Dirty Work

32

Stone crossed the Harlem River Bridge, slowing down only for E-ZPass to let him through. He looked at his watch: He never would have believed he could have gotten to Manhattan this fast.

“What’s taking us so long?” Carpenter demanded.

“We’ve just broken the world record for a trip from Washington, Connecticut, to Manhattan,” Stone said, “and by half an hour.”

She sniffed. “So you say.”

Dino, the captain, and the deputy DA had been chatting uneasily for forty minutes, while Sol Kaminsky talked to his client. The two detectives walked into Dino’s office and placed the pistol, silencer, and ice pick on his desk.

“What?” Dino asked.

“No prints on any of these.”

“What about the ballistics test?”

“Two of the bullets were too deformed to get a match,” one of the detectives said, “but one of them was whole.”

“And?”

“No match. Not even close. This is not the piece that killed the diplomat.”

“Shit!” Dino said.

“But this is a very interesting pistol.”

“How so?”

“It has no manufacturer’s markings anywhere on it. We ran the ballistics against the FBI database, and it came up federal, probably CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, something like that.”

Dino looked up to see Stone and Carpenter coming into the outer office. “Here’s our Brit spy,” he said. “Now we’ll get somewhere.” Dino introduced the two to the captain.

“Hello, Stone,” George Mellon said, not offering his hand.

“Hi, George.” Stone had once beaten him in court in a very embarrassing way.

“Where is she?” Carpenter asked.

Sol Kaminsky walked into Dino’s office. “You and I can meet with my client now,” he said. “Come on.”

Everybody followed Kaminsky back to the interrogation room, and Dino went inside with him, while the others stood behind the one-way mirror.

Stone elbowed Carpenter. “Well, is that La Biche?”

“God,” Carpenter said, “she looks so different. I’m not sure I could swear to it.”

“Nothing like an eyewitness,” the deputy DA muttered.

“All right, Lieutenant Bacchetti,” Sol Kaminsky said, “my client has identified herself with her valid passport and answered your questions. What evidence do you have to connect her to any crime?”

Dino placed the pistol, silencer, and ice pick on the table without saying anything. He wanted to see her reaction.

Marie-Thérèse looked at her lawyer uncomprehendingly. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“The lieutenant, my dear, thinks these weapons belong to you,” Kaminsky said.

“I have never seen any of them,” she replied. “I have no need for weapons.”

Kaminsky turned to Dino. “What evidence do you have connecting these weapons to my client?”

“She put them in the toilet tank in the ladies’ room at Elaine’s,” Dino said with a sinking heart.

“How do you know this? Did you find her fingerprints on any of them?”

Dino gulped.

“Have you connected any of these weapons with any of the murders with a ballistic or other scientific test?”

“Not yet,” Dino temporized.

“Do you have any witnesses who can place Ms. du Bois at the scene of any crime?”

“I’ll be right back,” Dino said. He left the room and joined the others behind the one-way mirror. “What about it, Carpenter?”

Carpenter winced.

“She can’t make the ID,” Stone said.

George Mellon spoke. “This is not looking worth getting me out of bed for, Dino.”

“Just hang on a minute,” Dino said. “This woman is a professional assassin well known to the European authorities. Right, Carpenter? I can run her name against the Interpol database and find charges against her, can’t I?”

Carpenter looked at the floor. “No,” she said.

“No? And why the hell not?”

“She’s in our files, but we’ve never shared them with any law enforcement agency. We’d hoped to pick her up ourselves.”

Mellon spoke up again. “Am I to understand that there is no open charge against this woman anywhere in the world?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Carpenter replied.

“And there were no fingerprints on the weapons, and the ballistics test was negative?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Dino replied.

“Well, then, book her on a weapons charge until we’ve got something concrete.”

Nobody said anything.

Mellon looked at Dino. “Am I to understand that you can’t connect the woman with the weapons?”

“She was in the ladies’ room at Elaine’s. We found the weapons in the toilet tank immediately after she left,” Dino said defensively.

“But you can’t prove that she put them there,” Mellon said. “Fifty women a night use the ladies’ room, and any one of them could have deposited the weapons in the toilet tank at any time for months past, right?”

“Yes,” Dino replied.

Mellon looked at all of them. “Anybody have any charge I can hang on this woman, even to hold her? Did she resist arrest, maybe? Assault a police officer?”

Nobody said anything.

Mellon began putting on his coat. “Then I’m out of here. Cut her loose.” He walked out of the room.

Carpenter was on her cell phone. “Mason? La Biche is about to be released from the Nineteenth Precinct. Get a tail on her now.”

Dino turned to the two detectives. “Grab anybody you can find and get out front. When she leaves, don’t lose her. Keep her in sight until she gets to her hotel, then put two men in the hallway outside her room and tail her if she leaves the hotel.”

“I’m sorry, Dino,” Carpenter said.

Dino went back into the interrogation room. “Mr. Kaminsky, your client is free to go just as soon as I’ve photographed and fingerprinted her.”

“In your dreams,” Kaminsky replied. “My client is not under arrest and there is no probable cause to believe she has committed a crime. Good night, Lieutenant.”

Dino led them out of the interrogation room. “My apologies for the inconvenience, Ms. du Bois,” he said.

“Think nothing of it, Lieutenant,” she replied.

Dino watched them leave, then led Carpenter and Stone into his office. “All we can do is tail her and hope she tries to kill somebody else.”

“Probably me,” Carpenter said.

A detective knocked on the door. “Lieutenant, I need to log that pistol and the ice pick. You got them?”

“They’re on the table in Interrogation One,” Dino said.

“No, sir, they’re not.”

“Oh, shit,” Dino said.

Marie-Thérèse and Sol Kaminsky were riding down Second Avenue in a cab.

“You want me to drop you at your hotel?” Kaminsky asked.

“No, thank you, Mr. Kaminsky. I’ll be getting out before then.”

Their cab stopped at a traffic light. Marie-Thérèse looked out her window to find a large truck next to them. “Mr. Kaminsky, please get out of the cab,” she said, “and walk away.”

He looked at her. “In the middle of the street?”

“Yes, please.”

Kaminsky opened the left rear door and stepped out of the cab. As he did so, Marie-Thérèse handed the driver a twenty. “Keep your meter running until Thirty-fourth Street, and don’t pick up anybody,” she said. She opened her door as little as possible, fell out of the taxi onto the street, and began rolling her way under the truck. She had just cleared it when the light changed, and the truck drove away. She rolled under a parked car and waited.

A block behind her cab, a detective radioed the precinct. “Tell Bacchetti the lawyer got out of the cab at Seventy-seventh Street,” he said. “We’re still following.” The light changed, and he drove on down Second Avenue.

Marie-Thérèse waited for the next change of the traffic light before she rolled from under the parked car, dusted off her clothes, and disappeared into the night.