The caller laughed. “Excellent! I’m so glad to hear you say that. This has been too much fun to end after a mere pair of encounters. When’s the next parvenu barbecue, as it were?”

“Tomorrow night,” Milos said through his teeth.

“Excellent!” A pause, then, “You wouldn’t be thinking of calling in the authorities on this, would you, Dragovic?”

“No! I am authority here!”

“Good. Because this is between you and us. And are we not men?”

What was this fool talking about?

“I do not know about you, but I am man, and I will have parties, many parties. Tomorrow night, and the next night, and the next night, and every night after until Labor Day. Do your damnedest!”

Milos slammed down the receiver and glanced at Mihailo on the far side of the room.

“He’s calling from another pay phone,” Mihailo said with a shrug. “Some place in Roslyn Heights.”

“Where is that?”

“Almost back to Queens. I’ll bet he pulled off the LIE and called from a gas station.”

Milos hadn’t in his most violent fantasies expected to be able to trap the man so quickly, but still he was disappointed.

“Very well,” he told his men. “You all know what to do during the next twenty-four hours.”

“What about us, Mr. Dragovic?”

Ivo had spoken. Milos turned and saw him and Vuk standing side by side. He was disappointed in these two. Both had been reliable men until now. But over the last two days their cars had been disabled twice—while they were sitting in them. They’d tried to cover up the second occurrence but he’d found out.

Two accidents in two days. Too much coincidence. Trouble was, the Sutton Square house appeared to be empty.

“You two will stay. I don’t want you wasting your time—and another one of my cars.” This drew laughs from the other men. Ivo and Vuk nodded and smiled uneasily. “We have too much to do here. The ones we are after will be coming to us tomorrow night. And I want us well prepared.”

Milos rubbed his hands together. He had a hot reception planned for the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee.

9

After finishing his call to Dragovic—which had gone just as he’d hoped—Jack left the gas station and headed up the highway to Monroe.

Parvenu… Abe had given him the word. A beauty.

In Monroe Jack parked at the edge of the marsh on a rutted road that ended a few hundred yards farther out at a tiny shack sitting alone near the Long Island Sound. He wondered who lived there.

A mist had formed, hugging the ground. The shack looked ominous and lonely floating in the fog out there with its single lighted window. Reminded Jack of an old gothic paperback cover.

Jack stuck his head out the window. Only a sliver of moon above, but plenty of stars. Enough light to get him where he wanted to go without a flashlight. He could make out the grassy area the Oddity Emporium used for parking. Only one or two cars there. As he watched, their headlights came alive and moved off in the direction of town.