Page 82 of Near Miss

“Good luck with that,” Dino said. “She’s a bundle of surprises, wrapped around a stick of dynamite.”

“I like that description,” Carly said. “Even if it is rampant hyperbole.”

“Hyperbole must be near the truth, to be effective,” Stone interjected.

“Touché,” Carly replied.

After they finished eating, the group lingered over coffee and brandy.

“I have an idea or two,” Billy said, lowering his voice.

Dino looked at his watch. “I think that’s my exit line,” he said. He shook Billy’s hand again and departed.

“I’ve never seen Dino leave early like that,” Carly said.

“There are things he doesn’t need nor want to know,” Stone said.

“Of course,” she replied.

“It occurs to me,” Billy said, “that I’m the only one in this little cabal that Alexei doesn’t know on sight. I think it is to our advantage to preserve that little edge, since it seems to be the only one we’ve got.”

“And you have lots of faces,” Stone said. Teddy was a master of disguise.

“I brought a little case with me,” he replied. “I’ll see what I can cook up that will preserve my unfamiliarity with the little file of faces in Mr. Gromyko’s brain.”

“Now we have two edges,” Stone said, “or as many as you can hatch from your little case.”

“You say that he maintains offices in Little Italy?”

“Well, he sometimes does business from a private dining room behind the bar at a restaurant, which is closed at lunchtime,” Stone said. “I’m not sure it qualifies as an office, but I doubt he’d be there. The FBI is looking for him, and it’s probably one of the first places they checked.”

“Forget the office, then. We need only a short time in his presence, long enough to conduct a single transaction and to depart the scene without sprinting into a subway station with his minions in hot pursuit.”

“I’ve heard he sometimes buys fruit on his way home,” Carly said, “à la Brando in theGodfather.”

“I can’t establish myself as a fruit seller on the street, without exciting the enmity of half a dozen others who ply the same trade. I would be noticed in a trice and dealt with in the same moment. Besides, if he can’t visit his favorite restaurant/office at the moment, I’m confident he won’t go anywhere near his home.”

“Let’s put theGodfatherout of our minds,” Stone said. “Where else does he do business?”

“My notes,” Carly said, tapping her temple with a forefinger, “put him constantly on the move, and switching cars frequently, which obviates planting an explosive device in his transportation, à la Trench.”

“Quite,” Stone said, in an upper-class British accent. “Though doing so would be poetic.”

“Perhaps we could find a way to put his paranoia to our own uses,” Billy said.

“That’s an attractive idea.” Stone glanced at his watch. “Whydon’t you two put some flesh on its bones, and we’ll talk again tomorrow. Billy, I’ll trust you to get Carly home safely, since you’re both staying at my house.”

“Of course,” Billy replied.

“I’ll have Fred drop me off and come back for you in a few minutes.” He got up, went outside, and crawled into the rear seat of the SUV.

“Only you, sir?” Fred asked.

“You can take me home and come back for Billy and Carly.”

“Yes, sir.”

For the rest of the ride, Stone didn’t occupy himself with the problem at hand, since he had two devious minds already at work on it.

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