Milos wanted to scream: Not one man! He was a decoy, a set up to make it look like one man could take out two of mine! It's all a plot, a conspiracy to ruin me!
But he would be shouting at the deaf. The only ones listening were on the other end of the bugs in his offices, maybe even here in his personal car.
The thought made him hunger for fresh air.
"Pull over," he told Pera.
He got out at the corner of East Eighty-fifth. He saw Pera looking nervously about. He was spooked. Vuk and Ivo this morning… who would be next?
"Wait here," he said, and began to walk east.
He had decided to take the matter into his own hands. If he could not trust his men, his phones, his offices, his cars, that left him with one resource: himself. He would track down his tormentors and personally dispose of them. It was the only means left to him to salvage his honor.
But he possessed only one hard fact about his enemy: the first call from the so-called East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee had come from a phone on the corner of East Eighty-seventh Street and Third Avenue. That was it. The rest—the man in the car in the security video, for instance—was all speculation.
He reached Third Avenue and turned uptown. Two blocks later he was standing before the phone. He would deal soon, very soon, with the man in the video, and perhaps with his woman and child if need be. But Milos needed to do this first. He needed to be in this place, to stand where his enemy had stood and pushed these numbered buttons to dial his number and taunt him.
Why here? he wondered, turning in a slow circle. Why did you choose this particular—?
He stopped when he saw the high-rise co-op. He knew that building. Last fall he'd had one of his men look up the address. He'd barely glanced at the numbers before handing the slip to Pera and saying, "Drive by this address."
But the building was unforgettable… Dr. Luc Monnet's building.
Milos whirled and slammed his hand against the phone booth's shield, frightening an old woman passing by. He turned away before she could recognize him, and cursed himself for not being more attentive, for letting underlings do too much. If he'd been paying attention last fall he would have connected the location of the phone with Monnet last Friday. He could have brought all this to a halt that very night. And then there would have been no second rain of filthy oil, no helicopter debacle, and no humiliating videotape playing and replaying nationwide today.
He canned himself. That was in the past. That was done. He could not change it. But he could avenge himself.
Because it was all so clear now.
Monnet and his partners wanted him locked up and out of the way, leaving them a clear field to tie up all the Loki trade for themselves.
Fair enough. If Milos could have figured a way to produce the drug on his own, he would have cut them out long ago. That was business.
But to humiliate him so publicly. This went beyond business.
And all Monnet's idea, he was sure.
He ground his teeth. Monnet… Milos never would have guessed that prissy, pissy little frog had the turn of mind to conceive such a scheme, let alone the guts to execute it. But here was the evidence, staring him squarely in the face.
Motive and opportunity—Monnet had both.
Listen to me. I sound like a fucking cop.
But it was true. Same for Monnet's brother worms, Garrison and Edwards.
Time to turn the tables. Time to square accounts and balance the scales. Only blood would settle this.
Unfortunately that would mean a shutdown of the Loki pipeline—a slaughtering of the goose that laid the golden egg. Bad business. But his honor demanded this. He could put no price on it.
Besides, he had his millions stashed in the Caymans and Switzerland. Once he settled accounts he would disappear for a while, go abroad for a year or two. This city, this country had now been tainted for him by Monnet and his partners.
Milos began walking back the way he had come. So forget about the man in the security video now. Why waste time with him when he would only lead Milos back here, to the GEM Pharma partners.
The partners… Milos would have to think of a way to settle with all three. And since he no longer could trust anyone, he would have to do it alone.
He walked on, planning…
12
"So, you're a hit man now?" Abe said, sliding the package across the counter.
Jack began peeling the masking tape from the tan butcher paper.
Once he'd pulled himself together on the ride back from Monroe, Jack had told Abe what had happened and what he needed. Abe had dropped him off at his apartment where he'd cleaned up as best he could. He'd put the muddied borrowed clothes aside; he'd return them to Peter Harris with a hundred-dollar bill when they came back from the cleaners.
Then he'd called Gia to explain things. He should have gone over in person but he didn't want Vicky frightened by seeing him scarred, battered, bruised, and burned.
Gia was not a happy camper. Once again Jack's line of work had put her and Vicky in harm's way.
No argument there.
When was it going to stop?
Good question. One he couldn't answer, one he could put off answering a little longer.
He hadn't brought it up, but they both knew that Vicky was alive now only as a direct result of Jack's line of work. Had he been a workaday member of straight society, she would not have survived last summer. He could still draw on that account, but he knew it was not bottomless.
The conversation had ended on a tense note.
Jack put those troubles aside for now. To take Gia and Vicky out of harm's way, a harm named Dragovic, he had to focus on the matter at hand. He unfolded the butcher paper, exposing the pistol.
"Looks a little like a Walther P-38."
Abe snorted. "If you should have very bad eyes and left your glasses at home, maybe a little. It's an AA P-98, .22 long rifle."
Jack hefted it, gauging its weight at about a pound and a half. Checked out the barreclass="underline" the front sight had been ground off and the last three-eighths of an inch were threaded. Then he picked up the three-inch-long black metal cylinder that Abe had wrapped with the pistol.
"Awfully small for a silencer. Will this work?"
"First off, a silencer it's not. It's a suppressor. You can't silence a pistol; you can only make it maybe less noisy. And will it work? Yes, it will work. It's a Gem-tech Aurora. It uses the latest wet technology that will knock twenty-four decibels off your shots for up to two clips. After that it won't be so good."
"I figure I'm only going to need a couple, three rounds."
"Pretty much takes care of the muzzle flash as well."
Jack shrugged. "This'll be daylight."
"And here's what you should load." Abe plunked a box of .22 LRs on the counter. "Subsonic, of course."
"Of course."
No sense in using a silencer—OK, suppressor—if the bullet was going to cause a racket along its trajectory, a teeny tiny Concorde doing Mach Two and cracking the sound barrier all the way.
Jack noticed the FMJ on the box. "Full jacket?"
"Hollows or soft-points could be deflected going through the wipes inside the suppressor."
Jack grimaced. "Don't want that. And speaking of wipes, can I borrow your gloves a minute?"
Abe reached under the counter and produced a pair of cotton gloves, originally white, now gray with grime and gun oil. Jack slipped them on.
Abe was staring at him. "Those rounds have maybe someone's name on them?"
Jack said nothing. He poured out a dozen rounds and wiped them with the gloves. Then he began loading them into the P-98's clip. He routinely and obsessively collected his spent brass, but in certain situations it simply wasn't possible. In such a case, he didn't want to leave any fingerprints behind.