Coldly, his mask in place, the Judge swung an arm across the table, sending glasses, plates, and silverware flying. The untouched burrata hit the floor and slid along it, leaving a trail, like a slug on steroids. The Judge looked surprised at what he’d done. “Sorry,” he said.

Ted stared in shock, not knowing how to respond to this eruption from a man who never seemed to lose control. Ted waited a moment, then finished what he had been reporting. “They call him Nicky Greco.”

The Judge nodded, playing catch-up, obviously putting pieces together in his head. His words came out without inflection, as emotionless as if he were reporting the daily rainfall statistics for the past month. “An hour ago, as Ron Reisner and his son were leaving the compound in Douglaston to come here, a man approached their car and shot both of them. The father is being taken to the hospital in serious condition. The son has been declared dead at the scene. Based on a witness’s description, the police are looking for this man, Stavros.”

Ted thought that at six foot eight with a shaved head shaped like a basketball and the physique of a steroidal gorilla, Stavros would be easy to identify. How easy he would be to find, however, depended on his cunning and luck.

“Greco, you said? Why has this man done this?” The Judge’s anger had withered, and what was left was helpless shock and confusion. “It was all arranged.”

Ted was so shocked by the transformation in this man, who had never before shown a sign of weakness, that at first he missed the implication in the Judge’s last words. All arranged?

Cheryl and her sudden confession. The light sentence. Even the payoff. The Judge would have been the one to direct all those arrangements.

And then Ted focused on the Judge’s question. Why would Nicky Greco do this? Murdering Reisner or his creep of a son wasn’t going to get the big Greek any closer to Cheryl’s supposed windfall from the surplus money. There never had been much of a chance of that anyway. So if money wasn’t the answer, what was left? Love, money, honor, or revenge. Revenge was merely a response to being thwarted in pursuit of one of the other three. Honor, in any of its guises, didn’t apply. That left only love. The big gorilla loved Cheryl Rubiano.

If Cheryl was taking the fall for Reisner and crew, Stavros Nikitopoulos, a.k.a. Nicky Greco, was going to make them pay. The Judge might understand murdering for love. “Why? Revenge. He’ll go after all of them. I’d have the police put a guard on Councilman Pak until this guy is caught.”

The Judge blinked again. He had aged decades in minutes. “Dear God,” he whispered.