had sense.
The bartender came up and put the three drinks down and left without a word.
When he was gone I asked, “How much?”
“For what?” LouBob stammered.
“How much they pay for you to kill me?”
“Six, sixty-five hundred.”
“Dollars? Not even euros? You’d end a man’s life for pocket change?”
LouBob swallowed hard but stayed silent.
“Where does Tim live?” Hush asked then.
LouBob rattled off an address about a hundred and fifty blocks to the north.
“You got a house on the beach north of Miami, don’t you, Lou?” the assassin said.
“Yeah?”
“You look pale. I think you should fly down there—tonight. And listen, don’t make any phone calls. None. You hear me?”
“Yeah. I hear ya, Hush.”
E€„
46
It was very quiet up in Washington Heights at that time of night. We drove past the address that LouBob had given us, then parked a few blocks away. We sat there for some time, waiting for the night to deepen.
At half past one we sauntered down the street like strollers on a Sunday afternoon. We were both armed, but that was okay. Even if the cops stopped us we had licenses for our guns.
The only sound on Moore’s street was somebody laughing in a park down near the water.
No cars passed by.
Tim had a pied-a- terre on Loquat Street, on the third floor of a turquoise monolith that stood over the Hudson.
People like Moore were chameleons: they hid in plain sight. He didn’t have extra locks on his door or go under a pseudonym. He was the one that sought you out, put a black mark on your mailbox or gave you a suitcase full of cash, and then had someone else shoot you when you walked into the room. He lived so close to the line of respectability that he made the mistake of thinking that he was a civilian: safe in his own home, under his own name.
I PRESSED HIS BUZZER, 3A, and waited. Hush stood away from the front of the building just in case there was an electric eye that we hadn’t seen.
“Who is it?” Timothy asked a minute or so later.
“McGill.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I got a problem, Mr. Moore.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No. I been mugged.”
“How’d you get my address?”
“Cop I know let me use his official browser. They had it because of your prison sentence.”
“You went to the police?” Tim Moore said.
“I got mugged, man. They stole all the money. Don’t worry about it, though. The cops just think I was doing a business deal for you.”
“What do you want?” he asked again.
“Let me up.”
There was a hesitation. I had given him a lot of information. I’d lost his seed money and talked to the cops, mentioning his name. I already knew where he lived and so had a way of getting to him.
While he was thinking over his options I saw a small wooden wedge on the concrete outside the outer door of the double-doored entrance. People must have used that little hardwood triangle from time to time when they were moving in their furniture and large appliances.
I picked it up.
“Okay,” Tim said. “Come on, then.”
He buzzed the outer and inner doors only long enough for me to go through one and race the eight feet to grab the other. Hush stayed outside so as not to be seen. He couldn’t make it to the outer door in time but that was okay. I just walked halfway down the hall toward the elevator and doubled back to prop the inner door open with the mover’s wedge, and then opened the outer door for Hush.
We took the stairs at a quick pace. At the third floor, I made my way down toward 3A while Hush stood just insiu€tood jusde the stairwell.
I knocked on the door and it opened immediately. Now there were only four inches of chain separating me from my killer.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Open up, Tim,” I said. “I need some answers.”
“Answers about what?”
