“Yeah, keep telling me how lucky I am,” Stone said. He turned into Tiffany & Company. “Come on, I’ve got to find a wedding present for Thad and Liz.”
“Listen, those people ought to be giving you a wedding present,” Dino said.
“Nevertheless.” Stone looked, first at crystal, then moved up to sterling. “What do you think of this?” he asked, holding up a handsome silver bowl.
“What would they keep in that, their money?”
“Fruit.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll take this,” Stone said to a saleslady. “Could you gift wrap it?”
“Of course,” the woman said. “I’ll just be a moment.” She vanished into a back room.
Dino went rigid. “Don’t turn around,” he said. “Dolce’s looking in the window.”
Involuntarily, Stone turned around and looked. He saw a disappearing flash of color.
“You stay right here,” Dino said. “Don’t move.” He walked quickly to the front door and outside, looking up and down the street.
Stone waited impatiently until the saleswoman returned, then waited even more impatiently while she rang up the sale and had his credit card authorized. Finally, blue shopping bag in hand, he hurried to the front door. He looked up and down the street as far he could see, then stepped outside. Dino was nowhere in sight, and neither was the red Cadillac.
Stone stood in the bright sunlight, feeling helpless, not knowing which way to turn. He waited for five long minutes, then made a decision: He turned right and walked rapidly along the street, checking shopwindows for Dolce and looking up and down the street for the red Cadillac.
Suddenly, Dino stepped out of a doorway and ran head-on into Stone. “Didn’t I tell you to stay where you were?” he demanded.
“I did, for a very long time,” Stone said. “Did you lose her?”
“Yeah, and I don’t understand it.”
Then, from not too great a distance, they heard three rapid reports.
“Gun!” Dino said, and started running toward the noise.
Stone followed, and the two of them turned a corner and ran toward a parking lot behind Worth Avenue. Stone could see the trunk of the red Cadillac protruding into the street.
Dino got there first. Women were screaming, and people in cars were trying desperately to get out of the parking lot. The Cadillac sat, blocking the entrance, three of its four doors open, with three bullet holes in the windshield. It was empty.
Dino flashed his badge at a parking attendant, who was crouching in a booth at the entrance. “What happened?” he asked the trembling man.
“I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “I was about to give the man in the Cadillac his parking check when the windshield seemed to explode.”
“Anybody hit?”
“I don’t know. I dove in here in about half a second.”
“Call nine-one-one,” Dino said, then he turned to Stone. “Let’s get out of here.”
As they walked quickly away, Stone looked around the lot and the street for a familiar face, but Dolce was gone, and so were Guido and his two goombahs.
54
THEY GOT BACK TO THE YACHT WITHOUT SIGHTING Dolce, and Stone was in his cabin, putting away his wedding gift, when Juanito knocked on the door.
“Yes?” Stone called.
“Mr. Barrington, there’s somebody to see you on the afterdeck.”