AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I am, dummy. I’m the only one who’s got a shot at recognizing her. If I see her, I’ll make a noise, or do something to attract your attention. Again, don’t look around the room. When I attract your attention, look at me. I’ll make a move, then you back me up. There may be a struggle, even a fight, but there will be no shots fired. You both got that?”
“Yes, boss,” Rosie said.
“I don’t want to be reading in tomorrow’s Post that there was a shoot-out at the Carlyle Hotel, you understand?”
“Yes, boss,” Viv said.
“I may want to go back to the Carlyle someday, and you may, too. We don’t want to get eighty-sixed from the joint.”
“Yes, boss,” Rosie said.
“You’re taking turns saying that,” Dino said.
“Yes, boss,” Viv said.
“It’s like watching Ping-Pong.”
“Yes, boss,” Rosie said.
“Stop that!”
“Yes, boss,” they said in unison.
“All right, go in there and get established. I’ll be in in a few minutes. Don’t notice me when I arrive.”
“Yes, boss,” they said in unison.
The two detectives got out of the car and started toward the hotel.
SHELLEY STOPPED at the door and checked out the room. Dino wasn’t there yet, as she had suspected, and nobody looked like the FBI or a cop. There were two women at the bar, but they were looking at each other, not the room. Probably lesbians, she thought. The headwaiter seated them at the corner table she had booked, and Steve dutifully pulled out the table and gave her the gunfighter’s seat.
DINO CHECKED his watch for the fifth time. He didn’t like letting them go in first, but it was for the best. They’d already be there when Shelley arrived, and maybe that would make her less nervous. On the other hand, maybe it would make her more nervous, who knew? All he could do was the best he could do.
Ten o’clock. “Take me around to the Madison Avenue entrance,” he said to his driver.
In front of the hotel, he got out of the car and took a look through the glass door of the bar, then he walked inside. The place was packed, and a girl singer was working with a trio, doing Gershwin. He waited for the headwaiter to ask, then said, “I’ll sit at the bar.”
The man retreated, and Dino walked slowly behind the musicians, turned a corner, and spotted Viv and Rosie to his left, at the far end of the bar. He didn’t check the crowd, not yet.
He found a stool at the other end of the bar. “Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks, fizzy water on the side,” he said to the bartender, who gave him a quick nod and produced the drink in a flash. Dino sat on the stool, turned, and rested his back against the bar. The whole room was before him, now, and he began checking things out, face by face, left to right.
By the time his head had swiveled all the way to the right, he had checked every table, looking for a single woman. There wasn’t an unescorted woman in the place. Shelley was not in the room, he was sure of it.
54
Herbie was working late. It was after nine, and Cookie was long gone. He was just closing folders and his briefcase, when there was a sudden movement at the door of his office. Herbie instinctively leapt to his feet. Dink Brennan was standing in the doorway.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Dink said.
Herbie sank back into his chair. “I wasn’t expecting you, Dink.”
“If you’re all done here, let me buy you a drink.”
“I’ll buy you one,” Herbie said, getting up again and going to the bar. “You’re legal now. What’ll you have?”
“Whatever you’re having,” Dink said.
Herbie put some ice cubes into two glasses and poured Knob Creek over them, then handed one to Dink and sat down.
