Page 252 of Sweet Ruin

He puts the hat on.

“You do not have to answer tonight, of course. Take your time.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.” He nods once. “That would have worried me. The envelope has a number to reach me directly. I hope to talk to you soon, Ms. Dorsey.”

He walks to the door and stops with his hand on it. “Oh. I should have added: Someone will be along tomorrow morning to fix this lock. It’s getting quite a workout these days, isn’t it? Ah, well. Good to keep the locksmiths in business, right?”

Then he steps outside.

The driver helps him into the car, and then they disappear into the guts of the city.

The envelope is still on the table.

I sit down in the little café chair he was in, which is still warm, and I brace my hands on either side of it.

I don’t open it.

Not yet.

But I don’t throw it away, either.

46

KANE

I’m on the Belt when Josef calls.

I take it on speaker.

“Boss.” He gulps. “There was a situation at the bakery.”

I move into the right lane and pull onto the shoulder. Cars go past me. The phone sits in my hand.

“Is she hurt?”

“No. No, she’s fine. She’s inside. Lights are on. I can see her through the back glass right now.”

“Then tell me what happened.”

He explains in a hoarse, halting voice. How a black sedan came around the corner at ten to seven and stopped in front, hazards on. A man got out of the passenger side and walked down the alley like he was looking for an address. Josef asked him what he wanted. The man put a gun against Josef’s ribs, under the coat, where nobody on the street would see it, and told him to stand still and keep his hands where they were.

“He didn’t take my piece,” Josef says. “He knew I had it. He just told me not to reach for it.”

“Who was in the car?”

“Osip Vetrov.”

I slump back in my seat with the engine running and the heater blowing on my pale, clammy hands.

“He went in the front,” Josef continues. “The door was locked, but he went right on through, I don’t even know how. He was inside about ten minutes. Then he came out, the driver put him in the car, and the guy with the gun walked backward down the alley to the street and got in and they left.”

“They didn’t touch you?”

“No. He said—” Josef stops. “He said to tell you he had no quarrel with the help.”

I look out at the water on my right, black under the streetlights, and the cranes standing over the terminal further down, and I think about the number of ways I am going to take Osip Vetrov apart.