“So what brings you to the big city?” Stone asked.
“I’m in hot pursuit of a fugitive,” Holly said.
Stone handed her a menu. “Let’s order dinner, then you can tell me about it.”
2
THEY WERE HALFWAY through their first course, a salad of French green beans, mushrooms, and bacon.
“Tell us about your fugitive, Holly,” Dino said. “Maybe I can help.”
“That would be nice, Dino,” Holly replied. “First, a little background: Not long ago, I wrapped up a case in my jurisdiction that involved a man named Ed Shine; his history is interesting. He came to the U.S. from Italy, as a teenager, and his original name was Gaetano Costello.”
“Costello?”
“Second cousin to Frank. The mob changed his name to Edward Shine, planted a birth certificate in the county records, and put him through high school and college, ostensibly the son of some people named Shine, who just happened to live in the same apartment building as Mr. and Mrs. Meyer Lansky. Right out of college, Ed starts building office buildings, and he never has any trouble arranging financing; he’s laundering money for the mob. He continues doing this for forty years or so, and very successfully. In the meantime, he’s visiting Florida on a regular basis, and he has a brief affair with a Latino woman and fathers a son out of wedlock, naming the boy Enrico. The kid takes his mother’s maiden name, Rodriguez, and is called Trini.
“Trini Rodriguez grows up his father’s son and is trained in all the little arts required of a Mafia-made man. His favorite is killing people. I thought I had killed him, but he bounced back.”
“Why did you think you had killed him?” Stone asked, putting down his fork.
“Because I stuck a steak knife in his neck and wiggled it around, and he was pumping blood at a great rate the last time I saw him.”
Stone gulped. “And why, may I ask, did you stick a steak knife in his neck?”
“He was trying to kill an FBI agent at the time, and I was trying to stop him.”
“Oh.”
“Apparently, though, his people got him to a hospital in time, and he recovered.”
“Wasn’t he arrested?”
“Yes, but there were complications.”
“He was trying to kill an FBI agent, but there were complications?”
“Right. Turns out Trini had been an FBI informant all the time he was killing people, and the Miami agent in charge, a guy named Harry Crisp, took him out of the hospital and put him in the Witness Protection Program, saying that he needed his testimony in the big case—my case. All this without mentioning it to me, and I wanted the guy for mass murder.”
Dino spoke up. “So the guy you’ve come to New York to find is in the Federal Witness Protection Program?”
“Right.”
“Well,” Dino said, wiping his mouth and taking a sip of his wine, “that’s going to make it just a little difficult to arrest him.”
“Hang on,” Stone said. “You said you wanted him for mass murder?”
“Right. I had a witness in protective custody, and he killed two of her relatives, trying to get at her. She insisted on going to the funeral, and the FBI had the scene covered with lots of agents and a few snipers. I’m up in the church bell tower with one of the snipers when the hearses arrive, and everybody is on maximum alert, looking for somebody with a weapon.
“The coffins are taken out of the hearses and set by the graveside, and my witness walks over, puts a rose on the first coffin and kisses it, then steps over to the other coffin, and, as she kisses it, both coffins explode.”
“Holy shit,” Dino said quietly.
“My sentiments exactly,” Holly replied. “It’s carnage, everywhere you look. More than a dozen people are dead and several dozen injured, some critically. Like I said, I’m in the church tower, and the shock wave from the explosions starts the bell ringing and nearly deafens the sniper and me.”
“So he murders a dozen people, and still the FBI puts him in the Program?”
“Harry Crisp puts him in the Program, and once anybody in the FBI makes a move, they never want to reverse it; makes them look bad, they think.”