“Well, you must be having one hot romance cooking, and it looks like I’m going to be your secret little helper. I just got a text, which I’ll read to you: Urgent. Tell Lucy. Meet me 3 AM Crane Hill Cemetery Sunnyside Equipment House 3. Thx 4 yr help. Boy Sam.”

“Thanks, Troy,” I say.

“This stuff makes sense to you, Lucy girl?” he asks. “Your man’s name is Sam?”

I don’t answer.

Troy speaks again. “I’m only asking, Lucy. Do you understand all this? Does this message make sense to you?”

“Yes,” I say. “It makes complete sense.”

Chapter 48

Chapter 48

AT TWO THIRTY IN the morning an Uber drops me off at 48th Avenue in Sunnyside, Queens. I’ve been followed at a safe distance by two detectives in a dark-blue Toyota Camry. They’re followed—or so I’m told—by Leon Blumenthal, Bobby Cilia, and two FBI agents. God only knows what Russian is following them.

I’ve been fitted out with a wire. The wire is different from anything you or I have ever seen in a movie or TV show. It is just a piece of flat round metal with Velcro on the back. A minuscule bit of plastic protrudes from the rim. The whole deal is barely the size of a dime.

It is attached by the Velcro inside a pocket of my black jeans. The whole fastening procedure took about five seconds.

I walk the two long blocks to Crane Hill Cemetery. The streets are empty except for a truck unloading cases of laundry detergent in front of a Met Foodmarket. Closer to the cemetery gate are three young men. They look threatening, but I’m not afraid. I know that both the guy unloading the truck and the three gangland-looking guys are police decoys.

Bobby Cilia initially suggested the decoys be two cemetery groundskeepers and an elderly widow visiting her husband’s grave.

“Are you nuts?” was Blumenthal’s reaction. “At three in the morning only psychos are visiting graves.” The eager Cilia kid has a lot to learn.

I feel curiously…free? Like an actress on a big movie set. I wear a loose shirt and carry a very large purse. It holds nothing but dozens of make-believe files about make-believe babies.

I’ve thoroughly studied a detailed map of the cemetery, so when I pass through the entrance gate, I know exactly where to find Equipment House 3. I pretend to be confused. I look left and right and left and right and then I nod to myself, as if I’ve newly discovered the small, flat brick building where I’ve agreed to meet Orlov.

The big black painted wooden door is unlatched, and I walk into a very dark room.