The block was closed. A police car had parked horizontally at the street entrance, preventing traffic from passing through to the avenue. The lights of another cruiser flashed several hundred feet away. No cars were leaving this space, nor entering, Rick realized. There was no escape route.
Rick nudged the man in the driver’s seat. Frank clearly wasn’t paying attention to the view out the windshield. His head was turned squarely toward the building surrounded by uniformed officers. To Rick, the cops seemed to engulf Nate’s townhome, rats crawling up the steps, moving in and out the front door, feasting on whatever remained. They shouldn’t be there, he thought. They should be traversing the island, searching for Melissa before it was too late.
Unless they already knew it was too late.
“You don’t think slow-rolling the scene of a crime draws suspicion?” Rick asked.
Frank shrugged. “It’s like an accident. Everyone takes a gander.”
“There’s no point in being here,” Rick responded.
Frank’s knee shifted. He turned the wheel to the right and floored the gas pedal. The Porsche roared as it blindly merged into incoming traffic, a lion leaping into a herd. A horn blared behind them.
“Subtle,” Rick quipped.
Frank smirked, acknowledging what they both knew. The man had always been the opposite of subtle. Rick was the nice guy, the one called in to smooth things over after a bad meeting or general bad behavior. He was the talker. The fixer.
Frank was the animal.
“Let’s say we head over to the other place.” Frank released a hand from the wheel to dig a remnant of lunch from between his teeth.
The sight made some of the vinaigrette dressing from earlier repeat on Rick. He cleared his throat and averted his eyes to the view outside the passenger window. For the first time, headlights seemed to light the sky more than the neon glow of building signs. He’d never seen New York City look so dark.
“That motherfucker will be there, right?”
The curse got Rick’s attention. He hated how Frank had taken to talking like a Scorsese character. There were other ways to relay a message than dropping f-bombs—even for guys like his partner.
“I don’t know where he’ll be,” Rick said. “Do you know where he’ll be?”
“I thought you two were fucking friends?” Frank said.
Rick rolled his eyes. Neither of them had friends. They had people. People they lunched with, people they drank with, people who could introduce them to other people or who they could pass around. Friends required feelings that couldn’t be changed in an instant by a business decision.
“The whole point of a silent partner is not needing to say a word to anybody,” Rick said.
“The whole point of an investment is to get paid, not to pad someone’s bank account,” Frank countered. “That lying, mother—”
“What are you going to say to him?” Rick said, cutting him off before his ears could be assailed by a barrage of profanity. “’Cause if your opening line is to call him names, I don’t think we’ll get very far.”
The light in front of them turned yellow. Rick slid his hand to the side of the leather bucket seat and curled his fingers around the edge, anticipating that Frank would floor it. Instead, his partner eased off the gas, letting the flat-six engine simmer down to a stop. At the red light, Frank leaned over the center console and popped up a flat panel. He reached inside and pulled out a shiny revolver that looked fresh from a sports’ shop display case.
Rick recalled what the newspapers had said about Nate’s death. The “arranged” gun. Both their incomes required a certain amount of respect. People had to know that they were not to be lied to, taken advantage of, or otherwise trifled with. But Rick maintained his standing through connections—knowing people who could make life difficult. He’d never given much thought to how he’d react if his connections couldn’t come through.
Apparently, Frank had.
The light flipped to green in front of them. Rick gestured to the windshield with his chin, afraid of making any sudden moves with a firearm inches from his thigh. “That loaded?”
Frank shot him a murderous look. “He took our money,” he said, dropping the pistol back in the bucket. “If I haven’t made it clear before, I’m done fucking talking.”