“Are you crazy?” asked Elizabeth.
Normally that’s just a figure of speech—what people usually say in response to being told something that strikes them as a bad idea, if not downright terrible.
This sounded different. Even over the phone. Elizabeth seemed pretty convinced the following morning that I’d officially lost my mind. Bonkers. Nutsville. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
“Okay, so it might not be the safest idea,” I said.
“Gee, you think?”
“It’s the boat part, isn’t it?”
“It’s every part,” she said. “Is Grimes at least going with you?”
“No. That would require telling him way too much.”
“So you’re really going alone?”
“You make it sound like a suicide mission,” I said. “Frank Brunetti is not about to kill me.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Where would I ever get that idea? You’re heading out on his yacht in international waters to basically meddle in his affairs. There’s no way you could possibly fall overboard by accident.”
“See? It is the boat part. I knew it. Do mobsters still do concrete shoes?”
“I’m serious.”
“I know. I’ll be fine. I went to meet Grigoryev alone, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, and how’d that turn out?” she asked, hitting a whole new level of sarcasm. “I’m still kicking myself for helping to arrange that meeting.”
“I asked you for that favor. That’s on me, not you.”
“Sure. At your funeral that’s exactly what I would’ve been telling myself.”
“I told you, I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, you will be,” she said, “because I’m coming with you.”
“What? No, you’re not. You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a federal agent, for starters,” I said.
“Does that prevent me from going on a boat?”
“I don’t know, let’s ask your boss. I’m sure Pritchard might have an opinion about this. It wouldn’t matter what special unknown assignment you might be doing for the mayor.”
“Pritchard would probably love it,” she said. “He hates Brunetti.”
She had a point. True power is when no one can touch you, and Frank Brunetti didn’t have a single fingerprint on him. For decades, the FBI—not to mention the IRS, and even the SEC—had all tried to take him down, to no avail. With the best legal and public relations teams that dirty money can buy, Brunetti had never so much as paid a parking fine. His was the kind of power that would seriously piss off a Bureau division head like Evan Pritchard.
Still. “It’s not a good idea,” I said.
“It’s better than the idea of your going alone. Also, you have zero chance of talking me out of it.”
“Zero, huh?”
“Nada,” she said. “Zip.”
Okay, Lizzie. If you insist…