Page 130 of Goodbye Girl

“No sniper on the rooftops?” asked Kelly.

“No sniper,” said Theo.

“For how long?”

The murder of Shaky Nichols had been front-page news worldwide. Reports of a sniper hardly seemed like a coincidence, and Theo had promptly reached out to Madeline Coffey at the U.S. embassy to get her view on a possible connection.

“The FBI’s legal attaché obviously has sources I don’t. There’s no doubt in her mind that the sniper who was after me here, in London, just made a hit in Miami.”

“Which is hardly any comfort at all,” she said, scoffing. “How long is a plane ride from Miami back to Heathrow?”

“It doesn’t work that way. Russian oligarchs don’t send their hit men—or hit women—on killing sprees. After a hit, they lay low.”

“How long?”

“The legat says at least a couple of weeks.”

“What if they hire another hit man?”

Theo couldn’t rule it out. “I lost four of the best years of my life in prison for something I didn’t do. I’m not going to live my life in hiding.”

She smiled a little. “I like that. That’s how I want to live.”

“Everybody thinks that. Until they have to do it. It’s the hardest thing there is, you know? Trying to make up for lost time.”

She seemed to relate, and it made Theo sad to think someone so young totally understood what he was saying.

His gaze drifted toward the river. A dinner-cruise boat filled with tourists passed, motoring downriver toward the bridge. “Why did you want to meet at this spot?” he asked.

“Judge took me here once.”

“What for?”

“That’s what I was wondering. Then he started talking.”

“What about?”

She glanced at Theo, then toward the Tower of London across the river. “Pirates,” she said. “Mostly pirate executions.”

“What about them?”

“Right across the river is where they did it. Execution Dock, it’s called. Pirates sentenced to death were paraded over London Bridge, past the Tower of London and toward Wapping. It was like a spectator sport. Streets were lined with tons of people, and the river was packed full of boats, all keen to see the execution. The prisoners were allowed one stop on the way to the gallows. It was at a pub called Turk’s Head Inn. They got their last quart of ale.”

“Judge told you this?”

“Yeah. He was obsessed with it. The execution dock was actually in the river. They would hang the pirate with a short rope, so that his neck wouldn’t break. They wanted a slow death by strangulation, lots of suffering. The crowd would laugh watching them kick their feet and pee in their pants.”

“Huh,” he said, but his thoughts ran deeper. All those years on death row, he’d thought the electric chair was a shitty way to go.

“Captain Kidd was especially gross,” she said. “The rope broke the first time, so they had to hang him twice. But here’s the part Judge really liked. Execution Dock was built at the low-tide line. They would leave the dead body on display for three rising tides. The idea was to warn other pirates.”

All of it sounded exactly like the previous week’s media coverage of the modern-day pirate killer. “Did you tell all this to the legal attaché when you were with her in the embassy?” asked Theo.

“I did.”

“Then what the hell’s wrong with them? This guy’s picture should be on every newscast. The whole world should be looking for him. Didn’t you tell her what Judge looks like?”

“Yeah. They brought in an artist. We did a sketch.”

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