Chapter 16: Is It Done

The phone was lying in the puddle by Clara's knee.

It had fallen out of the grey jacket when Alexander put its owner on the stones.

The screen was lit, and she picked it up.

She read what was on it, and for a moment the alley went very quiet.

Is it done?

Chase had sent it four minutes ago, from the car sitting thirty feet away.

It was the same three words, to the same kind of man, on the same street.

"Alexander," she said. "Hold him there."

"I am."

She walked toward the car with the phone held up in front of her.

Behind Chase, the hotel's service doors had filled with people.

They were smokers in evening dress, from the harbor association dinner, a few at first and then thirty, holding glasses and cigarettes.

At the front stood a white-haired man in a tuxedo, with Chase's jaw.

"Clara!" Chase spread his hands, and his voice rang off the brick. "Thank God. Your husband's men attacked me, and these poor fellows tried to help."

"Read this out loud."

"I beg your pardon?"

She held up the phone, and the lit screen faced the doorway.

"This message came in four minutes ago. It's from you. It says, Is it done?"

Nobody breathed.

"Read it aloud, Chase," she said. "Tell them which of us it's about."

"That's absurd. Anyone can send a text."

On the stones, the man under Alexander's knee began to laugh in a high, cracked voice.

"Fifty thousand," he said. "Cash, in a bag. He said finish it, and he said the yard is his the day she's in the ground."

"Shut your mouth."

"He told us the alley. He told us the hour."

A police car turned in behind Chase's car, then a second.

The detective got out of the first one with his coat open and a small black receiver in his hand.

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