Judge & Jury - James Patterson [45]
“Tomorrow sounds good,” I said, surprised at the dinner invitation.
“And, Pellisante,” Andie said, “prepare to die and go to heaven. My paella’s that good.”
I hung up, and couldn’t stop the smile that was creeping over my face. The first one in quite some time, actually.
Chapter 54
THAT NIGHT I COULDN’T SLEEP. Part of it was Andie, I know. Part was the exhilaration of seeing Cavello out in Marion.
For so long I was sure he was going to get away with the murders of my two close friends. Today had changed all that. On the jet back from Marion I had called Manny’s and Ed’s wives. I told them that they would see the bastard finally put on trial for the murders of their husbands.
I was wired—awakened! For the first time in months. I was free from the guilt and shame I’d been trapped in since the jury stepped on that bus. It’s out there, I told myself, a connection to the explosion. I just had to think outside the box.
That’s when it hit me. It was as if the alarm clock had gone off—my brain a little bleary from ER reruns at 2:00 a.m. I leaped out of bed and headed into my office, unstacking one of those towers of FBI documents piled high on my desk.
You’re looking in the wrong place, Nick.
The IED. The improvised explosive device. The bomb. That was the key.
I yanked out the FBI forensic report on the explosives. I pretty much had the damn thing memorized by then anyway. The van had been packed with more than thirty pounds of C-4. Enough to do the job ten times over. Getting their hands on that much plastic wasn’t like shopping for dry tarp at the local hardware store. You just have to think of it as antiterror, Nick. Not anticrime.
My C-10 buddies had gone over every turncoat and informer on the list, and couldn’t scare up a lead pointing to the kind of people Cavello might normally call on for a job like this. It needed coordination much more sophisticated than anything he’d tried before. The technology had first been used by the Chechens.
Why not the Russian mob?
Somewhere in this pile, my Homeland Security contacts had given me books of known bad guys who were thought to be in the country at the time of the bombing.
So I started over again. Leafing through pages of blank faces and names. Andie claimed she’d seen a man with long blond hair under his cap, running away. So why not? What if the hit was set up by the Russian mob?
Sergei Ogilov was still the Boss of Bosses in Brighton Beach. He wasn’t exactly a golfing buddy of mine—I’d put a number of his men away, or had them deported. But he’d probably talk to me.
A long shot maybe, but sometimes they come in.
Like Dominic Cavello’s gun had washed to shore.
Chapter 55
MONICA ANN ROMANO was in the middle of the best sex she’d ever had. Not that the list of her lovers was very long. It certainly wasn’t. The man she’d met while having an after-work drink with friends was taking her from behind. He was very good, from her perspective anyway. Not like the boring accountants and law clerks she’d been with before, who only lasted a couple of minutes and were as nervous and inexperienced as she was.
“How’s that, luv?” he said. “Is it good for you? Does it feel okay?”
“Oh, yes,” Monica said, panting. Did she even have to answer? She felt herself about to come. This was the third time.
For far too long Monica had come home from work, made dinner for her sick mother, and slumped into the den with her to watch TV. She was thirty-eight years old. She knew she had put on weight and that no one really looked at her anymore. Until this chance meeting, she had pretty much given up on the idea of ever finding somebody.
And then—Karl.
She still found it hard to believe someone so good-looking and well-traveled had come on to her. That in the crowd of attractive female lawyers and legal aides, this tall, blond European with the sexy accent had picked her out. He said he was Dutch, but she didn’t really care where he came from. The only thing that mattered was where he was now, about eight inches inside her.
Karl