"Donovan."
A woman's voice. Older. Frail enough that the words come out at half volume.
"Detective Donovan."
"Yes."
"My name is Margaret Voss. I was a nurse at St. Catherine's in Astoria. In nineteen-eighty-eight."
I do not say anything.
"I am at St. Helena's now. A hospice in Yonkers. I came here to die where no one would find me."
She breathes.
"I think I'm dying, Detective. And I need to tell you something before I do."
7
NADIA
It is 9:47 p.m. on a Friday in Queens.
The bar is on a corner that the guidebooks forget. Black-tile awning. A half-dead neon Budweiser sign. A sticker on the door for a softball team that disbanded a decade ago. The kind of place men come to drink slowly, alone, for reasons no one is allowed to ask about.
I have been parked across the street since 8:12 p.m.
The car is not mine. A Mazda I paid cash for at a Queens body shop that answers to my Geneva number. Plates clean. I will return it before sunrise.
Hair loose. Black jeans. A black t-shirt. A leather jacket I have not worn in years. None of it is mine in any way that the Morettis would recognize.La famiglia — the family.They would not know me on the street tonight.
Tonight I am not the consigliera.
Tonight I am the woman from Geneva.
My hands have remembered how she stands. The quarter-second slower she breathes in. I do not let myself think about how much I have missed her.
I let myself think about him.
He went into the bar at 8:31 p.m. He came on foot from the south, walking the way a man walks when his side has been recently opened and tied closed. Distributing weight in a way that only someone watching for it would catch.
Two men came and went. Both separate. Both left without finishing their drinks. Confidential informants. The first: Greek, old enough to remember Frank Donovan. The second: Italian, but notla famigliaItalian.
Sean is still inside.
The lawyer cannot warn a cop. The woman who patched him up cannot warn a cop. The only Nadia who can walk this man off the case is the one I left inGinevra. And she does not arrive without a gun.
He has not met this version of me yet.
He is going to meet her tonight.
I check the Glock at my hip.Sicura — steady.
I get out of the car.
He comesout of the bar at 9:53 p.m. and turns left. I move first. Cross the street behind him on the diagonal. Step into the alley between the bar and the laundromat before he reaches it.
Two seconds.
