The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [53]
Hotel waiters, teams of waiters, had gone up to service the penthouse suite half a dozen times in the last eight hours. What Parker needed to know now was who was he supposed to go after. Which one of the mob overlords was the target?
He wondered who was making the final decision, maybe making it right now.
Just past ten o’clock, Isiah Parker finally ducked out of the hotel. He strolled north along the crowded boardwalk toward where the famous Steel Pier used to be.
He stayed tucked inside the main body of the crowd. Just to be safe. The moon sitting over the ocean was the creamy yellow of butter. It was glowing brightly. The steel gray ripple on the water was beautiful, but he had trouble enjoying the view tonight.
A glossy poster at Bally’s proudly announced that Diana Ross was appearing there on Saturday night. Parker had once idolized her. He’d had the biggest crush on Prissy Miss Diana Ross. Things like that hadn’t mattered to him for a while, though.
The underground police assignment mattered. Parker knew he had been given the job specifically because of his brother’s murder. Charles Mackey and the police commissioner were using him, but at least they were up-front about it.
And now, several important crime lords were gathering in Atlantic City. He was supposed to hit one of them in the next twenty-four hours.
But which one?
And how was he supposed to pull it off?
By the time Parker made it to Resorts International, the last old-fashioned hotel on the boardwalk, his body was beginning to feel numb. He yawned and his jaw creaked, echoing inside his head.
He was about to head back toward Trump’s when Isiah Parker saw something that shook him.
He ducked inside a video game arcade. His body shuddered, and he assumed the worst.
A man he knew by sight, another New York policeman, was heading down the boardwalk from the direction of Trump’s. The man was propped up in a wheelchair, but he was still coming at a pretty good clip.
Lieutenant John Stefanovitch of Homicide was on the boardwalk of Atlantic City. The man investigating the St.-Germain and Oliver Barnwell murders was down here for the weekend. Isiah Parker didn’t think he’d come for the swimming.
51
John Stefanovitch; The Tropicana
STEFANOVITCH HAD TAKEN a half-hour sanity break from the surveillance watch inside the Tropicana. He’d gone out on the boardwalk to clear his head, but also to satisfy his curiosity about what the new Atlantic City looked like.
Twenty minutes after his trip down the boardwalk, Stefanovitch was back inside the Tropicana. He was moderately refreshed, ready to wait and watch nothing happen some more. He changed into a fresh shirt, spritzed on some cologne, and waited. Always the waiting.
The hotel suite in the Tropicana resembled a political headquarters after either a disastrous election result, or an equally problematic celebration. The regular furniture had all been pushed back away from the windows. A lot of real functional stuff like chrome torchére lamps, sectional couches, glass cocktail tables, was stacked against two of the walls.
FBI men with high-powered binoculars and opera glasses were slumped in a row of dining room chairs, observing the penthouse across the way at Trump’s. Used coffee cups and greasy sandwich wrappers were thrown everywhere, mostly just dropped on the floor near chairs.
The FBI men weren’t just idly observing the penthouse suites at Trump’s. Motion-picture and still cameras, but also sensitive directional microphones, were being used to record the syndicate meeting from every angle. None of the really important business had begun. A group of high crime over-lords wasn’t expected until the following morning, including the heir apparent from Europe, and the King of Kings in the Orient, who lived in Macao.
Stefanovitch had returned to his spot behind one of the gray-tinted picture windows. He slipped on a pair of bulky black earphones, and began to listen to more gangster conversation over in the penthouse.
Stakeouts are among the worst experiences in police