by Stuart Woods
“Just hang on a minute,” Dino said. “This woman is a professional assassin well known to the European authorities. Right, Carpenter? I can run her name against the Interpol database and find charges against her, can’t I?”
Carpenter looked at the floor. “No,” she said.
“No? And why the hell not?”
“She’s in our files, but we’ve never shared them with any law enforcement agency. We’d hoped to pick her up ourselves.”
Mellon spoke up again. “Am I to understand that there is no open charge against this woman anywhere in the world?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Carpenter replied.
“And there were no fingerprints on the weapons, and the ballistics test was negative?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Dino replied.
“Well, then, book her on a weapons charge until we’ve got something concrete.”
Nobody said anything.
Mellon looked at Dino. “Am I to understand that you can’t connect the woman with the weapons?”
“She was in the ladies’ room at Elaine’s. We found the weapons in the toilet tank immediately after she left,” Dino said defensively.
“But you can’t prove that she put them there,” Mellon said. “Fifty women a night use the ladies’ room, and any one of them could have deposited the weapons in the toilet tank at any time for months past, right?”
“Yes,” Dino replied.
Mellon looked at all of them. “Anybody have any charge I can hang on this woman, even to hold her? Did she resist arrest, maybe? Assault a police officer?”
Nobody said anything.
Mellon began putting on his coat. “Then I’m out of here. Cut her loose.” He walked out of the room.
Carpenter was on her cell phone. “Mason? La Biche is about to be released from the Nineteenth Precinct. Get a tail on her now.”
Dino turned to the two detectives. “Grab anybody you can find and get out front. When she leaves, don’t lose her. Keep her in sight until she gets to her hotel, then put two men in the hallway outside her room and tail her if she leaves the hotel.”
“I’m sorry, Dino,” Carpenter said.
Dino went back into the interrogation room. “Mr. Kaminsky, your client is free to go just as soon as I’ve photographed and fingerprinted her.”
“In your dreams,” Kaminsky replied. “My client is not under arrest and there is no probable cause to believe she has committed a crime. Good night, Lieutenant.”
Dino led them out of the interrogation room. “My apologies for the inconvenience, Ms. du Bois,” he said.
“Think nothing of it, Lieutenant,” she replied.
Dino watched them leave, then led Carpenter and Stone into his office. “All we can do is tail her and hope she tries to kill somebody else.”
“Probably me,” Carpenter said.
A detective knocked on the door. “Lieutenant, I need to log that pistol and the ice pick. You got them?”
“They’re on the table in Interrogation One,” Dino said.
“No, sir, they’re not.”
“Oh, shit,” Dino said.
Marie-Thérèse and Sol Kaminsky were riding down Second Avenue in a cab.
“You want me to drop you at your hotel?” Kaminsky asked.
“No, thank you, Mr. Kaminsky. I’ll be getting out before then.”
Their cab stopped at a traffic light. Marie-Thérèse looked out her window to find a large truck next to them. “Mr. Kaminsky, please get out of the cab,” she said, “and walk away.”
He looked at her. “In the middle of the street?”
“Yes, please.”
Kaminsky opened the left rear door and stepped out of the cab. As he did so, Marie-Thérèse handed the driver a twenty. “Keep your meter running until Thirty-fourth Street, and don’t pick up anybody,” she said. She opened her door as little as possible, fell out of the taxi onto the street, and began rolling her way under the truck. She had just cleared it when the light changed, and the truck drove away. She rolled under a parked car and waited.
A block behind her cab, a detective radioed the precinct. “Tell Bacchetti the lawyer got out of the cab at Seventy-seventh Street,” he said. “We’re still following.” The light changed, and he drove on down Second Avenue.
Marie-Thérèse waited for the next change of the traffic light before she rolled from under the parked car, dusted off her clothes, and disappeared into the night.
33
Stone got Carpenter into a cab.
“I’m exhausted,” Carpenter said.
“Let the cops and your people do their work,” Stone said. “You can get some sleep at my house.”
“That was a humiliating experience,” Carpenter sighed, as they rode downtown.
“You might have mentioned to Dino earlier the fact that there were no charges against her in Europe.”
“We didn’t want Interpol or the various police agencies to interfere,” she said.
“You just wanted to find her and quietly kill her. Is that it?”
Carpenter didn’t reply.
“If there were no charges against her, how did you gather all this information about her—the people she’s killed, and her methods?”
“From people we’ve . . . interrogated,” Carpenter replied.
“Can’t the testimony of those people be used to file charges against her, so Dino can make an arrest?”
“Those people are . . . no longer available to testify,” Carpenter said.
Stone took a deep breath. “Oh,” he said.
The detective following La Biche’s taxi radioed in. “Tell Bacchetti the cab didn’t go to the hotel. It’s continuing downtown.”
“This is Bacchetti,” Dino said. “Where is the cab now?”
“At Second and Thirty-fourth, stopped at a light,” the detective replied. “Wait a minute. The cab’s light is on and a guy is getting in.”
“Stop the cab,” Dino said. “Arrest her for tampering with evidence. She stole the pistol.”
The detective switched on his flashing light and drove up next to the cab. His partner got out and shone a light into the rear seat, then got back in. “Lieutenant,” he said into the radio, “she’s not in the cab anymore.”
“What?”
“She’s not there. We saw the lawyer get out, but not the woman. We thought she was still inside.”
“Oh, swell,” Dino said. He hung up and called Stone’s house.
“Hello?” Stone said. Carpenter picked up the other bedside extension.
“We’ve lost her,” he said.
“How?” Stone asked.
“My guys saw Kaminsky get out of the cab at Seventy-seventh Street, but not La Biche. Now she’s not in the cab anymore. What’s more, she stole back the pistol and the ice pick, took them right off the table in the interrogation room when I went to the door. Didn’t any of you behind the mirror see that?”
“We were talking to each other,” Stone said.
“It’s not your fault, Dino,” Carpenter said. “It’s ours.”
“Sorry, babe,” Dino said. “I can put an APB out for her for stealing the pistol, if you like.”
“Can you prove she stole it?”
“I can, if I can catch her with it.”
“And what do you think the chances of that are?”
Dino was quiet.
“Good night, Dino.” Carpenter hung up.
So did Stone. “What now?”
Carpenter dialed a number. “Mason,” she said.
Stone picked up the extension.
“Mason,” a man’s voice said.
“Tell me you’re still on her,” Carpenter said “We’re not, I’m afraid,” Mason replied. “There was no way we could get to the precinct before she left.”
“I was afraid of that. The NYPD lost her. They’ve been chasing an empty cab since Seventy-seventh Street.”
“Good God. Why didn’t they hold her?”
“That o
ne is our fault, I’m afraid. We never filed any charges against her, and the NYPD had nothing on her. They found a pistol in the ladies’ room at Elaine’s, but the ballistics didn’t match the slug from the diplomatic killing, and she didn’t use a gun on the others.”
“I’m very sorry to hear it,” Mason said.
“On top of everything else, she stole the pistol back from the police, walked right out of the precinct with it in her handbag.”
“So where we are now sounds very much like square one.”
“Very much.”
“Architect will not be amused.”
“Well, no. Get some sleep, Mason. We’ll speak in the morning.”
“Where are you?”
“At Barrington’s house.”
“I’ll send some people over.”
“Don’t bother. I think we’re safe for tonight.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
Stone and Carpenter hung up.
“I loved your house in Connecticut,” she said.
Marie-Thérèse let herself into the twenty-four-hour-a-day storage facility, went to her closet, and unlocked the door, closing it behind her. The space was about eight by ten feet, much like a prison cell, she thought. She stripped down to the skin, took a fur coat from a rack of clothes, and spread it on the floor. She found another coat and wrapped herself in it, then lay down on the fur coat.
Now she had used her most valuable, most hoarded resource: her own identity. She would not be able to use it again. Not, she thought, unless they were so stupid as not to enter it into their computers and send it to Interpol.
She fell asleep thinking of the baby she had held in her lap all the way across the Atlantic.
34
Five men and four women got off a Concorde flight at JFK and got into two waiting vans. The driver of one handed one of the men a cell phone. “Just hold down the number one, sir.”
He held down the number one, then put the phone to his ear.
“Trading Partners,” a woman’s voice said.
“Do you know who this is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re en route. I want a meeting in one hour, with everybody, and I mean everybody.”
“I understand, sir. I’ve been holding the conference room.”
“Good.” He snapped the phone shut and handed it back to the driver.
“It’s yours, sir, while you’re here,” the driver said.
Architect put the phone in his pocket and turned his attention to The New York Times.
The phone rang in Stone’s bedroom. “Hello?” he said sleepily, glancing at the clock.
“Miss Carpenter, please,” a woman’s voice said.
Stone shook Carpenter awake. “Call for you,” he said.
“What time is it?” Carpenter asked, rolling over and picking up the extension.
Stone hung up his phone. “A little after two P.M. We slept pretty good.”
“Hello?”
“Architect has arrived. There’s a meeting here at three,” the woman said. “Attendance is mandatory.”
“Right,” Carpenter said. She hung up. “I’ve got to get into a shower,” she said to Stone. “My boss is in from London.” She tossed off the covers and ran for the bathroom. “Any chance of some lunch?”
Stone went down to the kitchen and made a couple of ham sandwiches and brought them back upstairs. Carpenter came out of the shower, toweling her hair dry around the edges.
“That looks good,” she said, grabbing a sandwich and taking a huge bite.
“So, what’s this meeting going to be about?” Stone asked.
“I think you can guess.”
“How the hell are you ever going to find her?” he asked.
“We’ll find her, and we’ll deal with her,” Carpenter replied, her mouth full. She went back into the bathroom, taking her sandwich with her.
Stone picked up the phone and called Dino.
“Bacchetti.”
“You had lunch?”
“I missed it,” Dino said.
“Clarke’s in half an hour?”
“You buying?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s make it the Four Seasons.” Dino hung up.
Stone went to his own bathroom and got into the shower. Twenty minutes later, he stood on his doorstep with Carpenter.
“Dinner?” he asked.
“I’ll have to call you,” she replied, kissing him. She ran down the steps and turned toward Third Avenue.
Stone turned toward Park.
The last of the lunch crowd lingered over their espressos in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons. Getting a table was easy, since half the crowd had gone back to their offices. Stone and Dino ordered salads and omelettes and a couple of glasses of wine.
“How’d La Biche come to be in Elaine’s at exactly the time you were?” Stone asked.
“She came in looking for you.”
“What?”
“I kid you not. She came in, took a seat at the bar, ordered dinner, and whipped out that Page Six clipping about you representing Herbie Fisher. Asked the bartender who you were.”
“Did he tell her?”
“I don’t know. I was pretty busy. Elaine called me at home and told me somebody was asking about you, so I disappointed my wife, who was snuggled up to me at the time, and got my ass over there in a hurry. There she was, sipping a brandy.”
Stone thought about this.
“So why’d you want to have lunch? I had the feeling you had something on your mind.”
“Something’s brewing with our British friends,” Stone said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“The big cheese arrived from London and has called a meeting of his people.”
“Why do I care about this?” Dino asked.
“Because I think there’s about to be a rumble on your turf.”
“What kind of rumble?” Dino asked.
“Think about it.”
“What, I have to guess?”
“That’s what I’m doing. Anybody call you this afternoon? Any Brits, I mean?”
“Nope. Should I expect to hear from them?”
“I don’t think so,” Stone replied.
“Come on, Stone, what has Carpenter told you?”
“Only that there’s a meeting.”
“And what do you think is going to be the subject of that meeting?”
“Don’t be obtuse, Dino.”
“Okay, I know the subject. What are they going to do?”
“I think they’re going to hunt her down and kill her,” Stone said.
“Right here in New York City?”
“Yes. Of course, they may only want to kidnap and torture her, but I think the chances of taking the lady alive are nil.”
Dino chewed his salad and thought about it. “Okay,” he said finally.
“What do you mean, okay?”
“I mean, it’s okay with me if they hunt her down and kill her, or just kidnap and torture her.”
“Jesus, Dino, you’re a New York City police lieutenant. Are you going to let that happen?”
“Yep,” Dino said, sipping his wine.
“We’re talking about murder, Dino. You’re supposed to take a dim view of that.”
“You’re such a wuss, Stone,” Dino said.
“No, I’m not. I’m just opposed to murder in the streets of my hometown.”
“Well, I’m sure that when the murderers hear about that, there’ll be a dramatic drop in the homicide rate,” Dino replied.
“Dino, you’ve got to do something.”
“What am I going to do?” Dino asked. “These people are not visiting policemen. They’re fucking spies. They do things in secret. You think they’re going to let me in on their plans?”
“Maybe I can find out something.”
“I don’t want to know,” Dino said. “And if you want to keep rolling around in the hay with Miss Felicity Devonshire, you’d
better not want to know, either.”
“You want to know why there are no charges against La Biche in Europe?” Stone said.
“No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Because the Brits got their information on her by torturing and killing her friends, so there’s nobody left to give evidence against her.”
“I didn’t want to know that,” Dino said.
“It’s how they work. These people don’t arrest criminals and try them. They put them in cellars while they extract information from them with tools, and when they’re done, their captives are done, too. They’re outside the law. They’re above the law.”
“Well then, if I were you, I wouldn’t piss off Carpenter.”
“When you and I were cops together, we had a common view of the law,” Stone said. “We believed in doing it by the book.”
“Well, not always strictly by the book,” Dino said.
“All right, we slapped around a few people, frightened a few guys, but we didn’t murder anybody.”
“And I’m not going to start now,” Dino said.
“But you’re going to turn a blind eye to what these people are planning?”
“Stone, in this case, a blind eye is all I got.”
“You don’t want to see it.”
“You’re right, because, unlike you, I understand that there are two whole different worlds existing right alongside each other: There’s your world and mine, then there’s their world, where a crazy woman holds a grudge against their people and goes around killing them, plus a few other people along the way. How do we prosecute that? There’s never any evidence. And suppose I could, somehow, stop them from killing La Biche? What would I do with her? Pat her on the head and send her back to Europe to kill a few more people? I don’t have any evidence against her. Jesus, somebody’s got to stop her, and it ain’t going to be me.”
“This is depressing,” Stone said.
“It’s not depressing if you don’t think about it,” Dino replied.
35
Carpenter rushed into the building, went to her temporary office, deposited her coat, and picked up her notes. She made it to the conference room just as Architect took his seat.
