“How’d it go?” she said after he collapsed in a ball of sweat onto the floor of the van’s rear.

“Swimmingly, darling. Just swimmingly.”

Chapter 25

The next morning at twenty minutes before nine, I was sitting and staring at a Norman Rockwell print.

It was one of my favorites. The one of the big state trooper seated beside the cute little runaway kid at the diner. I loved all the incredible colors and details. The deep blue of the trooper’s uniform, the focal point red of the bandanna tied to a stick under the kid’s shiny chrome diner stool. I thought it was a heck of a painting, but then again, I suppose you could accuse me of being a little biased in the cops and kids department.

The print hung on the office wall of Chief of Detectives Fabretti, who had texted me for a meeting on my way in to One Police Plaza. Beside the print on a whiteboard were crime scene photos. One was of the MetLife Building’s roof, another of the assassin’s blind that we’d found under its rim. Beneath them was a shot of the huge Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle we’d been unable to trace or find even one print on.

I hoped the chief wasn’t looking for an update on things, because there was none. It was pretty frustrating. We were no closer to finding the president’s shooter than on day one.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, I know. I’ll call you back,” Fabretti said into his cell as he came in and loudly dumped the bunch of binders he was carrying onto the smooth glass top of his desk.

“The fricking president is making another visit to the UN. Can you believe this?” he said as he dropped himself into his tufted leather office chair. “That was Paul Ernenwein. He just got off the phone with the Secret Service. Does Buckland have a death wish? I mean, some in the press like to say he’s like the new JFK. You think he wants to end up like him?”

“When is he coming back?” I said.

“Two weeks. They said he has a big meeting with ambassadors from a bunch of the former Eastern Bloc countries and some NATO ones. They said he’s trying to put the full-court press on Russia. Really up the pressure.”

“He’s upping the pressure, all right,” I said, shaking my head.

“You said it,” Fabretti said. “My blood pressure alone. Just having to work with those Secret Service prima donnas again after all they did to try and throw us under the bus is an outrage.”

“I’m with you there,” I said. “Anything else, Chief?”

“Well, now that you ask,” said Fabretti as he took a sheet of paper out of one of his binders.

Chapter 26

In the last daylight of my long day, I stepped out of my unmarked into the parking lot of a big, ugly, yellow concrete building in Brooklyn. It was the last, most southern building in the South Brooklyn marine terminal, a massive industrial wilderness of rusting chain-link and corrugated sheet metal just south of the Gowanus Canal.

Icy wind off the bay roared in my stinging ears as I crossed the parking lot. I looked up at the looming silhouettes of a couple of massive dock cranes at the adjacent facility, where imported cars were processed and put onto freight trains.

This must be the old Brooklyn, I thought, turning up the collar of my coat. There wasn’t a hipster in sight.

The inside of the building was even more depressing than the outside, if that was possible. It was a meat distribution center—basically, a giant refrigerator stacked with row after endless row of cardboard cases of frozen meat. Beyond a smudged window by the front door, workers in hooded winter coats piloted forklifts and pallet lifts between the rows, like lost souls doing penance in a frozen hell.

I found Pavel Levkov upstairs in a cozy, warm glass office overlooking the interior tundra of the warehouse. He was a medium-size bald man in his fifties, with gray eyes and a weight lifter’s build. He didn’t offer me a seat.

I’d actually been looking for him all day. He was a hard man to find. He had a list of cash businesses as long as my arm: a bunch of gas stations in Newark, a slummy motel in Coney Island, a garbage-hauling outfit out in Staten Island.

Though Levkov didn’t have a record, he was linked to the Russian mob in New York. He was also linked to the informant who’d told the FBI about the MetLife shooter.

Apparently, the FBI’s informant had split town yesterday, out of the blue, but not before telling his wife that if something happened to him, we should talk to Pavel Levkov.

So here I was.

“NYPD? What the fuck is this about?” Levkov said after I showed him my shield.

“How do you do, Mr. Levkov? My name’s Detective Bennett, and I’d like to ask you a few questions. Actually, just one. Who put the hit out on the president? Was it you?”

The Russian immediately started laughing. I’d really hit his funny bone. He crossed his arms as he creaked his bulk back in his old wooden office chair, giggling.

“Yeah, it was me. You’ve found me out, Detective. Welcome to Dr. Evil’s lair,” Levkov said with a theatrical wave of his meaty hand.

He sat forward then, leaning on his desk with his elbows. “I’m just a businessman, Detective. Look at this place. Do I look like I’m getting rich to you? Look at my car in the lot, some piece of shit Jeep Cherokee with a bad transmission. How many times do I have to tell you people? I pay my taxes and pursue the American dream. That’s it.”

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