Free To Free a Spy by Nick Ganaway Page A

pickpockets but he couldn’t help himself. He looked at the Tiffany’s sign, shined the tops of his shoes on the back of his trouser legs and walked into the store. He looked around at the lights and displays and thought of the contrast between there and old man Barella’s shop.
    A floor manager met him at the door. “How may I help you, sir?”
    Magliacci fished the ring from his pocket. “Uh, I inherited this ring. I think it came from here.”
    “Oh, wonderful!” said the manager with a congratulatory smile. “How can we help?”
    “Well, I want information about it. You know, details.”
    The man led him to a small paneled room. Lenny sank into a leather chair and moments later a woman came in and introduced herself as Laura Lerner and asked how she could help.
    He gave her the diamond ring and addressed her as he might a subordinate. “Laura, I represent the estate of the deceased who left this ring. We’d like to know something about it.”
    She left with the ring, returned with it two minutes later and punched something into her computer. She confirmed that it had been bought at Tiffany’s, gave him technical details about the stone and confirmed Barella’s thirty-thousand-dollar estimate for a new similar stone.
    Lenny suppressed his excitement as he pressed on. “And can you determine who you sold the ring to from the initials on the inside?”
    She looked at him apologetically. “That would require a great deal of documentation from you.”
    Lenny thanked Lerner and left. The trip wasn’t a waste. She had confirmed what old man Barella said about value but, more important, Magliacci gleaned from a peek at the computer monitor the exact date the ring was purchased.
    Driving back to Atlantic City, Magliacci racked his brain for a way to identify KA and JAG . The purchase date of the ring was a little more than seven years ago. Someone at the GT besides Gallardi must have known KA or JAG, probably both of them. Lenny thought of a handful who had worked there for a long time and scribbled their names on a legal pad as he drove. Of the seven he came up with, five were top Golden Touch executives, close allies of Gallardi’s who wouldn’t throw a bucket of water on Lenny if he were on fire, and the sixth was dead. He might have a chance with the seventh, a woman whose office was not located on the executive level with the others.
    * * *
    Before she became the Golden Touch’s first executive housekeeper, Maria Sanchez held the same position at a small four-star hotel in New York. She had bided her time for years waiting for the right opportunity to get out of the city. Maybe this new hotel and casino in Atlantic City was it, she told her husband when the headhunter contacted her. In prior years, they had driven down on vacation twice and loved the Boardwalk, the ocean air and the less frenetic pace. After clearing three preliminary interviews with some of the hotel executive staff, Maria met with Frank Gallardi himself for final approval. She knew within minutes he was a man she could work for all out. Everything about him—the people he surrounded himself with, the fact that he made eye contact when he talked to her, his straightforward manner—felt right. She figured Gallardi was impressed as well because he hired her on the spot. That same day, she and her husband found a house they liked within walking distance to both the Golden Touch complex and a Catholic church.
    Maria had spoken to Gallardi’s widow soon after he died and offered her services in any way that might make things easier. Rose Gallardi thanked Maria and told her how much her husband thought of her, but of course there was nothing she or anyone else could do. She would not hesitate to call.
    Since joining the Golden Touch Maria had been approached by headhunters representing almost every hotel in Atlantic City. Although her housekeeping department and its army of workers was not a profit center for the hotel, it contributed to the