Hardy was at his desk trying to think out what was apparently coming at them tomorrow. Dammerman hadn’t said anything specific, but he and the top brass had been on tenterhooks for the past week or so, and especially this morning.
It was no big deal to him to take down the Levin broad—orders were orders, and it was what he was getting paid for—but it made no real sense. Evidently she had pissed off someone on the top floor badly enough to order her elimination. Whatever she had done had to have been large. Kidnapping and murder were the real deal, a hell of a lot more real than extortion, racketeering, or money laundering. People could get serious jail time.
But he had put a few things in place to cover his own ass. To begin with he’d made sure that whenever and wherever he and Dammerman had spoken there were no recording devices, and especially no wires. A few years ago a geek friend downtown had sold him a cigarette pack–size device that could detect any electronic emissions within a twenty-five-foot range.
“Just keep your voice low enough so that someone outside that range can’t hear you,” the kid had told him.
But in all that time, and for all the things he’d done for Dammerman and the firm, he’d never thought he needed the detector till now.
His phone rang, and he picked it up. “Hardy.”
It was one of his lieutenants, the same one who’d followed O’Connell. “Levin and Imani are just leaving the building.”
“Follow them, and as soon as you find out what direction they’re taking, call me back. And if they take a cab, get the number and let me know immediately.”
“Got it,” the man said and hung up.
Like a lot of ex-cops, at the beginning of his career Hardy had been a gung-ho athlete, in fantastic physical shape. But as the years had gone by, switching from being a cop on a beat on foot to a detective sitting on his ass in a car on a stakeout, he’d gotten soft around the edges. A little paunch, a little weakness in the knees, for which he compensated with a short temper.
Lately he’d been thinking about getting out. Maybe heading down to Miami Beach, something he’d talked about ever since he could remember. Summers here were okay, but the winters were bullshit.
But the money at BP made up for a lot of snowy days and freezing-your-ass-off nights.
His phone rang. “South on Nassau Street.”
It was not the same direction Julia had taken—that had been to the west—and he had to wonder if they were going to meet with the head of the NYSE, like Julia had. But it didn’t matter.
“Stick with them until I call you,” Hardy said.
“Yes, sir.”
Hardy broke the connection and dialed Bykov’s burner phone. The Russian answered on the first ring.
“Yes.”
“They’re on the move.”
“Where?”
“On foot south on Nassau Street. Do you know where I’m talking about?”
“Of course,” Bykov said. “Is the op a go?”
Military asshole, Hardy thought. “The op is a go.”