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Mick nodded. “Not all the memories are good ones, after all. Still, you got well out, didn’t you? Always said you would.” He rose then, carrying his half-empty pint as he strolled to the glass doors. “Think of it. You own this whole bloody place, and Christ knows what besides. Last years, I’ve been over the world and off it, and nowhere I’ve been could I say I haven’t heard the name of my old boyhood mate bandied about. Like a damn religion.” He turned back and grinned. “Fuck me, Roarke, if I’m not proud of you.”
It struck Roarke, oddly, that no one who had known the boy had ever said those words to the man. “What are you doing with yourself, Mick?”
“Oh, bits of business. Always bits of business. And when some of it brought me to New York City, I said to myself, ‘Mick, you’re going to get yourself a room in that fancy hotel of Roarke’s and you’re going to look him up.’ I’m traveling under my own name again. Time enough’s passed since Liverpool. And too much time’s passed I’m after thinking since I had a pint with old friends.”
“So you’ve looked me up, and we’re having our pint. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s behind it all?”
Mick leaned back against the door, lifted the pint to his lips, and studied Roarke with those dancing eyes. “There never was any getting over on you. A natural radar you’ve always had for bullshit. But the fact is what I’ve told you is true as gold. It just so happens that it occurred to me that you might be interested in some of the business I’m here to conduct. It’s a matter of stones. Pretty colorful stones just wasting away in some dark box.”
“I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”
Mick grinned, let out a short laugh, then blinked as Roarke merely sat watching him. “Oh come now, this is Mick. You’re never going to tell me you’ve retired those magic hands of yours.”
“Let’s just say I’ve put them to different uses. Legal ones. I haven’t needed to pick pockets or lift locks in some time.”
“Need, who said anything about need?” Mick said with a bluster. “You’ve a God-given talent. And not just your hands, but your brain. Ne
ver in my life have I met anyone with a slick and cagey a brain as yours. And for larceny it was created.” Smiling again, he walked back to sit. “Now you’re not going to expect me to believe you run all of this fucking empire of yours on the up and up.”
“I do.” Now. “And that’s a challenge in itself.”
“My heart.” Dramatically, Mick clutched his chest. “I’m not as young as once I was. I can’t take this kind of shock to the system.”
“You’ll live through it, and you’ll have to find another setting for your stones.”
“A pity. A shame. A sin, really, but what is, is.” Mick sighed. “Straight and narrow, is it? Well, I’ve got something straight as I like to mix things up to keep myself fresh. I’ve a little enterprise I’ve started with a couple of fellows. Small chickens compared to a big rooster like you. Scents. Perfumes and the like, with the idea of packaging the product with an old-fashioned spin. Romance, you know. Would you be interested in an investment?”
“I might.”
“Then we’ll talk about it sometime while I’m in town.” Mick got to his feet. “For now I best see what sort of accommodations I’ve copped here, and let you get back to whatever it is you do with yourself.”
“You’re not welcome at The Palace,” Roarke said, rising. “But you are in my home.”
“That’s kind of you, but I’m not looking to put you out.”
“I thought you were dead. Jenny and the others, save Brian, are. I never had them in my home. I’ll have your luggage seen to.”
There were already psychiatric, personality, and pattern profiles generated on Yost through various law enforcement agencies around the globe. Still, Eve considered sending them, and her notes on him, to Dr. Mira, the NYPSD’s top profiler, for a nutshell analysis.
But a professional killer was, in essence, only a tool. However much she wanted him, she wanted his employer more.
“The FBI estimates Yost’s fee for a single hit to be in the neighborhood of two million, USD. This doesn’t include expenses and escalates according to the target, and the difficulty of the job.”
Eve inclined her head to the screen in the conference room at Central where Darlene’s image smiled out at her. “What makes a twenty-two-year-old chambermaid worth two million plus?”
“Information,” McNab suggested. He’d been called in, much to his delight, as consult from EDD. Now he sat, his long blond hair meticulously looped through a trio of round red clips, and his pretty, thin face sober.
“Possible. Going there we say the victim had, or was believed to have had, damaging information. If so, why not arrange, for a much lesser fee, a botched mugging? She had a regular routine coming and going to work, used public transportation, and walked, most usually alone, from the transpo stops to the hotel, and to her building. Stick her on the street, grab her purse, and she goes down as a mugging victim. Low profile.”
“Yeah.” And though he agreed, McNab felt he had to justify his addition to the team by playing devil’s advocate. “But there’s a real element of risk on the street. She gets lucky, gets away, some good samaritan comes to her rescue. You take her at work, in a room, and there’s no mistake. She’s out.”
“And the murder gets priority, a big, fat investigative team, and Roarke,” she added, though she didn’t care for it. “Somebody’s got enough wherewithal for a major hammer, he knows just what he’s taking on by putting a murder into Roarke’s lap.”
“Could be he’s stupid,” McNab said with a glimmer of a grin.
“Could be you are,” Peabody snapped back. “Whoever hired Yost wanted it high profile. Media, intense investigation. It’s an attention grabber, so it follows he was looking for attention. Maybe paying for it, too.”
“Okay, and maybe I agree with that.” McNab, miffed, shifted to Peabody. “But why? The hammer and the victim get the attention. He doesn’t. So what’s his point? We’ve got no real motive for French. Fact is, we can’t say for sure if she was a specific target or just a handy one.”
