Lucas held up a finger, took out his phone and called Shelly White. “What are you up to, sweetie?”
“I was planning to sit slack-jawed in front of my TV and watch the fourth season ofElementary.You got anything better?”
“We do. It’s related to Sokolov,” Lucas said. “My old lady’s gonna make some mac ’n’ cheese for dinner and we can talk it over. Basically, we’ll want you to sit in a doorway like a street person, shivering in the cold, maybe with a wine bottle between your feet. Do you have moon boots?”
“Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact. You want down-market wino?”
“That should work,” Lucas said.
“I got it covered.”
“See you here in an hour.”
• • •
White arrived atsix o’clock, bundled in jeans, an enormous black parka that hung almost to her knees, and regular boots, though she had red moon boots in her car. They made an evening out of it, eating mac ’n’ cheese with a decent, but not great, Italian red, talking surgery and cops and spies and surveillance and hockey. Sam went off with Ellen, who already had her driver’s license, while Lucas and Weather’s daughter, Gabrielle, went to practice her cello, which was Gabrielle-speak for talking endlessly on her telephone to girlfriends.
White told Weather that she still had muscle pain from the repair work done on her leg, from when she was shot two years earlier. Weather had no advice except physical therapy.
At nine o’clock, Mallard called.
“I am told,” he said, “that Bernie is going out to a club called White Ducks, which is up in the northeast part of town, wherever that is. He wants to get out of the apartment by ten o’clock, and he told his bodyguards that he might bring a woman back. They’re still arguing about that, but we’re going to say okay, hoping that the woman is the blond shooter. We have no idea about a phone, if there is one. We’ll bag his room tonight while he’s gone.”
“So he’s already made whatever arrangements he was hoping to make, and the hit team is on its way back to Russia, or they’re getting wound up for another run at old man Sokolov.”
“That would be my guess,” Mallard said. “One or the other.”
“All right. We’ll hang around the edges, except we’ll have a coupleof informants on the street. Tell your FBI people not to shoot anyone who looks suspicious, because it’s probably my guys.”
“I will tell them,” Mallard said. “Good hunting, Lucas.”
• • •
“We oughta getgoing,” Lucas said, when he was off the phone. To Sherwood: “You sure you don’t want a weapon of some kind? In case the hit team shows up? I’ve got a cold revolver that, you know, is purely simple. Point and shoot. If you kill somebody, you could always throw it away, so you don’t have to fill out reports.”
“Tempting,” Sherwood said. “I sometimes carried an M16 in Syria and Iraq, and a Smith six-shooter in Lebanon, so I’ve had some revolver work. But…I better not. I don’t have your kind of training. We never cared if there was somebody behind the target.”
“If you say so.”
Sherwood scratched his nose, and said, “All right, give me a revolver.”
Lucas went out to the garage, got the revolver, a five-shot .357 magnum Ruger with a two-and-a-quarter-inch barrel, along with a speed loader with five more rounds. Lucas took a minute to download the gun and speed loader with .38 Specials, carried it back to the dining room, handed it to Sherwood and said, “Extreme last resort only.”
“Make sure I’m not standing behind the target,” White said.
Capslock said, “Remember, this is against everybody’s better judgment.”
“Got it,” Sherwood said. He took the gun, popped the cylinder out to the side without looking for the release, checked that it was loaded,popped it back, and said, “This is almost the exact gun I carried, but mine had a shrouded hammer. This is fine.”
“Sights are a little hard to pick up,” Capslock said.
“Wouldn’t use them anyway,” Sherwood said. “If I’m more than six feet from the guy I’d be shooting at, I’d just run away instead.”
“Excellent plan,” Capslock said.
Sherwood picked up his coat and dropped the revolver in a pocket.
White would follow Capslock to his house, where they’d stop for another enormous parka and a battered rolling suitcase. They’d hang in doorways close to the club, staying as warm as they could.
