“Was he working on something for you?”
“No.”
“Stone, your check for sixteen hundred bucks was in his pocket.”
“He was working on something; we finished up this morning, and I paid him.”
“Any loose ends?”
Stone thought about Martha, but dismissed the idea. “No; he checked two people out for me, gave me his report this morning, and that was it.”
“Anything about these two people that could have hurt Arnie?”
Stone shook his head. “It was a straightforward surveillance, a background check. Both people were no problem to my client, so that was it.”
“Any chance either of them could have known Arnie was following them?”
“You know Arnie better than that, Dino; he was good.”
“Yeah.” Dino opened his notebook and showed Stone an address in the low Nineties. “That address mean anything to you?”
Stone shook his head again.
“Yeah. You sure this address doesn’t match up with either of your people?”
“Absolutely; one lives in the West Fifties, the other in the East Village. Who lives there?”
“My guys talked with all the tenants, but nobody admitted knowing Arnie or anything about him. One woman saw him coming down the front steps as she was going up; that was about five-forty-five. Arnie bought it in an alley beside the building shortly after that.”
“How?”
“Small-caliber handgun, looks like. He took two in the head. It wouldn’t have made much noise.”
“Robbery, maybe?”
“Maybe. They took his gun; I remember Arnie using the old standard Smith & Wesson thirty-eight, two-inch barrel. His wallet was beside him and the money was gone, but who knows? That could have been window dressing.”
“Look, Arnie wasn’t the sort of guy to attract a pro hit. He worked Robbery for most of his career, never had anything to do with the wiseguys.”
“I know, I know.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“What was he working on for you?”
“Are we off the record here, Dino?”
“Sure, it’s just between you and me.”
“You remember that DIRT thing
. He was checking out two of Amanda Dart’s employees; both of them came up clean. It isn’t the sort of business to end up with a shooting like this one. It’s all ego, vanity.”
“Two good motives for murder.”
“Not in this case. Neither employee had any thought of being followed by Arnie; he’d have known it if they did. There’s only one other employee, and I didn’t assign Arnie to her; I was going to check her out myself, if it came to that. I don’t think it will.”
“Where does that employee live?”