Hit List

43

Dinner passed quickly, with much conversation about everything but the matter hanging over them all. Then, Dino’s phone rang, and everyone got quiet.

“Bacchetti. Be right there.” Dino rose. “Please excuse me, one of my guys wants to see me at the door.” He left the room, and took the conviviality with him. Everybody just sat.

Dino came back and sat down. “A search team took Frances’s handbag apart and came up with these.” He placed a large, zippered plastic bag on the table.

“I see a passport and a wallet,” Stone said.

Dino held up a key on a chain. “You missed this,” he said. “It’s an apartment key — two keys, in fact, and we believe her driver’s license may have the correct address on it.”

“Have they searched the apartment yet?”

Dino shook his head. “I think somebody saw that as a gift to me.”

“Then let’s go,” Stone said. He and Eagle stood up; the women seemed to think they weren’t invited.

“Ed,” Dino said, “are you armed?”

“Courtesy of Stone,” Eagle said.

“Leave it here. I can’t go around the city with an out-of-stater who’s packing.”

Eagle thought about that.

“She’s not going to shoot you,” Dino said. “She’s dead.”

“Ah,” Eagle said and placed Stone’s pistol on the table.

“We’ll take my car,” Dino said. “It’s in Stone’s garage.”

They went down and got into the big SUV.

“May I see her wallet, please, Dino?”

“Sure,” Dino said, tossing it to him from the front seat. Keep everything in exactly the same order it’s in.” He gave the driver an address on East Sixty-sixth Street, and they pulled onto the street.

Stone switched on the overhead light and went carefully through each section of the wallet. There was everything a normal person would carry — driver’s license, a health insurance card, three credit cards, a Bloomingdale’s charge card. The last thing uncovered was a piece of paper, folded and pressed very flat from being stuffed into the wallet. “Listen to this,” Stone said, holding up a sheet of stationery.

“There’s an address and phone number in Ames, Iowa,” Stone said, then he read on.

“It’s signed and notarized,” Stone said. “I think Frances understood that, if she stuck with Larkin, bad things might happen to her.”

“The hospital would certainly like to see that insurance card,” Dino said. “She was admitted an indigent.”

Stone returned everything to its original place in the wallet and handed it back to Dino. “Frances said Larkin liked the Upper East Side,” Stone said. “Dino, did any of your people talk to that real estate agent who had rented to him?”

“Yeah, and she’s promised to call us if she hears from him.”

They pulled up in front of the address Dino had given his driver.

“Everybody sit still for a minute, while I have a look around,” Dino said. He got out of the car and strolled up one side of the street and down the other, looking at everything, then he got back in. “Okay, here’s how it looks. It’s a building of only three stories, plus a basement, where there’s a light on — probably the super. The two upper floors are dark, as we might expect, since the lessee is deceased and her boyfriend is on the run.

“Dan,” Dino said to his driver. “You and one of the guys in the tail car talk to the super. Let him know that we’re in the building, and we don’t want to be disturbed, and find out everything he knows about Larkin and Frances.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ed, Stone, let’s go climb some stairs.” They got out of the big SUV, went to the front door, and Dino opened it with one of the two keys on the chain. The lights on the stairway came on automatically, and Dino led the way up the steps. At the second floor, he used the other key to open the door. He felt for a light switch and found one. It turned on three lamps in the room. An interior staircase led up to another floor.

“Well,” Dino said, “this is all living room. Let’s turn it over very carefully. I don’t want my people to be greeted with a mess when they show up.” He went to a desk on one side of the room, switched on the computer that sat on it, and while it booted up, began opening drawers.

Ed just walked around the room slowly, looking at things, while Stone walked to the rear windows and looked out to the rear of the house. It was well lit by a bright moon. “There’s a fire escape,” Stone said, “going up to the top floor and leading down to a nicely planted garden. Shall I go out there and look around?”

“Let’s finish in here, first,” Dino said. “And we’ll have a look at the top floor, then we’ll go outside.”

Stone was looking out one of the two windows; he withdrew and walked to the other window, where a table with a lamp sat. He pulled the table out of the way and was about to walk around it to the window, when the glass exploded inward and noise filled the room. “Shotgun!” he yelled. “Hit the deck!”

Everybody did before the second shot was fired, then there was the noise of feet ringing on the steel fire escape, then nothing. A moment later, what sounded like a garden gate slammed.

Dino sat up and reached for his handheld radio. “Shots fired!” He said into it, “Nobody’s down. Assailant went down a rear fire escape and left through a garden gate. Flood a three-block area with uniforms, and proceed with caution. He has a shotgun, at the very least.” He got to his feet. “Everybody okay?”

“I’m fine,” Stone said.

“I’m not,” Eagle replied. He was sitting up and holding his left shoulder with his right hand. “I caught a couple of pellets, I think.”

Stone and Dino helped him to his feet, sat him down in a chair, and pulled his jacket off his shoulders.

“You caught three pellets,” Stone said, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, rolling it, making a tourniquet and applying it to Eagle’s arm. “Hold that,” he said. “And once in a while, let it bleed a little. We’ll get you to Lenox Hill Hospital and get you patched up.”

There were many feet on the stairs now, and policemen flooded into the room.

“Stone,” Dino said, “you take the car and drive up to Lenox Hill. I’ll stay here and go through the place with my people.

“Right,” Stone said, taking Eagle’s good arm as they walked out.

“No need to steer me,” Eagle said. “I’m okay.” Then he collapsed onto his knees.

“Just a little shock,” Stone said. “Let’s try again.”