The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (67 page)

The man bent to his knees and unzipped Harold’s fly.
 
“Let me give you a real high.”

*
  
*
  
*

They arrived at a modest-looking brownstone on 12th Street.

As the car came to a stop at the curbside, Derrick lifted his head from Harold’s lap and looked out a side window.
 
“We’re here,” he said to Harold.
 
“Come on.
 
We’ll be more comfortable inside.”

Harold looked at the brownstone in surprise—it was beautiful.
 
Although it was still raining, the sun had broken through the clouds and it now shined against the building’s narrow brick facade.
 
“You live here?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“What do you do for work?”

There was an uncomfortable silence.
 
“Look,” the man said.
 
“I like to be discreet.
 
You don’t know me and I don’t know you.
 
We’ll have a good time—that I can promise—but that’s as far as it’s ever going to go.
 
Is that cool?”

Harold wanted him.
 
He nodded.

They left the car.
 

Inside, the house was large and warm and smelled of roses in their prime.
 
His interest piqued, Harold stepped further into the spacious foyer and saw vases filled with flowers, side tables by Chippendale, paintings tiling the walls.

He knew something was wrong even before Derrick locked the door behind them. This man could never afford such opulence, could never afford an original Matisse.

Turning, about to protest, Harold heard the sound of a door being shut behind him and footsteps clicking on parquet.

“Nice work, Derrick,” he heard a man say.
 
“Is he clean?”

“He’s clean,” Derrick said.
 
“I tossed out the heroin myself.”

“Excellent.
 
See Nicky on your way out and he’ll give you the money we agreed upon.”

A chill enveloped Harold’s heart.
 
Knowing he had been set up, he looked quickly behind him and came face to face with Mario De Cicco.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Fragrant ribbons of steam curled from the silver coffeepot and lifted into the stale, smoky air.
 
Lucia De Cicco crossed her legs and looked with annoyance at the uniformed maid as she bent over the table and poured the hot liquid into two porcelain cups.

She wanted to be alone with Mario’s father.
 
She wanted to speak to him in private.
 
She willed this woman to go away.

“Will there be anything else, Mr. De Cicco?”

Antonio De Cicco gave the young lady such a surprisingly suggestive smile, that Lucia immediately became suspicious of their relationship.

“No, Gloria,” he said.
 
“That’s all for now.”

The woman left the room.

De Cicco leaned forward in his seat, chose one of the cups from the silver coffee service and lifted it to his lips.
 
They were in the library of his Todt Hill mansion and the smoke from his ever-present cigar was beginning to make Lucia’s eyes burn.

She looked at the man seated before her.
 
He was amazing, really.
 
Dressed immaculately in a gray suit, his face tanned from hours in the sun, the man was pushing seventy years old—and yet he looked fifty.

Ashamed of his meager beginnings in Sicily—and as vain as any person could be—Antonio De Cicco worked hard to look as professional and as educated as any man hustling on Wall Street.
 
In repose, the illusion worked.
 
But when he spoke, his fifth-grade education became embarrassingly apparent.

“You gonna have coffee?” he asked.

Lucia shook her head.
 
She toyed with the diamond brooch fastened to the lapel of her white jacket and said, “We have to talk.”

“I gathered that the other night when you called and said we needed to talk.”

His humor was not lost on her.
  
She smiled even though she was tense.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t have talked then, but things have been pretty busy around here,” he said.
 
“So, what’s the problem?”

Lucia gauged her words carefully.
 
“It’s Mario,” she said.
 
“He’s sleeping with Leana Redman again.
 
I’m sure of it.”

De Cicco studied her.
 
“Lucia,” he said.
 
“Lucia, where do you get these crazy ideas?
 
Mario’s no fool.
 
He knows I’d kill the broad if he ever pulled that shit.
 
We already talked.”

“I don’t care what he knows,” she said.
 
“It’s the truth.
 
When I called you Friday night, he’d just left to meet her at one of his damned shelters.
 
He admitted it to me, Uncle Tony.
 
He said that if I told you, if any harm came to him or Leana, he’d make me regret it for the rest of my life.”

“Mario said this?”

Lucia nodded.
 
“He frightened me.”

“You got any proof he’s fuckin’ her?”

“No.
 
But I know he is.
 
She calls all the time and he hasn’t touched me in months.
 
I go to bed alone and wake to find him in the guest bedroom.
 
I’m fighting for my marriage and he seems determined to end it.
 
Can you do something?”

De Cicco drew on his cigar.
 
He’d known this woman since she was a child.
 
He loved her as if she were his own daughter.
 
There was a threat against her life and yet she had left the safety of her home and come here to ask him for his help.
 
Although he wasn’t entirely convinced Mario was sleeping with Leana—hadn’t the woman just married Michael Archer?—he would at least consider Lucia’s request.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

Lucia’s eyes darkened.
 
“I want you to kill her,” she said evenly.
 
“I want you to kill her so Mario and I can start over.”

De Cicco didn’t blink.
 
“And how would you want this done?”

“That I’ll leave up to you,” she said.
 
“But I do know this—on Tuesday night, she’ll be at the grand opening of The Hotel Fifth.
 
I’ve been following the story in the Daily News, and she’s almost sure to make a speech.
 
She’s the manager of the hotel.”

De Cicco watched her intently.

“The world will be there,” she said.

“So will a world of security.”

“You can handle security.
 
It’ll be one of her proudest moments.”
 
She knew that would get him.
 
“Perhaps then…?”

*
  
*
  
*

The woman who strolled down 12th Street certainly looked like a mother.

Dressed casually in faded jeans and an oversized plaid shirt, her dark hair pulled away from an angular face, she pushed the pink carriage down the sidewalk and cooed to a baby that was non-existent.
 
As she strolled, she carefully avoiding the bumps in the cement—knowing that any sudden, jarring movement could cause herself—and the area surrounding her—to explode into nothingness.

The rain had stopped and she was thankful for that.
 
Spocatti didn’t give her an alternative plan of action.
 
If the sky hadn’t cleared, she wasn’t sure how she would have executed this plan—and yet that was not entirely true.
 
She was a highly trained operational agent and had complete confidence in that training.
 
She would have found a way.
 
Spocatti knew it.

She moved against the breeze, ducking beneath the sun-dappled trees.
 
Her mind was sharp and focused.
 
Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.

She could see them across the street, standing outside the attractive brownstone, guarding its entrance with their oversized bodies.
 
There were two of them, just as she knew there would be, and both were young, handsome, their guns shielded by long, black raincoats.

They were idiots.
 
They could not harm her.
 
She would crush them.

Ahead was his car.

Parked at the curbside, the black Taurus seemed to call out to her, shining in the late-morning sun.
 
The limousine idling beside it was an unexpected surprise that she welcomed.
 
Its presence would help block their view when she ducked beside Mario’s car, which now was less than twenty yards away.

As she neared it, the men on the steps glanced at one another, said something she couldn’t hear and started watching.
 
Cooing, humming softly to the explosives hidden in the carriage, she looked down the street and saw an elderly couple sitting on a bench at the end of it.
 
Besides herself, these men and the limousine’s chauffeur, they were the only other people in sight.

She pushed forward—aware that the men had moved down the steps and were now watching her.
 
Timing was everything.
 

As she approached the car, she reached into the carriage as if to adjust a blanket or a bottle, but instead tossed out one of the four stuffed animals that encompassed the pink satin interior, making it look as though a child had done it.
 
The stuffed elephant hit the curb, bounced and rolled to a stop beside the Taurus’ rear right wheel.

The woman stopped and looked crossly into the carriage.
 
“Jillian,” she said, her voice carrying across the street.
 
“That’s twice.
 
If you keep throwing your toys out of the carriage, they’re going to get ruined.
 
Behave or we’re going home.”

One of the men laughed.
 
The woman looked past the Taurus, over the limousine’s shiny black roof and smiled at him.
 
She was beautiful when she smiled.

“My kid is going to wear me out,” she said.

The man mistook that as an invitation.
 
He started across the street, leaving his friend at the base of the stairs.
 
“I love ‘em,” he said.
 
“How old is she?”

Her gun was within reaching distance, hidden beneath the mattress.
 
As with every job she took, she came prepared to die.
 
If she had to, she would fight him to the death—confident that if she lost, her own child, far away from here, would inherit the money Spocatti already had secured for her in a Swiss account.

“Eighteen months,” she said, her smile unwavering.
 
“And it looks as though she’s got her father’s strength.”
 
The man passed the limo and her hand went easily for the gun.
 
If he came much closer, he would see there was no baby in the carriage.