Near Miss

Chapter 58

Stone got a call from Bill Eggers, his managing partner. “I need you in my office for lunch with a prospective client,” he said.

“Sure, who’s the client?”

“Name of Peter Greco. He’s the CEO of a conglomerate, made up of half a dozen companies. He reckons they’ll spend about three million a year on legal fees.”

“See you at lunch.” He didn’t mention that he knew Greco and that he had declined to represent his group, something that Greco had said he understood and would respect.

Stone was on time and accepted a glass of tonic water, as he sat at the table.

“Greco is late,” Eggers said.

“How did he come to you?” Stone asked.

“He knew a guy I was at Harvard with.”

“Not much of a recommendation.”

“He mentioned three million in fees. That was enough of a recommendation.”

“Right,” Stone said.

An hour later, Eggers left the conference room then came back. “I guess he isn’t going to show. His secretary said he had left his office in plenty of time to make our lunch.” Eggers absently speared a slice of quiche and started eating it. “When are you going to send Carly back to us?”

“Maybe never. She’s turned out to be very useful. I don’t have to use a dictionary anymore.”

“She has a big vocabulary?”

“Well, yes. When she was twelve, she says, she memorized the Oxford English Dictionary.”

“How much of it?”

“All twenty volumes of it.”

Eggers stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“I kid you not. Just ask and she’ll give you the spelling, definition, and etymology of any word in it, though I rarely need the etymology.”

“I don’t think you should let any of our clients know that,” Eggers said.

“Why not?”

“She’ll scare them to death.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

They finished eating, and Stone stood. “Thanks for the lunch. See you around. Let me know if you want to reschedule.”

Stone left the building and walked slowly back to his house, crossing the street now and then and watching the reflections in shop windows to be sure he wasn’t being followed. He seemed in the clear.

Back at his office he greeted Joan, who was hard at work, typing something on her computer. He was still hungry, so he walked back to the kitchen and found a pickle, which had just the right flavor. When he reached his office, the door was open, and a man was seated opposite his desk, his back to the door.

Stone returned to Joan’s office. “Who’s the guy in my office?”

“What guy?” she asked, mystified.

“The one in my office. Who is he?”

She rose and walked ahead of him to his office, strode in and said, “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Mr. Barrington has just returned from a meeting.”

Stone followed her into the room. “Good afternoon,” he said.

Joan was standing next to the man’s chair, looking down at him. “Sir?” she was saying, then she froze.

Stone stopped in his tracks. “What?”

“I think he’s dead,” she said.

Stone walked to her and looked down at the man. He was Peter Greco, and Joan was right.

“Well,” he said, “at least he has a good excuse for standing Eggers and me up for lunch.”

Carly walked into the room. “Hi,” she said. “Something smells dead.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Joan said. “I guess our air-conditioning isn’t working well enough.”

“Joan,” Stone said, “call 911, then get me Dino.”

“Why don’t we skip a step and just call Dino?” Joan asked.

“Dino doesn’t like skipping that step,” Stone replied. “He likes to be the second to hear.”

Joan made the calls, and yelled, “Dino on one!”

Stone picked up. “I just came back from meeting with Eggers at Woodman & Weld and found a stiff waiting for me in my home office.”

“Which one? I know a lot of stiffs.”

“This one is both stiff and cold and is starting to impair our atmosphere,” Stone said.

“Anybody we know?”

“Peter Greco.”

“Why am I not surprised? Did you call 911?”

“Of course.”

“When the detectives get there, tell them I’m on the way and not to touch anything. Don’t you or yours touch anything, either.” He hung up.

Carly was standing next to the desk, staring at Greco’s corpse. “Why would they kill him somewhere else and leave him here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe their dumpster was full.”

“Right, that makes a lot of sense.”

“Or maybe as a warning.”

“What kind of warning?”

“The ‘this could happen to you’ kind of warning.”

“Oh. You think it could be the Sarge guy?”

“It would be foolish to think otherwise.”

“He sounds like an unpleasant person.”

“He does, at that.”

“I wonder why he thought he had to prove it?” Carly mused.

There was a low moan from a police siren outside, and Joan let in two detectives — as usual, one Stone knew named Kelly, and a younger one.

“Hello, Stone,” Kelly said. “I hear you’ve got some business for us.” He gestured toward the other guy. “This is my partner, Smith.”

“What kind of name is that for a cop?” Stone asked.

“Call me Smitty,” the younger man said.

“Smitty, it is,” Stone said. “Call me Stone, if this is going to be a pleasant meeting.”

“Just a few questions,” Smitty said, taking a seat near the corpse.

“Shoot.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Nope. He was like that when I got home from a meeting at my law firm.”

“How long has he been dead?”

“Beats me.”

“About two hours,” Carly said.

Stone introduced her to the two cops.

“How do you figure?” Smitty asked her.

“I have a nose.”

“A better one than mine,” Stone said.

“Okay, let’s start with where everybody was two hours ago. We gotta do something until the ME gets here and tells us if we got a psychic on our hands.” He nodded at Carly.

“My advice is to take her word for it,” Stone said. “She’s not often wrong.”

“Hardly ever,” Carly added. “I worked in the New Haven morgue nights and weekends as an undergrad at Yale. At the morgue, they called me ‘the Nose.’ ”

“Okay,” Smitty said.

A man wearing scrubs and carrying a satchel entered the room. “I’m Dr. Carson,” he said, looking at Greco and sniffing the air. “About two hours, I’d say.”

“Can you get him out of here before I start smelling him?” Stone asked.

Dino entered the room. “Okay, how long?” he said to the ME.

“About two hours.”

“Carly had already made that estimate,” Stone said. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d appreciate it if he were moved before he stinks up the whole place.”

Dino looked at the ME and jerked a thumb.

“Whatever you say, Commissioner,” the man replied, and made the same gesture to the two men pushing the gurney. The atmosphere began to improve.

The ME reentered the room, ten minutes later. “Preliminary cause of death, a small puncture wound in the neck, near the base of the skull,” he said.

“Ice pick,” Dino said.

“Possibly. Doesn’t appear to be a small-caliber gunshot: no powder burns.”

“Any other news?” Dino asked.

“Not before I’ve got him splayed on a table,” the ME said. “Can you contain yourselves for a few hours?”

“We can,” Dino said. “There’s not going to be much news, anyway.”

“You’re a very nice policeman,” the ME said. “Good day.” He closed his bag and left.

“I’ll bet nobody’s ever called you a ‘very nice policeman,’ before,” Stone said.

“Not outside of the sack,” Dino said. “My wife sometimes calls me that after a bout in the hay.”

“What other affectionate terms does she use?” Carly asked.

“Ask me when I’ve had a couple of drinks,” Dino said to her.

“I wish Rawls were here,” Stone said, looking at his watch. “I can never remember what time it is in England.”

Dino glanced at his watch. “Middle of dinner, I should think.”

Stone’s phone rang. “Yes?”

“It’s Rawls. We had a good flight and Sarah has a pair of shotguns that we’ve cleaned, oiled, and loaded with buckshot.”

“I’ll bet Carly can smell the gun oil from here,” Stone said.

“Oh, stop it,” Carly said.

Rawls laughed. “Has she been confounding you all with her powers?”

“She has. She just nailed the time of death of a corpse in my office at home, ahead of the ME.”

“Good going, Carly!” he hooted. “Who’s dead?”

“Peter Greco, ice-picked in the neck and delivered fairly fresh.”

“Oh, shit. I got out just in time, didn’t I?”

“I hope so. And I hope you’re not next, because I’m in line right after you.”

“You’re just going to have to kill the next Russian in line, since I’m not there to do it for you.”

“I would, but I don’t think our police commissioner will let me.”

“Maybe somebody in his shop can tell us who’s in line after Greco. He’ll be the guy who hired the Sarge. I don’t have a guess, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll ask.”

“Do you want me to come back tomorrow and watch your ass?”

“Don’t bother. Strategic Services have that view of me.”

“I’m always available, once I’ve relaxed. I got relaxed on the flight over, when nobody shot us down.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“You can only do that if you’re alive. If you fail to call, I’ll assume the worst. Find the Sarge and kill him.”

“It would save us all a lot of time if you’d just do that anyway.”

“Maybe you can talk Dino into doing just that. He has more resources at hand than I. Tell him somebody took a shot at Viv; that’ll set him off.”

“Yeah, but if he finds out I’m lying, that’ll set him off, too, and at me.”

“I leave it in your capable hands, Stone, for the moment. Bye.” Rawls hung up.

To Dino, Stone said, “Do you or your people have a guess at who is next in line to take over now that Greco is dead?”

“If you asked me a week ago,” Dino said, “I would have said yes. But then Greco got the job. Nobody saw that coming. So, who knows now?”

“Take Greco out of the equation. Who should have been given the job instead of him?”

“Let me make a call.” Dino pulled out his phone and stepped out of the room. When he returned, he said, “One of three men.”

“And they are?”

“Igor Krupin, Dmitri Asimov, or Gregor Dryga. Krupin’s at the older end, put in his time, knows where all the bodies are buried. Literally.”

“I’ve heard of him. He’s been around in the background for a while.”

“Asimov is one of the younger upstarts. Hot-tempered, doesn’t like to wait around for things to happen, the kind of guy who likes to fix problems with a sledgehammer. It doesn’t matter how small they are.”

“He sounds lovely,” Stone said.

“I’ll give you his number. You can have drinks together,” Dino said. “The last guy, Dryga, is known as the Bean Counter. He’s the guy who took over the CFO duties from Greco. Before that, he handled logistics for several of the family’s businesses. He’s smart, calculating, and obsessed with details.”

“As supervillain names go, the Bean Counter is not great.”

“Maybe he needs a better PR guy.”

“What’s your gut on who has the inside track?”

“Given how quickly they brought in the Sarge, I’d lean toward Asimov.”

“Do we know where he is?”

“Why? You really interested in grabbing that drink with him?”

“Just the opposite. If I know where he is, I know where not to be.”

“I thought you’d be more concerned about the Sarge.”

“If you know his whereabouts, I’ll gladly take that information, too.”