Near Miss

“Now we have two edges,” Stone said, “or as many as you can hatch from your little case.”

“You say that he maintains offices in Little Italy?”

“Well, he sometimes does business from a private dining room behind the bar at a restaurant, which is closed at lunchtime,” Stone said. “I’m not sure it qualifies as an office, but I doubt he’d be there. The FBI is looking for him, and it’s probably one of the first places they checked.”

“Forget the office, then. We need only a short time in his presence, long enough to conduct a single transaction and to depart the scene without sprinting into a subway station with his minions in hot pursuit.”

“I’ve heard he sometimes buys fruit on his way home,” Carly said, “à la Brando in the Godfather.”

“I can’t establish myself as a fruit seller on the street, without exciting the enmity of half a dozen others who ply the same trade. I would be noticed in a trice and dealt with in the same moment. Besides, if he can’t visit his favorite restaurant/office at the moment, I’m confident he won’t go anywhere near his home.”

“Let’s put the Godfather out of our minds,” Stone said. “Where else does he do business?”

“My notes,” Carly said, tapping her temple with a forefinger, “put him constantly on the move, and switching cars frequently, which obviates planting an explosive device in his transportation, à la Trench.”

“Quite,” Stone said, in an upper-class British accent. “Though doing so would be poetic.”

“Perhaps we could find a way to put his paranoia to our own uses,” Billy said.

“That’s an attractive idea.” Stone glanced at his watch. “Why don’t you two put some flesh on its bones, and we’ll talk again tomorrow. Billy, I’ll trust you to get Carly home safely, since you’re both staying at my house.”

“Of course,” Billy replied.

“I’ll have Fred drop me off and come back for you in a few minutes.” He got up, went outside, and crawled into the rear seat of the SUV.

“Only you, sir?” Fred asked.

“You can take me home and come back for Billy and Carly.”

“Yes, sir.”

For the rest of the ride, Stone didn’t occupy himself with the problem at hand, since he had two devious minds already at work on it.

Gromyko’s watchers were gone by the time they reached home. Fred dropped Stone in the garage, and Stone made his way to the master suite, unbuttoning things along the way. He was sleeping alone tonight, and he needed the rest.

Chapter 40

First thing the next morning, Stone sat in his study and waited for his newly formed team of assassins — a film producer and a rookie attorney — to join him.

Eventually, they filed in and sat down.

Stone waited for their plot to unfold.

“We’ve talked it over at some length,” Billy said, “and I’ve decided that it’s best to fall back on old habits and experience. Fewer ways to screw up.”

Stone squinted at Billy over his folded fingers and waited. Old habits? he asked himself. “What kind of ‘old habits’?” he asked Billy.

“I’ve put out some feelers. Gromyko’s been moving around a lot, but I found out where he’ll be this afternoon. We wait for him to step out of his nest, then I walk up behind him and put two in his head.” As if it were the easiest thing in the world. “It’s the easiest thing in the world,” Billy said.

“And Carly’s role in this?”

“To walk on the other side of the street and observe. It will be good experience for her.”

“And how do you get your own ass out of there after shooting the guy in the head?”

“You leave that to me,” Billy said, like it was a done deal.

Stone took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I know it’s not the sort of plan you were thinking about,” Billy said. “That’s why it will work. It’s simple. Nobody will be thinking of it.”

“You don’t think Gromyko’s bodyguard will notice when his charge collapses in the street?”

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” Billy said, as if that explained everything.

“Billy, I know your work well enough to know that you will vanish into thin air, but is Carly just supposed to hike up her skirts and sprint away?”

“It’s hard to explain, cold, like this,” Billy said, “but it will go much better in the viewing.”

“This won’t be happening in a screening room, but in a public street, likely a crowded one.”

“The more witnesses, the better,” Billy replied. “They’ll each have their own story to tell, and none of them will match.”

Stone took another deep breath.

“I want there to be no way for Carly to be associated with what happens; that’s the only way I’ll feel comfortable with her participation.” He packed as much finality into that sentence as he could manage.

“No one will be paying her any kind of attention.”

“Is that a promise?”

Billy drew an X across his chest with his finger, and said, “Cross my heart.”

Stone looked at Carly. “And you’re okay with everything?”

Carly shrugged. “Peachy keen. I’ve heard enough from Billy to believe that he knows what he’s doing.”

“The first sign you might be in danger, I want you off the street and unobservable from any point of view,” Stone demanded.

“I promise,” Carly said.