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."