The Murderers (Badge of Honor 6)

“I don’t want to be a lawyer, and I don’t—especially don’t—want

to work for Nesfoods International.”

“‘Especially don’t’? What are you going to do when you marry Penny? It’s a family business, for Christ’s sake.”

“Your family. Her family. Not mine.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Chad said. “She’s an only child. I don’t know how much stock she owns now, but…”

“Let it go, Chad!”

“…eventually, she’ll inherit…”

“Goddamn it, quit!”

“Your old man sits on the board,” Chad went on. “Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo and Lester’s biggest client is Nesfoods.”

“Just for the record, it is not,” Matt said. “Now, are you going to quit, or do you want to celebrate your vice presidency all by yourself?”

Nesbitt sensed the threat wasn’t idle.

“One final comment,” he said. “And then I’ll shut up. Please?”

After a moment, as he closed the zipper of Chad’s gray flannel slacks, Matt nodded.

“I liked the Marine Corps. I was, I thought, a damned good officer. I really wanted to stay. But I couldn’t, Matt. For the same reasons you can’t ignore who you are, and who Penny is. I think they call that maturity.”

“You’re now finished, I hope?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now we’ll go out and celebrate your vice-presidency. I can handle you alone, or Penny, but not the both of you together.”

“OK.”

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a new Italian place down by the river. Northern Italian. I think that means without tomato sauce.”

Matt pulled up his trousers leg and strapped his ankle holster in place.

“You really have to carry that with you all the time?” Chad asked.

“I’m a cop,” Matt said. “Write that on the palm of your hand.”

Mr. John Francis “Frankie” Foley checked his watch as he circled City Hall and headed west on Kennedy Boulevard. It was ten forty-five. He had told Mr. Gerald North “Gerry” Atchison “between quarter of eleven and eleven,” so he was right on time.Mr. Foley considered that a good omen. It was his experience that if things went right from the start, whatever you were doing would usually go right. If little things went wrong, like for example you busted a shoelace or spilled spaghetti sauce on your shirt, or the car wouldn’t start, whatever, so that you were a little late, you could almost count on the big things being fucked up, too.

And he felt good about what he was going to do, too, calm, professional. He’d spent a good long time thinking the whole thing through, trying to figure out what, or who, could fuck up. His old man used to say, “No chain is stronger than its weakest link,” and say what you want to say about that nasty sonofabitch, he was right about that.

And the weak link in this chain, Mr. Foley knew, was Mr. Gerry Atchison. For one thing, Frankie was pretty well convinced that he could trust Atchison about half as far as he could throw the slimy sonofabitch. I mean, what kind of a shitheel would offer somebody you just met a chance to fuck his wife, even if you were planning to get rid of her for business purposes?

The first thing that Frankie thought of was that maybe what Atchison was planning on doing was letting him do the wife and the business partner, and then he would shoot Frankie. That would be the smart thing for him to do. He would have his wife and partner out of the way, and if the shooter was dead, too, with the fucking gun in his hand, Atchison could tell the cops that when he heard the shots in the basement office he went to investigate and shot the dirty sonofabitch who had shot his wife and his best friend and business partner. And with Frankie dead, not only couldn’t he—not that he would, of course—tell the cops what had really happened, but Atchison wouldn’t have to come up with the twenty-five hundred Frankie was due when he did the wife and the business partner.

Frankie didn’t think Atchison would have the balls to do that, but the sonofabitch was certainly smart enough to figure out that he could do something like that. So he’d covered those angles, too. For one thing, the first thing he was going to do when he saw Atchison now was make sure that sonofabitch had the other twenty-five hundred ready, and the way he had asked for it, in used bills, nothing bigger than a twenty.

If he didn’t have the dough ready, then he would know the fucker was trying to screw him. He really hoped that wouldn’t happen, he wanted this whole thing to happen, and if Atchison didn’t have the dough ready, he didn’t know what he’d do about it, except maybe smack the sonofabitch alongside his head with the .45.

But Atchison could have the dough ready, Frankie reasoned, and still be planning to do him after he had done the wife and the partner. He had figured out the way to deal with the whole thing: first, make sure that he had the dough, and second, when he came back to do the contract, either make sure that Atchison didn’t have a gun, or, which is what most likely would happen, make sure that he always had the drop on Atchison.