The horse began kicking its stall.
“Easy,” Zolner called soothingly. “We’re almost ready.”
The animal calmed down immediately.
“How do you do that?” marveled Antipov, who had never fought on horseback.
“He knows I like him,” said Zolner. “He would never believe what we have planned for him. Would you?” he asked, approaching the animal with an apple.
Yuri, the least sentimental of men, asked, “Couldn’t we unhitch him?”
“The Financial District is crawling with police. The streets and sidewalks are jam-packed at lunch hour. We’ll be lucky to get away on foot, much less leading a horse. All right, are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready for days!”
“I am talking to the horse.”
Zolner opened the stall, said, “Come along,” and hitched the animal to the wagon.
They dressed in workmen’s shirts, trousers, boots, and flat caps, all smudged with coal dust, and rubbed dust on their hands and faces. Zolner climbed up on the driver’s bench and took the reins. Antipov slid open the stable door.
A man who looked like a plainclothes police officer stepped in from the sidewalk. He looked around with quick, hard eyes, took in the horse, Zolner seated in the wagon, and Yuri Antipov frozen with surprise. He opened his coat, revealing a gleaming badge pinned inside the lapel, and a fleeting glimpse of a heavy automatic pistol.
“Have either of you gents seen Charlie ‘Trucks’ O’Neal?”
• • •
ZOLNER SPOKE first in Russian, saying to Yuri, “I will distract him for you,” and in heavily accented English, “Ve not know such person.”
“Big guy, six-two, broken nose, black hair.”
“Ve not know such person.”
“That’s funny. ’Cause I hear he rents this stable. And here are you guys with a horse and a wagon, which are staples of the stable business, if you know what I mean.”
“Are you policeman?”
The man stared a moment, appeared to make up his mind, and suddenly sounded more friendly. “Don’t worry, gents, I’m not a cop. Van Dorn private detective. Harry Warren’s my name. I don’t mean to keep you guys from going about your business. Though I’m not sure who’s going to buy your coal in the middle of the summer.”
He opened his coat again, took out a wallet, and flashed a ten-dollar bill. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”
Marat Zolner reached for the money and stuffed it in his pocket. “Man who rent stable . . . desk there.” He pointed at the office door.
“Thanks. You gents go on. I’ll wait for him in there.”
Harry Warren was halfway to the office door when Antipov started after him, dagger drawn.
“Was that Russian you were speaking?” asked the detective, turning suddenly and drawing his pistol with blinding speed. He fired once, into the stable floor, an inch from Antipov’s shoe. The Comintern officer skidded to a stop.
Harry Warren glanced at the distant door to the street. No one had been passing by, no one was peering in for the source of the gunshot, which was good. He needed time with these two without the cops.
He said to Zolner, “Translate to your pal to drop his knife before I shoot him. And you keep your hands where I can see them.”
Zolner spoke. Antipov let the dagger fall from his hand.
Warren did not know what he had stumbled into while looking for Trucks O’Neal, but it looked promising. Particularly with the Russian connections Isaac Bell kept turning up. He addressed Zolner in a deliberately conversational tone while watching closely for the man’s reaction. “The reason I ask about Russian is we keep running into a Russian connection to this case we’re trying to solve about who tried to kill our boss. Could be coincidence, though, if it is, your pal’s attempt to stick a knife in my back will require some explaining.”
Marat Zolner and Yuri Antipov stood still as bronze statues. Not even their eyes moved, not even to track the sudden motion of Trucks O’Neal entering silently from the covered alley and clutching a full bottle of counterfeit Glen Urquhart Genuine by the neck.