Betrayal in Death by J. D. Robb Page B

eyes on you, Roarke."
    "And you. What are you doing in New York, and in my hotel?"
    "Business. Always a little business. In fact, I'd hoped to run you to ground to discuss it with you. Deal and wheel, wheel and deal." He winked. "Have you any time for an old friend?"

CHAPTER FOUR
    He looked damn good for a dead man. Mick Connelly wore a petal-green suit. Roarke remembered he'd always been one for color and flash. The cut and drape disguised most of the heft he'd added in the last years.
    None of them had had any heft to speak of in their youth, as varying types of hunger had kept them bone lean.
    His sand-colored hair was cut short and sharp around a face that had, like his body, filled out with age. He'd had the front teeth that had bucked out like a beaver's fixed somewhere along the way. He'd lost the pitiful excuse for a mustache he'd insisted on sporting, and had never come in at more than a smudge over his top lip.
    But he still sported the Irish pug nose, the fast, crooked grin, and eyes of wicked and dancing green.
    No one would have called him handsome as a boy. He'd been short and skinny and covered from top to bottom with ginger-colored freckles. But he'd had quick hands, and a quicker tongue. His voice was pure south Dublin, tough music suitable for choreographing flying fists.
    When he stepped into Roarke's office in the old and elegant main house of the hotel, he planted his hands on his hips and grinned like a gargoyle. "So, you've done for yourself, haven't you, mate? I'd heard, of course, but seeing's a kick in the arse."
    "Seeing you's the same." Roarke's voice was warm, but he'd had time to recover from that instant of surprise and pleasure. A part of him held back, calculating what this ghost from the dead past might want of him. "Have a seat, Mick, and catch me up."
    "I'll do that."
    The hotel office was designed to uplift its more pedestrian functions. And as anything Roarke designed, it was as much concerned with comfort as with efficiency. The topflight communication center and equipment were blended into graceful furnishings and stylish wall panels. The ambiance was of an urban exec's fashionable pied-a-terre.
    Mick took a seat in one of the deeply cushioned chairs, stretched out his legs, scanned the room -- and Roarke imagined, the fenced value of its contents. Then he sighed and studied the view out the wide glass doors and the stone balcony beyond them.
    "Yes, you've done for yourself." His eyes darted back to Roarke, the laughter in them impossible to resist. "If I give you my word not to lift any of your doodads here, will you stand an old friend to a pint?"
    Roarke moved to a wall panel and, opening it, ordered two Guinnesses from the AutoChef inside. "It's programmed to draw them proper, so it'll take a minute."
    "Been a while since we lifted one together. How long do you think? Fifteen years?"
    "There or about." And the fifteen before that, he thought, we had been as thick as, well, thieves. Roarke leaned back against the table while the Guinnesses were built, but didn't fully relax his guard. "I'd been told you'd bought it in a Liverpool pub. Knife fight. My sources are usually reliable. So why is it, Mick, you're not making book in hell?"
    "Well now, I'll tell you. You may recall my mother, God bless her cold, black heart, would often tell me that it was my fate to die with a knife in my belly. She claimed whenever she had a good snootful of the Irish to have the sight."
    "Is she still living then?"
    "Oh aye, last I heard. I left Dublin some time before you did, you'll remember. Traveling here and there, out to make my fortune however it could be made. Doing bits of business, mostly moving merchandise of one kind or another from one place to another place where it might cool off before moving it yet again. Which was what I was doing in Liverpool on that fateful night."
    Idly, Mick opened a carved wooden box on the table beside him and arched his brows at the French cigarettes inside. They