“I can’t answer that for sure,” I said, “but I suspect as much as any one person knows with the exception of our friend’s right hand man.”
“Is he part of this plan?”
“Yes, because—”
I snapped my mouth shut. My blood started to boil. Here was that personal bullshit rising up. Damn. I drank the rest of the water in gulps.
“Because why?”
“I’m pretty sure our friend is offering up his little sister as incentive to his right hand, probably on a fucking silver platter.”
“She happy about that?”
“Of course not.”
“Should I guess how you feel about it?”
“Please don’t.”
“This is dangerous territory, you know that. You’ve seen it happen before. Cop falls for girl. Girl’s bad. Cop takes a fall—and that’s the lucky outcome. Sometimes he falls so hard he doesn’t get back up. My adv
ice—don’t go there. It’s a been-there-done-that scenario you can’t win.”
“I’m already wearing the T-shirt, boss,” I muttered.
“Then you need to rip that fucker off,” he said forcefully. “I’ll have teams in place tomorrow. How many players involved in this?”
“Five including me.”
“Hopefully there won’t be more than a couple of drop-off locations and I can stack the deck in our favor at each scene. Our eyes on the armored car will be in contact with all teams in the event they detour. Think there’s a chance of that?”
I thought about it, trying to think like Richie. I thought he’d want as few witnesses as possible, as few potential problems as possible. He wanted this to be a slam-dunk. He’d want his first foray into the world of luxury commodities to be a rousing success. Richie Silvestri, the man who can get things done.
“I don’t think he’ll detour. I think the heist will be arranged for a neighborhood, possibly at a community gate or a private one.”
“I agree. Have any questions for me?”
“No, sir.”
“Then enjoy your pizza and thanks for calling Dominos.”
The line went dead. I had one more call to make before calling it a day, and Pops knew immediately why I was calling.
“Is the shit about to hit the fan?” he asked.
“Yeah, Pops. Just wanted to let you know because in a few minutes, this phone will be permanently dead.”
My dad hesitated for a minute. He always got quiet right before I made a bust. I couldn’t really imagine what went through his head, and he never told me, but my guess was his thoughts were never all that good.
“When we talk next, it will be over Sunday dinner,” he said, trying, and failing, to sound cheerful. “You’ve got this, Danny. Just be careful.”
“Always, Pops.”
“Night, kid. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
He clicked off first. I always let him do that.