crime. Partner in general skepticism. Partner who was about to split a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar payday with me. We were now scouring the heart of the Harvard campus for its weakest ventricle, wandering the quad looking like creepy middle-aged men.
“And scrambled eggs,” I added.
“No, no, no,” said Milt. “Not that.”
His job was analyzing the geometry: the brick walls, the brick arches, the backpacks, angles, shadows—any opportunity for our twenty-year-old victim to, let’s say, accidentally fall off a ledge. My job was to study the human element. I was checking the faces of the various students passing us. The redhead. The tall Korean. The non-giggling girls on a bench. The tardy jogger. I needed to look into their eyes and see them seeing tomorrow’s murder. I needed to see their reaction to what hadn’t happened yet.
“I hate scrambled eggs,” said Milt.
So did I. But we’d received no info about our target, except that he was enrolled in an economics class on Wednesdays at 11:00 a.m. in Harvard’s Massachusetts Hall, the building behind us.
“We should cross the courtyard,” I said. “Get measurements.”
We were planning a silent hit. The type that has your target die roughly five seconds after contact. That means we theoretically had five seconds to clear the area. We would then have about six minutes to escape from the widening circle of police response.
Six minutes.
We debated the numbers all morning, betting on the reaction times of everyone around us. Trying to identify the most prototypical student, I focused on the girl on the steps reading Proust, or possibly the guy behind her sketching a quasar. We wanted a guinea pig who might be representative of the types of panicking we could expect tomorrow.
“Her,” said Milt, nodding to a girl in a floral-patterned dress. “She’s your test case. Go chat her up.”
“Her? No.”
“The body language says yes. It says yes to a tall glass of Michael Dennis Ryan.”
“We’re only here for the test. And no, I’m twice her age.”
“Half plus seven. C’mon, man. These ladies are exactly like you. Socially dead. Sittin’ around having an imaginary conversation with a book.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, you do. Probably whisperin’ to Moby Dick right this moment, while not listening to me.”
I wasn’t whispering. I was focused on a new development in our day. A little bit of good luck—or catastrophic luck, depending on how you saw it.
“There’s the mark,” I said, nodding to a particular student we hadn’t expected to see yet. “And he’s not alone.”
We were assigned to kill Goran Šovagović Mesic tomorrow. His description: twenty years old, tall, athletic, loud. And currently walking across the courtyard.
“He’s totally alone,” said Milt.
“Behind him.”
“Where? I don’t…Oh.” Milt saw the two thick men lagging in the distance. “Yup. Croatian Mafia. They like baiting it.”
Milt meant that the kid’s bodyguards followed well behind him. It meant these guys preferred a fight—essentially daring someone to come and start trouble. Yet it also meant we’d have access to a faster, cleaner hit.
Cleaner—as long as he behaved the way we needed him to.
Goran walked with his backpack slung over one broad shoulder, his cashmere V-neck snug. He looked exactly like what you’d expect an Eastern Bloc playboy to look like.
“A Vronsky,” I murmured.
“A what?”
Vronsky, the gent who had lured Anna Karenina to the dark side. He was stately and well composed—with just the right array of anatomical features to inspire an alluring young lady of the 1800s to derail her own marriage. I didn’t say all this to Milt. I summarized the essence of it. “A guy who’ll always act in his own best interest.”
“That’s every male in Massachusetts.”
“He happens to do it in a way that helps us. He’s someone I can predict.”
Milt pointed out that I’d never met him, that I knew zilch about him. That once again, I was making a big deal out of an irrelevant detail, instead of sticking to ballistics triangulation and trajectory analysis. He was right about most of it. But I was right about something, too—call it a gut feeling, or something based on years of experience: the murder of this kid wasn’t going to be simple.
Chapter 2
“You can predict him?” said Milt.
“Girl in the turtleneck,” I replied.
There was a set of stairs in Goran’s path where foot traffic slowed down a bit. Goran would be passing a girl in a turtleneck sweater. He’d walk by her and create a small situation. I could foresee it.
“Finger to the chest,” I said to Milt. “Watch.”
“Her? She’s with a guy.” Milt pointed to the young man