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the other, she said, “Way to go, Tommy Boy. I’ve been following you for three days on the TV.” Shifting her eyes to Elaina, a wide smile still on her face, she said, “Both of you looked beautiful in Stockholm, and at the airport.”
    Pumping my hand now with his free one, Manny added, “You sure did. And let me tell you, both you guys really gave it to dem reporters at the airport. You told ‘em like it is. Man … everybody is so proud of you.”
    A few minutes later, Manny helped us schlep our suitcases up the five flights. Then, at long last, we were finally alone.
    The first thing I did was go to the refrigerator for a glass of cold water. When I opened the insulated door, and saw what was inside, my heart suddenly felt like it was too large for my chest. It raced and it caromed off my ribs like a crazed elephant in a phone booth. Hot adrenaline seared every vein and capillary in my body. Immediately, a shroud of unfathomable dark doom took hold of my psyche, and I knew then and there it would never let go. In the course of one second I had entered a new world—an eerie, ominous, dark place that nobody should ever have to inhabit.
    Heaped in front of me, on a glass shelf, were eight dead kittens. All of them with their throats slit. A note scrawled in their blood lay on top of them. It said, “You’ve only got one life left, Soles. If you want to keep it, stop the presses.”
    I reached in and felt one of the kittens. It was still warm.
    Then there was a scream, Elaina’s scream.
    With my history of high blood pressure, I thought for sure my heart would implode. Totally submersed in fear, that previous sense of doom now insignificant, I rushed toward the bedroom in a state of unmitigated confusion. I was living out a macabre dream, so horrifying, so chaotic, it dizzied me.
     
    I burst through the living room, up the short hallway, and swerved left into the bedroom. Once inside, I stopped short as if I’d hit a tempered glass wall. I stumbled two quick steps back as if I’d bounced off it. Elaina was hysterical. Hands over her eyes, her drooping head shaking a long procession of no’s all she kept saying was, “Oh God, oh god, oh god, oh god…”
    Strewn before us, on our bed, were thirteen blood-soaked copies of Enough is Enough . Every last page had been ripped out of them and scattered around the room. They were all over the carpeted floor, on the bureau, the dresser, and the night stands. Blood was all over everything. As if it had been sprayed with a water gun or a similar device, it dripped red on the walls, pictures, closet doors, window, and ceiling.
     
     

 
     
    Chapter 5
     
     
     
    For the next five days and nights, Elaina and I stayed at a hotel near LaGuardia Airport. Naturally, the detectives from the 109 th precinct cordoned off our apartment and declared it a crime scene. They fine-combed every inch of it, as well as the building’s common areas. They also checked out the street where the black SUV had parked, and questioned most of the neighbors, including the children who’d been playing out front. But they didn’t find a single clue. Of course, they contacted the DMV, but with more than 6,000 black Lincoln Navigators in the city, there wasn’t much to go on. Whoever committed this abominable crime knew exactly what they were doing. What concerned me most at this point was what they might do next.
    Holed up in that hotel the way we were, Elaina and I felt like two hunted fugitives on the verge of being gunned down. Other than picking up our meals in the downstairs restaurant, we didn’t step out of our room once. As for sleeping, one can only imagine how difficult that was. Take it from me; it’s not easy when there’s a steady stream of fear and heinous thoughts charging in and out of your mind. Occasionally, we’d hear a late-night cough, voice, or noise in the adjoining rooms or out in the hallway. Every time we did, we’d jolt upright in the bed. Horrible as the whole