Requiem for an Assassin

didn’t, and as it came closer I could see the occupants were just an elderly couple. Shit, they were probably on their way to church.
    I let the SUV pass and checked the rearview. There was the Mercedes, pulling out of Hilldale and making a left on Middle Neck, away from me. For a moment, I’d been so keyed up that I was surprised he wasn’t coming at me. Then I realized I was being ridiculous. What was Accinelli going to do, blow someone away from his own car a hundred yards out from his $10 million home, right in front of the horrified neighbors? No. Hilger might have been trying to set me up, but it wouldn’t be that way.
    I did a U-turn on Middle Neck and followed from about a hundred fifty yards back. It was a long, straight road that gradually curved from east to south, and tailing him from far back was easy. I continued to scan for surprises as I drove.
    After about two miles, Accinelli made a left onto Thayer Lane. Thayer, right, now I remembered, that was the address of the club. I followed along behind him. About eight hundred yards up, Thayer curved around to the right and I lost sight of him for a moment. Then I came around the curve, too, and saw Accinelli’s car again, stopped next to an island with a guard post at the center of it. Beyond the post was a parking lot; beyond the parking lot, a compound of enormous tile-roofed brick buildings that I remembered from the website comprised the former estate of Isaac Guggenheim. This was it, then, the entrance to the club. Accinelli moved forward past the post. I swung around on Thayer and headed back out.
    I recognized there was an opening here, if I could move fast enough to exploit it. I input the coordinates for Midtown Manhattan into the nav system. Twenty-five miles. Allowing time for parking and the purchase I planned to make, with just a little luck and light traffic I could be back here in not much more than an hour and a half.
    I took the Long Island Expressway west as fast as I could without risking a ticket. What was Accinelli planning today—nine holes, or eighteen? And how long would he be playing regardless? Surely no less than two hours, even for a shorter game. And it would be lunchtime after that. Maybe he’d grab a bite at the club. Maybe this was a Sunday ritual for him, leaving his wife a golf widow, spending two, three, maybe four hours on the links, and with his cronies thereafter. It made sense. Anyone who played in these temperatures had to be a fanatic.
    Maybe. But of course I couldn’t really know. There was no time to hone in on his patterns, and all my suppositions were just that. But with only five days to work with, I had to exploit whatever openings presented themselves, no matter how narrow.
    It took me less than forty minutes to reach the Spy Shop on 34th between Third and Lexington. I remembered it, along with a few other handy places, from the last time I’d reconnoitered New York. Predictably, there were no parking spaces anywhere nearby. I considered parking illegally—I was going to be in the store for only a few minutes—but decided it wasn’t worth the admittedly small risk of having the BMW’s presence here logged in a New York City law enforcement database. I found a garage around the corner, gave the attendant a twenty to keep the car on the main floor for fifteen minutes, and jogged over to the Spy Shop. It was a bit warmer now than when I’d arrived that morning, but I was still going to have to make time to buy some proper clothes when I had a chance.
    The store was well outfitted with various options for vehicle tracking, overt and surreptitious. I chose a top-of-the-line model I was familiar with, the Pro Trak Digital, a magnetically emplace-able real-time GPS system, and was suddenly down another twenty-six hundred dollars. Along with warm clothes, I was going to have to find a bank.
    I picked up the car and headed back to the Village Club. Traffic was manageable again and I made good time. While I drove, I unpacked the unit, placed the eight D cells I had also bought into the battery pack, assembled everything, and tested it for power. It all seemed to be working. I put the unit in the glove box and stuffed the empty packaging under the passenger seat. I was wearing the gloves, not just because of the weather, but to keep my prints off the device, too.
    As I turned onto Thayer Lane again, exactly ninety-seven minutes after I’d left it, I started thinking in Japanese, like my good friend