“He’s not your Justice Department contact…”
“Good God, no,” Ethridge said flatly.
“Sparacino?”
“I would think so. That would make the most sense, wouldn’t it, Kay?”
“Why?”
He began studying the check, then said, ‘To make sure he knows what’s going on. To spy. To intimidate.”
He glanced up at me. “Take your choice.”
Scott Partin had struck me as one of these self-contained young men often a study in sullen splendor. I remembered he had been reading the New York Times and gloomily drinking a beer. I had been vaguely aware of him only because extremely beautiful people, like gorgeous arrangements of flowers, are difficult not to notice.
I felt a compulsion to tell Marino all about it as we rode the elevator down to the first floor of my building later that morning.
“I’m certain,” I repeated. “He was sitting two tables over from us at Gallagher’s.”
“And he wasn’t with nobody?”
“Correct. He was reading, drinking a beer. I don’t think he was eating, but I really don’t remember,”
I replied as we cut through a large storage room smelling of cardboard and dust.
My mind and heart were racing, trying to outrun yet another one of Mark’s lies. Mark had said that Sparacino didn’t know I was coming to New York, that it was coincidence when Sparacino appeared at the steak house. That couldn’t be true. Young Partin had been sent to spy on me that night, and that could have happened only if Sparacino knew I was there with Mark.
“Well, there’s another way to look at it,” Marino said as we walked through the dusty bowels of my building. “Let’s say one of the ways he stays alive in the Big Apple is he does some part-time snitching for Sparacino, okay? Could be Partin was sent to tail Mark, not you. Remember, Sparacino recommended the steak house to Mark– or at least this is what Mark told you. So Sparacino had reason to know Mark was going to eat there that night. Sparacino tells Partin to be there, check out what Mark’s up to. Partin does, is sitting alone drinking a brew when the two of you walk in. Maybe at some point he slips out to call Sparacino, give him the scoop. Bingo! Next thing you know, Sparacino’s walking in.”
I wanted to believe it.
“Just a theory,” Marino added.
I knew I could not believe it. The truth, I harshly reminded myself, was that Mark had betrayed me, that he was the criminal Ethridge had described.
“You got to consider all the possibilities,” Marino concluded.
“Of course,” I muttered.
Down another narrow corridor, we stopped before a heavy metal door. Finding the right key, I let us inside the range where the firearms examiners conducted test
fires on virtually every weapon known to man. It was a drab, lead-contaminated cinderblock room, one entire wall covered by a pegboard and lined with scores of handguns and machine pistols confiscated by the courts and eventually released to the lab. Propped up in racks were shotguns and rifles. The far wall was heavy steel reinforced in the center and pitted by thousands of rounds fired over the years. Marino headed for a corner where nude manikin torsos, hips, heads, and legs were commingled in a heap ghoulishly reminiscent of an Auschwitz common grave.
“You prefer light meat, don’t you?” he asked, selecting a pale flesh-colored male chest.
I ignored him as I opened my carrying case and got out the stainless-steel Ruger. Plastic clacked as he rummaged, finally selecting a Caucasian head with brown-painted hair and eyes. This went on top of the chest, both of which Marino set on top of a cardboard box against the steel wall some thirty paces away.
“You get one clip to make him history,” Marino said.
Loading wadcutters into my revolver, I glanced up as Marino withdrew a 9-millimeter pistol out of the back of his trousers. Cocking back the slide, he pulled out the clip, then snapped it back in place.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, offering it to me, safety on, butt first.
“No, thank you,” I said as politely as possible.
“Five pops with your piece and you’re out of business.”