She hung up.
FIFTY FEET from Carrie Cox’s front stoop, Willie Leahy sat in his car surveying the street. He got out of the car and looked both ways, then crossed the street and looked again.
The speaker/microphone for the radio on his belt popped on. “We’re ready. Everything okay?”
“Everything okay,” Willie replied. He crossed the street, got into the car, and drove up to Carrie’s stoop. Peter hustled her into the car. “Where we off to?” Willie asked.
“To Stone Barrington’s house,” she replied.
“Gotcha.” Willie headed for Turtle Bay.
As he turned into Stone’s block, he slowed. “A guy I don’t like, across the street from Stone’s,” he said. “Black raincoat.”
“Drop me here,” Peter replied, “and go around the block.”
Willie did so. “Carrie, lie down on the backseat,” he said.
“Will do. Are there bad guys?”
“Maybe. We’ll know soon.” Willie drove slowly past the man and made mental notes: five-eleven, two hundred, suit and tie under the raincoat, forty to forty-five. He drove around the block.
PETER LEAHY PUT his hands in his coat pockets and walked down the block at a normal pace. As he came up to the man in the black raincoat he stopped behind him and whispered in his ear, “Don’t turn around.”
The man froze.
“The guy who lives in that house doesn’t like loiterers,” he said.
“It’s a free country,” the man replied, not moving.
Peter flipped up the lapel of his coat and removed a four-inch-long hat pin that had belonged to his grandmother. He gave the loiterer a quick jab in the ass.
The man cried out and spun around. Then, walking backward, he shoved his hand inside his coat and made his way down the block.
“If you pull that thing on me, you better kill me with the first shot,” Peter said.
The man kept his hand inside his coat but didn’t draw anything. He turned and now began walking fast, hurrying away.
“And don’t come back,” Peter called after him. He looked over his shoulder, saw Willie coming, and held up a hand for him to stop. He waited until the watcher had turned the corner before he waved Willie on. They hustled Carrie into the house.
STONE MET THEM at the door. “Any problems?”
“Just one,” Peter said. “I sent him on his way.”
“How’d you do that?” Stone asked.
Willie showed him the hat pin.
Stone laughed. “I haven’t seen one of those things since I was a kid.”
“You’d be surprised how useful it can be,” Peter said. He turned to Carrie. “Are you staying the night?”
“Yep,” she replied.
“Then we’ll leave you in Stone’s capable hands.”
The Leahys departed.
27