"You got it," Vince Ellerbe said. "And I'll bet he was that way right up until the moment he died."
"I'll go you one further," Justin said. "I'll bet you it's exactly what got him killed."
Justin decided to take the ferry back from Connecticut to Long Island. The ferry was about twenty minutes into its voyage when Justin's cell phone rang. It was Billy DiPezio.
"You got an ID on my prints?" Justin asked.
"As a matter of fact, I do. And so do you. The results should be in your e-mail."
"Anything good?"
"No idea. The guy's meaningless to me."
"Connections to Lenny Rube?"
"Not that I can find."
"Rival mob?"
"I'm not sayin' no, Jay, but this guy ain't on my radar. His prints are on record, but I don't see any arrests, any suspicion, anything but the guy's name, which is all that's in the system. But that's not why I'm calling."
"Shit," Justin said. He knew that tone in Billy's voice and he felt goose bumps running down the back of his neck. "What happened?"
"The offices for the LaSalle Group were broken into last night. Files were taken."
"What files?"
"All sorts. But we do know that the lists that LaSalle's assistant made for you-"
"Ellen Loache."
"Yeah. Her hard copy of that is definitely gone." When Justin didn't say anything, Billy said, "Somebody sure seems to be very interested in what you're doin' and beatin' you to the punch."
"I just wish I knew what the hell I was doing." Justin sighed. "Was there any damage?"
"Only if you count the human kind."
"Oh Christ."
"One of the guys you met with, Stan Solomon."
"What the hell was he doing in the office on a Sunday night?"
"He was puttin' in some overtime, I guess you could say."
"What happened?"
"Had his windpipe broken. According to the witness, never knew what hit him."
"The witness? What witness?"
"Ellen Loache."
"She was there?"
"Yup. Ms. Loache… or I should say Mrs. Loache… is married. Looks like she and this guy Solomon liked to work together when no one else was around, if you know what I mean."
"Yes, Bill, I get the drift. I picked up on that when I was with them. Kind of thought there was something going on."
"Well, there was. And he was quite the valiant guy. When they realized there was an intruder, he told her to hide."
"But he didn't?"
"Nope. Not macho enough, I guess. And according to Mrs. Loache, when he saw who the intruder was he just kinda threw caution to the wind. Figured there was no danger."
"Who was he?"
"It wasn't a he, Jay. It was a she."
"A woman broke his windpipe?"
"Apparently one quick motion. Bam. That was it."
Even in the summer heat, Justin's skin turned cold as he flashed on the women who might possibly be in Ron LaSalle's office. Vicky, he thought. Then he thought, no, couldn't be her-she wasn't capable of doing that. And then he thought: Reggie. Could she have gotten up there and back down in time? Christ, was it Reggie?
"Okay, who was she?"
"We don't know. Ms. Loache didn't recognize her. Didn't even get a great look at her, she was too afraid, especially after she saw what happened to her boyfriend. All we got was that she was Asian."
"Asian?" He let his breath out in relief. "That's it? Nothing more specific?"
"Nothin' that's a giant help."
And then Justin saw her. It came as a sudden flash, something out of a movie, an image barreling into his brain. She was walking down the street, passing him by right after he'd left Wanda's car. Floating down the street was more like it.
"Billy, did Loache say anything else about her? Tall, really good-looking?"
"You got it. She said tall and beautiful, but she wouldn't recognize her again if she fell over her."
"It's okay. I would."
"You know her?" Billy DiPezio asked incredulously.
"No. But I saw her. I saw her when I got out of Wanda's car the other day. She was right there."
"Jay, there are a lot of good-lookin' Asian women walkin' around these days."
"It was her. I know it. I'm telling you, I can feel it."
There was a pause, then Billy said, "I've known you too long not to at least listen when you get a feelin'. What else can you tell me about her?"
"Let me think about it for a little bit, see if I can conjure up more. I'll get back to you and give you whatever details I remember."
Billy agreed, then he said something he'd never said to Justin before. "You be careful, okay?"
Justin nodded, realized Billy couldn't see the nod. "This is a weird one, huh?"
"There's somethin' goin' on here, Jay, and I don't like it. And, worse, I don't understand it. There're usually dots and the problem is connecting 'em. But I don't even see the dots on this one."
"You be careful, too, okay?"
"Later," Billy said, and Justin clicked his cell phone off.
Billy was right, Justin knew. He'd put his finger right on the fat of the problem: People were dying all around them. Something was happening. But where were the damn dots?
Justin sat in his car and, as the ferry churned forward, he stared at the dirty blue water stretching out ahead for miles and miles. The water looked as if it could go on forever with no land and no end in sight, and Justin realized he might not mind all that much if it did.
23
Reggie had heard the news about the break-in and murder from Agent Fletcher by the time Justin had called to say he was about half an hour outside East End Harbor. By the time he was pulling into his driveway, she was waiting outside his front door.
The first thing they did when they were inside was use Justin's computer to go online and open the information that had come from Billy DiPezio. The shooter's name was Pietro Lambrasco, and the reason his prints were in the system was because he'd recently come into the country, visiting from Italy, and had gone through customs. The norm was now to fingerprint anyone entering the country. He was visiting for pleasure rather than business, and his business was listed as salesman. There was nothing else of any use. Reggie immediately processed the name and the prints through the FBI system, which had a far wider range of links than did the Providence PD. She told Justin they'd have results within an hour.
He ran down what he'd learned at Melman Academy and from Vince Ellerbe, and when she asked about the yearbooks he dropped on his beat-up coffee table, all he said was "Can't explain it. Just wanted to know more about the guy's past."
"Well, I'm pretty much blind by now," Reggie said. "I've been going through all the LaSalle info you got from his office. I've also been trying to narrow down the search on Hades and Ali."
"And?" Before she could answer he said, "Hold on. Let me get a couple of beers. I spent the day drinking lemonade and it almost killed me."
He disappeared into the kitchen, came back with two open bottles, handed one to her. "Okay," he said, once he took a pull off the Sam Adams.
"Well, I don't have enough cross-references to come up with anything useful for either Hades or Ali, so that was a total bust. What I was able to do with the LaSalle info was try to break it down and see if it made any sense."
"Did it?"
"Not to me. But there are enough unique aspects to it that it will to somebody. We just have to find someone who can recognize the patterns, I think, or something else to match it all up against." He indicated for her to go on, and she pulled out a yellow legal pad that had pages of nearly illegible markings and scribbles.
"Jesus," he said, "your handwriting's worse than mine."
"So shoot me. No, forget I said that. Not a good phrase to use around you."
"Just tell me what you've got."
"More than anything else, it's the travel spots. I can't make sense of them. Ron LaSalle did very little traveling up until a year ago."
"That's about when he started his own company."
"The company started four months before that-that's when he left Rockworth. So for four months he's pretty stable at home."