“Oh, come on, Dino,” she replied. “The guy’s not coming back. No mugger is that stupid.”

Dino looked at the floor. “You do like I tell you about this, you hear me?”

Stone went and sat on the sofa next to her. “Mary Ann,” he said, “it’s not a mugger.”

“What are you talking about?”

He turned to Dino. “It’s our guy,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” Dino replied. “Worst fears realized.”

9

KELLY RETURNED WITH DINO’S SON, Benedetto, a black-eyed six-year-old who looked like a tiny Sicilian prince, taking after his mother’s line. Dino dismissed Kelly, then gathered up the boy, sat him on his lap, and explained what had happened that afternoon.

“Why don’t you just have the guy capped?” the child asked.

Dino sighed and looked at Stone. “He spent the weekend with his grandfather.” He turned back to the boy. “Because, Ben, I am a police officer, and we don’t have guys capped. We arrest them and put them in jail, remember? Now you go and get washed up for dinner. Uncle Stone is going to join us.” The boy got down from his father’s lap and ran toward his room.

“Thanks, I’d love to,” Stone said.

Mary Ann excused herself and headed for the kitchen.

“Come on into my study,” Dino said. “Let’s have a drink.”

Stone followed Dino into the handsome little walnut-paneled room, where Dino produced Stone’s favorite bourbon and a scotch for himself. It was not the study or the apartment of a New York City police lieutenant, and the books on the shelves, mostly art history, history, and biography, revealed a broader Dino than most people knew.

Stone knew that Dino’s father-in-law had acquired the apartment for his daughter in circumstances that were murky, to say the least. It was in a white-shoe, East Side cooperative building that did not ordinarily entertain applications from people whose names ended in vowels, and Stone reckoned it would sell for somewhere between a million and a half and two million dollars on the open market. Stone knew that the apartment’s purchaser and his daughter’s ownership were protected behind a complex corporate veil, and he doubted if any other member of the NYPD had ever entered the place before today. He wondered what would happen if Dino ever became the target of some in-depth departmental investigation.

“You got any thoughts about all this?” Dino asked.

At first, Stone thought he meant the apartment, then he realized what the subject was. “Oh. Not really. Certainly, Mitteldorfer’s alibi is tight. I think I’d check out the nephew in Hamburg, to see if he’s really in Germany. Might be good to check out Mitteldorfer’s visitors list, too?” He allowed himself a grin. “If you can get it out of Captain Warkowski.”

Dino raised his glass in a little toast. “Fuck you,” he said.