Among thieves

The Swissair lady couldn’t stop smiling at Demarco. When she asked if he had any bags to check, he smiled back and said, “No.”

She peeked over the counter at his elegant Tumi Woodbridge carry-on garment bag. And smiled again. God, what a beautiful man. What style.

Demarco breezed through security, had his usual drink, Grand Marnier and decaf coffee in the lounge. He called Elliot to tell him he wouldn’t be able to make it upstate this weekend. All he had to say was that something had come up, and he was sorry. The sorry part was enough for Elliot.

By the time Demarco walked into the first-class cabin, the steward asked him if he preferred a window pod. One had become available at the last minute, closer to the front of the cabin.

Demarco settled in next to Alan Crane, in what would have been Olivia’s seat, finishing up a text to Beck that read cryptically “seat empty.” Enough to confirm for Beck when he woke up that Ma

Crane, already on his second glass of champagne, seemed a bit distracted, realizing that it was now certain that Olivia Sanchez was not going to make this flight.

By the time the plane landed in Geneva, Switzerland, Demarco had learned Crane’s new name, Paul Adler. And the hotel he was staying at: the D’Angleterre.

Demarco arrived at the D’Angleterre well before Crane, since Crane had to wait for his luggage. However, he didn’t enter the hotel. He waited across the street, sitting on a bench near the lake, the chill air not affecting him in the least, noticing that next to the hotel was a private branch of HSBC bank. Probably the reason Crane picked the D’Angleterre.

While he waited for Crane to arrive, Demarco booked a junior suite at another hotel, the Beau Rivage, and called for a limo. His limo arrived five minutes after Crane entered the hotel.

Demarco crossed the street, motioned for the driver to roll down his window. He told the driver he was Mr. Williams, asked him to take his bag and wait fifteen minutes, he had to take care of something in the bank, which conveniently was open until noon on Saturdays.

He walked into the bank, waited ten minutes for Crane to get to his room. While in the bank, he called the hotel and left word that a document was coming for Mr. Adler from the bank. He confirmed the room number. Then he entered the hotel through the service entrance, wearing fine leather gloves and his fedora pulled low to obscure his face from security cameras.

When Demarco arrived on Crane’s floor, he lifted a vase full of flowers from a table in the elevator foyer and carried it to Crane’s room.

He knocked on the door discreetly, holding the flowers so that they blocked the view through the room’s peephole.

When asked who it was, Demarco said, “Housekeeping.”

Crane must have liked the idea of more flowers for his suite. He opened the door quickly. Demarco punched Crane in the throat at just about the moment Crane recognized Demarco from the plane.

Crane landed on his back hard, clutching his throat, struggling to breathe.

Demarco quickly straddled Crane’s head and broke his neck. He stripped him of all valuables: watch, wallet, passport, cash in his pocket.

He grabbed Crane under his armpits and lifted his upper body onto the bed, and then his legs.

Demarco adjusted the body on the luxurious bed into a more normal position. He picked up the vase which he had set on the carpet and left the room, replacing the vase exactly where it had been on the table in the foyer.

He retraced his steps out the back of the hotel, reentered the bank, went out the front entrance, and slipped into the backseat of his waiting limo. He checked his watch. He’d been in the hotel exactly eleven minutes. Not bad.

*   *   *

Ciro’s job was much easier, although he, too, had to dress up a bit. He wore a black wool overcoat, a white silk scarf that covered his neck tattoo, and a wide-brimmed Irish cap pulled low to shadow his face. He had borrowed a dog from his cousin Veronica, an excitable little Yorkshire terrier named Mickey. Not exactly Ciro’s type of dog, but Mickey would have to do.

Ciro waited on the quiet path that ran from Seventy-ninth Street past Dog Hill to the boat basin.

Milstein was right on time.

When Milstein saw the large man walking a small dog, heading his way, he hardly gave it a second thought. Ciro looked nothing like the man Milstein had seen briefly in the park four days before. He was just another dog walker.

The stupid dog almost got in Ciro’s way. He had the leash in his left hand, the knife in his right, in perfect position as Milstein approached. Then the damn dog veered over to check out Milstein’s dog.

Milstein’s dog also started to cross in front of him. He yelled, “goddammit,” and wrenched the leash on the big terrier.

Ciro pulled up on the little dog’s leash hard enough so Mickey landed about three feet to the left. The dog emitted a short yelp at the exact moment Ciro buried the knife just below Milstein’s sternum, angled straight up toward his heart.

The blade was long, sharp, hardened steel. Ciro plunged it into Milstein with such force that it rose up and severed the pulmonary artery and half the aorta, and lifted Milstein off his feet. Goddammit was the last word Frederick Millstein uttered.

Ciro pulled out the blade. Milstein fell face forward onto the asphalt path.

Ciro looked around. No one in sight. He let go of the dog leash, wiped the blade on Milstein’s coat, and pocketed the knife.

He dragged Milstein into the bushes about twenty feet off the path and dumped him well out of sight. He quickly stripped him of everything in his pockets.

Both dogs had stayed where they were on the path, sniffing each other, Mickey jumping around and yipping at the bigger dog.

Ciro picked up both leashes and started to lead both dogs back to Dog Hill. But now his cousin’s dog wanted nothing to do with him. Perhaps it had to do with being jerked three feet off his feet.

Ciro picked up the little dog, feeling bad about giving it such a hard tug. Milstein’s dog walked along with him as if nothing had happened.

When he got to where Milstein usually let the dog off the leash, he released Tam. The big dog immediately ran off into the dark field.

Ciro kept the small dog cradled in his arm so he wouldn’t follow the big dog.

“Sorry about pulling you so hard little guy.”

Mickey looked up at Ciro and licked his gloved hand.

Ciro smiled, and then he realized the little dog was licking Milstein’s blood.

*   *   *

Beck had waited until after Olivia’s funeral to distribute the cash that Alex Liebowitz had smuggled in with his scuba-diving equipment from Belize.

He’d decided that the bribes he’d paid to Walter Pearce would set the amount. Thirty thousand for setting up the cops, plus twenty for monitoring Milstein’s call to the Belize bank. It added up to an even fifty thousand dollars.

He didn’t even try to calculate whose efforts might have been worth more than another’s. Nydia, the Bolos, Phineas, Brandon Wright, Joey B: without any one of them, they would have never survived.

He doubled the amount he gave to Pearce, giving each of them a hundred thousand in cash.

He also paid for Joey B’s hospital bills and follow-up care.

He knew Brandon Wright wouldn’t accept any money, so he bought him a case of his favorite Irish whiskey, Midleton Very Rare, gave him ten thousand dollars to give to his surgical nurse, and asked Wright to name a charity to which Beck promised to contribute money in the doctor’s name.

That left Willie Reese and Alex Liebowitz outside the core team. Willie got fifty thousand in cash. Alex got five hundred thousand fu

After laundering the remaining money through five dummy corporations Alex had set up, paying the corporate taxes to keep clean with the IRS, Beck had enough to give himself, Ma