, and the baby in an SUV. Big Cyndi was going to bring them to Zorra, the cross-dressing former Mossad agent, and then Zorra would find a safe house and would tell no one—not even Myron or Win—where it was. This way, Win had explained, if his plan somehow backfired and Herman Ache grabbed and tortured them, they wouldn’t be able to tell them where Lex was.

“How comforting,” Myron had said.

Win had a car waiting. Normally he’d use a driver, but why put anyone else in danger? Crisp was fully awake now. They pushed him in the backseat and redid his restraints, adding some to his legs. Myron sat in the passenger seat. Win drove.

Herman Ache lived in a legendary mansion in Livingston, scant miles from where Myron grew up. When Myron was a kid, the estate had belonged to a famed crime boss. Rumors swirled around the playground about the place. One kid said that if you crossed their property line, real-live gangsters shot at you. Another kid said that there was a crematorium behind the house where the mafia boss burned his victims.

This second rumor was actually true.

The gateposts were topped with bronze lion heads. Win took the long drive to the first landing. That was as far as they’d be able to go. They parked. Myron watched three big guys in ill-fitted suits approach. The one in the middle, the leader, was extra beefy.

Win took out both his guns and placed them in the glove compartment.

“Get rid of your weapons,” Win said. “We’re going to be searched.”

Myron looked at him. “Do you have a plan here?”

“I do.”

“Do you want to share it with me?”

“I already did. The four of us are going to chat. We will all act rationally. We will learn what we need to about your brother. We will agree not to harm their business interest if they don’t harm us. What part of this bothers you?”

“The part where you trust a psychopath like Herman Ache to act rationally.”

“He is, first and foremost, interested in business and the air of legitimacy. Killing us would harm that.”

The biggest of the beefy bruisers—he had to be six-seven, three hundred pounds—knocked on Win’s window with his ring. Win rolled down the window. “May I help you?”

“Get a load of this.” Beefy looked at Win like he was something that had just dropped out of a dog’s behind. “So you’re the famous Win.”

Win smiled brightly.

“You don’t look like much,” Beefy said.