Worst Fears Realized

I’d be lying down there in the street with a very big knife in me?”

“All right, all right,” Dino said, seeing that he was not going to win this one. “Can you describe the man?”

“Late thirties, early forties, small; I’d say five-seven. Wiry, and he had an Afro.”

“He was black?”

“No, but he had an Afro, kind of. Kind of a Jewish Afro.”

“He was Jewish? How do you know that?”

“No; I mean, that’s what we used to call it in high school, when a Jewish kid had that kind of kinky hair, you know?”

“Did the guy look Jewish?”

“Not particularly. His hair was dark, though, almost black.”

“How was he dressed?”

“He was wearing a raincoat, kind of new-looking, you know? Freshly pressed, no wrinkles.”

“Anything else?”

“No, the raincoat covered everything. It was single-breasted, not a trench coat; I remember that.”

Detectives Anderson and Kelly arrived, then, and Dino brought them up-to-date. “Andy, you get on the phone and get out an APB for this guy. Get a bulletin out to all the hospitals in Manhattan to expect a guy answering the description to come in with a gunshot wound to the head, possibly to the left ear. Be sure and tell them he’s armed with a knife and to exercise extreme caution. I don’t want this guy cutting up a nurse.”

Anderson went to the phone, while Kelly leaned against a wall, saying nothing.

“Thank God the kid was in school,” Dino said. He wrote something on a pad, ripped it off, and handed it to the idle Kelly. “Get over there and pick up my kid at his school. That’s the address.” Kelly left. “Mary Ann, neither of you goes anywhere without a cop for a while.”

“Oh, come on, Dino,” she replied. “The guy’s not coming back. No mugger is that stupid.”

Dino looked at the floor. “You do like I tell you about this, you hear me?”

Stone went and sat on the sofa next to her. “Mary Ann,” he said, “it’s not a mugger.”

“What are you talking about?”

He turned to Dino. “It’s our guy,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” Dino replied. “Worst fears realized.”

9

KELLY RETURNED WITH DINO’S SON, Benedetto, a black-eyed six-year-old who looked like a tiny Sicilian prince, taking after his mother’s line. Dino dismissed Kelly, then gathered up the boy, sat him on his lap, and explained what had happened that afternoon.

“Why don’t you just have the guy capped?” the child asked.

Dino sighed and looked at Stone. “He spent the weekend with his grandfather.” He turned back to the boy. “Because, Ben, I am a police officer, and we don’t have guys capped. We arrest them and put them in jail, remember? Now you go and get washed up for dinner. Uncle Stone is going to join us.” The boy got down from his father’s lap and ran toward his room.

“Thanks, I’d love to,” Stone said.

Mary Ann excused herself and headed for the kitchen.

“Come on into my study,” Dino said. “Let’s have a drink.”

Stone followed Dino into the handsome little walnut-paneled room, where Dino produced Stone’s favorite bourbon and a scotch for himself. It was not the study or the apartment of a New York City police lieutenant, and the books on the shelves, mostly art history, history, and biography, revealed a broader Dino than most people knew.

Stone knew that Dino’s father-in-law had acquired the apartment for his daughter in circumstances that were murky, to say the least. It was in a white-shoe, East Side cooperative building that did not ordinarily entertain applications from people whose names ended in vowels, and Stone reckoned it would sell for somewhere between a million and a half and two million dollars on the open market. Stone knew that the apartment’s purchaser and his daughter’s ownership were protected behind a complex corporate veil, and he doubted if any other member of the NYPD had ever entered the place before today. He wondered what would happen if Dino ever became the target of some in-depth departmental investigation.

“You got any thoughts about all this?” Dino asked.

At first, Stone thought he meant the apartment, then he realized what the subject was. “Oh. Not really. Certainly, Mitteldorfer’s alibi is tight. I think I’d check out the nephew in Hamburg, to see if he’s really in Germany. Might be good to check out Mitteldorfer’s visitors list, too?” He allowed himself a grin. “If you can get it out of Captain Warkowski.”

Dino raised his glass in a little toast. “Fuck you,” he said.

Stone lifted his glass. “Thanks. Have you got any ideas?”

Dino shook his head. “Not really. It’s spooky how the perp looks like Mitteldorfer used to look, though.”

“Yes, it is. I think the Hamburg nephew is not a bad bet. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d immigrated, or if he turns up on Mitteldorfer’s visitors list. I’d like to know if Mitteldorfer has any other relatives in this country, particularly any children he didn’t tell us about.”

“First thing tomorrow,” Dino said. “Well, one good thing about all this; it’s given you something else to think about besides your broken heart.”

“Give me a break, Dino,” Stone said wearily.

“Listen, Stone, I think you’re well out of the thing with Arrington.”

“I thought you liked Arrington.”

“I did. I do. I just think that if you’d married her, she might have run off with Vance Calder later, and that would have screwed you up even worse.”

“I am not screwed up, and, anyway, Arrington’s not like that,” Stone said. “I dropped the ball; I didn’t commit when I should have, and by the time I got around to it…”

“And when did you get around to it?”

“I was going to ask her to marry me when we went on the sailing trip; I’d made up my mind on the way down there. Then, when the snowstorm kept her in the city, and when Calder showed up… well, it was a good offer, and she had no reason to think I was going to make a better one.”

“So you blame yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Blame her; it won’t hurt as much. There’s nothing like being pissed off at a woman to make her absence easier.”

“I’ll try and remember that,” Stone said drily.

“You think there’s any chance she’d leave Calder?”

“None. She’s borne him a son, remember? She’s locked in.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time people with kids got a divorce.”

“Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind.”

“Why don’t you just go out to LA and get her?”

“I had my shot at that; she made her choice. I’ll just have to learn to live with it.”

“You really believe the kid is Calder’s, not yours?”

“The tests were done, Dino; she wouldn’t lie about that.”

“Nah; women never lie.”

“I’m at peace with that part of it, at least. If the child had been mine, she’d have come back to me. That was our agreement. Why are you digging through all this?”

Dino shrugged. “I figured it might do you good to talk about it.”

“Well, now that you mention it, I do feel a little better having articulated the situation.”

“You sound like a fucking shrink.” Dino abruptly changed the subject. “I’m going to put a watch on you,” he