The boathouse sitsat the end of a stone walk forty yards behind the main house. Flagstone wet from the river. The river running fast because the rain three days ago is still draining out of the Catskills.
I have been told about Crane.
I was told in a Brooklyn apartment four nights ago by a woman sitting on the edge of her bed, her hair still wet from the shower. She said his name like a person says the name of an old wound.
He is the man who walked into my apartment on a Friday night and put me in a panel van.
She did not ask me to kill him.
She did not have to.
Frank did not ask me either. Frank has not been able to ask me anything since I was thirteen years old. But Frank spent thirteen years building a file on Kostas Stavros, and Crane was Kostas's man, and the file was the price Frank was willing to pay to keep a boy safe.
Crane is the man who made sure Frank never got to pay it.
He is in the boathouse, on the phone, with his back to the door.
The voice on the other end is male. Accented. Greek. Not Kostas.
Crane is sayingthey have eyes on three at the inner perimeter and two more moving toward the courtyard. He is wrong. He is reading through the cameras, and the cameras have not caught up to where Luca and I actually are.
He turns when he hears me.
Slowly. Because some part of him already knows.
He does not raise the weapon in his hand. He looks at it. He looks at me. He understands what the next ten seconds are going to be, and he is, to his credit, not going to pretend otherwise.
"Donovan."
"Crane."
"Did she send you?"
"No."
"That's worse."
"I know."
I put two rounds in his chest.
He goes down between the rowing scull and the wall. The phone skitters across the floor. I can hear the voice on the other end still talking, getting louder, asking a question in Greek that he won’t answer.
I pick up the phone. Hold it to my ear without speaking.
The voice stops.
The pause of a man who has just understood he is talking to the wrong person.
Then, in English, very quietly:Detective Donovan. We were expecting you. Mr. Stavros would like you to come up to the study.
I drop the phone in the river.
I roll Crane's body in with my boot.
The river takes him without protest.
I stand at the edge of the water for one second.
