“Bring it home, and let’s run it.”
Stone walked up to where Dino was speaking with the on-scene supervisor.
“There must be a dozen security cameras round here trained on this scene,” Dino said.
“Four, so far,” the officer replied.
“I want to see the results, ASAP. E-mail them to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dino took Stone’s arm and guided him back toward his car. “They found a piece of an American passport; they’re running it by the State Department now.”
“And a cell phone data card,” Stone said. “I watched them pick it up, not far from the arm over there.”
“That looks like the biggest piece of the guy remaining,” Dino said. “We’ll pick up prints and DNA from that. Nothing more we can do here.”
They got back into the car and drove to Stone’s house. “Too early for a drink?” Stone asked.
“What kind of question is that?” Dino asked, getting out of the car.
They entered through the office door and found Elise inside, sitting in her new office and looking around. Her mother was admiring it, too.
“Welcome aboard,” Stone said, then led Dino upstairs to the study.
“Aboard?” Dino asked.
“We hired Elise as Joan’s new assistant.”
“Why does Joan need an assistant?”
“I asked the same question, but she was ready for me, had a barrage of answers. Elise is moving into Fred’s old apartment.”
Rance Damien got back to his office to find a note from Henry: See me soonest. He went directly to Henry’s office.
Henry and Hank were waiting.
“Where have you been?” Henry asked.
“Confirming the cancellation of the contracts,” Damien said.
“God, I hate paying those characters for doing nothing,” Henry said.
“I didn’t pay them,” Rance said. “I made other arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“God, I hate being told that,” Henry said.
“Poppa,” Hank said. “Rance is right. You don’t need to know, and neither do I.”
“You heard about Bloomingdale’s, I assume,” Rance said.
“We did,” Henry replied.
“My guy didn’t get my phone messages. It was his colleague who took out the Grants and got shot on the street up there.”
“So the contract wasn’t canceled in time?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Whose fault is that?” Henry demanded.
“Nobody’s,” Rance said. “The messages didn’t go through. If you need to blame somebody, try AT&T.”
“Don’t you get smart with me, boy,” Henry said.
“Poppa!” Hank said. “He’s just telling you the truth. At least, we won’t have to worry about that girl now.”
“Well, the police are going to make that connection pretty quick,” Henry said. “I’m surprised they aren’t already here.”
“We’ve been in a meeting all morning, the three of us,” Hank said. “I’ll let the girls know.” He left the office, then returned. “All square.”
“Look,” Henry said, pointing at the TV, which was muted. “Breaking news at Bloomingdale’s.” He turned up the volume.
“The man shot on the sidewalk, the assumed assassin, has not yet been identified by the police, but the two women shot in the changing room upstairs were Betty and Barbara Swearingen, of Greenwich, Connecticut. They were sisters, who were apparently in town for a day’s shopping.”
“What the fuck!” Henry shouted.
50
Stone and Dino were warming themselves by the fire and their innards with brown whiskey, when Dino’s phone made a noise, and he turned it on. “Security-camera footage from the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge area.”
Stone walked behind Dino’s chair and looked over his shoulder, while the phone downloaded the footage.
“Here we go,” Dino said. They stared intently at the screen; the shot was taken from upriver, apparently from a camera affixed to the bridge. “Long shot,” Dino said.
A man wearing a windbreaker and a baseball cap walked over to the only bench in sight and sat down. Then he answered his phone and walked away. “These have already been edited for best use,” Dino said.
Shortly, a figure appeared, walking up the river, a man in a black topcoat and a black hat, carrying a briefcase. “Who wears a hat these days?” Dino asked.
“Somebody who doesn’t want to be seen by a security camera,” Stone ventured. “It’s the upper-class hoodie.”
“Yeah.”
The second man sat down on the bench, upriver side. He set down his briefcase and turned to face the man in the baseball cap, who had walked toward him.
“No luck on the guy in the hat,” Dino said. “But that’s a clear shot of the guy in the baseball cap.”
“They’re a long way off from the camera, though,” Stone said.
“We’re already working on enhancing the face,” Dino said.
The two men conversed for a short time, then the man in the hat rose and headed back the way he came.
“Did you see that?” Dino asked.
“See what? His back?”
“He left the briefcase under the bench when he got up.”
“You’re right,” Stone said.
The man in black disappeared off screen, then the man in the baseball cap reached under the bench and brought out the briefcase.
“Here we go,” Dino said.
The second man seemed to inspect the briefcase, then stroked it with one hand, then both his hands moved into position to open the case. The explosion was noiseless, since there was no audio, but the force of the blast was visible. The man in the baseball cap simply disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
They watched as debris began to fall around the bench.
“There’s the arm we saw,” Stone said, as it landed a few yards from the bench.
“Right,” Dino replied. He quickly ran the three other camera views, but it was obvious that the shots from the first camera were the best. Dino set down his phone.
“It’s not every day you see a guy blown to pieces,” Dino said.
“Thank God for that,” Stone replied.
Dino’s phone made the noise again, and he picked it up. “Enhancement coming in,” he said.
Stone stood behind him and watched as the shot from the first camera ran again in the enhanced mode. “Looks like a cashmere topcoat,” he said.
“Yeah, but that’s not going to help us.”
“And a Yankees ball cap.”
“Right again.”
The motion stopped, a square was drawn around the head of the man in the Yankees cap. It was enlarged, then enhanced before their eyes.
“Hey, that’s good!” Dino enthused. “Our facial recognition software ought to be able to do something with that.” He turned off the phone, and Stone sat down.
“He looked sort of Mediterranean,” Stone said.
“So did the guy at Bloomingdale’s.”
“So, a Middle Eastern terrorist shoots two women in Bloomingdale’s and another Middle Eastern guy gets handed a briefcase with a surprise inside,” Dino said.
“The guy at Bloomingdale’s thought he was shooting Elise and Elena,” Stone said, “but he got it wrong, then his cohort goes to accept payment for the job from a guy by the river, only the guy by the river didn’t want to pay. That makes sense.”
“It does,” Dino said. Then his phone rang, and Dino put it on speaker and set it on the coffee table. “Bacchetti.”
“Boss, it’s Lieutenant Perdido, in intelligence tech services,” a voice said.
“What have you got?”
“A connection between the guy at Bloomingdale’s and the one from the bridge. Their passports, though their numbers were not consecutive, were both issued at the American embassy in Paris, and both on the same day.”