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the
envelope I left in the glove compartment?” His employer sounded annoyed.
    “I never made it to
the car.”
    There was silence for
a long moment. “Go to the Three Brothers’
Diner on Eighty-Sixth Street and Columbus at five this afternoon. At the
coat-check booth, tell them you left a brown suede jacket there. If they ask
for the check slip, say you misplaced it but that there is a green wallet and a
set of keys in the pocket of the jacket. Inside the wallet, you’ll find money and
your instructions.”
    “Got it.”
    “When you arrive in
Washington, I’ll call you at the number we agreed upon.”
    “I’ll call you,” said
Dornal.
    “That’s not the
plan…”
    But Dornal had hung
up; he liked to make his own plans.
    After the food
arrived, he resisted his urge to wolf it down, eating and then finishing up
with hot, black coffee. He paid with the dead man’s credit card. He didn’t care
if the Feds traced it because he’d be out of Manhattan in the next few hours
anyway. He left the dinghy tied to the restaurant’s dock and exited The Water
Club through the main entrance on East Thirtieth Street.
    Dornal walked a few
blocks north along the river promenade. When no one was watching, he chucked
the cell phone into the water where it sank to the bottom with the rest of the
trash. He wished it was John Monroe’s lifeless body which was slowly sucked
under the murky olive waves. He reassured himself that he’d track Monroe down
with the same ruthless efficiency he performed all his tasks. Soon, John Monroe
would be the only ghost left in town.
    ****
    It was bright and
early when John received a call from Buzzy Rossmore. The old man was pleasant
on the phone, assuring John he had come so highly recommended he was confident
this would all work out beautifully. His voice had the easy charm of old money.
Good manners had probably been bred into Buzzy so early in life, he wouldn’t
know how to behave any other way.
    It must be nice, John thought as he listened to Mr. Rossmore
speak. The archeologist asked John to drop by around three o’clock to meet his
daughter and go over the details of the assignment. John agreed before hanging
up.
    He decided to walk
through Central Park on his way to the Rossmore’s East Side town house. It was
a bright, balmy day and the trees were bursting with new, green life, while the
magnolias had begun to bloom all around Belvedere Lake.
    John passed
well-dressed little kids running wild through the playground at the foot of the
large, bronze statue of Alice in
Wonderland . Jamaican nannies chatted together on park benches while keeping
one eye glued to their tiny charges. In Sheep’s Meadow, private school students
lay out on picnic blankets soaking up the first weak sun of the season. They
gathered in clusters listening to iPods, drinking diet sodas, and smoking clove
cigarettes as they checked each other out from behind dark sunglasses.
    He strolled past a
patch of earth where Dutch tulips pushed up insistently in beds of red, yellow,
and orange. They screamed, “Spring is here! Rejoice!” A little Chihuahua,
dressed in a peach angora sweater and matching hat, danced over to the flowers
on his tiny feet and christened them, his proud Park Avenue mommy beaming at
him, exclaiming, “Good baby! That’s a good boy!” in a baby-talk voice that
belied her fifty-plus years.
    As he turned onto
Fifth Avenue and left the park behind, John passed the Metropolitan Museum with
its grand, white-columned façade and dancing fountains. Street artists had
their easels out and painted bad Manhattan cityscapes for tourists to buy.
    John made a right
onto Ninety-First Street and scanned the elegant row of town houses. He spotted
number 12 about halfway down the block. It was modest-looking compared to some
of the wedding cake homes on the block with their carved stone gargoyles and elaborate
decorative iron fences and balconies. The Rossmore’s house was a three-story
brick building with