“Do you have a lot of clients?”
“Woodman & Weld has hundreds. I have a few that I manage personally.”
“What are they?”
“Strategic Services, the Steele insurance group, the Arrington hotel group, and now Perado Brewing. I serve on the boards of the first three. Oh, and of course, there’s Pat Frank Aviation Services.”
“And you do all that by yourself?”
“No, I have a lot of support from Woodman & Weld. Joan and I do the rest.”
“I might steal Joan from you.”
“Good luck with that. You wouldn’t like what you’d have to pay her, and if you did lure her away, I’d have to shoot you.”
Pat laughed. “Okay, okay, but I’ve got a dozen and a half airplanes to run now, and I’m picking up new business by word of mouth. I’m going to need an office manager soon. I’ve been doing it myself.”
“I’ll ask Joan if she knows anybody. Does this person need aviation experience?”
“It couldn’t hurt, but not necessarily. It will be office work—bookkeeping, phones, mail, that sort of thing. I’ve already got one person doing flight planning, and soon I’ll need somebody else to help her.”
“Sounds like you’re going to need office space soon, too.”
“I’m going to try to keep it to the space I have downstairs in the house. Renting office space would be a huge step for me.”
“Have you got a new tenant for your newly vacated apartment upstairs?”
“Not yet. I’m going to have to put a realtor on that soon.”
“Or you could rent it to some of your staff and convert it to office space when you need to.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I don’t know, why didn’t you?”
—
Frank Riggs was at his desk when the receptionist buzzed. “A Mr. Charles Carney to see you.”
Frank sighed. “Okay, send him in.”
Charlie rapped on the open door, and Frank waved him to a seat. “What’s up, Charlie?”
Charlie eased into the chair, looking pleased with himself. “I got another job for us,” he said.
“Listen, Charlie, you should take some time off—lie in the sun, charter a boat, relax.”
“Why do that when I can be making more money?”
“Look, you’re sitting on a pile of cash now, don’t get greedy. If you start a crime wave in South Florida, your chances of getting caught will go way up. You’ve already got three law enforcement agencies trying to get at you as it is.”
“Three? Who?”
“The local cops in the town where the bank is, the state police, and the FBI. It was a bank job, remember? That’s federal. Where are you living?”
“I’m in a nice motel a couple of miles from here.”
“You’d be smart to buy yourself a condo while the market is still favorable.”
“Yeah, I guess. How much would that cost me?”
“At least two, three hundred thousand. You can spend a lot more, of course. My point is, you’ve got to establish yourself as a solid citizen, somebody no one would ever suspect of doing bank jobs. Might be a good idea to buy a small business, use it as a cover.”
“Good idea.”
“And stop doing jobs for a while—let things cool off. If the cops think there’s somebody new in town, knocking off this and that, pretty soon they’ll have a task force hunting you. You know how burglars work?”
“I was never a burglar.”
“They case a place, do it, then wait for the owner to replace all his goods, then they do it again.”
“You mean I should do the same bank again?”
“Why not? Give it three, six months, let things return to normal, then repeat. They’re not going to have any more security than they had before. They’ve already got cameras, alarms, an armed guard. What else are they going to add?”
“I see your point.”
“I hope you see my point about letting things cool—you’ll stay out of the joint that way.”
“I hate to pass up the one I’ve got in mind.”
“It’ll still be there a few months from now.”
“You want to hear about the job I have in mind?”
Frank shrugged. “I’ll pay a finder’s fee or a percentage.”
Charlie began to explain, and Frank thought it wasn’t half bad. “Let me talk it over with my partner, and I’ll let you know. In the meantime, take a vacation. You ever been down to the Keys?”
“No, but I hear it’s nice.”
“It’s better than that. Take a drive. I’ll be in touch.”
“You’re right, Frank, I’ll take your advice.” Charlie shook his hand and left.
Frank began to think about Charlie’s job; it had possibilities, he thought.
Gene Ryan woke on Saturday morning, his mouth dry, his head hurting and very fuzzy around the edges. It took him a minute to realize that it was his cell phone that had awakened him. “Hello?” Ryan croaked.
“Hey, Gene, it’s Al. How you doin’?”
“What time is it?”
“Hey, as bad as that, is it? It’s after nine—AM.”
“Shit.”
“Listen, I need to talk to you about something. Meet me at that diner down the block from you in an hour. I’ll buy you brunch.”
“What’s this about?”
“Work.” Al hung up.
—
An hour and fifteen minutes later, Ryan shuffled into the diner and located Al in a corner booth. “Coffee,” he said to the passing waitress, then joined Al.
“This better be good,” Ryan said as he slid into the booth. “Getting me up at the crack of dawn.”
Al laughed at that. They ordered breakfast and chatted idly. When the food was set on the table, Al got down to business.
“I got something sweet.”
“How sweet?”
“Maybe a hundred and a half—you and me take eighty percent.”
“Who gets the other twenty?”
“My cousin Vinny, like the movie.”
“What’s the job?”
“A poker game, a fat one. I’ve been playing in it for three weeks. Sometimes there’s two hundred grand changing hands.”
“Tell me more.”
“It’s in a pretty good motel on 17 North. The room is on the ground floor with two doors. The back one leads to the alley where they pick up the garbage. Six guys, all of them businessmen, no wise guys.”
“Go on.”
“I’m at the table, you and Vinny come in the two doors, you’ve got that sawed-off shotgun of yours. That will scare the shit out of everybody.”
“Are you carrying?”
“Nope, I’m a victim. You make everybody empty their pockets onto the table, then take the table blanket, cards, money, and all, and beat it out the back door, where Vinny has a car stashed. We meet at your place, as soon as I can get out, and divvy the money.”
“How do I know Vinny can handle this?”
“Because I say so. He’s a cool kid—it’s not his first job.”
“Are you the newest guy in the game?”
“There’s one newer by a week.”
“How’ve you been doing?”
“I’m up a couple grand for the three weeks. One of the players brought in a pro dealer, who, turns out, is a mechanic. I figure tonight I’ll win pretty big, and next week, they’ll lower the boom on me. Except you and me and Vinny will already have lowered the boom on them.”
“Okay, I’m in. When?”
“Tonight.”
“That’s not much time for planning.”
“The planning is all done. You just heard my plan.” Al looked toward the door. “Here comes Vinny.”
Vinny was lean and obscenel
y barbered, with a fashionable two days of stubble. He didn’t say much.
“I told him the plan,” Al said.
“I like the plan,” Ryan said, “but Vinny has got to understand: nobody gets hurt. No shooting, no blows to the head. This is an illegal game, so nobody is calling the cops—unless somebody gets hurt, then we’re in the shit.”
“Got it,” Vinny said. It was the first time he had spoken.
—
Ryan went back to his apartment, got a duffel off the top shelf of his closet, and dumped the shotgun onto the bed. It was an old-fashioned, open-hammer scattergun with the barrel sawed off to about four inches. Vinny had fired it into a target: from ten feet it had a pattern the size of a basketball.
He cleaned the weapon, dropped a couple of double-ought shells into it, and closed it. It couldn’t fire until he pulled back the hammers.
—
Al dropped off Vinny at his mother’s house. “You okay with Gene?” he asked the young man.
“No problem, I guess.”
“You guess? What does that mean?”
“Nothin’.”
“You do understand why nobody gets hurt?”
“Yeah, nobody gets hurt, nobody calls the cops. But, Al . . .”
“Yeah?”
“What if somebody’s packin’?”
“Don’t worry about it. Nobody in this crowd packs.”
“If you say so,” Vinny replied. “But if somebody draws, we’re in a whole new poker game.”
Al sat at the poker table and glanced at his hand again. He raised. The dealer dealt another card, and Al watched his face instead of his hands. He had already learned that the guy was too good a mechanic to make a move you could see. His face was something else, though. As he dealt Al’s next card there was a tiny smile.
Al forced himself not to look at his watch, on being completely caught up in the game. He wanted to be as surprised as everyone else at the table. When the two doors were simultaneously kicked in, he flinched with the best of them and looked around. Two men in masks and black clothes came into the room, one with a semiautomatic pistol held out in front of him and the other with a mean-looking sawed-off shotgun.
“Hands on the table, everybody!” Ryan shouted, and for emphasis, he cocked both hammers of the shotgun.
Al went back to looking at the dealer, and as he placed his hands on the table, the butt of a pistol revealed itself under his jacket. Oh, no, Al thought.
Vinny was methodically emptying the pockets of the players, while Ryan moved the shotgun back and forth, as if spraying the men at the table.
Al saw a flicker of a move of the dealer’s right hand, and he caught the man’s eye and slowly shook his head. That stopped the man long enough for Vinny to discover the pistol. It was a snub-nosed .38, and he thumbed open the cylinder and shook the cartridges out onto the table. Al heard somebody say, “Shit!” but he wasn’t sure who.
Vinny began wrapping the money, the cards, and the cartridges in the blanket, then he nodded at Ryan, who let go a single, deafening round into the ceiling, showering everyone with pieces of acoustic tiles. The two men ran out the rear door, and a moment later, Al heard the car’s tires squeal as it drove down the alley.
People seemed reluctant to move for a moment. “They’re gone,” somebody said.
Al turned to face the dealer. “You,” he said, “you nearly got somebody killed.”
“Fuck you,” the dealer snarled.
—
After a change of cars and a dumping of their clothes, Ryan let them into his apartment and tossed the bundle onto the couch.
“I want to see it,” Vinny said, making a move.
“Not until Al gets here,” Ryan said. “That was the deal.”
“He’s going to be at least an hour,” Vinny said.
Ryan switched on the TV and found an old movie. “Watch and learn,” he said. “It’ll make the time fly.”
Al arrived at the apartment just before two AM. “Sorry,” he said, as Ryan let him in, “I had to drink with them, or they’d have suspected something. A couple of them were looking at me funny, until I pointed out to them that I was the big loser.”
He opened the blanket, and they stared at the pile of money. “I had twenty grand on the table,” Al said. “I get that out first.” He quickly counted the money, while Ryan and Vinny sorted the bills by denomination and kept a running tally on a shirt cardboard.
“I make it two hundred and twenty-two grand,” Ryan said, “give or take.”
“Vinny,” Al said, “you just made yourself forty-four grand.” He counted out the money.
“You guys made more,” Vinny said.
“You set up the jobs and do the planning, and you’ll make more,” Al said.
“Somebody give me a lift to my mom’s house?” Vinny said, getting to his feet.
“Sure,” Al said, getting up. “We’re all beat. Remember, no flashy spending for a while. Give it a month before you buy anything noticeable.” He led Vinny to his car and told him to get into the rear seat. “Stay down,” he said. “I don’t want anybody seeing us together.”
“Right,” Vinny said. “You got something else for us soon, Al?”
“Maybe,” Al said. “You don’t want to pull a rash of jobs. You got cash, take your girl to the city for dinner and a show.”
“Right.”
Al deposited Vinny on his doorstep, after a good look around, then drove away.
—
Ryan still wasn’t ready to sleep. He turned on New York One, the 24/7 cable news channel. He was half asleep when he heard a name that jerked him awake.
“Police Commissioner Dino Bacchetti worked late tonight,” the reporter said, “and got home late to his Park Avenue apartment.” Ryan watched as Bacchetti got out of a black SUV and walked under an awning into his building. He saw the building number on the awning. This was Barrington’s buddy, who rousted him outside the restaurant and made him spend a night in the can. Barrington had been hard to find lately, but now he knew where to look for his friend.
Bacchetti would do.
Ryan came back from his test-drive of a two-year-old Triumph Bonneville Black motorcycle and made the man an offer. After some haggling, he shelled out five grand for the machine, got the paperwork, and got the hell out of there. He was in Manhattan in half an hour.
The TV news show he’d watched during the wee hours had said that Bacchetti attended Mass on Sunday mornings, but not where. Ryan planned to see him either coming or going.
He eased the bike into a spot between two cars on East Sixty-third Street, locked the machine, and took the shotgun from the saddle bag and concealed it under his biker jacket. He didn’t take off the helmet.
—
Dino showered, shaved, and got into a suit. The doorman rang as he was checking his tie, and he told the man to tell his detective that he’d be right down. It was ten-thirty, plenty of time to schmooze on the steps of the church. He’d been advised when he was sworn in that he should be seen in public around town often, and he’d managed to do so.
He left the elevator and walked briskly through the lobby, greeting the doorman and his detective, Bobby Calabrese. He could see his car at the end of the awning.
—
Ryan had seen the black SUV pull up to the building and the plainclothes cop get out of it and go inside. He’d been waiting for less than half an hour, and he’d gotten it right.
—
Dino walked out of the building, and all hell broke loose.
—
Stone and Pat were having a late brunch by the pool when his cell phone rang.
“Oh, turn it off,” Pat said. “Nothing important ever happens on a Sunday morning.”
Stone looked at the phone. “It’s Joan, she wouldn’t call if it weren’t important. Hello
?”
“Stone, it’s Joan. Something’s happened to Dino.” She sounded breathless.
“Just slow down and tell me what you know.”
“I had the TV on, and there was a report that Dino was shot on the sidewalk outside his apartment building. They’ve said nothing since.”
“I’m on my way,” Stone said. “Call again if you get more information. We’ll be in the air in half an hour, and you can reach me on the satphone.” He looked at his watch. “Ask Fred to meet us at Teterboro at three PM.”
“Got it.” She hung up.
“Something wrong?” Pat asked.
“It’s Dino—something’s happened. Get packed, we’re leaving in ten minutes.” He got up and ran for their cottage, with Pat right behind.
She filed a flight plan for Teterboro as they drove to the airport, and they each took half the airplane for the preflight inspection.
Stone was frightened of the phone call that might come at any moment. He had tried to reach Viv, and the call had gone directly to voice mail. He got his IFR clearance and taxied to the runway while Pat entered the flight plan into the computer. He was cleared for takeoff, and as he lined up on the runway, he tried to get everything out of his mind but flying the airplane. He pushed the throttles forward, and Pat called the airspeed for him.
“Rotate,” she said, and he did. He got the gear and flaps up, engaged the autopilot at 450 feet, and pressed the flight level button to climb to his first assigned altitude of 16,000 feet. He was halfway there when he got his clearance to cruising altitude of flight level 410. The autopilot did the rest, while he ran through his checklists and tried not to think about what awaited him in New York.
He was over Orlando when the satphone rang. “Hello?”
“It’s Joan. There’s more, and it’s not good. He was shot, and the reports say it was a head wound. A detective with him was shot, too, and they were both taken to a hospital. They didn’t say which one.”
“It’ll either be New York Hospital or Lenox Hill,” Stone said. “Try and find out and let Fred know.” He hung up and tuned in XM rado, a news channel. Not a word about Dino for the remainder of the flight.
He flew the ILS 6 into Teterboro and taxied to Jet Aviation. As they approached the terminal, he could see Fred waiting on the ramp. Five minutes after shutdown they were in the car.
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