“OK, now that he’s gone, time for a little medicine,” Dowdy said, producing a pint of Jameson’s and a couple of little steel cups from his bag of tricks.
I shook my head and then shared a laugh with Mary Catherine as the two tough, nutty old men shared a stiff belt of the good stuff. Obviously, I would have felt better if Seamus had stayed for some more tests, but I knew it would be fruitless to try to persuade him. He did look OK. Plus the fact that he was back to his old Emerald Isle vaudeville routine was definitely positive.
When I turned on my phone to tell Brian the good news and that we were on our way home, I saw that I had several new texts. Three of them were from Starkie.
The gist of his messages was that he’d recently been fielding complaints about me from the jewelry store owners, Bruno Santanella and his wife, Ellie. The Santanellas were claiming that I’d left the crime scene at their store even faster than the thieves. Which was completely unfair. I’d stayed at least five minutes. The thieves had been out in, like, two.
Starkie concluded that he wasn’t real happy with the investigation so far. Or with me, for that matter.
Fair enough, I thought, filing the aggravating criticism in the memory hole with a tiny flick of the Delete button.
I’d been running the length of the city like a beheaded chicken since I’d gotten back to New York, and now the one special night I’d finally planned with Mary Catherine had gone belly-up.
I honestly couldn’t say I was real happy these days with things myself.
CHAPTER 66
THE RESTAURANT HONCHO SAT in forty-five minutes past noon was on Prince Street in the very center of SoHo.
The modern French bistro was called 82 Clichy, after the address of Le Moulin Rouge in Paris, and like that famous cabaret, it was over-the-top posh, with black satin wallpaper and pale-plum-colored leather banquettes and an antique mirror the size of a billboard over its massive gleaming zinc bar.
Though decadent bordello was definitely Honcho’s style, especially in the tailored black seventeen-hundred-dollar Prada suit he was now decked out in, he wasn’t there to soak in the atmosphere. Sitting by a window open to the sidewalk, he kept glancing at the street through the zoom lens of his Nikon between bites of his scallop ceviche. As he pretended to snap pictures of the area’s charming Venice-like cast-iron loft buildings like some geeky tourist, he kept keen watch on an establishment two blocks west on the southwest corner of Wooster.
Through the camera’s magnifying lens, he could easily read the gold-leaf sign on its door: WOOSTER FINE DIAMONDS.
He turned from the window when he finally heard the loud clopping. The tall, curvy platinum blonde who stomped up to his table wore a seemingly painted-on black sleeveless turtleneck Givenchy dress with big black Dior shades and too-high Louboutins. With the not-so-demure diamonds at her ears and throat and the flashy Barbour and Kate Spade shopping bags clutched in her hands, she looked like a high-end stripper who’d bagged a billionaire.
Which was precisely the look Honcho had been shooting for when he hired the mobbed-up Ukrainian looker for this latest job.
“You’re late,” Honcho said, dropping a hundred on the table and quickly leading Iliana back out into the street by her elbow.
“You told me to shop!” Iliana shrieked in her heavy accent, waving the bags as they crossed the Belgian-block street.
“For over an hour!?” Honcho said as they headed west. “I told you we were on a schedule. Anyway, you know what to do, right? Want me to go over anything?”
“Do I look like an amateur to you?” Iliana said, ripping her elbow out of his hand. “I was picking pockets before you had peach fuzz on your nuts, so you worry about your part. And you better have my money in cash right after, like you said, or I’ll have your nuts.”
“What a sweet-talker you are, Iliana. Look lively now,” Honcho said as they made a beeline up Prince Street toward the jewelry store.
CHAPTER 67
THE TALLER OF THE two armed security guards opened the jewelry store door as Honcho and Iliana stopped in front of it.
From casing the joint over the last three months, Honcho knew that the dark-haired, heavyset white guard with the throwback macho-man mustache was named Gary Tenero and that he was easygoing and probably a pushover. It was Tenero’s intense Hispanic partner, Eric Galarza, who was shaved bald and chiseled like an MMA fighter and on the NYPD hiring list to become a cop, who had Honcho much more worried.
Spotting Galarza through the window, stationed in the center of the store, Honcho was racked with a sudden and strong bad feeling. Before his eyes came a prophetic vision of himself down on his hands and knees leaking blood on the luxe retailer’s expensive carpet.
Should I abort? Honcho thought.
But then Iliana was clicking up the jewelry store’s cast-iron steps and everything was going down.
“Are you effing kidding me?” Honcho said, starting the script.
He put on a pretty convincing Russian accent for the benefit of the guard. Honcho was acting Russian and had chosen the Ukrainian Iliana because of the sudden influx of megarich Russians and Europeans into the super-wealthy SoHo shopping area.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Honcho complained loudly at Iliana’s back. “I am not going into one more store. I am already late.”
“It will just take a minute. Come on,” Iliana barked.