Beth watched the activity on East 13th street from a safe distance.
"It looks like someone beat us to it," Beth said as she watched the two detectives and the much larger number of uniforms comb the area in and around the building where four men and a large collection of automatic weapons and cash had been discovered in the early hours of the morning.
"Are we sure it was one of Carmine's?" Julia's voice asked through Beth's earbuds.
"It fits the pattern," Beth answered, "and it was a solid source, and I guarantee that he was scared shitless when he told me. He could not have lied if his life had depended on it."
"His life had depended on it."
"You know what I mean. And you know I wouldn't have killed him."
"Yeah, but he didn't know it."
"Which was the point."
Beth had not intended to kill him, but Alice was never far beneath the surface, and Alice had her own agenda, and no guard rails. God help that man if Alice had been the one asking the questions. Julia knew Beth (and Alice) well enough to know how much danger the man had been in, and he had been right to be scared. More than one man had shit himself before, or during, an interview with Alice; and many of those men had died weeping in puddles of their own bodily fluids. Beth still had the memories, even if she was mostly rid of the urges. What urges she still had she had learned, was still learning, to redirect. Her twin sister Kate, who had demons of her own, and knew Beth's struggle from the inside, had saved her. Whenever Beth would use those words with her sister, Kate would almost always say that they had saved each other, but sometimes, when the emotions became too much, Kate would just hug her, and wipe her tears onto Beth's shirt, and it was like they had never in their entire lives been apart.
Alice was mostly a thing of the past. It was only her name that Elizabeth Kane kept now, a reminder, as the memories were, as the nightmares were, of what she had endured and survived; survived with the help of the men and women closest to her, one of whom was speaking into her ear.
"Was this targeted at Carmine? Did we miss something?"
Carmine Falcone had enemies, lots of enemies, on both sides of the line. Some of them wore suits, like Kate, or Bruce. Some of them wore badges, like the men searching the warehouse a few hundred yards away. Some of them were Carmine's former business associates. It was that last group that was responsible for the regular, though not frequent, attempts on Carmine's life, a life he should spend in prison until death took him. But which group was responsible for fucking up Beth's plans was a mystery. A week's worth of work wasted. That pour fucking guy she had scared half to death could have gotten a pass. Beth could have spent the week on a beach somewhere and the result would have been mostly the same. Mostly.
"No, there would be four bodies and a burning building if it were targeted directly at Carmine. This was something else."
"Something else like the recent string of something elses?"
The recent string of raids on locations like this. Someone was pissed, and taking it out on the criminal element of NYC, regardless of affiliation.
"Maybe, but, whatever it is, Carmine is going to be pissed, and he will be looking for somebody to blame, and we will definitely be on his list of suspects."
"Not a very exclusive club," Julia said.
Something else or, more accurately, someone else, Beth thought as she raised the binoculars to her eyes and refocused.
Hmmmm.
That detective is definitely something else. He can toss me anytime.
"What did you say?" Julia asked.
Beth's eyes widened.
"Did I just say that out loud?"