A junior suite at the Roxy Hotel, directly across the street from Frankie’s restaurant in Tribeca, served as our rehearsal stage the following night. I had finally caught up on sleep, and Tracy was officially “off book,” as they say in the theater world. He knew the script cold.
“He’s ready,” I said.
“Maybe. But let’s rehearse it one more time,” said Elizabeth, channeling her inner Stanley Kubrick in the pursuit of perfection. She reached for the last quarter of her turkey club. Please don’t burn the toast or undercook the bacon, she’d told room service.
“Actually, that’s one thing we didn’t discuss,” said Tracy, watching her take a bite. “Do I have a reservation to eat or am I just going to the bar?”
“You definitely don’t have a reservation,” I said.
As a former CIA operative I still had the ability to engineer a few minor miracles. Getting a reservation at Frankie’s on short notice, however, was absolutely not in my toolbox. Ditto for Elizabeth. To think, we both even knew the owner.
Frankie’s restaurant was one of Frank Brunetti’s other legitimate holdings. If his gambling boat was his bread and butter, Frankie’s was his pride and joy—not to mention a poke in the eye to everyone with a badge who wanted to bring him down. Reason being, the restaurant was one of the hottest reservations in town, and had been for years. The food was excellent (Brunetti had brought in a two-star Michelin chef from Rome), but what really gave the place its buzz was the mob-boss aura. Frank Brunetti himself—“Frankie,” if you were a regular—was almost always in the house.
Thankfully, tonight would be no different.
Tracy went over his lines with us one more time. Once again, he nailed it. Elizabeth was sold. He was as ready as he was ever going to be, at least for the first act of the evening. We turned our attention to the second act.
“You’ve got the picture, right?” asked Elizabeth.
“Right here,” said Tracy, patting the breast of his suit jacket. That was good enough for me. Of course, I should’ve known better when it came to Elizabeth.
“Show it to me,” she said. “I want to make sure.”
Tracy chuckled as he reached inside his breast pocket to prove he had the picture. “I know what you’re doing,” he said. “You just want to take another look at the guy.”
The guy was agent Danny Sullivan, Elizabeth’s coworker. I’d only just met him face-to-face at the Chelsea Piers ice rink after the favor he’d done for me—arranging a meeting with Vladimir Grigoryev—had spectacularly backfired. Danny intervened with Grigoryev and basically saved my life. So how do I repay him? Ask him to do another favor, of course.
But I knew he’d be on board. He was that kind of guy. Plus, it didn’t hurt that he had the hots for Elizabeth. It was pretty obvious at the rink. And, yeah, given the way she was looking at the photo of Danny, the feeling was definitely mutual. Not that this was the time or place for me to point that out to her.
As for everything Tracy knew about Danny, that was next to nothing. Tracy wanted it that way, too. I’m pretty sure it was a method-acting thing. Stanislavsky and Stella Adler, all rolled into one. He wanted to think of Danny only in terms of the character he’d be playing. All he needed to know was what Danny looked like.
Tracy glanced at the picture of Danny again before putting it back in his pocket. “I swear, he looks like he could be Ryan Gosling’s brother,” he said. “What do you think, Lizzie?”
Elizabeth wasn’t about to take the bait, glancing at her watch instead. “It’s showtime,” she said.
I’d convinced myself that I was okay with the idea of turning Tracy into an operative for one night, and one night only. But as Tracy stood and straightened his tie in the mirror by the door, I got this sudden jolt of regret. What are you doing, Reinhart? Are you nuts?
It certainly didn’t help the guilt meter when Tracy casually turned to remind me that I should check in on Annabelle at some point. Lucinda had agreed to babysit her for the evening, although by now she was already snug in her toddler bed.
“Don’t forget,” said Tracy.
“I won’t,” I told him. “Same goes for you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means remember everything we talked about. Most of all, expect the unexpected.”
Tracy smiled, nodded, and buttoned his suit jacket. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
Maybe he did. But the second he left the hotel room to head across the street to Frankie’s, I was on my phone. “He’s on his way,” I said.