Near Miss

“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.”

Chapter 59

Ed Rawls found his girlfriend Dame Sarah Deerfield waiting for him in living room.

“Ready?” she said and stood.

She had attired herself in a red dress that hugged her in all the right places. Ed took a moment to admire the view before saying, “It might be better if we eat in tonight.”

Her eyebrow crooked. “Problems in New York?”

“Greco is dead.” He didn’t need to tell her the rest as he’d informed her about what had been going on when he’d first arrived.

“Which means you’re next,” she said.

“Me or Stone. Or, depending on how ambitious they are, both of us at the same time.”

“I don’t like the sound of any of that.”

“It doesn’t exactly fill me with joy, either.”

“Shall I call my friends at Scotland Yard? I could have two dozen officers surrounding my house within the half hour.” Sarah was the retired chief of the Metropolitan Police in London.

Ed considered the suggestion, then nodded. “Make the call but let me check the area before you have them show up.”

She pulled out her phone, and he headed upstairs.

Ed checked Sarah’s security cameras on the monitor in the bedroom and saw no obvious signs of trouble. But if the Sarge was as good as his reputation, there wouldn’t be.

Ed opened his suitcase. While he had followed Mike Freeman’s instructions to the tee and had brought no weapons with him on the flight from Teterboro, he had packed a few items typical travelers would not have. Tucked among the stuff in his bag were a pair of binoculars, with both available light and night vision modes.