The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [49]
Stefanovitch was asked by Thomas to wait at the nurses’ station. Sarah and the warden then went down to a room at the end of the corridor.
A tensor reading light was the only illumination inside the infirmary room. Nicky Wilson was seated in a cone of light streaming from the lamp.
“The chest pains are real,” he said when he saw Sarah standing in the doorway.
“No pain, no gain.” Her smile was slightly forced.
“I’ll be right outside,” Warden Thomas said. He glanced at Sarah, then walked away, though only a few yards down the corridor.
“Who have you talked to about our meeting?” Wilson immediately asked her. He turned the tensor light away, and his face dropped into shadows.
“The police commissioner knows. The governor’s office.” Sarah sat in the only chair inside the tiny room.
“Don’t talk to anyone else.”
Sarah nodded. She wasn’t going to argue with Nicky Wilson about anything right now.
“You’ll understand why by the time I finish talking. Maybe you’ll understand more than you want to. You might even know why I finally decided to talk to you instead of somebody else.” It was the second time Wilson had alluded specifically to her coming to the prison.
For the next forty-five minutes, she listened to Wilson talk. And Nicky Wilson was absolutely right, part of her wished that she wasn’t hearing any of what the powerful underboss had to tell her.
“I am on the periphery of a group that makes up the most influential crime syndicate in the world. I don’t kid myself about that; I’m on the outside looking in. I work for them. This syndicate is sometimes called the Midnight Club,” Nicky Wilson said.
“It’s called Midnight because their meetings are always very secretive and held late at night. After midnight. The members are mostly unknown to the public, even to the underbosses. These are very private individuals. Some of the old-line bosses like their women, sometimes a little gambling, and they demand that kind of action at the meetings.
“Somehow it all works. For the past ten years, this syndicate has been responsible for running the major organized crime activity around the world. I mean the crime that is organized, not the small stuff, the wise-guy operations on the street.
“The syndicate has settled disputes and arbitrated between groups from different countries. It’s made decisions about who should get a piece of the action, particularly as the Third World is divided up. That alone could have caused gang wars all through the late nineteen seventies. It didn’t. The syndicate is the reason why.
“The profit—not the earnings—the profit per year is in the area of sixty-five billion dollars. The number has been rising steadily for the past ten years. If you think about how the world really works, about that much money at stake, you begin to understand the power of the syndicate. You also understand the paranoia operating right now. Some kind of a coup has been set in motion. A major coup that none of them understands.
“An emergency meeting was called during the past day or two. Word went out everywhere around the world. They want to talk about the killings. They’re conducting their own investigation. They’re using police departments around the world to investigate for them. You understand what I’m saying?”
Sarah understood, at least she thought that she did. Wilson was telling her that the syndicate had the full use of certain police forces, maybe even of governments. How was that possible, though?
“I can tell you where the emergency meeting will take place. I know the location. I can lead you to them. I’m willing to give you that, but you have to give me something in return. You have to get me out of here. Because they won’t. They’ve refused me.”
Sarah stared back at Nicky Wilson. Neither of them spoke for several seconds. She finally told him that she could do what she’d promised at their first meeting. She could get him out of Danbury; she had assurances that this would happen. He just had to tell her everything he knew about the Midnight Club.
47
Stefanovitch; Atlantic City, New Jersey