Near Miss

Ten minutes later, there was a tap on the rear street entrance to Stone’s office, and he let in Billy Barnett, who was, somehow, dressed differently than when he had departed an hour ago.

“Did you see everything?” Billy asked.

“No,” Stone said honestly, “just a shot of Carly getting out of a cab at the Strand, and you getting in.”

“Then you missed all the action,” Billy said. He picked up a remote control and rewound the video, then played it in slow motion.

“I still missed most of it,” Stone said.

“Then so will the police,” Billy said, holding out a shopping bag. “Krispy Kreme?”

Stone looked into the bag and saw donuts, but didn’t take one. “I’m confused,” he said.

“And that’s a good thing,” Billy said.

Shortly, Carly entered the house and flopped down in a chair. “Got another Krispy Kreme?” she asked, and Billy offered her one. She chewed reflectively for a moment. “Well?” she asked nobody in particular.

Everybody stared at Carly.

“Well, what?” Stone asked.

“That’s the best question you could have asked,” Billy said. He played the recording again, then recordings of two television stations.

“I see nothing,” Stone said, “except the back of Carly’s head, once or twice.”

“And nobody’s looking for the back of Carly’s head,” Billy said.

“It’s all too obvious to believe,” Stone said.

“Correct.”

“And I did what Billy said,” Carly remarked. “I learned a lot.”

“What did you learn?”

She held up her Krispy Kreme. “I learned that nobody cares about a lady buying donuts. And that, if you just do what you would normally do in the circumstances, you’re not a suspect.”

“Well,” Stone said, “in many years of trying to solve homicides, I didn’t look for ordinary people doing what they did. I looked for obvious suspects, and usually, I found them.”

“That’s because the perpetrators were influenced by their own actions,” Billy said. “They were furtive because they knew they were guilty, or were going to be. If you’re going to commit a murder, state of mind is everything.”

“You didn’t explain that before,” Stone said.

“No, and that’s because an explanation would have altered your state of mind, and you would have been looking for missteps, instead of overlooking them.” Billy set the remote control down. “I have a plane to catch, but keep me updated on any developments, Stone. Let’s stay in close touch.” He nodded at Carly and headed for the door.

Dino sat and watched the videos of the murder from neighborhood security cameras. He thought he caught sight of Carly’s head once, but then he lost her. He saw two women carrying shopping bags from Krispy Kreme, but what the hell, it was right there on the corner, and that would have been entirely acceptable and actionless. Who cared who bought donuts? And he would expect that, if questioned, Carly would have had an ironclad alibi: she was buying donuts on a whim.

“Good luck with this one, guys,” he said to his team. “Question all the hit men on our list. Nobody’s going to miss Gromyko. You’ll come up dry.” Everybody filed from the squad room and went to work, while Dino returned to One Police Plaza, to issue a statement and return the phone calls of media people.

That night, he slept the sleep of the ignorant.

Chapter 42

In the wake of Gromyko’s murder, the council meeting was delayed until one am. Two members of the family’s inner circle were in Boston and had to fly back. A third was in the hospital, recovering from a gallbladder operation, and had to be transported to the location via ambulance.

The Bean Counter was in attendance, though word of his earlier meeting with the Greek, and its antagonistic nature, had made the rounds, and few of the others would even make eye contact with him.

The gathering was chaired by Igor Krupin, the senior member of the council and the person who oversaw operations near the docks. “For the third time in less than a year we are meeting because our leader has been murdered. I know you all are as angry as I am. And that—”

“Do we know who did it?” The question came from Dmitri Asimov, the man who oversaw the family’s distribution business.

“I was getting to that.”

“Get to it faster.”

While the question of who was responsible for the Greek’s death needed to be answered, the Bean Counter knew the more important question was who would lead the family now. Because until that was decided, the tension between not just Krupin and Asimov but every man sitting around the table would only escalate.

Krupin glared at Asimov. “At this point, it’s too early to know who is behind it.”

A chorus of upset voices broke out.

Krupin held up a hand. “Quiet. Quiet!”

“Of course, we know who did it,” Asimov said. “Gromyko himself was sure if he were killed, it would be at the hands of the lawyer, Barrington.”

“Barrington?” another man at the table asked, incredulous. “The same Barrington who was responsible for the death of the elder Pentkovsky brother?”

“And the first Greek.”

Everyone turned to Krupin.

“Why hasn’t he been killed yet?” a man sitting next to the Bean Counter asked.