Kill Me If You Can

Chapter 24

NATHANIEL PRINCE SAT on his bed, his eyes fixed on the cordless phone beside him.

“You can’t make it ring by staring at it,” Natalia said.

“Chukov should have called hours ago,” Prince said.

“Then call him.”

“It’s not my job to follow that incompetent prick around with a broom and a dustpan,” Prince said. “Chukov is the underling. He’s the one who should be calling me.”

Natalia looked at her watch. “It’s getting late. Pretty soon he’ll be too drunk to dial.”

Prince couldn’t argue with the logic. He picked up the phone and pushed a single button. Chukov didn’t answer until the fourth ring.

“Nathaniel, I was just going to call you,” Chukov said. “I have good news. We zeroed in on the guy who has our diamonds.”

“It’s about time,” Prince said.

“I e-mailed you his picture.”

“His picture? I want his head delivered to my front door with his balls stuffed in his mouth,” Prince screamed. “Who is he?”

“He’s just some asshole kid who was at the right place at the right time. Zelvas stashed the diamonds in a locker at Grand Central. This guy found them and took off.”

“You told me the diamonds were in Zelvas’s safe,” Prince said. “Why did he move them to a locker in a train station?”

Because Natalia knew the combination, and Zelvas didn’t trust a whore who would bed down with her own father, Chukov thought.

“I don’t know, Nathaniel,” he said.

“What do we know about the guy who has the diamonds? What’s his name?”

“We don’t know his name yet,” Chukov said, “but he probably either works at Grand Central or is a regular commuter. Somebody has to know who he is. We definitely will find him.”

“Who’s we? ”

“Me, Rice, Benzetti, and the Ghost,” Chukov said.

“Not enough,” Prince said. “I want more people on it.”

“I have a dozen of my men…”

Prince cut Chukov off before he could finish. “I don’t want foot soldiers. I want a professional. A hunter. A killer.”

“The Ghost is a professional…”

“He’s one man,” Prince said. “The Syndicate is going to blame me for the missing diamonds. I don’t care how good this Ghost guy is. He can’t be everywhere. I need insurance, backup. Somebody smart. Somebody we’ve worked with before. What about the German?”

“Krall?”

“That’s the one.”

“I don’t know,” Chukov said. “These killers for hire are like prima donnas. They don’t like to be in competition with someone else. They want an exclusive contract.”

“I don’t care what they want,” Prince said. “They’re mercenaries. I pay, I make the rules. I want you to find the bastard who took my diamonds, and I want his fingers chopped off, one by one. And if Krall doesn’t want to do it, find somebody who will.”

Prince hung up the phone and went to his computer. He printed out the picture of the man who had stolen his millions. He showed it to Natalia. “You know this muzhik? ” he asked.

She studied the picture. “I’d definitely remember him if I saw him. He’s cute,” she said, toying with Prince.

“He won’t be so cute when I’m finished with him.”

“Don’t be jealous,” she said. “I think you’re cuter.” She dropped the picture to the floor and kissed him lightly on the mouth, letting her lips linger.

He kissed her in return. Not so lightly.

She unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, button by button.

He unbuttoned her black silk blouse the same way. Then he cupped her breasts.

It was a ritual they had performed many times before. Undressing one another slowly, tantalizing and teasing each other. But this time Nathaniel couldn’t wait.

He pulled down her slacks, then her panties and got behind Natalia as she leaned forward over his heavy oak desk. He dropped his trousers, planted his hands on her ass, angled her into position, and entered her.

It had been twenty years since the taxi mowed down his wife and son and left his little girl for dead. They had forged a bond since that tragedy. And as Natalia grew into a beautiful girl, the bond became a physical and emotional union, a fierce, unstoppable love that had erupted the summer she was seventeen. For the next decade their love had flourished without guilt, without regret, and without shame. If it was forbidden and wrong, then so be it. It was their lives, their choice to make.

It was a give-and-take relationship, but tonight Nathaniel Prince needed to take more than he could give. His body was racing to climax and he couldn’t wait for Natalia. He came violently, repeatedly, panting, exhaling her name like a prayer.

She called out to him in Russian — just as she had called out to him every day and every night as he sat by her in the hospital, watching her fight for her life.

“Papa, Papa.”

Chapter 25

MARTA KRALL WAS as beautiful as she was intelligent, as intelligent as she was deadly. She was nearly six feet tall, with white-blond hair, a former model who could make a man’s heart beat faster just by walking into a room. But for the right amount of money she could make a man’s heart stop. Permanently.

Chukov had tracked Krall down in Los Angeles. Eight hours later, she entered his apartment, wearing Marc Jacobs pleated black leather jodhpurs and a Derek Lam dark gray cashmere cowl-neck sweater. Her hair was cropped close to her face, framing perfect features and flawless skin that most men and many women longed to touch.

She sat down and stared at Chukov.

An ice sculpture, he thought. Cold to the very core. The perfect killer.

“I read in the New York Times that Walter Zelvas was found dead in the Grand Central fiasco,” she said.

“Yes,” Chukov said. “He decided to take early retirement.”

“You should have called me,” she said. “Then his retirement party might not have been front-page news.”

“It was a rush job. He was planning to leave town.”

“More likely he was planning to leave the hemisphere,” Krall said. “Why was he running?”

“He was stealing from the Syndicate, and we found out about it.”

“I see. And since you’re in the diamond business, I’m guessing he wasn’t pilfering office supplies.”

“Very observant,” Chukov said. “And now I want to recover everything he stole.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said. “I don’t do lost and found. Call me when you have something more challenging and interesting. Wet work is best for me.”

“Here,” Chukov said, handing her a photo of a preppy-looking young man standing next to a locker. “Get this guy as wet as you want.”

Marta studied the picture. “Sexy guy,” she said. “I almost hate to kill him. Not really, but a little. I’d prefer to play with him first, though.”

“Just find out what he did with my diamonds. Can you do that?”

“With one hand tied behind my back,” she said, staring at the Russian with sea-green eyes. “And both hands tied behind his.”

They negotiated her price, a high one.

“One question,” Marta said. “Who am I in competition with? And if you lie to me, I’ll know it, and I’ll be on the first flight back to L.A. Or Hamburg.”

“It’s not a competition,” Chukov said. “I got two local dickhead cops who work for me, and one professional.”

“Who?”

“The Ghost.”

Marta kept her icy exterior, but inside she was roiling. She had never met the Ghost, but she despised him. People talked about him like he was a god.

“The Ghost,” she said casually. “I’ve heard he’s pretty good.”

Chukov laughed. “Pretty good? They say he’s the only assassin who will go to heaven. Satan would be too nervous having him around.”

“If he’s so good, why do you need me?”

“Because my boss wants a backup.”

She stood up. “I’m nobody’s backup. Get somebody else to suck hind tit.”

Chukov knew he’d handled her wrong. He watched as she headed toward the door. Prince would kill him if he lost her.

“Wait,” he said. “Forget about what my boss wants. I want you because I think the Ghost might know more about the missing diamonds than he lets on, and I’ll pay you double if you’ll do me the honor of killing him.”

Krall looked surprised. Nothing would make her happier than to eliminate the Ghost. And now someone was willing to pay her to do it.

She reached out and shook Chukov’s hand. “I accept.”

Chukov had surprised himself by his impulsiveness. But then he lowered his eyes to his chest. He could still see the red dot boring into his skin, into his flesh, trying to tear a hole in his dignity.

He had no regrets about his sudden decision. The Ghost must die.

Vadim Chukov bows to no man.

Chapter 26

MARTA KRALL TOOK a cab to 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue and bought a turkey, avocado, and bacon sandwich at the ’wichcraft kiosk in Bryant Park. She found a quiet table under a London plane tree in the northern promenade and called Etienne Gravois in France.

He wasn’t happy to hear from her. He never was. Marta had saved Etienne’s life, and he had been paying for it ever since.

Etienne was a compulsive gambler who made the mistake of borrowing twenty thousand euros from an Algerian drug dealer and failing to pay it back. Marta was hired to kill him. Instead, she paid off his debt. Etienne was much more valuable to her alive. He worked in computer records for Interpol.

“Bonjour, Etienne,” Marta said. “I e-mailed you a photo of a young man.”

“I’ve left the office for the evening,” he said.

“Then go back.”

“I’m meeting my wife for dinner. It’s her birthday.”

“Please give her my best. And tell her that in a few days I, too, will be meeting her. Only by then she’ll be your widow.”

“I’ll go back to the office.”

“The photo was taken at Grand Central Terminal in New York City a few days ago,” she said. “I want to know who the man is and where to find him.”

“Do you know anything about this man?”

“No. That’s your job, Monsieur Gravois. You sold your worthless soul to the devil. Now go back to your computer and get the devil what she wants.”

“Yes.”

She gave him a phone number. “How long?”

“If he has a criminal record, maybe two hours. If I have to dig deeper, a little longer.”

“Don’t waste time. I need it now.”

“I understand.”

“One more question, Etienne. Do you have anything new on the Ghost?”

“No.” He laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just that half the police agencies around the world are looking for the Ghost. Now you, too.”

“Well, if you get anything on him, I hope you don’t make the mistake of calling any of them first. Comprenez-vous, Etienne?”

“Oui.”

She hung up.

Marta Krall rarely smiled. All those years of posing for fashion photographers had drained the joy from her. Her eyes were cold and malevolent-looking. Her face could not hide the evil in her heart.

But that was before Chukov hired her to kill the Ghost. She opened her bag and took out a pocket mirror.

Just as she suspected. She was smiling now.

Chapter 27

MARTA WAS CONFIDENT that Gravois would identify the handsome guy in the photo. His life depended on it. As for tracking down the Ghost, she had a better resource. And he was right here in New York City: Ira.

She took a cab down to lower Manhattan and got off on Canal Street, where the air was thick with the fumes of the hundreds of trucks and a few scattered cars that crawled their way into the Holland Tunnel heading for Jersey.

She walked from Canal to Laight, then along West to Watts, and finally, positive that no one was tailing her, past the sprawling UPS truck garage to a soot-gray brick building on Washington Street.

The building was a little piece of old New York gone to seed. Six stories; six doorbells. She pushed the only one that had a name on it — ACME INDUSTRIES.

A voice answered. “Sorry, we’re closed.”

“I’m told that you’re open late for your premier customers,” Marta said.

The voice came back. “What level premier customer?”

“Titanium.”

She was buzzed in. She walked past the elevator and took the stairs. On the second-floor landing she saw a rat gnawing on a moldy bagel. He didn’t move, just glared at her and bared his teeth until she passed.

Ira’s door was on the fourth floor. Another buzzer and she was inside the loft. It was three thousand square feet, every inch of which was covered. There were rows of mismatched tables holding electronic equipment, and a kitchen area where Marta could see two more rats scavenging on a countertop. There was a bed littered with food containers, beer cans, and porn magazines. Stacks of computer manuals piled waist-high were parked next to an overflowing garbage can.

A path wide enough for a wheelchair wound its way through the chaos. The man in the chair was somewhere between thirty and fifty, grossly overweight, and seemingly uninterested in personal hygiene. He had an open bag of Cool Ranch Doritos on his lap and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi on the computer stand next to him.

“I’m Ira,” he said. “Sorry if I smell a little gamey. We don’t get many social calls, and getting in and out of the tub is a bitch.”

“No problem,” Marta said. “I’m Giselle.”

“Who sent you, Giselle?”

“A friend.”

“My best reference,” Ira said. “If I ever meet this Mr. A. Friend, I’d love to buy him a beer. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a husband who can’t keep his dick in his pants, but if you can’t get in and out of a tub, I doubt you can do anything for me. My problem requires someone with a lot more muscle.”

“We have a division of labor at Acme Industries,” Ira said. “Brains and brawn. I’m brains.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Ira,” Marta said, “but I already have brains. What I’m looking for is someone strong enough to toss a hundred and ten pounds of shit off a roof.”

“I’m guessing the husband with the wandering dick weighs more than one ten,” Ira said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a hard-bodied little mistress about that size.”

“Well, I was surprised, Ira. And now I’m going to surprise them. Yes or no, is this something you know how to handle?”

“Absolutely. Do you want your husband roughed up as well?”

Marta laughed. “I could rough the dumb bastard up. I could also bash his head in with a cast-iron skillet when he’s sleeping. But I’d rather see the look on his face when he finds out that his little office-manager — slash-whore did a swan dive off a building.”

“No problem. I have several candidates who can handle the job.”

“I don’t want several. I want one. The best man you have.”

“I can give you second best,” Ira said. “But my number-one man doesn’t do matrimonial.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“He gets top dollar for hunting down hard-core dirtbags. He doesn’t believe in killing some pretty little thing just because she’s banging your old man.”

“A killer with a conscience. How noble. What’s his name — Don Quixote?”

“They call him the Ghost.”

“And you’re sure he’s good?” Marta said.

“Nobody better.”

“Excellent,” Marta said. “He sounds like just the man I’ve been looking for.”

Chapter 28

“I think I would really like to meet this Ghost fellow,” Marta said. “Tell me about him.”

Ira stroked the stubble-covered rolls of fat that were his chins. “Let’s see, what can I tell you about the Ghost?” he said. “He likes candlelit dinners, long walks on the beach, outdoor concerts at Tanglewood, and doing the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in bed with a smart, sensuous woman. Someone like you, Giselle.”

He shoved a handful of Doritos in his mouth.

Marta stiffened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“C’mon, Marta, do you think I’m stupid?” Ira said, Cool Ranch crumbs blowing out of his mouth. “I have a database of millions of voiceprints, and I have yours from half a dozen phone calls. Somebody buzzes me from downstairs, I check the voice for a match. I’m flattered you would visit. My clients usually come here, but my operatives almost never come to the office. It’s dull as hell around here on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. What do you want with the Ghost?”

“We’re working on the same job.”

“What job?” Ira said. “Zelvas is dead. Finished.”

“Not finished,” Marta said. “The diamonds that Zelvas stole from the Syndicate got stolen from him.”

“I know,” Ira said. “Chukov sent me a picture of some guy nabbing the stones out of a locker. I passed it along to the Ghost. You want a copy of that?”

“I have it. Chukov hired me as backup. Sorry about trying to con you, but since the Ghost and I are on the same side, I thought you could connect us.”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he said. “He contacts me. But it’s a pleasure to meet you in person. Forgive me if I don’t stand up.”

“Did you ever meet the Ghost in person?” Marta asked.

“No, ma’am. He’s got a policy. Nobody gets to see him. That way, nobody knows what he looks like.”

She unsnapped the clasp on her black leather Bottega Veneta shoulder bag and removed her Glock 38 semiautomatic. The light.45-caliber pistol fit comfortably in her hand, and its ten-round magazine gave her a soul-satisfying feeling of power.

“Funny thing,” she said, pointing the gun squarely at Ira’s sagging chest. “I have the same policy.”

He stared at her, much less afraid than she expected. “Oh, come on, Marta. Do you really think I’d rat you out?”

“Would you?”

“Never. How do you think I’ve been able to do this all these years? I keep secrets. Yours, his, everybody’s.”

“I believe that,” she said. “But I also believe that you might part with a few of his secrets if I let you live.”

“You call this living?” he said, spitting out a bitter laugh. “Eating, drinking, and jerking off in this shit hole — that’s not a life. The only thing that keeps me from slitting my own throat is the danger. Working with assassins, executioners, butchers. I’m a conduit to the death squad. That’s my life. You want to put me out of my misery? Go ahead. You’re not the first one to pull a gun on me.”

“Maybe not. But I’m the first one who will pull the trigger.”

She pressed the muzzle of the gun hard against his sternum.

“It might be an ugly life, Ira,” she said, “but it’s the only one you’ve got. Do you want to live?”

The bravado drained from his face. “Yes,” he said. “Given the choice…”

“You hear anything—anything—that will lead me to the Ghost, you call me.”

She handed him a card with a cell number on it.

“I’ll call,” he said. “I swear.” His body began to shake, and the bag of chips fell from his lap and spilled on the floor.

“Careful,” Marta said, lowering the gun. “You don’t want to mess up the place.”

Chapter 29

I THOUGHT THAT what I was about to do would blow Katherine’s mind. At least I hoped it would. I dialed her cell number.

“What’s up?” she said. Two words, but just hearing her voice got me going. We were still at that stage in our relationship, and I hoped it wouldn’t end.

“It’s payback time,” I told her. “You had a surprise for me. Now I have one for you.”

“Cool. What is it?”

“What it is,” I said, “is a surprise…as in I’m not telling you anything over the phone.”

“Can you at least give me a hint?”

I was sitting on my bed with Walter Zelvas’s medical bag at my side. I ran my fingers over the pebble-grain leather.

“Okay, one hint,” I said. “It sparkles.”

“Sparkling surprises are my favorite,” she said. “When do I get to see it?”

“Immediately, if possible. Where are you?”

“I’m just wrapping up at the Whitney. I need about a half hour.”

“I’ll meet you at the Amity and buy you lunch,” I said.

“Deal. Love you,” she said.

“You’re going to love me even more when you see this surprise,” I said, hanging up before she could ask for another hint.

Five minutes later, I was on the subway headed uptown on the number 6 local. I sat next to an elderly woman who took one look at my medical bag and told me how wonderful it was that there were still doctors who made house calls.

At 42nd Street I switched to the express, got off at 86th Street, and walked to the New Amity diner at 84th and Madison. I opened the door and immediately felt like a rock star.

“Mottchew,” Gus called from the back of the diner. “Mottchew Bannon. Good to see you, my friend.”

The owner, Steve, two other waiters, and the short-order cook behind the grill all gave me a big welcome.

As Greek diners go, this one is the absolute best. The food is good, the prices are affordable, and the service is fantastic. Gus was about sixty, with thinning silver hair, a ready smile, and an endearing accent. He was from Greece, or as he called it, Grrrriss. I didn’t know much about him, but I got the feeling he’d had quite an interesting life in the old country.

He pointed to a booth, and even before my butt hit the vinyl, he delivered my usual mug of half-regular, half-decaf coffee and a small pitcher of skim milk.

“Long time ago, I had one like this,” he said, eyeing my medical bag.

“Were you a doctor back in Athens?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You have a doctor bag. Are you a doctor?” he said, avoiding my question and adding to the mystery of his past. “Is the pretty lady coming today?”

“The lady is here,” Katherine said as she breezed in and plopped down on the other side of the booth. “She’s not feeling pretty, but she’s definitely thirsty.”

Gus brought Katherine her usual: a large glass of water, no ice, slice of lemon, and a straw. We ordered sandwiches — one turkey and tomato, one tuna melt — to be split in the kitchen so we could share.

“So, what’s the occasion?” she said. “What did I do to deserve a surprise?”

“It’s just my little way of thanking you for giving me an A for the semester.”

“I haven’t posted the grades yet, so your surprise sounds more like a bribe,” she said. “And Katherine Sanborne does not accept bribes.”

She took a long sip of her water. “But in your case, I’ll make an exception. Don’t keep me in suspense any longer. Where is it?”

I put the medical bag on top of the table.

“That’s it?” she said.

“You look disappointed,” I said.

“You said the surprise sparkles, so I was expecting one of those little robin’s-egg-blue boxes from Tiffany’s,” she said.

“Who knows?” I said. “Maybe Tiffany’s changed their packaging.”

“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” she said.

She unclasped the brass latch and opened the bag.

I held my breath.

Chapter 30

KATHERINE REACHED IN and pulled out a bundle of postcards that I had tied with a red ribbon.

“The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame Cathedral,” she said as she thumbed through the cards. “I’m beginning to sense a theme here.”

“There’s more,” I said. “Keep going.”

She took out a bottle of wine.

“Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau,” she said. “Is this what sparkles?”

“No. It’s flat and cheap. On sale for seven bucks,” I said. “I spared no expense.”

“This is fun,” she said. “Like a treasure hunt.”

She reached in and took out two baguettes and a wedge of Brie. “Are we going on a picnic?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Where?”

“Keep digging,” I said.

She reached in and pulled out two e-tickets that I had printed from my computer an hour before.

And then she shrieked. “Paris? We’re going to Paris?”

She looked around and realized that half the people in the diner were watching us. “We’re going to Paris,” she said, in case any of them hadn’t heard her the first time.

Several people applauded.

“I don’t know what to pack,” she said. “When are we going?”

I pointed at the e-ticket.

She looked at it and shrieked again. “Tonight? Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” I said. “About you.”

“I can’t go tonight.”

“Sure you can,” I said. “We’ll travel light and buy what we need along the way. People who buy cheap last-minute tickets on the Internet are usually poor and flexible. I figure we qualify as both.”

She was dumbfounded and over the moon at the same time. “I only have eight hours to get ready. I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Two middle-aged women were sitting at a table across from us. One of them leaned over and said, “Honey, if you don’t go to Paris with this gorgeous guy, I will.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Katherine said. “This is the most fantastic, most romantic, most extravagant gift I’ve ever gotten.”

Gus arrived with our lunch and took a look at the wine, the cheese, and the French bread. “That looks better than a tuna melt,” he said. “You want I should wrap up these sandwiches to go? You can have them for lunch tomorrow.”

“No can do, Gus,” I said. “Tomorrow the two of us are having lunch in the City of Light. I hear it really sparkles.”

Chapter 31

RICE AND BENZETTI tracked down the cabbie who picked up Bagboy, their code name for the young guy with the bag full of diamonds.

“You remember this guy?” Rice asked, showing the driver the surveillance photo.

“No. Should I?”

“You had him in your cab the night of the bomb blast at Grand Central.”

He took a second look at the picture. “Oh, yeah, I remember. Crazy night. I picked up a fare who wanted to go to Jersey. This dude tagged along for the ride.”

“Where in Jersey did you take him?” Benzetti asked.

“He didn’t go the whole way. He’s a doc. I dropped him at St. Vincent’s Hospital downtown. And it was a free ride. No charge. Them kind of nights bring out the Good Samaritan in me.”

“Yeah, you got philanthropist written all over your face,” Benzetti said.

The two cops spent the next few hours hitting the shops, restaurants, and ticket windows at Grand Central, hoping to find someone who could ID Bagboy.

Whoever he was, he wasn’t a regular. Nobody recognized him.

“Let’s talk to the uniform who pulled the gun on him,” Benzetti said.

“His name’s Ruben Kendall,” Rice said. “He’s over at the Seventeenth.”

“I don’t want to make a house call,” Benzetti said. “Too many people know us there and will ask why we’re nosing around. See if you can get him to meet us on the outside.”

Rice called the Seventeenth Precinct and got Kendall on the phone.

“Officer Kendall, this is Detective John Rice. Nice job the other night at Grand Central.”

“Um, thanks. What can I do for you?”

“I’m trying to wrap up some paperwork on that whole bomb thing,” Rice said. “Got time for a few quick questions?”

“Sure. Come on over to the precinct.”

“If my partner and I set foot inside the Seventeenth, we’ll run into at least a dozen guys who will want to catch up and schmooze about the old days,” Rice said, faking a chuckle. “Would you mind popping outside? We’re in a black Chevy Tahoe around the corner at Fiftieth and Third.”

“No problem. I’ll be right there.”

At six four, two hundred and forty pounds, Officer Ruben Kendall was an intimidating presence. But his baby face and warm brown eyes transformed the tiger into a pussycat.

The two detectives got out of their car and introduced themselves. Rice handed him the surveillance photo. “You recognize this guy?”

The cop took a quick look. “That’s the doc from the other night at Grand Central.”

Benzetti jumped in. “How’d you know he was a doc?”

Kendall hesitated. He knew a loaded question when he heard one.

“He…he told me,” Kendall said.

“He told you?” Benzetti said.

Kendall put a hand across his eyes and slid it down his face. “I never got around to checking his ID. It was a madhouse. It was like nothing they teach you at the Academy.”

“I went to the Academy,” Benzetti said, “and I distinctly remember being told, if you see a guy standing over a dead body, check his ID.”

“Hey, man, people were insane, trying to get out of the station, and then I got a ten-thirteen call,” Kendall said. “‘Multiple looters. Officer needs assistance.’ This guy wasn’t a threat. I took off.”

“Listen, kid, nobody expects you to check IDs during a terrorist attack,” Rice said, putting a hand on Kendall’s shoulder and oozing Good Cop from every pore. “So the guy said he was a doc. What else can you tell us about him?”

The cop pulled a pad from his pocket. “I remember he said he worked at St. Vincent’s,” Kendall said as he flipped through the pages. “He gave me his name and I wrote it — here it is. Jason Wood. Dr. Jason Wood. Does that help?”

“If it’s his real name, it’ll make our job easier,” Rice said.

“And if it’s a phony, what happens to me?”

“Meter-maid patrol,” Benzetti said.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Rice said. “He goes by the book, but we all make mistakes.”

“Is he going to write me up?”

“I’m not going to let him,” Rice said. “Nick, listen to me. We’re not turning this kid in. You made plenty of mistakes when you were a rookie.”

Benzetti shrugged. “Fine. But I don’t want to get nailed for not turning him in. So this conversation never happened. You never even met us. You got that, kid?”

“Yes, sir. It never happened. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“Get out of here.”

Kendall turned fast and headed back to the precinct house.

“Dumb bastard,” Benzetti said. “Call St. Vincent’s.”

“Why bother? Fifty bucks says they never heard of Dr. Jason Wood.”

“I wouldn’t bet fifty cents on it,” Benzetti said. “But you might as well go through the motions.”

They got back in the car, and Rice called the hospital. Two minutes later he hung up. “Never heard of him,” he said. “Now what do we do?”

Benzetti didn’t answer. He was too busy mind-humping a tall, leggy blonde who was walking down Third Avenue. “Take a look at that,” he said.

“Dream on, Beans. If that woman ever saw you with your shoes off, she’d laugh herself into a coma.”

They watched as the woman walked toward the car.

Benzetti rolled down his window.

“What are you doing?” Rice said.

“She’s great from the front. I want to get a good look at her ass as she walks past.”

But the woman didn’t walk past. She stopped, reached inside the window, grabbed Benzetti’s tie, and yanked hard, smacking his head against the car door.

“You’re Chukov’s Boys in Blue, right?” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Chapter 32

BENZETTI YOWLED IN pain. He fumbled for his gun, but before he could get it, there was a muzzle of a Glock pistol in his mouth.

Rice went for his gun.

“Unless his head is made of Kevlar, the bullet will go right through him,” the blonde said. “Then right through you. One shot. Two dead cops.”

Rice froze. “Is Chukov giving you a bonus if you kill us both with one bullet?”

“Kill you? The thought never crossed my mind.” She smiled, beautiful and evil at the same time. “Chukov hired me to work with you. I’m Marta, your new best friend.”

“If I were you, I’d work on my first-impression skills. If we’re friends, why is that gun in my partner’s mouth?”

“Because he was drooling over me like a dog in a meat market. I wasn’t hired to give your greaseball partner a hard-on.” She jiggled the gun in Benzetti’s mouth. “You got that, Romeo?”

He grunted a yes.

Marta slid the gun from his lips, but kept it pointed at him. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

“Yeah, a real joy,” Benzetti said, rubbing his head where it had smashed into the top of the car door.

“What have you got on this guy who walked off with Chukov’s diamonds?”

“Nobody we talked to at Grand Central recognized him,” Rice said. “A rookie beat cop saw him bending over Zelvas’s body, but the kid conned him into thinking he was a doctor. As soon as the cop got distracted, Bagboy split for the exit and hopped a cab. The last person to see him was the cabbie who dropped him at St. Vincent’s Hospital.”

“But he’s not a doctor, so how does that help us find him?” Marta said.

“The guy just stumbled on a fortune in diamonds,” Benzetti said. “Where’s the first place he’d want to go? Home. He wouldn’t give the cabbie his real address, so he plays out the doctor ruse and asks to be taken to a hospital in his neighborhood. St. Vincent’s is on West Twelfth Street, which means it’s a good bet he lives within a five-to-ten-block radius.”

“That’s a big territory,” Marta said.

“Give me a break,” Benzetti said. “I just eliminated four boroughs and most of Manhattan.”

“What if he got to St. Vincent’s and caught another cab?” Marta said. “What if he jumped on the subway to Brooklyn?”

“Look, I’m a cop. I can’t handle all the what-ifs. I follow the leads I got, and if I run into a dead end, I try something else. It’s called leg work.”

“Leg work takes time, which is something you two useless losers don’t have. So you better come up with something smarter than standing on the corner of West Twelfth Street with your hands in your pockets, waiting for some guy to walk by with a bag full of diamonds.”

She wagged the gun in his face. “Do I have to add or else?”

“We get the point,” Benzetti said. “We’ll find the diamonds.”

“I doubt it,” Marta said. “But if you do…every last one of them goes back to Chukov. Got it?”

“Got it,” Benzetti said.

“I’ll have my eye on you two, so be careful, boys. This is your last warning.”

She put the gun in her shoulder bag and headed down the street without a care in the world, window-shopping of all things.

Chapter 33

“SHE’S RIGHT,” RICE SAID. “We don’t have a lot of time left to find those diamonds. First Chukov warns us, now she does.”

“So, what are you suggesting? Give me a plan.”

“We go public. Get the surveillance shot of Bagboy out to the press.”

“Are you crazy?” Benzetti said. “This isn’t even our case. The bombing at Grand Central belongs to Homeland Security. We’re trying to find a bag of blood diamonds stolen from ruthless killers, and we’re trying to do it on the down low. If we go public, we’ll have Feds all over us.”

“I understand that. So we go to the press and we don’t say anything about Grand Central. We’re just two cops looking for a suspect. We can say he’s wanted in connection with whatever we want. We can say he’s a person of interest in an ongoing murder or robbery investigation. Doesn’t matter. But we don’t give the TIPS phone number. We just give out our direct lines and we handle the incoming. What do you say?”

Benzetti nodded. “Let me think about it.”

Rice exploded. “How about putting a gun in your mouth while you’re thinking? Damn it, Nick, that blond bitch was even crazier than Chukov. She said she’s keeping an eye on us, and from the way she got the jump on us, I believe her. I don’t care about walking away with a fistful of diamonds. I got two kids. I want to walk away with my life.”

“Okay,” Benzetti said. “We’ll go public. I know a guy who works over at New York One. It’s not CNN, but they do twenty-four-hour, ’round-the-clock news — and it’s all local. We’ll tell them they have an exclusive for a day. They’ll flash this poor bastard’s picture and our phone numbers every six minutes until we find him and kill him.”

Chapter 34

“IS KATHERINE ONE IN a couple hundred million or what?” I asked. “Can you even begin to think of another woman who would meet me for lunch and then a few hours later drop everything and jump on a plane to Paris?”

No answer.

“Okay, okay, maybe a lot of women would drop everything to go to Paris. But name one besides Katherine who would go with me.”

No answer.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Cat got your tongue?”

At that point, my somewhat bored audience finally responded with a loud meow.

We were in the apartment. Just me and Hopper. He was licking himself and I was packing. I was so hyped that I needed to talk, and I must have been interesting, because he seemed willing to lick, listen, and watch me pack.

“According to my father, there are two ways to pack,” I explained to the cat. “The Marine way and the wrong way. First rule: travel light. Unless you’re flying to the moon, you can buy anything you didn’t bring. If you know what you’re doing, you can go around the world with one bag.”

My one bag was a well-traveled Red Oxx Sky Train, the world’s most efficient carry-on. I opened it up and then started bundle-wrapping. It’s an old military trick that saves space and avoids creases. It’s also a great way to hide things in plain sight.

You lay your clothes out flat, one on top of the other, biggest stuff on the bottom. At the top of the pile, you put a central core object. Mine is always an organizer pouch filled with socks and underwear. Then you carefully fold your clothes over the core, one by one, until you have a compact little bundle. Once you master the technique, you’ll never pack any other way.

I had done it hundreds of times, but this time, my central core was the medical bag and my socks filled with diamonds.

“I know it’s risky, smuggling these into a foreign country,” I told Hopper. “If I get caught by French customs, I could wind up in jail. Even worse, if anyone finds out I’m the guy who has Mr. Zelvas’s diamonds, I could wind up dead. If that happens, Hopper, my neutered little friend, you’ll have to stay at the cat sitters’ forever. But it’s worth the risk. If I can sell these, I’ll be in fat city. Even if I get half of the thirteen million they’re supposed to be worth, I’ll still be pretty much set for life.”

I got another meow.

“You’re right. We’ll be set for life. You, me, Katherine, and maybe a couple of rug rats. Don’t get excited, I’m not talking about actual rodents, I mean—”

The doorbell rang, and I checked the monitor.

“It’s Katherine,” I told Hopper. I zipped up the Sky Train and buzzed her in.

She came bounding up the stairs, wearing jeans, a navy sweater, and a New York Yankees baseball cap.

“This is all I brought,” she said, dropping a soft-sided canvas carry-on bag to the floor.

“Boy, when I said travel light, you really took me seriously,” I said.

“Everything is washable,” she said. “Plus, I’m hoping you rented one of those Paris hotel rooms where clothing is optional.”

I turned to the cat. “What did I tell you? She’s one in a million.”

I wrapped my arms around Katherine’s slim waist and pulled her close. Her breath was warm and sweet. Her lips were soft and seductive.

This was joy. This was all I ever needed. I had my art, I had the woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life, and if things went according to my makeshift plan, I was about to have all the money I’d ever need.

Nothing could stop me now.

Chapter 35

“HIS NAME IS BANNON,” Gravois said. “Matthew Bannon.”

Marta didn’t have to write it down. It was seared in her mind. “What took you so long, Etienne?” she said. “Please don’t tell me you decided to meet your wife for dinner after all.”

“No, no, I didn’t meet my wife.”

“If I find out you did, I’ll kill her and make you watch.”

“I swear I went straight back to the office, but my boss was still there. He knew it was my wife’s birthday and wanted to know why I came back. I told him we had a fight. Then I had to wait for him to go home.”

“Why?”

“He hovers,” Gravois said. “What was I supposed to do? Tell him I came back to break into confidential police files and download data for some assassin’s next target?”

Marta lit a cigarette. She was, as always, in a no-smoking hotel room. They were always so much cleaner than the rooms that allowed smoking. Most smokers were pigs. Not her.

She inhaled deeply and watched the smoke billow into the air slowly. She took a second drag so that Gravois could suffer in silence for at least a minute.

“All right,” she finally said, “I’ll take your word for it. Now tell me about this Matthew Bannon.”

“He’s not in the criminal database,” Gravois said. “I picked him up through his military records. He’s an American, served in the Marines.”

“Combat-trained?”

“Very. He did a tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.”

“Where is he now?”

“New York. He’s a student.”

“A student?” Marta said. “How old is he?”

“Thirty. He’s a master’s candidate in Fine Arts at Parsons in Manhattan.”

“A combat-trained Marine studying Fine Arts? He sounds conflicted.”

“There was nothing in his military records about psychological problems,” Etienne said.

“Relax, Etienne. I was only making a joke.”

“Oh,” the Frenchman said, laughing. “Yes. Very funny.”

“Where can I find Mr. Bannon?”

“His apartment is on Perry Street,” he said, and gave her the number. “Parsons is a few blocks away on West Thirteenth.”

Marta smiled. And St. Vincent’s Hospital is on West Twelfth. Maybe that dumb cop wasn’t so dumb after all.

“I can e-mail you a complete dossier with his address, phone number, military records, and his school transcript,” Etienne said.

“All that’s missing is his obituary,” Marta said.

Etienne laughed loud and hard.

“I wasn’t joking,” Marta said.

“I’m sorry. The German sense of humor is so different from the French.”

“Yes,” Marta said. “We’re not funny.”

Etienne held his breath, trying to guess whether to laugh or not. “It’s late, Marta,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”

“Not tonight. Why don’t you go home and wish your wife a happy birthday,” she said.

“Merci.”

“And many more,” Marta added. “But that, of course, will be entirely up to you.”

She hung up the phone.

Chapter 36

MARTA HAD A rule when on a job: Never leave an impression that can’t be forgotten, controlled, or erased. Part of that meant never taking a taxi to a contract killing. Cab drivers remembered too much. She walked from the hotel to Times Square, then blended into the evening rush hour and caught the downtown number 1 train to Sheridan Square.

Once out of the rush-hour mob, she had to watch her movements. Her determined stride turned into a casual saunter. She strolled along Christopher Street, gawking at store windows, looking more like a sightseer than a murderer on a mission. She headed north on Bleecker, where the street was wider and the stores and restaurants not nearly as funky.

At the corner of Bleecker and Perry, she stopped to look in the window of Ralph Lauren, checking the glass’s reflection for tails. Those moron cops might follow her, looking for payback. But she was clear, so she headed west on Perry, a tree-lined residential street dotted with classic West Village brownstones and town houses.

She walked slowly past Matthew Bannon’s building, then doubled back and walked past it again. Five stories. Bannon’s apartment was on the top floor. Compared with some of the other buildings, this one looked secure. But she’d faced tougher.

She climbed the six steps and tried the front door. Open. She stepped into the vestibule, where the security kicked up a notch — a closed-circuit camera and a heavy brass plate protecting the inner door from being jimmied.

The doorbells were clearly labeled. She pressed apartment 5, BANNON.

There was no answer, but then the inner door was opened.

A man came through, African American, early thirties, about six foot six, with a thick bull neck and a square head that was shaved clean. He barely looked at her, just pulled the inner door shut and quickly left the building.

She rang Bannon’s bell a second time. Still no answer. She rang all the bells. Someone would buzz her in and she’d wait for Bannon in his apartment.

She held the thumb latch on the inner door and waited for the buzzer. Through the glass, she could see the door to apartment 1 open. A man stepped out — blond buzz cut, baby blue eyes, wearing faded jeans and a gray muscle shirt that left no room for the imagination.

He smiled and opened the front door.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

A gentleman, Marta decided. And from what she knew of American accents, his was not from New York. He was from one of the southern states. Alabama, or maybe Mississippi.

“I’m looking for Matthew Bannon,” she said.

“He’s not here,” the southern gentleman said. “But surely you must have figured that out when he didn’t answer the second time you rang. Now, are you gonna keep ringing all the bells till you find someone dumb enough to let you in? Because we don’t rent to stupid people. So, take a hike, Blondie.”

Marta’s Bottega Veneta bag was hanging from her shoulder. She pressed it to her side with her upper arm until she could feel the Glock against her ribs.

Her face remained icy calm. “I’m one of his teachers at Parsons,” she said. “Can you tell me where to find him? I have his final paper. I wanted to give him his grade.”

The man from apartment 1 relaxed a little. “Oh, so you’re an art teacher.”

Marta gave him her most seductive smile. She had been on the cover of German Vogue four times. This guy would be easy. “Yes,” she said. “I’m Professor Mueller.”

“So, then, Professor,” he said, still filling the doorway, “how do you feel the Dadaist movement affected the growth of postmodernism in twentieth-century America?”

“Fuck you,” Marta snapped.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s pretty much how I feel about Dada. But I’m a big fan of those dogs playing poker. Now, get out of here.”

Marta hated quick hits. This one wasn’t researched, wasn’t planned, but the Russians were in a hurry to find Bannon. If she was going to be waiting for him in his apartment when he got home, she’d have to kill the asshole blocking the door.

She ran through the scenario in her head. Turn toward the outer door, take the gun from my bag, spin around, shoot him between the eyes, drag his body inside, clean up, go up to the fifth floor, and wait for Bannon. The guy in the muscle shirt would be collateral damage. Tough luck, pal. You asked for it.

She turned to the front door, one hand on the clasp of her black bag. And then she saw him.

The first guy, the one with the shaved head, who looked like he was in a hurry to go someplace, hadn’t gone anywhere. He was standing outside sucking on a cigarette.

She removed her hand from the leather bag. Killing one person was manageable. Killing two was messy. Too messy for Marta.

She opened the front door, and the black guy with the cigarette grunted a polite but detached New York hello. The white guy followed her out of the building and stood at the top of the front steps.

“Happy trails, Professor,” he said.

She walked down the steps and onto Perry Street.

She’d be back. To kill Matthew Bannon and the redneck bastard from apartment 1.

Chapter 37

GETTING THROUGH AIRPORT security at JFK turned out to be a snap. For me. I breezed through with my multimillion-dollar carry-on.

Katherine, on the other hand, got caught red-handed, carrying a five-ounce tube of toothpaste into a three-ounce world.

She was stopped by a TSA screener — a chunky Hispanic woman wearing a government-issue white shirt, black pants, blue latex gloves, a gold badge, and a name tag that said MORALES.

“I’m going to have to confiscate this,” the screener said, pointing at the toothpaste.

“I know the three-ounce rule,” Katherine said. “And yes, this is a five-ounce tube. But it’s more than half empty. There’s maybe only two ounces left.”

“I appreciate that, Miss,” Morales said, “but you really don’t know the rule. All liquids, gels, and aerosols must be in three-ounce or smaller containers. Larger containers that are half-full or toothpaste tubes that are rolled up are not allowed on the aircraft.”

“You’re joking,” Katherine said.

“Miss, we do not joke here.”

“For God’s sake,” Katherine said, “what do you think I’m going to do with half a tube of toothpaste? Blo—?”

I clamped my hand on Katherine’s mouth before she could say the four words that would land us both in jail—blow up the plane.

Katherine pulled away. “Matt, what the hell are you doing?” she barked as two more security screeners stepped in and flanked us on both sides.

“I’ll tell you what he’s doing, Miss,” Morales said. “He’s saving your ass. Now, unless you want to miss your flight to Paris, you’d be smart to toss that toothpaste in that bin and be on your merry way.”

I squeezed Katherine’s arm gently. “Please,” I said. “I promise I’ll buy you toothpaste in Paris.”

“This is Tom’s of Maine,” she said. “They won’t have it in Paris.”

“I’ll buy you French toothpaste. They make the best in the world.”

“This one is called Tom’s Wicked Fresh and it’s all natural and it keeps my breath fresh for hours. It’s the only one I use.”

I leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. “You may find this hard to believe, but we are about five seconds from being arrested, strip-searched, and thrown in jail for the night. I’ve never asked you to do anything for me on blind faith, but I’m asking you now. Please, please, please, give the nice lady your toothpaste, don’t utter another word, and I promise you that tomorrow morning we will be checking into our hotel, racing up to our room, peeling off our clothes, snuggling under the sheets, and I will kiss you over and over and over, even if your breath smells like a Paris sewer. Please?”

She tossed the toothpaste in the bin.

“Have a nice flight,” Morales said.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing my head. “Thank you.”

Morales smiled. She knew what I was thanking her for.

I only wished I could have told her that she might have saved the world from Tom’s toothpaste but she missed the guy who was leaving the country with a bag full of diamonds he stole from a dead Russian.

Chapter 38

“Let’s find a bar,” I said as I propelled Katherine as far from security as I could. “I need a drink.”

We found a little place close to our gate that served burgers and beer. I had one of each. Katherine didn’t want either, so she decided to backtrack to the Starbucks we had seen as we walked through the terminal.

I sat at a small table, munching my burger, which was not hot, sipping my beer, which was not cold, and staring at the LCD flat-screen TV over the bar. It was tuned to a local news station. The sound was muted, and I was too far away to read the closed captioning.

I was just starting to unwind from the toothpaste incident when I gagged so badly I almost puked my burger and beer all over the table. I wasn’t choking on the mediocre airport cuisine. What made me want to throw up was what I saw on the television screen.

Me.

Me at Grand Central, holding a black medical bag with a bank of lockers behind me.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Holy shit, what?” Katherine said, sitting down at the table with a grande cappuccino and a blueberry muffin.

She sat facing away from the television.

“Holy shit, I need another beer,” I said, jumping up and heading for the bar. I got there just in time to read the tail end of the closed captioning:…wanted for robbery. They flashed a phone number.

And then they cut to a commercial.

I looked around the bar to see how many other people had caught it. A dozen, maybe more. What else do people sitting around an airport bar do but stare at the TV? Hopefully they wouldn’t look up at me.

I tucked my chin down, put one hand over my eyes, and studied the floor tiles as I walked back to the table where Katherine was sitting.

“Where’s your beer?” she said.

“I changed my mind,” I said. “You know what I really need?”

“No.”

“A hat.”

I lifted the somewhat faded, definitely broken-in Yankees cap off her head. I put it on mine. It didn’t fit.

“It’s way too small for your big head,” she said.

“Well, let’s buy one that fits,” I said.

“As soon as I finish,” she said, picking up her muffin and biting it.

So we sat and talked. And then it happened again. My picture flashed on the TV screen.

I didn’t try to read the closed captioning. I just kept my head down until Katherine polished off her cappuccino. Then we walked over to Hudson News. Katherine checked out the magazines, and I went to the gift shop.

I was about to buy a Yankees baseball cap when I saw the berets. Absolument, I thought. Très français and a much better disguise. They had two colors — brown or red. I settled on brown.

I moved over to the sunglasses rack and picked out a pair of mirror-lens wraparounds.

Then I found Katherine. “What do you think?”

She laughed out loud. “What happened to the baseball hat?”

“I’m an artist. We’re going to France. I definitely need a beret. And sunglasses,” I said, putting on my shades. “Is this perfect or what?”

“Or what,” said Katherine. But she was grinning.

Chapter 39

DINNER WAS SERVED about an hour into the flight to Paris.

“At long last,” I said. “Fine French cooking. Maybe we should eat and critique our dinners.”

I had the beef goulash; Katherine opted for the herbed chicken.

“Bland, dry, overcooked,” she said after a few bites. “One star, and that’s only because I’m an easy marker. How about you?”

“Four stars,” I said.

Katherine threw me a look.

“I think it’s the ambience,” I said, kissing the back of her neck. “And the company, of course.”

As soon as the trays were cleared, we turned out the overhead lights and raised the armrest between our seats, and Katherine curled up against me, wrapped in a blanket and my arms.

She zonked out in minutes. I couldn’t sleep.

I loved this woman. What was I dragging her into?

If that toothpaste incident had escalated one more notch, Katherine’s behavior might have branded us as troublemakers, but my carry-on bag would absolutely have landed us both in jail.

What was I thinking? What had I gotten her involved in? Was I crazy? The questions were bouncing around in my brain like a beach ball at a rock concert.

Somewhere along the way I fell asleep, and I didn’t wake up till we were on our final approach to Orly airport. Looking out the window, we could see the lush vineyards and tiny red-roofed farmhouses that dotted the French countryside.

“I can’t believe you’re actually taking me to Paris,” Katherine said, still snuggled up against me.

“Believe it,” I said. Then I kissed her.

She pulled away fast. “Matt, no. I have horrible morning breath.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “Your breath smells Wicked Fresh.”

She punched me in the shoulder. “Matthew! You are so totally lying.” God, I loved this woman.

The plane parked on the tarmac, and one of those big mobile lounges off-loaded the passengers and drove us to the terminal. All around me people were speaking French. The signs, the sounds, even the music piping through the PA, were French.

I took off my sunglasses and my beret. I was thousands of miles away from New York, where my picture was being flashed on a TV screen every ten minutes. I felt safe. Nobody would be looking for me here.

Chapter 40

THE ARTIST KNOWN as Leonard Karns had a nearly pathological crush on Katherine Sanborne, and that was just one of the reasons he hated that muscle-bound, no-talent Matthew Bannon. Bannon and the professor were an item. No doubt about that. But now Karns had a way to get back at both of them.

God, he despised Bannon and Sanborne. For one thing, they were into Realism, even into portraits. Karns hated portraits. “If that’s all you’re going to do,” he said one day in his Group Critique class, “you might as well work at a carnival.” One girl left the room in tears.

Karns was a Big Bang! artist. Big Bang! was the new, hip abstract painting for the twenty-first century. Big Bang! surged with energy and exploded with color. The imagery emanated from computer technology, quantum physics, genetics, and other complex contemporary issues. That, as far as Leonard Karns was concerned, was art.

Losers like Matthew Bannon were stuck in time, painting variations on pictures that had been done years ago and sucked even back then.

Karns was sitting in his pathetic apartment, thinking about Bannon, when his picture suddenly flashed on his TV, and the announcer said he was wanted for robbery.

And there was a reward.

He dialed the number on the TV screen and got a recording. A Detective Rice told him to leave his information and said that his call would be returned as soon as possible.

“I know the guy you’re looking for,” Karns said into the machine. “The robbery suspect. I saw his picture on TV. He goes to art school with me. I also know where he lives. Call me.”

Karns gave his name and phone number. He was about to hang up when he had to add a delicious afterthought. “Plus, the guy is a total fraud as an artist.”

Chapter 41

SOONER OR LATER I figured Katherine would ask the one question I was hoping to avoid. It turned out to be sooner. We were still in the airport, and I had stopped at a currency-exchange window to trade dollars for euros. Katherine handed me some cash from her wallet.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I got it.”

She laughed. “What do you mean you got it? You’re not paying for both of us. Absolutely not. No way, Matthew.”

“Sure I am,” I said. “I invited you to join me in Paris. My treat.”

“Hey, Matt, I invited you to join me at Parsons,” she said. “I don’t remember springing for your tuition.”

“This is different. It’s a date. Happens to be in Paris. Guy pays.”

“Not if he’s a struggling artist.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying not to make this a macho thing, which it wasn’t. Well, maybe it was. “I recently came into some money.”

“Oh, Matt, I hope you’re not spending the money you got for your paintings,” she said.

“No,” I said, keeping it playful. “This is different. Trust me, okay?”

“You came into some money?” she said. “How come you never mentioned it before? What money is this?”

“It’s too crazy,” I said. “I figured you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me,” she said.

I shrugged. “Okay. I found a big bag of diamonds in a train station.”

“And I’m having tea with the queen of England,” she said.

“Hey, if you invite me along, I’ll pay.”

She wrapped both arms around me. “You are the most generous, lovable, adorable man I ever met,” she said. “But you’re a terrible liar. If you found a bag of diamonds, you’d give it back.”

She kissed me long and hard, and the subject of how I could afford the vacation was dropped. At least for now.

We breezed through customs — I guess the French don’t have diamond-sniffing dogs. We were both too tired to even think of hopping on a bus and saving money, so we headed for the taxi rank and got into a sleek, comfortable black Peugeot.

The driver was a robust man with a gray beard and a broad smile. “You are going to where?” he said.

“The Hotel Bac Saint-Germain,” I said. “You know where it is?”

“Oui, monsieur,” he said. “You are very in luck. It is the only hotel in all of Paris I know where to find.”

Katherine and I both laughed.

“You speak English, and you’re funny,” I said.

“English is not so necessary. But to drive a taxi you must have big sense of humor,” he said as he guided the car toward a ramp that said A106.

“Where are we staying?” Katherine asked me.

“It’s a little hotel I found online. It’s on the Left Bank, in the Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which is the hippest, coolest section in all of Paris.”

“And about to get hipper and cooler,” she said.

The driver laughed. “You two cool hipsters are art lovers?” he said.

“Oui,” Katherine said.

“The district where you are staying, there are art galleries on every street corner,” he said. “And many cafés, and beautiful shops, and crazy, wonderful people.”

“That’s why we’re here,” I said. “We heard you had room for two more crazies.”

“You like Aznavour?” he asked, sliding a CD into the sound system.

“Who doesn’t?” I said.

And then the seductive voice of Charles Aznavour filled the cab.

If you’re not in love when you get to Paris, you will be when you leave. If you’re already in love, it only gets better.

Katherine curled up in my arms, with her head on my chest, and for the rest of the ride, we were serenaded by the sexiest tenor in all of France, possibly in the world.

“Are your eyes open or closed?” Katherine whispered to me at one point.

“Open.”

“Mine, too,” she said.

Why would anyone close his eyes in Paris? I thought. Wherever you look, everything is just so incredibly romantic. Even being stuck in traffic. With a woman like Katherine.

Chapter 42

THE HOTEL WAS colorful, modern, and cheap — only 110 euros a night. Our room wasn’t ready when we checked in, so a bellman escorted us to a cozy little restaurant on the seventh-floor terrace, where we enjoyed steaming cups of frothy café au lait, flaky buttery croissants, strawberry jam, fresh fruit, yogurt, and a magnificent view of the entire district.

Forty minutes later the bellman returned and took us to our room. He set down the bags, and I tipped him, hung the NE PAS DéRANGER sign on the doorknob, and locked the door.

Katherine and I hadn’t been alone since she came by my apartment an eternity ago, and we couldn’t wait to get our hands on each other. Within seconds, our clothes were strewn on the floor and we were under smooth, cool sheets.

The sex was a little fast, but the afterglow lasted much longer. We talked, then drifted off to sleep. Katherine woke me three hours later, and again we made love, this time slowly and tenderly, then took a long, hot shower together and headed out to explore Paris.

“Where to first?” I said. “I can think of a dozen places I want to go. Right off the top of my head.”

“Lunch,” Katherine said. “But you have to let me buy.”

“Lunch?” I said. “Okay, sure.”

“Good. We have a one-thirty reservation.”

“We do?”

“I decided to stick with the surprise theme of our vacation.”

We caught a taxi. “Le Jules Verne restaurant,” she told the driver. Ten minutes later he dropped us off at the base of the Eiffel Tower. We walked under the tower to a yellow awning, where we were greeted by a smiling maître d’.

“Sanborne,” Katherine said. “We have a reservation for two.”

“I called from New York,” Katherine told me as the maître d’ checked his book. “It’s kind of popular. I was hoping to get a dinner rez, but that was impossible.”

We took a private elevator to a magnificent room that was suspended from the steel latticework of the Eiffel Tower. It afforded us a spectacular panoramic view of the city below.

A tuxedoed host escorted us to a table near the center of the room.

“There’s a six-week wait for a window table,” Katherine explained.

“I hope that’s not an apology for this one. I’m floored.”

It was the most fantastic lunch I had ever had. And the most expensive. I almost choked when I looked at the prices on the menu.

“Don’t worry about it,” Katherine said. “If you can spend all your ‘newfound diamonds’ on everything else, the least I can do is buy lunch.”

We were sipping champagne when the waiter brought a small, intricately decorated chocolate cake with a single candle in the center to the couple sitting at the next table. White-haired, well-dressed, and from the way they held hands across the table, very much in love, they had to be in their eighties.

The woman blew out the candle.

“Happy birthday,” Katherine said.

“Merci, no,” the old woman said. “It is our anniversary.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “How many years?”

The man smiled. “One-half,” he said. “Émilie and I have been dating for six months.”

The City of Love was living up to its reputation.

After lunch we went to the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. It was Katherine’s idea. It’s the French national art school, where we could wander the halls, looking at works in progress by students.

“It’s just like Parsons,” Katherine said.

“Almost,” I answered. “Except for the fact that Monet, Degas, Moreau, and Delacroix didn’t go to Parsons.”

“True,” she said. “But Jasper Johns, Edward Hopper, and Norman Rockwell did.”

I winced. “As they say in Paris, touché, mademoiselle.”

“As they say in New York, gotcha, dude.”

After that, we hit the Louvre, along with about fifteen thousand other people. We didn’t see them all, but that’s how many the guidebook said show up on a daily basis. It could take a week to see all four hundred thousand pieces of art that are in the Louvre. We decided to spend two hours focused on a handful of works by Michelangelo, Raphael, and other Italian masters.

Then we did a one-eighty and took another taxi to the Galerie Mona Lisa. The average tourist wouldn’t know about it, but the elderly couple in the restaurant had tipped us off to it. It was jam-packed with works by contemporary artists. There was no single medium, no unifying school of thought, just great art from people who were still very much alive.

“One day you could be hanging here,” Katherine said.

“And the best part is, I don’t have to be dead to get in.”

We left the Galerie and were strolling along the Boulevard Saint-Germain when we took a random left turn on Rue de Buci and stumbled on Cacao et Chocolat.

The store was a work of art in itself, and every bit of it was edible. We sat in a booth while a petite waitress served us the thickest, richest cocoa I’d ever tasted. Then we fed each other chocolate truffles from a silver tray.

“I’ll be in a sugar coma in about five minutes,” Katherine said as she licked a bit of chocolat noir from my fingertips. “But what a way to go.”

Leaving the chocolate shop, we found our way to Le Bon Marché, a French department store that makes Bloomingdale’s look like a flea market. Katherine insisted she didn’t want anything, so I bought myself some Christian Maquer lingerie in Katherine’s size.

We weren’t ready to call it a night yet, so we walked past our hotel and across the river to the Jardin des Tuileries. Then we strolled hand in hand back to our hotel, and Katherine tried on the incredibly sexy sheer black camisole, and minutes later I removed it.

We turned out the lights, opened the blinds, and let the moonlight pour into the room as we made sweet, sweet love.

Chapter 43

NY1 ran Bagboy’s picture a dozen times. They’d have run it a lot more except for the crane collapse on 57th Street. One entire section came crashing down on a crosstown bus, killing three and injuring fourteen, including a pregnant woman. In keeping with the age-old tradition “if it bleeds, it leads,” the station abandoned Bagboy and focused on the crane disaster around the clock.

Even so, there were ninety-one tips waiting for Rice and Benzetti in the morning. They separated them into three batches. Solids, Possibles, and Nut Jobs.

Leonard Karns sounded like a Solid until they got to the part of the message where he said the guy he wanted to turn in was a “total fraud as an artist.” He sounded like someone with an ax to grind, which dropped his tip to a Possible. Then, just before Karns hung up, Benzetti could hear him cackling hysterically, as though he’d just escaped from the flight deck at Bellevue.

Nut Job, he decided.

It took the two detectives a full day to track down and question all the callers in the Solid and Possible folders.

“So far I got squat,” Rice said. “What have you got?”

Benzetti looked at his call sheet. “I got one lonely old lady who was angling to get me to come over for tea, three angry chicks hoping to pin a robbery on their ex-boyfriends, and a whole bunch of bullshit artists and hustlers trying to peddle bogus information to score the reward.”

“We might as well start calling the crazies,” Rice said.

He dialed Leonard Karns’s number.

“It’s about time,” Karns said as soon as Rice identified himself. “I called in the tip a day and a half ago.”

“You and a lot of other people,” Rice said. “You said something on your message about this guy being an artist.”

“He’d like to think so,” Karns said. “I was in one of his art classes at Parsons and his paintings are shit, but he’s banging the professor, so he’s getting a straight A all the way.”

Rice was only half listening. He was about to write this numbskull off when he heard the one word that sparked his adrenaline.

Parsons.

“Mr. Karns, sir, please refresh my memory,” Rice said, his tone now reeking of respect and deference. “Where exactly is Parsons?”

“West Thirteenth Street.”

A block from where Bagboy took the taxi from Grand Central. Bingo!

“So, then, what’s this lousy artist’s name?” Rice asked.

“Not so fast,” Karns said. “First let’s talk about the reward.”

The reward, of course, was pure fiction, but Rice and Benzetti had decided that without it, no one would even bother calling.

“Like it said on TV, the reward is twenty-five grand. And you get to remain anonymous.”

“Screw anonymous,” Karns said. “I want credit for turning the cops onto this phony.”

“No problem,” Rice said. “We’ll invite you to the press conference.”

Press conference. NY1. “Now you’re talking,” Karns said.

“Do you know where he is?” Rice asked casually. “His name would be helpful, but if you tell us exactly where he is, the reward can go even higher.”

“I know who he’s with, and she’s easy to find,” Karns said.

“Who would that be?”

“Like they say in the movies, Detective,” Karns said, “show me the money. You’re not getting my valuable information over the phone. You show up with some kind of NYPD legal document that says I get paid if I help you catch him. Then I’ll tell you his name and how to find him.”

“Fair enough, sir,” Rice said. “We’ll send over our person in charge of rewards.”

“And what’s his name?” Karns asked.

“It’s a female,” Rice said. “Her name is Detective Krall.”

Chapter 44

“I got him,” Rice told Benzetti as soon as he hung up. “I think this total asshole Leonard Karns actually knows where our Bagboy is.”

“Let’s go pay him a visit,” Benzetti said. “Right now.”

“Not us,” Rice said. “Did you forget about the butch German who shoved the gun in your mouth?”

“She caught me by surprise. You thought she was butch?”

“Marta Krall is a pro, and she’s expensive. She’d whack two cops like us and not even break a sweat. We found Karns. Now he’s her problem.”

“Fine,” Benzetti said. “You deal with Marta. I hope I never see her again.”

Rice called Krall’s cell. “We’ve got a lead on the guy with the diamonds,” he said.

“You know who he is?” Krall said, and sounded absolutely astonished.

“No.”

“You know where he lives?”

“No.”

“I know his name, and I’ve been staking out his apartment for two and a half days,” she said. “So much for your police work, your vaunted NYPD protocols.”

“Listen,” Rice said. “My partner and I are just trying to hold up our end of the deal. But if you’ve got the guy, you don’t need us. So good-bye.”

“Wait. I don’t actually have the guy,” Krall said. “Not yet. But he’ll be back sooner or later.”

“Well, if you don’t feel like waiting for later, I’ve got the name and address of someone who knows how to find him.”

Chapter 45

MARTA KRALL CHECKED her Breitling Starliner and rang the doorbell to Leonard Karns’s apartment. One thirty-three in the afternoon. The building was drab, dilapidated, and depressingly quiet. Karns buzzed her in, and she took the stairs to apartment B4.

A short, fat lump in gray sweatpants and an olive-drab T-shirt that said ART IS RESISTANCE stood in the doorway.

“You Detective Krall?” he asked.

She smiled and nodded. Then she pointed to her throat and whispered, “Laryngitis.” She liked acting and had unsuccessfully attempted a transition from modeling to movies back in Germany.

“That sucks,” he said. “But no problem. I know what you’re here to find out.”

Marta smiled again. Good boy.

She stepped into the apartment, and he shut the door. It was stuffy and smelled of burnt coffee. There was art all over the walls. Undoubtedly his. She stopped to look at one of the paintings and gave him a big thumbs-up.

“It’s called Improbabilities Number Six,” he said.

“Nice,” she whispered. It was true. She genuinely liked Improbabilities Number 6. It was powerful, meticulous, urban chic — nothing like the loser who painted it.

Marta tapped her hand to her heart to show how much she loved it. Karns’s eyes settled on her chest as he mumbled a shy thank-you.

Marta took the picture of the man she was trying to find and handed it to Karns.

“You’re going to give me the paperwork for the reward, right?” he said.

She waved him off with an of course I will gesture, and sat down on the sofa. She pulled her skirt up a little so he could get a good look at her legs. She took out a pad and pencil and sat waiting for him to speak.

“The guy you’re looking for is Matthew Bannon,” Karns said. “He’s in one of my classes at Parsons. Since you like my work, you’d hate his. He’s all technique. But he’s dead inside. No originality.”

Marta nodded and tried to communicate that she understood this idiot.

“Who did he rob, anyway?” Karns said.

Marta turned to a clean page on her pad and wrote Where can I find him?

“Believe it or not, he’s been shacking up with the professor of our Group Critique class. Her name is Katherine Sanborne. She’s an asshole, just like he is. Talk about a conflict of mediocrity.”

He watched her write it down. “No, that’s not how she spells it,” he said.

He took the pad and wrote Katherine Sanborne in clear block letters. Marta wrote the words Where is she above the name and added a question mark after it.

“Just a sec,” Karns said. He scrambled over to his desk, opened a center drawer, and pulled out a packet of papers that were held together by two brass brads.

“This is the faculty directory,” he explained. “They don’t exactly give it out to students. I happened to get my hands on a copy. You never know when you might want to get in touch with one of your professors.”

Or stalk her. Marta gave him another thumbs-up for his ingenuity.

He opened it to Katherine’s name in the directory. There were penciled doodles all around it. Karns had obviously spent time staring at it. Below Sanborne’s name were her address, home phone, cell phone, and e-mail. That was all Marta needed.

“And you think that zis Sanborne woman will be wiz Bannon?” Marta said loud and clear.

“Definitely,” Karns said. “Hey, how did you get your voice back like that?”

“I sink it’s a miracle,” Marta said.

Karns looked totally confused. “Are you German?” he said.

“What’s the difference?” Marta said as she crossed her legs like sharp scissors.

He never even saw the Glock. He was staring at Marta’s thighs, lightly licking his lips, as she pulled the trigger and blew most of his head off.

A few minutes later, Marta Krall casually walked down the steps and checked her watch as she left the building. She’d taken something to remember Leonard Karns by. Improbabilities Number 6.

Chapter 46

LIKE A LOT of young women who move to Manhattan, Katherine Sanborne couldn’t afford to live in a building with a doorman. So she invested in three heavy-duty locks for her front door. And none for her windows. As she had said to her concerned parents, “Who’s going to climb five stories up the side of the building? Spider-Man?”

Marta Krall didn’t have to climb up. She took the elevator to the roof, rappelled ten feet down, and went through the unlocked window. It took less than thirty seconds.

The apartment looked like it had been hit by Hurricane Katherine. Dresser drawers were open, and there were piles of clean clothes on the bed and the floor. Katherine had obviously packed and left in a hurry.

Marta was familiar with the scenario. Her target was on the run and he had invited his girlfriend to run with him.

But where were they going?

The first clue lay on Katherine’s four-by-five-foot dining room table: a red ribbon and a handful of postcards with pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and other Paris landmarks.

There was also a bottle of French wine on the table.

Instinctively, Marta opened the refrigerator. It was single-girl-in-the-city sparse. But there, alongside the nonfat yogurt and the Coke Zero, were two baguettes and a chunk of creamy-rich 60-percent-butterfat Brie.

All part of Bannon’s romantic invitation, Marta decided.

Katherine’s computer was sitting on her desk. Marta booted it up. No password required, because, once again, the prevailing thought process was I don’t have anything worth stealing, and even if I did, how could anyone get into my apartment?

Marta opened Katherine’s e-mail in-box. The last message was from Beth Sanborne. Kat,Can’t believe you and Matthew are going to Paris on the spur of the moment. Oh, to be young and in love. Send us the flight number and the name of the hotel. I don’t care how old you are. Mothers need to know.Love,Mom and Dad

Marta checked the sent mail. Katherine’s response had the flight details, and she’d followed up with Don’t know the hotel yet. Will text you from Paris.

She shut down the computer and called Etienne Gravois at Interpol.

“This Matthew Bannon you found for me is on his way to Paris,” she said. “He’s traveling with another American, Katherine Sanborne. They should have landed at Orly the day before yesterday. I need a confirmation.”

“Hold on,” Gravois said. Twenty seconds later he was back. “They cleared passport control Saturday, no problem. He’s a student. Should they have flagged him?”

“No, he’s not a terrorist,” Marta said. “Just a small nuisance I have to deal with.”

“Yes,” Gravois said. “I know how efficient you can be with nuisances.”

“And don’t ever forget it,” Krall said. “Where are they staying?”

“The Bac Saint-Germain.”

“Is that a decent hotel?”

“It’s not the George Cinq, but it’s clean and it’s in the Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which is very vibrant, very artsy. It’s quite nice.”

“Good,” Marta said. “I’d hate to stay in a dump.”

Chapter 47

Marta was hungry. She softened the bread and cheese in Katherine’s microwave, found a corkscrew for the wine, and ate a late lunch. While she was eating, she called Chukov.

“I know who has your diamonds and where they are,” she said.

“Who? Where?” Chukov made no attempt to hide his anxiety.

“A man named Matthew Bannon has them. He’s in Paris.”

“Paris?”

“Yes, he and his girlfriend are on the run,” Marta said. “But he has no idea I’m running after him. I’ll get a flight tonight and be there tomorrow.”

“Fly coach,” Chukov said.

“Marta Krall doesn’t travel in coach.”

“All right, all right, but don’t stay at some thousand-dollar-a-night hotel. This whole thing has cost us a fortune already.”

“Relax,” she said, enjoying listening to him whine about a few dollars when there were millions at stake. “I’ll be staying in the same hotel as Bannon and his lady friend, in the Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés. And despite the fact that I’ve been told it’s very vibrant and very artsy, I won’t be staying long.”

“What’s the name of the hotel?” Chukov said.

“Why do you ask? Are you going to send champagne to my room? Or are you planning to call your friend the Ghost to back me up?”

“I am not calling the Ghost,” Chukov said, trying to sound indignant at the suggestion. “I told you I want you to kill the Ghost. As far as I’m concerned, we still have an agreement. Unless you’ve decided to back out.”

“Not at all,” Marta said. “But information has a way of leaking, and if I tell you where I’m staying, the Ghost might find me before I find him. I’ll call you from Paris,” she said and ended the call.

Marta left Katherine’s apartment through the front door.

Chukov immediately called the Ghost. “The man you’re looking for is named Matthew Bannon. He and his girlfriend are in Paris. Their hotel is somewhere in the Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Can you find him?”

“Yes.”

“I hope so,” Chukov said. “So far it looks like I’m the one doing all the work.”

He hung up. The noose was tightening around the neck of the young man who had his diamonds. And now Chukov had two assassins competing to track him down. Once he had the diamonds back, he’d be happy to pay Marta Krall for killing the Ghost.

He smiled to himself. In an ideal world, he thought, they would kill each other.

Chapter 48

KATHERINE WAS SITTING up in bed when I got back to the room.

“Bonjour, sleepyhead,” I said as I sat down beside her.

She was wearing a pale pink nightshirt made of the softest, silkiest cotton I ever touched. The neckline had a tiny little bow in the center, totally nonfunctional but definitely adorable.

I gave her a quick kiss.

“Bonjour yourself,” she said. “It’s way too early in the morning to be this chipper. What have you been up to?”

“I woke up at six, went for a walk, grabbed some coffee, and then had a long, serious talk with the concierge.”

“About what?”

“Dinner. I had him make us a reservation at a nice little restaurant he recommended. It’s called Antico Martini.”

“It sounds Italian.”

“It should,” I said. “It’s in Venice.”

“Venice? Italy? We’re going to Venice for dinner?”

“That would be crazy,” I said. “So I had the concierge book us a hotel for a couple of nights.”

“But…but…” She was dumbfounded, and I hated to admit it, but I was having fun dumbfounding her. “But we just got here.”

“Hey, I’m feeling adventurous. We’ve already made love in one romantic city. Let’s do it again in another.”

“Just like that?” she said.

“Why not?” I said. “Didn’t we leave New York just like that? Come on, our flight leaves at ten fifteen.”

I got up, took my bag out of the closet, and started packing.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. She grabbed a pillow and threw it at me. “You are not only drop-dead amazing to look at, fantastic in bed, and wildly spontaneous, but you are also ridiculously romantic. Who cares if you’re going to be a poor struggling artist all your life?”

“Who cares?” I said. “I care.” I threw the pillow back at her.

She hugged the pillow to her chest. “I love you,” she said.

“You talking to me or the pillow?”

“Our plane leaves at ten fifteen?” she said.

“Yup.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s only seven oh five, and I’m a real fast packer.”

She lifted the pink nightshirt up over her head, tossed it on the floor, and slipped under the covers.

“I love you,” she repeated. “And I’m not talking to the pillow.”

Chapter 49

MARTA KRALL CAUGHT the 7 p.m. Delta flight out of JFK. She had only one small suitcase, and despite the fact that there was plenty of room in first class to bring it on board, she checked it.

She touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport at 8:45 the next morning and went to the baggage carousel, where she was reunited with her bag.

She cleared customs, then found the nearest ladies’ room. She locked the stall door, sat on the toilet, and opened her bag. Her hair dryer was in the black drawstring case, exactly as she had packed it.

It wasn’t a working dryer. It was built for her by a mold maker in Holland. She used a paper clip to push a recessed button on the grip. The dryer popped open. Inside were the pieces of her Glock, each one held in place by a steel clasp.

It took only three minutes to assemble the gun.

Forty minutes later, she was in the lobby of the Hotel Bac Saint-Germain.

The front desk clerk was young, slender, and extremely beleaguered.

“No, madame. No one else has complained about the water pressure,” she told the guest on the other end of the phone. Her voice was calm, but her body language said otherwise. “Of course. I’ll send the engineer back to your room immediately. Yes. I know. Room three one four. Merci.”

She hung up and smiled at Marta. “Bonjour, madame. May I help you?”

“I’d like a room,” Marta said. “Preferably on the same floor as my friends Matthew Bannon and Katherine Sanborne.”

The clerk’s long bloodred fingernails clicked lightly on her keyboard. “I’m afraid you just missed them,” she said.

“Out sightseeing, I’m sure,” Marta said. “Do you happen to know when they’ll be back?”

“They’re not expected back. They checked out this morning.”

Marta stood at the front desk, cool and composed on the outside, boiling over on the inside.

“How strange,” she said calmly. “I guess I can FedEx the paperwork I was going to discuss with them. Did they leave the address of their next stop?”

“No, but I saw Monsieur Bannon talking with the concierge a couple of hours ago. He might be able to help you.”

The front desk phone rang, and after checking the caller ID, the clerk turned back to Marta. “Now, what size room are you looking for? They all have excellent water pressure.”

“You’re busy,” Marta said. “Why don’t you deal with room three fourteen, and I’ll see if the concierge knows where to find my friends.”

Marta walked across the lobby as the front desk clerk reluctantly picked up the phone.

The concierge was tall and trim and had thick, dark hair that was slicked back. He wore a well-tailored gray uniform with black piping and two crossed gold keys — the clefs d’or—on each lapel. He was currently engaged with a Japanese couple, and the language barrier made the slow communication process painful to watch.

After several minutes, he paused to nod to Marta. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.

She didn’t know if he was just being polite or trying to let the couple know that there were other people who needed his attention, too. But he looked up several times and smiled at Marta.

Another five minutes passed before the concierge handed the couple a map, a packet of brochures, and a printout of their itinerary for the day. They thanked him profusely with head bows and several euros.

“Mademoiselle, I am Laurent,” he said, offering up his name quickly. “Sorry to keep you waiting. How can I be of service?”

She leaned forward and rested her hands on his desk so he could get a good look at her breasts. He didn’t seem all that interested. Ah, the French. She loved them.

“I was supposed to meet my friends here, but there seems to have been some miscommunication,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “According to the front desk, they checked out this morning. I’m wondering if you know where they went.”

“These mix-ups happen all the time,” he said with a smile that showed a mouthful of perfectly straight, professionally whitened teeth. “What are their names?”

“Matthew Bannon and Katherine Sanborne.”

His lips tightened and the smile disappeared. He sat broom-up-his-ass straight in his chair. One second he looked like he was ready to invite himself up to her room, and the next he was transformed into the quintessentially cold, uncaring, unhelpful Parisian.

“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” Laurent said, “but I have no forwarding address for your friends.”

It was clear he was lying through his cosmetically enhanced, pearly white teeth.

The question was why.

Chapter 50

“Laurent,” Marta said sweetly. “Of course you know where they went. This may help jog your memory.” She slid fifty euros across his desk.

He ignored the money. “Whether I know or do not know is not relevant. The privacy of our guests is of utmost concern, and I’m not at liberty to say anything. Hotel policy.”

The cash bribe didn’t work. Marta leaned across his desk, her breasts almost out of their nest. “You can tell me,” she purred. “And you can surely imagine how grateful I would be.”

The concierge leaned in toward her and wagged a finger in her direction. “Mademoiselle, I absolutely cannot divulge any—”

Marta grabbed his finger and held it tight.

“I guess you’re not the breast man I thought you were,” she said. “How do you feel about fingers?”

His eyes widened, but he tried to maintain his composure. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, pressing hard on the top of his knuckle joint with her thumb and squeezing the rest of the digit with viselike strength, “how much do you care about your fingers?”

“This is ridiculous,” Laurent said. “Surely, you can’t be threaten—”

She snapped his finger in two, and the crack of Laurent’s bone was followed by a piercing scream.

Marta covered it up immediately with a shriek of her own and began laughing hysterically. The harried desk clerk was still on the phone with the dissatisfied guest and barely turned to see what the noise was about.

Marta let go of the concierge’s broken finger and grabbed on to his pinkie. “You’ve got nine left,” she said. “So let me ask you again. How much do you care about your fingers?”

Tears were streaming down the concierge’s face. Excruciating pain and paralyzing fear trumped hotel policy.

“I made reservations for Monsieur Bannon this morning,” he whimpered. “A flight to Venice and dinner at the Antico Martini at eight tonight.”

“What hotel?”

“The Danieli.”

“One more question,” Marta said. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? You don’t strike me as a man who would be a slave to hotel policy.”

“Monsieur Bannon gave me a hundred euros to be discreet about where he was going.”

Or where he was taking Chukov’s diamonds, Marta thought.

She released Laurent’s pinkie. His hands flew to his chest and he tucked them safely under his armpits.

He stood there cowering as Marta picked up the fifty euros she had put on his desk. She slipped the money into her purse, then slowly turned and left the hotel.

What a merry little chase this was turning out to be. Marta Krall absolutely loved it.

Chapter 51

It was 4:30 a.m. in New York City when Chukov’s phone rang. The voice on the other end was female and the accent German. Marta Krall didn’t have to identify herself.

“He’s in my sights,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in a taxi on my way to Charles de Gaulle airport.”

“To the airport?” Chukov said. “Aren’t you on your way from the airport into the city?”

“I did that while you were sleeping. I went to his hotel. He checked out this morning.”

“Checked out — where did he go?”

“Venice. He booked a room at the Hotel Danieli.”

“The Danieli?” Chukov screamed. “Do you know how much that costs?”

Marta laughed. “I’m sure he doesn’t care. He’s spending your money.”

Chukov was apoplectic. “That’s a five-star hotel! I want five bullets in his head — one for every star.” He grabbed the inhaler from his night table and sucked on it.

Marta closed her eyes and savored the sound of the fat Russian gasping for air.

“Five bullets won’t be easy,” she said. “One shot with my forty-five-caliber Glock and his head will explode like a mush melon.”

“Then put the other four bullets in his worthless dick,” Chukov wheezed. “But first get the diamonds.”

“If he still has them,” she said. “He was in Paris for twenty-four hours. He could have sold them.”

“No,” Chukov said. “What idiot would sell diamonds in Paris? And never in Venice. He’s not stupid. He’ll go to Antwerp or Amsterdam or even Tel Aviv.”

“No, he won’t,” Marta said. “Venice will be Matthew Bannon’s final stop. I promise you that.”

Chapter 52

CHUKOV TURNED UP the hot water in the shower full blast. He stood on the bathroom floor for ten minutes inhaling the steam, sipping his morning vodka, and trying to figure out his next move.

He dressed, ignoring the Bowflex and the rest of the exercise equipment he regularly bought from late-night infomercials, some of the pieces still in their boxes.

Then he called the Ghost. “Do you still have your thumb up your ass in Paris?” he asked.

“No,” the Ghost said. “My ass is currently in Venice, sitting in a very comfortable chair in a premium deluxe room at the Hotel Danieli.”

Chukov was stunned. “You’re at the Danieli already? How did you find out Bannon was in Venice?”

“It’s what I do,” the Ghost said. “The better question is, How the hell did you know? It’s five in the morning in New York. Who called you?”

Chukov took another swig of his vodka. Time to put his plan in motion. “Marta Krall. Do you know her?”

“Only by reputation,” the Ghost said. “She’s slow, she’s stupid, but she’s beautiful, so she has no trouble convincing lonely men like you to pay her fat fees and first-class travel. And then, more often than not, she botches the job.”

Chukov laughed. The Ghost was just like the rest of them. He didn’t like competition. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Or maybe you can buy Fraulein Krall a celebratory drink after she’s found the diamonds and killed Bannon. She’s the one who’s been doing all the heavy lifting.”

“Are you firing me?” the Ghost said.

“Why would I fire you?” Chukov said. “Two assassins are always better than one. But just a reminder — only one of you gets paid.”

Chapter 53

THE GHOST HUNG up on Chukov.

He looked around the room. It was exquisite — highly polished antique furniture, lush draperies made from the finest Venetian fabrics, a luxurious handcrafted marble bathroom, all counterpointed with state-of-the-art electronics, including a forty-two-inch flat-screen LCD television, high-speed Internet, and a relaxing Jacuzzi.

The Danieli was expensive but well worth it. Especially with Chukov footing the bill. And now, the Ghost thought, it turns out he’s hired a backup.

Krall. Despite what he had said to Chukov, the Ghost knew Marta Krall was anything but slow and stupid. Contract killing was more than her profession, it was her passion. She was the queen of the slow death.

She had once put eighteen bullets into an undercover DEA agent over the course of three days. The man died from shock and blood loss four times, but Krall revived him each time with a makeshift crash cart to keep the party going. The Jamaican drug lord whose operation had been infiltrated by the narc happily paid a premium for the additional pain and suffering.

The Ghost stood up and looked out the window at the lagoon directly below. The view was spectacular. Venice was incomparable — a thriving cultural center surrounded by water. He only wished he had the time to stay and enjoy it.

He stretched out on the brocade silk spread that covered the king-size bed and stared up at the crystal chandelier.

He closed his eyes and tried to think like Marta Krall would think. Where was she? What was her next move? How could he stay one step ahead of her?

The door to the room burst open with a bang. Before he could move, a woman bounded into the room, leaped onto the bed, and pinned him down.

And then she kissed him. Hard.

“Jesus, Katherine,” he said. “You scared the living shit out of me.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again.

“I tried your cell, but it went straight to voice mail,” Katherine said. “Who were you on the phone with?”

“The Antico Martini,” he said. “I was just confirming our dinner reservation. I want to make sure it’s extra special.”

“I don’t care where we eat,” she said, “as long as it’s just the two of us. You’re a real catch, Matthew Bannon. I wouldn’t be surprised if another woman came after you.”

“What woman would possibly want to come after me?” Matthew asked, smiling at the irony.

“Sweetie, you look a little pale. Are you sure you’re okay?” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said quickly. “Just a little tired. It’s a lot of hard work being a tourist.”

“Okay,” Katherine said. “But you had me worried. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”