Over my shoulder, a pack of girls giggled as they walked past. It gave me an excuse to turn around and make sure Erica was still at her post, which she was. Still engrossed in the book I knew she wasn’t reading. I dropped my fork and pushed my tray away.
“Did this detective ever question Denise? Did he talk to my kids, tell them what he thought—”
“Ben fled to Europe,” Robert continued, taking a sip of his large fountain Sprite. “Our hero detective—guy named Connelly—coordinated with Interpol, but despite the pile of evidence stacked against him, no one could ever seem to bring him in. Ben bounced around Europe a bit—London, Barcelona, Rome—until settling down for almost a year in a small German village just outside of Berlin. No idea what he did for a living there—maybe he bottled his own sauerkraut—but then one day . . .” He waggled his fingers again.
“Poof, right, I get it.”
He smiled and pushed his own tray to the center of the table. “You know, when I first met Denise, all she told me about her ex was that he up and left one night. No note. No money. No nothing. Just left behind his ring. Which she still keeps in a box at the back of one of her dresser drawers, by the way. God knows why.”
Well I’ll be damned. She kept it.
“The cop part of me wanted to look you up right away, but I respected Denise and figured I’d let her tell me, whenever she was ready. If she was ever ready. I knew there was more. The way she got uncomfortable whenever your name came up.”
So the detective did talk to her. Fuck.
“And then you called and invited me out for a cup of coffee. Told me two of my colleagues were dead, there was a target on my back and that she and the kids might be in danger, too. ‘Robert,’ I said to myself, ‘if that isn’t enough probable cause to do some digging on this guy, then I don’t know what is.’”
“Not to be rude, but are we getting closer to a point?”
“When you first called,” he said, ignoring me again, “I didn’t know how you knew Frank and Nadia. But you did, and that was enough to perk my ears up. I called their section chief first thing Monday morning to see if he’d heard from them—”
“And?”
“No, nothing. But he did confirm those other names you gave me were a part of the same task force. I asked him to check in with his counterparts at Mossad and MI5, see if those agents had gone silent as well. Turns out the Mossad ones have been dark for about as long as Frank and Nadia—”
“Shit.”
“—but MI5 abruptly pulled their men from the field. Said they got an anonymous tip from someone who knew their agents’ names, along with Frank, Nadia, and the Israeli couple. The tipster claimed they were all in danger and that he was the guy who found the people paid to hunt them down.”
“Do they know who it was?” I tried to make the question sound sincere, but it rang phony inside my ears.
Robert smiled again, the knowing kind that says he caught a whiff of what I was selling and it wasn’t roses, no matter how much I tried to convince him otherwise. “No. Guy never gave his name and hung up before they could complete a full trace. But it got me thinking. About you and what you did for a living when you and Denise were married. What you allegedly did before you left. And what you possibly could have been up to in the decade since. ‘Guy like that must be pretty well-connected,’ I thought. Guy like that might have a network of little birdies, just like he said he did. And those little birdies just might not be full of shit.”
“They’re not.” I leaned over the table toward him. “Robert, trust me—they’re not.”
“I believe you. That’s why I put a couple of beat guys on protection duty for Denise and the kids.”
I almost said, I know, but caught myself.
“And it’s why I didn’t chase you down after you high-tailed it away from the Navy Yard.”
Fuck. I suck at following people.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” he said. “But let me take it from here.”
“No, Robert, listen—”
“The whole reason you came here was so that I would believe you, right?” I didn’t answer, just stared. “Well I believe you. I also believe you were the one who phoned in the anonymous tip to MI5 that probably saved two lives. Which means there’s at least a part of you that isn’t an asshole. That’s the part that I’m giving one chance to walk away. If you’re mixed up in the kind of things I think you are, then your presence puts me and my family—”
My family.
“—in greater danger. It doesn’t make us safer.”
“I just,” I started, not sure what the next word was. “I need you to understand the kind of people that are coming after you. These aren’t your everyday, gangbanger hitters.”
“Is there anything you can tell me about them that would be useful, other than that they’re a couple of scary-ass motherfuckers?”
“No,” I said with a little laugh, though nothing about this was funny. “No, that about sums it up. One’s Asian, a male, and the other’s Persian, a female, but by the time you’re close enough to recognize them it will be too late.”
“Either one got a name? A real one?”
“None that you’ll find in any database.”
“Then we’re done here.”
“But if there’s something you could tell me about why you’re such a threat to them,” I said before he could stand up, “maybe we could figure out a way to head them off. Two of the highest-priced hitmen on the planet have been hired to take you out, and you’ve obviously been working with the FBI in some capacity. How are you involved in their case?”
His face slipped into the look it had two nights ago at The Colonial when I asked the same question.
“Robert, please. You said you believe me. Well then trust me when I say if there is any chance, no matter how small, that we can get this hit called off, it’s one we need to take. Why are they after you?”
He rapped his knuckles on the table then looked up. His face had softened. Not much, but enough to give me hope.
“When you called MI5,” he said, “what name did you give them?”
I smiled. “What’s up, Doc?”
He smiled back. Then his phone rang.
