Dominic and Manny loitered atthe corner across the street from where Jack Coulter lived. It was nearing nine p.m., and a third of the building’s street-facing windows were dark.
Through the glass doors to the lobby, they could see a doorman and two security guards. There was no way to get to the elevators without going by them.
“Jeez, Dom,” Manny said. “How we gonna get to him?”
“We’ve sneaked into tougher places,” Dominic said firmly, though he had no idea how they were going to do it, either.
They’d already checked the back of the building and found two entrances. Both were metal security doors, with locks easy enough for either man to pick. Or they would have been easy if not for the security cameras mounted high on the building that covered the area.
“Yeah, but we usually had time to plan ahead,” Manny said.
“Look. Are you with me? Or not?”
“You know I’m with you.”
“Then trust me, all right?”
“I do trust you.”
“Good,” Dominic said. “Then stop complaining and start thinking about how we can get to him.”
While Dominic had been talking, Manny’s attention had been across the street. “We could just follow him.”
“What?”
Dominic looked over to see what had caught Manny’s eye.
The doorman of Coulter’s building was outside now, standing near the curb with a pair of carry-on suitcases, signaling for a taxi. Standing just inside the lobby were two men who hadn’t been there when Dominic had last checked. Both were more than six feet tall, the one wearing a suit a good twenty years younger than the other, if not more.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” Manny said.
Dominic squinted. The older man looked like he could be Coulter, but it was hard to tell through the glass door. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it,” Manny said. “That’s him. I’m sure of it.”
As a cab pulled to the curb, the doorman signaled to the men in the lobby. The moment they stepped outside, Dominic saw that Manny was right.
“Grab a taxi,” he said. “Hurry!”
By the time the cab Coulter was in had started to pull onto the street, Dominic and Manny were climbing into theirs.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
Dominic pointed across the street. “See that taxi? We go where it goes.”
“This ain’t the movies, buddy. Give me an address or get out.”
“A hundred on top of the fare, if you do it.” That would bea severe strain on Dominic’s finances but worth it if this paid off.
“Up front,” the cabbie said.
Dominic pulled out a hundred-dollar bill he kept in case of emergencies and shoved it through the slot in the Plexiglas divider.
The cabbie whipped the car in the direction Coulter had headed. “Which taxi was it?”
Dominic eyed the road ahead and pointed. “That one.”
Stone pulled the compact outof his pocket and opened it so he could see out the rear window of the cab.
