Free Kill Me if You Can by James Patterson Page A

as she suspected. She was smiling now.

Chapter 27
    Marta was confident that Gravois would identify the handsome guy in the photo. His life depended on it. As for tracking down the Ghost, she had a better resource. And he was right here in New York City: Ira.
    She took a cab down to lower Manhattan and got off on Canal Street, where the air was thick with the fumes of the hundreds of trucks and a few scattered cars that crawled their way into the Holland Tunnel heading for Jersey.
    She walked from Canal to Laight, then along West to Watts, and finally, positive that no one was tailing her, past the sprawling UPS truck garage to a soot-gray brick building on Washington Street.
    The building was a little piece of old New York gone to seed. Six stories; six doorbells. She pushed the only one that had a name on it— ACME INDUSTRIES.
    A voice answered. “Sorry, we’re closed.”
    “I’m told that you’re open late for your premier customers,” Marta said.
    The voice came back. “What level premier customer?”
    “Titanium.”
    She was buzzed in. She walked past the elevator and took the stairs. On the second-floor landing she saw a rat gnawing on a moldy bagel. He didn’t move, just glared at her and bared his teeth until she passed.
    Ira’s door was on the fourth floor. Another buzzer and she was inside the loft. It was three thousand square feet, every inch of which was covered. There were rows of mismatched tables holding electronic equipment, and a kitchen area where Marta could see two more rats scavenging on a countertop. There was a bed littered with food containers, beer cans, and porn magazines. Stacks of computer manuals piled waist-high were parked next to an overflowing garbage can.
    A path wide enough for a wheelchair wound its way through the chaos. The man in the chair was somewhere between thirty and fifty, grossly overweight, and seemingly uninterested in personal hygiene. He had an open bag of Cool Ranch Doritos on his lap and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi on the computer stand next to him.
    “I’m Ira,” he said. “Sorry if I smell a little gamey. We don’t get many social calls, and getting in and out of the tub is a bitch.”
    “No problem,” Marta said. “I’m Giselle.”
    “Who sent you, Giselle?”
    “A friend.”
    “My best reference,” Ira said. “If I ever meet this Mr. A. Friend, I’d love to buy him a beer. What can I do for you?”
    “I’ve got a husband who can’t keep his dick in his pants, but if you can’t get in and out of a tub, I doubt you can do anything for me. My problem requires someone with a lot more muscle.”
    “We have a division of labor at Acme Industries,” Ira said. “Brains and brawn. I’m brains.”
    “I hate to disappoint you, Ira,” Marta said, “but I already have brains. What I’m looking for is someone strong enough to toss a hundred and ten pounds of shit off a roof.”
    “I’m guessing the husband with the wandering dick weighs more than one ten,” Ira said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a hard-bodied little mistress about that size.”
    “Well, I was surprised, Ira. And now I’m going to surprise them. Yes or no, is this something you know how to handle?”
    “Absolutely. Do you want your husband roughed up as well?”
    Marta laughed. “I could rough the dumb bastard up. I could also bash his head in with a cast-iron skillet when he’s sleeping. But I’d rather see the look on his face when he finds out that his little office-manager–slash-whore did a swan dive off a building.”
    “No problem. I have several candidates who can handle the job.”
    “I don’t want several. I want one. The best man you have.”
    “I can give you second best,” Ira said. “But my number-one man doesn’t do matrimonial.”
    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
    “He gets top dollar for hunting down hard-core dirtbags. He doesn’t believe in killing some pretty little thing just because she’s banging your old