A hand got the shoulder of her tailored business outfit and pulled her back into her seat.
Wendy would have pleaded for her life, but she couldn't get anything past her spasming windpipe.
She wondered for a wild minute what would kill her first, the blocked airway or the terrible Mafia executioner who had come to rub her out.
With undeniable strength, the man lifted her up onto the desk and laid her across the blue blotter, upsetting her yogurt. He pulled her head straight back by her red-gold hair while his other hand reached for her midriff.
She closed her eyes, hoping the apple would kill her before she was violated. After she was dead, he could do anything he wanted. Just please, not before.
The sound was like a gentle slap. But it made Wendy's abdomen convulse so hard she saw stars. All the air spewed out of her lungs.
The apple wedge jumped from her yawning mouth and came down to splatter on her forehead.
"Okay," said the Mafia enforcer. "You can sit up now."
Wendy declined. The fact that she could breathe again only meant she was going to suffer at the mafioso's hands.
"I said, you can get up now."
"Perhaps she needs a drink of water," suggested the secretary helplessly.
"Go get some," said the Mafia enforcer, his voice less harsh now.
Wendy opened her green eyes. The face that looked down at her had the deep-set eyes of a skull. They were flat and dead, with no trace of warmth.
"What are you going to do to me?" she asked.
"Ask you some questions."
Wendy sat up. His voice was direct but nonthreatening. "Who are you?" she asked.
"Call me Remo."
Wendy leaned back again, shutting her eyes. Remo. Her worst fears were true. She shuddered.
A firm hand forced her upward again. Hard-as-punch-press fingers pried one of her eyes open.
"Why are you acting this way?" asked the killer called Remo.
"Because I don't know what else to do," replied Wendy truthfully.
High heels clicked near. "Here's your water."
The one called Remo accepted the water from the secretary and brought it up to Wendy's lips. Wendy took the paper cup in her hands and greedily gobbled down the cold spring water. It had never tasted so good, she decided.
"Will you leave us alone now, please?" said the man who called himself Remo.
"Of course."
"No!" said Wendy.
"Yes," said Remo.
The secretary hesitated. Remo plucked a yellow pencil from a Lucite holder and jammed it into an electric pencil sharpener. The motor whined. The pencil disappeared into the orifice. Complete.
As he reached for another, Remo said casually, "When I run out of pencils, I might start thinking about using fingers."
The secretary hid her hands behind her back and raced for the door, which she drew quietly closed.
Remo turned to Wendy and said, "Guess no one told her they make the pencil holes too small for fingers." He smiled. No lights of humor lit his flat deadly eyes, Wendy saw.
"Heimlich?" Wendy asked, touching her throat. Her esophagus felt like a balloon that had been stretched too tight.
"Call it what you want. I hear you were tight with Tony Tollini. "
"We were in the same boat together, if that's what you mean."
"Same boat?"
Remo eased Wendy off the desk and into her chair. She looked up at him. He looked exactly like she pictured the real Frank Nitti would look. She wondered if he was an enforcer.
She decided not to ask. No point in setting him off.
"We're both IDC orphans," she said.
The man's eyebrows drew together in perplexity. He winced as if the act of thinking hurt. Definitely an enforcer, she decided.
"This is the south wing, where they dump us," Wendy added.
The man looked around. "Nice office."
"Sure, if you like sixty-watt bulbs and eating from a brown paper bag instead of the subsidized company cafeteria."
"Tsk-tsk. How terrible. But enough of your problems. I want to know everything there is to know about Tony Tollini. "
"He's missing."
"I know."
"The Mafia got him."
"I know that too. But what I don't know is why."
Wendy frowned. "You don't know why?"
"Would I be wasting my breath if I did?" asked the man, shooting his cuffs absently. She noticed his shirt sleeves were too long for his jacket. Typical hood. All he needed was a snap-brim fedora.
"Aren't you from Boston?" she asked.
"Hardly."
"New York, then?"
"I sorta kick around, actually."
Wendy's frown deepened. Maybe he wasn't a typical hood after all.
She decided to take a chance.
"Are you from the board?" she asked.
"No, but I'm getting bored. And I want some answers or I'll try to replace that wedge of apple with another." He hefted the chewed Granny Smith in one hand menacingly.
Normally Wendy Wilkerson would not be frightened by a mere apple, but inasmuch as she had nearly succumbed to a piece of one, she found herself suitably intimidated.
"Why don't I start at the beginning?" she said quickly.
"Go," said the man, taking a ferocious bite from the apple.
Wendy took a deep breath and plunged in. "They transferred me here from accounting. I had misplaced a decimal."
The man stopped chewing. "Aren't they kinda common? Like paper clips."
"In an electronic ledger," Wendy explained. "It meant our bottom line was worse than had been thought. They . . " She hesitated. Her voice sank to a whisper. "They actually had to terminate some people to cover the shortfall in projected revenue."
"You mean lay off?"
"Shhh! Don't say that word around here!"
"Why not?"
"International Data Corporation never-repeat, never-lays off employees," Wendy explained. "They may terminate for cause, attrit positions, or deploy into the out-of-IDC work force, but we do not lay people off. In so many words."
"If you've been tossed out on the street," asked Remo, "what's the difference?"
"Ask Tony Tollini-if he's still alive."
"Meaning?"
"The week after I got promoted to director of product placement, Tony was promoted to VP of systems outreach."
Wendy Wilkerson looked away as if ashamed. She swallowed hard while trying to compose herself.
"Yeah?" Remo prompted.
"He was promoted because as director of sales he had had to let some staff go. Unfortunately, he used the L word."
"L?"
"Lay," said Wendy, "off." She said it as if enunciating two disconnected words not having any remote coincidence in nature or commerce.
"He used that word in public," she went on, "in a press release. When the board heard about it, they promoted him to the south wing so fast he was still in shock when they were moving his personal effects in."
"Time out. You say he screwed up, but then they promoted him?"
"At IDC," said Wendy, "if you screw up, one of two things happens. You get shipped out of Mamaroneck, never to be heard of again, completely derailed from the fast track. Or they promote you to the south wing, which is like a second chance."
"Other than the weak light, how bad can it be?"
Wendy sighed, giving her red hair a toss. "It's hell. First, they give you a title that has no meaning and no concrete job description. Then they ignore you, all the while expecting you to produce for the firm. If you don't, it's like being buried alive, fast-track-wise."
"But you get paid, right?"
"There's more to life than money, I'll have you know," Wendy said tartly. "I lost my secured parking spot and my secretary. I have no perks. The other wings pretend I don't even exist. And worst of all, I've been director of product placement for almost six months and I have no idea what I should be doing. What is product placement, anyway? Do you know?"