Craig shrugged. “Why not?”

“You and Ida should make arrangements for the kid, maybe with Ida’s sister or Social Services, and then move far away.”

“Arrangements?”

“I’m thinking long term,” Quinn said. “You wouldn’t want Eloise to talk about what she might have overheard. You need to cut ties completely to guarantee her safety.”

He didn’t say Eloise would be better off with a family that didn’t deal in jewel theft.

“My sister’s place in Queen’s is no good,” Ida said. “I have an aunt back in Ohio.”

“That’d work,” Quinn told her. “And there’s one more condition. Eloise takes Boomerang with her to Ohio.”

“Done,” Craig said. “But the damned cat will probably find its way back.”

Later, in the brownstone, Jody questioned whether the deal Quinn had made was entirely legal.

“Maybe the outcome isn’t exactly legal,” Quinn said. “But it’s just. And it gives the kid a chance.”

Jody looked to her mother.

But Pearl was as impossible to read as Quinn.

Jody shook her head and grinned. “You two!”

“Three,” Pearl said.

Epilogue

May 16, 11:37 p.m.

Jody wasn’t along on this one. Fedderman and two uniforms had the front door of Willard Ord’s house in the Village covered. The back door was being watched by two more uniforms and a plainclothes detective from the nearby precinct house. In the front and back of the building were also Emergency Service Unit sharpshooters, the NYPD equivalent of a SWAT team. In dangerous situations, the safest strategy was to overwhelm the suspects.

Pearl and Quinn stood to the side, and Quinn reached over and rang the doorbell.

Within a few moments, floorboards creaked softly inside the old brick building in the Village. A yellow porch light to discourage bugs flickered on, and the door opened.

Willard Ord stood in the doorway. He was wearing what looked like a white bathrobe and glossy black wing-tip shoes with black socks.

“You’re police,” he said with a smile. “You don’t need any identification other than your eyes.”

Quinn could see beyond Willard a table covered with cards and poker chips. There were three chairs at the table, and three beer cans on it.

“Are you alone in the house?” Quinn asked.

“Yes. In fact, I’d just gone to bed when I heard the doorbell.”

There were shouts from around the back of the house, and several gunshots. Most of the shots, and the last of them, sounded as if they came from ESU sniper rifles. ESU snipers always hit what they aimed at, and they shot to kill.

Quinn and Pearl both had their handguns aimed at Willard, who shrugged.

“I’m alone now,” he said.

PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

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Copyright © 2014 John Lutz

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ISBN: 978-0-7860-2830-6

First electronic edition: October 2014

ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3548-9

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