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“Have you dismissed your driver?”
“Yes, I sent him home for some sleep.”
“Then we’ll take my car.” Stone picked up the phone and asked Fred to get it ready to leave the garage. At 9:30 they got into the Bentley, and Fred opened the garage door and drove out. The traffic was heavy, and it was ten o’clock before they got out of the car at Lenox Hill. A nurse took them upstairs,and the surgeon was leaving Rosie’s room as they arrived. Dino introduced himself. “How is she?”
“She’s had a rough night. Although we made the repair without difficulty, she’s picked up an infection, and we’re treating her with intravenous antibiotics.”
“But she’s going to make it, isn’t she?”
The surgeon’s brow wrinkled. “I suspect that the needle she was stabbed with was infected with something.”
“Deliberately?”
“Most likely. We’re waiting for the antibiotics to kick in now.”
“May we see her?”
“For just a moment, if she’s awake.” The surgeon nodded to a nurse, who led them into the room and to Rosie’s bedside.
Rosie’s eyes were closed, but they fluttered as Dino spoke her name.
“Dino?”
“I’m right here, baby; Stone is here, too.”
Rosie spoke with some difficulty. “It was the wig,” she said.
“Her hair was a wig?”
Rosie nodded. “I think... I think the key and the needle were hidden under the wig.” Then she closed her eyes and seemed to sleep again.
The nurse took Dino by the wrist and elbow and forcibly escorted him from the room. He and Stone sat down on a bench.
“Did you make her hair as a wig?” Dino asked.
“It never crossed my mind,” Stone replied. “Good place to hide something small like a handcuff key and a hatpin, though.”
“It also means that we’re not going to find her anytime soon. Her appearance will be too different. And if she or whoever’s running her is that smart, it means she was in a safe house very soon after she left the station. I forgot to tell you. They found the cruiser she stole parked next to the Lexington Avenue subway stop at Sixty-Third Street. She could have taken the train uptown or downtown.”
“Or she could have left the car there, got rid of the wig, and hoofed it to the safe house. Let’s go back to my place and have some breakfast. They’ll call you when she wakes up again.”
“Okay, I don’t know how much more Rosie could tell us, anyway.”
—
They had agood breakfast and were on coffee when Stone’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“It’s Lance. How’s the detective doing?”
Stone told him everything he knew.
“That’s all very clever, isn’t it?” Lance asked.
“Too clever for a Russian crime boss?”
“It smells more like an intelligence service.”
