Jack spotted Seventy-second Street approaching. The light was green. He rapped on the plastic partition.

“Take a right up here-into the park.”

The cab turned into the traverse and headed across Central Park. Where to now? Couldn’t head straight back to Glaeken’s. He’d left a dead guy behind in the park. NYPD would be all over the area, collecting witness accounts, checking the traffic cams. They might end up talking to… he checked the operator license taped on the other side of the partition: Abhra Rahman… they might track down Abhra and want to know where he’d dropped them. Jack needed a diversionary stop.

He pictured the city. They were heading east. What was landmarky in this area of the East Side? Of course-Bloomie’s down on Fifty-ninth and Lexington. Get out there, then downstairs to the subway station, hop a downtown N, R, or Q two stops to West Fifty-seventh, then cab back to Glaeken’s.

Yeah. That would work.

He rapped gently on the partition. “Drop us at Bloomingdale’s, please.”

He’d make sure to give Mr. Rahman a good tip.

2

“Who the hell are you?” Jack said as he spotted the guy sitting in the Lady’s front room.

He already had the Glock half out of its holster when the Lady touched his arm.

“A friend of Glaeken’s.”

The guy rose and extended his hand. “You must be Jack. Glaeken sent me down. I was visiting him. He’s told me a lot about you. I’m Bill.”

“Told me a little about you,” Jack said as they shook. “Very little.”

Jack had seen him from a distance before. This was the first time close up. Long hair pulled back into a ponytail and a full beard, both generously salted with gray, a scarred forehead and bent nose, eyes almost as blue as Glaeken’s. The face put him in his sixties, but his lean, muscular six-foot frame seemed younger. Jack felt thick calluses on his shake hand.