Sara Paretsky - Sisters on the Case

Bianca wasn’t about to gamble with her daughter’s life. If anyone had earned a trip to the boneyard, it was this guy. And no one was better equipped to punch his ticket than Bianca Diamante. While she’d always made it firm policy never to mix personal and professional matters, she was prepared to make an exception for the Russian.

That’s what Tony would have done. He’d never have stood for a thug threatening one of his girls. A hit man does not have to put up with poor behavior.

Tony had been a real pro, not a mob thug who blasted away with the biggest gun he could find. He’d worked freelance. The money had been good and he was his own boss. But there’s no retirement program for hit men, and when he got the cancer and knew he wouldn’t be there to see his kids grow up, he’d provided for them the only way he knew how. He’d taught their mom the family business.

In the early days Bianca had let Tony’s contacts believe that his brother had taken over. Even now, only the man who acted as her agent knew her true identity. He hadn’t liked the idea of repping a woman, but she’d convinced him that she had unique assets that suited her for special jobs. When she was younger, she’d used her looks to gain access to powerfulmen. But in her late forties, she’d discovered an even better cover. Instead of trying to look younger, she’d aged herself.

As an older woman, she was invisible. People paid no attention to her. A homeless woman talking to herself could stumble into a mobster without arousing suspicion. A nicely dressed church lady could chat up guys who’d never let a stranger get close.

‘‘You’ll need a niche,’’ Tony had told her, ‘‘something you do better than anyone else, so when a job comes up that’s right, they call you, and they pay extra.’’

Bianca’s niche was the convenient accident, death by natural causes. Or unnatural ones that left no trace. She was an expert in poisons. It wasn’t a subject they offered at the local JC so she’d had to teach herself. Once she had the basic knowledge, it was a matter of locating experts who possessed information not found in books. It was surprisingly easy to get them to talk; they were delighted to find someone who shared their passion. Especially when that someone was a woman adept at flattering their egos.

Could they send her a specimen of this or that poisonous mushroom so she might see it for herself? Did they know where she could get a small bit of that amazingly potent toad-skin toxin? In recent years, with the expansion of the Internet, just about anything was available if you knew where to look.

The Russian posed several problems. The first was timing. Bianca needed to set up the hit before he got out of jail; then she needed to execute it before he could act on his threat. The chance that the cops would keep him under surveillance made things even dicier.

The second problem was that she knew almost nothing about the thug. A hit that didn’t look like a hit required planning. You needed background on the victim if you were to design a proper exit for him. And research was the best protection against dangerous surprises. This was not a job she’d have accepted for any amount of money. But then, it wasn’t about money.

She called Marty, the guy who handled her business dealings, and asked him to find out what he could. ‘‘I need quick and dirty here,’’ she said. ‘‘An address, whether he lives with anyone, if he uses drugs and which ones, anything you can get that might be useful.’’

Marty whined when she told him she needed it in a couple of hours. ‘‘It’ll cost double,’’ he said. ‘‘And that’s whether I get anything or not, ’cause with so little time, I might not get much.’’

Not much was exactly what he got-an address and word that the guy lived alone. ‘‘He’s midlevel,’’ Marty said, ‘‘and a nasty piece of work. I have to tell you that I thought you were being maybe a bit too worried. I mean, why hit a prosecutor? They just bring in a new one. But this Reznikov has a real temper, plus he don’t like women, and he really don’t like a woman taking him down.

‘‘You know you don’t have to do this one. I could get someone to take care of it for you. Guys like him have enemies. He gets whacked, no one’s gonna be too surprised.’’

Bianca considered it. Hiring the job out was safer, but it was also less sure. She didn’t want to risk a screwup. While the cops might not look too hard for the killer, if Sophia decided the Russian was hit to shut him up, she’d start digging around, and Bianca didn’t want to think where that might lead.

The best way to learn about the Russian was to search his house. And the time to do it was now, while he was safely locked away. The address Marty had given her was in a town about twenty minutes from her house. She wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood, so she took a drive to check it out.

September had brought a break from the summer’s humidity, but the air was still warm in the late afternoon. Only a few trees showed the first signs of color. Otherwise, it was summer without the stifling heat.

Reznikov’s home was a fairly new two-story brick on a quiet street in an affluent neighborhood. It was a family house, but Marty had said he lived alone. Bianca would have bet an ex-wife and kids lived in less spacious digs somewhere else. The street was deserted. Several garages had basketball hoops, but there were no kids banging balls off the backboards. Not for the first time, Bianca reflected that the more valuable the real estate, the fewer people you saw enjoying it.

In neighborhoods like this, the easiest way in was the cleaning lady ruse. An older woman lugging cleaning supplies barely registered. No one got suspicious when she went into a backyard or fumbled with a lock. Most people forgot they’d even seen her.

As she drove home, Bianca formed a plan. If she’d had more time, she’d have opted for an accident. But you couldn’t count on an accident to be fatal, and she needed to nail the Russian on the first try. That left poison as the weapon of choice. Something fast acting that would incapacitate him before he could call for help. A faked suicide, perhaps. Feed him the poison, let it do its work, then come back and leave a bottle next to the body. The police would figure he saved them the expense of a trial. If his friends suspected otherwise, they wouldn’t be talking to the cops about it.

For faked suicides, she had a special cocktail of a barbiturate and a drug prescribed as a sleeping medication. Each magnified the effect of the other, and alcohol gave them an even bigger boost. Best of all it was colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and she had it in both liquid and pill form. It cost plenty, and she had to put up with its producer, Alvin, a brilliant chemistry student who was either bipolar, schizophrenic, or both. Conversations with Alvin were always trying since he assumed they shared the same paranoid universe and got agitated if she muffed her lines. But once she plugged into his fantasy, he was delighted to provide whatever she asked for and to tinker for months to get it to meet her specifications.

The major problem with poison was targeting. You had to be sure to get the victim without exposing anyone else. You couldn’t just lace his favorite snack with poison because he might share that snack with a bystander. And one of Bianca’s cardinal rules was that you never hit a bystander.

At home she donned her cleaning woman disguise- shapeless housedress, apron, sensible shoes, heavy support hose. She collected a mop, bucket, blue plastic gloves, and assorted cleaning supplies. Studying herself in the mirror, she decided to add a wig of tight steel gray curls and thick glasses.

There was no way to know whether the suicide plan would work until she’d had a look inside the Russian’s house, but it was worth taking the poison with her, on the chance she’d get lucky. For that, and for the wig and glasses, she turned to the cabinet.