“I don’t,” Fratelli said.
“Then buy one and go down the escalator. I’ll give you two minutes.”
He hung up.
As soon as Toomey haddescended the stairs, he called Miguel.
“We’re at the Columbus Circle subway station,” he reported. “Well, I am. Gennaro’s still up on the street. I think he didn’t want me around while he made some calls.”
“He’s not ditching you, is he?” Miguel asked.
“Nah. If he didn’t want me here, he’d just tell me to go home. I get the sense the exchange is either going to happen here, or we’ll take a train to where it will.”
“Have you seen Rosa?” Miguel asked
“No. Is she here in the station?”
“We don’t know where she is.”
“The new guy lost her?”
“Don’t get me started. Suffice it to say, he’ll be looking for new employment once he recovers from his exit interview. In the meantime, keep an eye out for her.”
“Will do.”
“And keep me posted.”
Two stops south of ColumbusCircle inside the Broadway-Forty-Second Street station, Rosa held her phone to her ear while she kept an eye on the down escalator.
“You see him yet?” her brother asked.
“Not yet.”
“What the hell is taking him so long? I told him two minutes. It’s been more than three.”
Rosa could think of several logical reasons Fratelli mighthave been held up, like a line to get a MetroCard, but she wasn’t going to point any of them out. It was more enjoyable to let her brother panic.
“Dammit,” he muttered.
Rosa started to sneer at his discomfort, then her eyes widened.
She knew what Jack Coulter looked like. She’d looked him up online after hearing her brother telling Dominic and Manny that he was Fratelli. Right now, Fratelli was nearing the bottom of the escalator, a briefcase in hand.
She was vaguely aware of her brother saying something, but all her attention was on Fratelli as he stepped off the escalator, then moved out of the flow of traffic and stopped near the wall. That’s when she noticed that the man who’d been behind him also did the same.
“Rosa?” her brother all but yelled. “Are you still there?”
“He’s here,” she said. “And there’s a man with him.”
“Describe him.”
“About the same height, distinguished looking, maybe twenty or twenty-five years younger.”
“That’s got to be Barrington. He’s just a lawyer, so he won’t be a problem. How’s the crowd? Enough to work with?”
She glanced around. People were hurrying this way and that, some in groups, some alone, giving the space its normal sense of controlled chaos. “I think so.”
“Then let’s do this.”
