“Yeah, sure. I ain’t going anywhere. Tough as nails. I fooled that little Chinese bastard on the tower, didn’t I? Sonafabitch thought he could fuck with me. Is he dead?”
“He’s dead, all right,” Mariucci said. “Believe me.”
“Good.”
“What happened at the tomb, Joe?” Ambrose said. “Tell me about that night in Paris.”
“Like I say, the guy’s kid was in on it. Whoever ordered the hit from their side, the Corse, they wanted the kid there. So, we played along, you know. What the hell. Crazy frogs.”
“What next, Joe?”
“We had the guy, the hit, up against a rail or something. Right over the friggin’ tomb of Napoleon. Benny gave me the piece and told me to do it. You know, make my bones. But—but then—”
“Then, what? What happened, Joe?” Ambrose said, staring into the man’s eyes.
“I don’t feel so good,” Joe said, his eyelids fluttering. “Feels like something’s wrong with my, uh—”
“Okay, Captain, I think that’s it,” the EMS guy said. “We need to administer—”
“Gimme a second, here. Please.” Mariucci said, holding up his hand with the forefinger extended. “This is very important. One second.”
“Joe,” Ambrose said, “Did you kill Emile Bonaparte in Paris that night?”
“Naw. I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t do it, see? God as my witness. We was in a cathedral, f’crissakes. A house of God. I couldn’t kill nobody in a cathedral. I’m a Catholic, Inspector. I couldn’t kill nobody. I ain’t proud of it, but I never did.”
“Who did kill Emile Bonaparte, Joe?” Congreve said. “Tell me, please. Did Benny do it?”
Joey Bones closed his eyes and for a terrible second, Congreve thought they’d lost him.
“The kid,” he whispered.
“The victim’s son?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep talking, Joey,” Mariucci said, “You can do it.”
“The kid did it,” Joe whispered through parched lips. “See, when he saw my hand shaking, that I wasn’t gonna shoot, this kid Luca grabbed the piece right out of my hand and shot his old man right in the heart. Never seen anything like it. His own father!”
“Luca Bonaparte murdered his own father,” Mariucci said, looking Joe Bones in the eye. “In Paris, in 1970.”
“Saw it with my own eyes,” Joe said. “Got no reason to lie no more.”
“Thank you, Joey,” Ambrose said, looking up at Mariucci, his face flooded with relief.
“Yeah, Joey, you did good, paisano,” Mariucci said.
The captain flipped his notebook shut and put it inside his jacket. Ambrose had what he’d come to New York for. They could both use a drink.
Joey lifted his bony arm and placed his hand on the captain’s shoulder. “You got something else, Joe?” the captain asked.
“When we, uh, got h-home from P-Paris,” Joey Bones said, his voice rattling with effort, “Benny kinda let it get around on the street that it was me who’d whacked the guy. Why not, right? Who would know? Nobody in the neighborhood ever messed with me after that. I was a made man, you understand? I was Joey Bones!”
It was very quiet in the car. Just the patter of soft rain on the tin rooftop.
“You did good, Joey,” Mariucci said.
But Joey was already gone.
As they emerged from the car into the glare of the TV lights, Mariucci paused, squinting, and said to Congreve, “Who the hell is that?”
“Who?” Ambrose said.
“Over there. Edge of the crowd. There’s a woman in a black raincoat staring right at you. See her?”
“Where?”
“Never mind. She’s gone.”
Chapter Forty-three
Berlin
THEY WAITED UNTIL DARKNESS FELL AND THE MOON ROSE over the snowcapped mountains. Then they flew. Jet was wrapped in a blanket, sound asleep on a bench seat behind the pilot. She’d put another blanket on the floor for Blondi. Arnold was flying. Stoke sat in the copilot’s seat to his right, now wearing Arnold’s muscleman black VDI uniform, a perfect fit if a little tight across the shoulders. They were headed almost due north, destination Berlin. The moon was full, just rising over the ragged peak of the Weissspitze at nine thousand feet.
“You do know how to fly this thing, right, Arnold?” Stoke had said to him as they trudged through knee-deep snow from the Zum Wilden Hund out to the black chopper on the pad. It was a specially modified Super Lynx helo that had once belonged to the German navy. Stoke noticed AIM missile brackets mounted under the belly between the skids and asked about them. The Lynx formerly flew antisubmarine warfare missions for NATO.
“Yes,” Arnold said, “I know how to fly it.”
“Good. Then we got the right Arnold.”
Twenty minutes into the flight, Stoke leaned over in his copilot’s seat, pressed his face against the cool Perspex, and stared down thoughtfully at the endless white ground. At this altitude, basically zero, give or take a foot or two, you had a pretty good sensation of speed. They were skimming across snow-covered fields, brushing the tops of the tall pines, and jinking and juking around any small hill that got in their way. There was a whole lot to be said for the fun factor, flying below the radar across Europe. Stoke concentrated on their little moon-shadow zipping along on the sparkling snow just beneath them.
“What’s that up ahead?” Stoke asked Arnold.
“Czechoslovakia,” Arnold said.
“Let’s try not to hit it.”
Sometimes, Arnold would get so low down, the Lynx and its darting shadow almost kissed. Catch a skid and you’re not sitting on top of the world, Stoke thought, and looked at his watch. If they could stay down on the deck and maintain this speed without cracking up, they’d touch down at Tempelhof well before midnight. It was nice and warm in the cockpit. It had been a long day. Stoke let his head fall back across the seat and closed his eyes.
“Put it down just there,” Jet said to Arnold, waking him from some dream of swaying palms and convertibles and his beautiful Fancha climbing out of a turquoise pool dripping wet and naked as the day she was born. Soon as all this was over, first-class ticket nonstop to Miami.
The black helo was approaching the LZ low and dark, no landing lights outside; inside, the cockpit was lit only by a dim red glow from the instrument panel. Stealth chopper. He hoped. Heavy armed resistance at this point would be a problem. He had only the Schmeisser and a few mags of ammo he’d been able to scrounge up going through drawers at the gasthaus. Jet had the dead Arnold’s automatic and two spare mags.
They approached Tempelhof low and from the rear, away from the entrance where the guards were stationed. Here, boxy apartment complexes and warehouses would hide their approach from the guards at the entrance on the far side of the field. Arnold dropped down below the rooftops. He flew between the buildings, along a narrow deserted street that dead-ended at the fence line. They rose slightly and almost clipped the fence. A darkened helo, coming in low, a hush kit to dampen the engine noise, hell, they had a pretty good chance to arrive unannounced.
He wasn’t sure what they’d find on the ground, but as they crossed the perimeter and flared up for a landing, he sure as hell felt like they were going into the belly of the beast.
They set down on a very remote part of the airfield, in the moon-shadow of a rusty hangar that looked like it hadn’t seen much use since “Operation Vittles,” the American airlift that began in 1945. There was a high perimeter wall all around the field, topped with concertina wire, and probably guarded by remote sensors. In the far distance stood an illuminated complex, the huge semicircular building that housed Von Draxis Industries.
Stoke swung his cockpit door open and was met with a blast of cold air. It felt good, woke him up. So did the
