Stone Cold

by David Baldacci

  ‘unflappable’ used that many times in describing a person. I hope you recognize yourself.”

  “Milton would make a great con. Not that I’d recommend that life to anyone I actually cared about.”

  “He also said you looked troubled on the way back. Did something happen?”

  She glanced at his cottage. “Can we talk inside?”

  Describing the interior of Stone’s cottage as spartan would have been generous indeed. A few chairs, a number of odd tables, sagging shelves of books in multiple languages and an old worm-eaten partner’s desk, together with a small kitchen area, bedroom and tiny bath all outlined in roughly six hundred square feet constituted the man’s entire domicile footprint.

  They sat near the empty fireplace on the two most comfortable chairs, meaning the only ones with padding.

  “I came here to tell you I’m leaving. And after everything that’s happened, I feel like I owe you an explanation,” she said.

  “You don’t owe me anything, Annabelle.”

  “Don’t say that!” she snapped. “This is hard enough as it is. So hear me out, Oliver.”

  He sat back, crossed his arms and waited.

  She pulled the newspaper article from her jacket pocket and passed it across to him. “Read this first.”

  “Who is this Anthony Wallace?” he asked after he’d finished.

  “Someone I worked with,” she said vaguely.

  “Someone you worked a con with?”

  She nodded absently.

  “Three people killed?”

  Annabelle rose and started pacing. “That’s the thing that’s driving me crazy. I told Tony to lay low and not flash the cash. But what did he do? He did the exact opposite and now three innocent people are dead who shouldn’t be.”

  Stone tapped the paper. “Well, from the looks of it your Mr. Wallace will soon be making it a quartet.”

  “But Tony wasn’t innocent. He knew exactly what he was getting into.”

  “And what exactly was that?”

  She stopped pacing. “Oliver, I like you and I respect you, but this is a little . . .”

  “Illegal? I hope you realize that comes as no great shock to me.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “I doubt anything you could have possibly done would surpass what I’ve seen in life.”

  She cocked her head. “Seen, or done?”

  “Who’s after you and why?”

  “That’s no concern of yours.”

  “It is if you want me to help you.”

  “I’m not looking for help. I just wanted you to understand why I have to leave.”

  “Do you really think you’ll be safer on your own?”

  “I think you and the others will be a lot safer without me around.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “I’ve been in plenty of jams before and I’ve always managed to get myself out of them.”

  “Out of a jam this tight?” He glanced at the paper. “This person doesn’t seem to fool around.”

  “Tony made a mistake, a big one. I don’t intend on doing that. I lay low, for as long as it takes, and as far away from here as I can get.”

  “But you don’t know what Tony might have told them. Did he have any information that could be used to track you down?”

  Annabelle perched on the edge of the fireplace’s raised hearth. “Maybe,” she said tersely. “Probably,” she corrected.

  “Then all the more reason for you not to go this alone. We can help protect you.”

  “Oliver, I appreciate the sentiment but you have no idea what you’re getting into. Not only is this guy the scum of the earth with a lot of money and muscle behind him, but on top of that, what I did was illegal. You’d be harboring a criminal on top of risking your life.”

  “Not the first time on either count,” he replied.

  “Who are you?” she asked pointedly.

  “You know all you need to know about me.”

  “And I thought I was a world-class liar.”

  “We’re wasting time, tell me about him.”

  She rubbed her long, thin fingers together, drew a deep breath and said, “His name’s Jerry Bagger. He owns the Pompeii Casino, the biggest in Atlantic City. He was run out of Vegas years ago because he was a whack job. He would literally rip out your intestines if you tried to steal a five-dollar casino chip.”

  “And how much did you, um, relieve him of?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “It’s important to know how much motivation the man has to come after you.”

  “Forty million dollars. Think that’ll motivate him?”

  “I’m impressed. It doesn’t sound like Bagger is a man easily conned.”

  Annabelle allowed herself a brief smile. “It was one of my better scams, I have to admit. But Jerry is also very dangerous, and not entirely sane. If he even thinks someone is helping me, that person might as well be me. He’ll get the same treatment: death by pain, great pain.”

  “You have no reason to believe that he’s aware you’re in D.C.?”

  “No. Tony had no idea I’d be coming here. Neither did the others.”

  “So there are others on the con team? Bagger might get to them.”

  “He might. But like I said, they don’t know I’m here either.”

  Stone slowly nodded. “Of course, we can’t be sure of what Bagger really knows or doesn’t know at this point. I’m sure that the public details of our little adventure involving the Library of Congress didn’t include your name or picture. However, we can’t be absolutely certain there isn’t something out there that would help him track you down.”

  “My original plan was to head to the South Pacific.”

  Stone shook his head. “Fugitives always head to the South Pacific. That’s probably the first place Bagger will check.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Partly, yes. But only partly.”

  “So you really think I should stay here?”

  “I do. I’m assuming you’ve covered your tracks well. No trails leading here, names, travel arrangements, phones, friends?”

  She shook her head. “Coming here was pretty much a spur-of-the-moment thing. And all under an alias.”

  “The smart thing to do would be to find out, as quietly as possible, what Bagger knows.”

  “Oliver, you can’t possibly get anywhere near that guy. It would be suicide.”

  “I know how to look, so let me start looking.”

  “I’ve never asked anyone to help me before.”

  “It took me decades before I could ask anyone to help me.”

  She looked puzzled. “But you’re glad you did?”

  “It’s the only reason I’m alive right now. Move out of your hotel and into another one. I’m assuming you have money.”

  “Cash is not a problem.” She rose and started to the door but turned back. “Oliver, I appreciate this.”

  “Let’s hope you can say that when it’s all over.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “DO YOU THINK I’M STUPID?” screamed Jerry Bagger. The casino chief wedged his arm against the other man’s windpipe as he mashed him against the wall in Bagger’s luxurious office on the twenty-third floor of the Pompeii Casino. The drapes were closed. Bagger always closed the drapes when he was either going to bang a willing lady on his couch or kick the shit out of somebody who deserved it. These matters should always be kept private, he felt. It was a point of honor with him.

  The man didn’t answer Bagger’s question chiefly because he couldn’t breathe. However, Bagger wasn’t waiting for a reply. His first blow caught the guy flush on the nose and broke it. The second one knocked a front tooth out. The man fell to the floor weeping. For good measure Bagger kicked him in the gut. That made the beaten fellow vomit on the carpet. As the puke spread across the expensive inlaid wool Bagger’s own security force had to pull their furious boss off the fallen man before real da
mage was done.

  The guy was carted away, crying and bleeding and mumbling that he was sorry. Bagger sat down behind his desk and rubbed his cracked knuckles. Glaring at his security chief, he growled, “Bobby, you bring me any more pissants like that one who say they know something about Annabelle Conroy and end up trying to shake me down while feeding me a sack of shit, I swear to God I will kill your mother. And I like your mother but I will kill her. Do you hear me!”

  The burly black security chief took a step back and swallowed nervously. “Never again, Mr. Bagger. I’m sorry, sir. Really, really sorry.”

  “Everybody’s sorry but nobody’s doing a damn thing to get me the bitch, are they?” Bagger roared.

  “We thought we had a lead on her. A good one.”

  “You thought? You thought? Well, maybe you should stop thinking, then.”

  Bagger hit a button on his desk and the drapes opened. He jumped up and looked out the window. “Forty million bucks she took from me. This could screw up my whole business, you know that? I don’t have enough reserves to meet the state regs. You get a government bean counter in here right now looking at my books he could shut me down. Me! You used to be able to pay those assholes off, but now with all this anticorruption and ethical bullshit going around, you can’t do that no more. You mark my word, that full disclosure crap is gonna destroy a great country.”

  “We’ll find her, boss, and get the money back,” his security chief assured him.

  Bagger didn’t appear to be listening. Staring down at the street far below, he said, “I see the bitch everywhere. In my dreams, in my food, when I’m shaving there she is in my mirror. Hell, even when I’m taking a leak, her face is in the toilet bowl staring at me. It’s driving me nuts!”

  He sat on the couch and calmed down. “What’s the latest on our boy Tony Wallace?”

  “We got somebody on the inside at the hospital in Portugal. Jerk’s still in a coma. But even if he comes out of it, there’s nothing there. Our source says the guy’s a permanent retard.”

  “If you ask me he was a retard long before we got to him.”

  “You know, boss, we probably should’ve just killed him like we did everybody else.”

  “I gave him my word. He told me what he knew, he got to live; that was the deal. But in my book brain dead means you’re still alive. Lots of people live forty, fifty years like that. It’s like being a baby until you’re eighty. Get fed through a tube, get your ass wiped every day and you play with blocks. Granted, it’s not much of a life, but I didn’t go back on my word. People can say I’m violent and I got a bad temper and all that crap but they can never point to one time where I ever went back on my word. You know why?”

  The security chief shook his head warily, obviously unsure whether his boss wanted an answer or not.

  “Because I got standards, that’s why. Now get outta here.”

  Alone, Bagger sat down behind his desk and put his head in his hands. He would never admit this to anyone, but mixed in with all the hatred he had for Annabelle Conroy was a sincere, if grudging, admiration. “Annabelle,” he said aloud. “You are without a doubt the greatest con artist in the world. It would’ve been a pleasure working with you. And you were probably the best piece of ass I’ve ever put my hand on. So it’s too bad you were so stupid as to take me on because now I gotta kill you. I gotta make an example of you. And it’s a waste, but that’s just the way it’s gotta be.”

  It wasn’t just the loss of the forty million that had enraged Bagger. Ever since word of the successful con had leaked out, cheaters had become far more brazen in his casino. Losses had quickly risen. And his competitors and business associates were also not quite as respectful as they had once been, sensing that Bagger was no longer at the top of his game, that he was vulnerable. Calls weren’t immediately returned. Action that he could always count on getting didn’t always come through now.

  “An example,” Bagger said again. “To show these assholes that not only am I still at the top, I’m getting stronger every day. And I will find you, lady. I will find you.”

  CHAPTER 8

  THE CONTACT OLIVER STONE proposed using was an honorary member of the Camel Club named Alex Ford, a Secret Service agent. The two men trusted each other fully and Stone knew it was the one place he could turn to for discreet intelligence.

  “Does this have something to do with that woman you were working with? Her name was Susan, right?” Alex asked when Stone called and relayed his request.

  “It has nothing to do with her,” Stone lied. “She’s actually leaving town soon. This has to do with something else I’m involved in.”

  “For a cemetery worker you get around a lot.”

  “It keeps me young.”

  “The Bureau can help out too. After what you did for them last time they owe you. When do you need to know?”

  “As soon as you can get something.”

  “Just so you know, I’ve heard of this Jerry Bagger guy. The Justice Department has been trying to get something on him for a long time.”

  “I’m sure the attention is well-deserved. Thanks, Alex.”

  Later that night, Reuben Rhodes and Caleb Shaw visited Stone at his cottage. Caleb was in a high state of indecision.

  “They asked me, but I don’t know if I should accept or not. I just don’t know,” he wailed.

  “So the Library of Congress wants you to become the director of the Rare Books Division,” Stone said. “That sounds like a great promotion, Caleb. What’s to decide?”

  Caleb said stiffly, “Well, considering the fact that the position became available only because the former director was horribly murdered on the premises and the acting director after him suffered a nervous breakdown from what happened there, it does give one pause.”

  Reuben growled, “Hell, Caleb, go for it. I mean, who’s going to mess with a fine young buck like you?”

  Caleb, who was in his fifties, of medium height and a bit pudgy, with not a trace of athleticism or personal courage, was not amused by this comment.

  “You said it is more money,” Stone reminded him. “In fact a good deal more.”

  “Yes, but if that only means I can afford a much nicer funeral, I’m not sure I’m interested.”

  Reuben added gruffly, “But when you die, you die knowing that you have more to leave to your friends. Now if that’s not true comfort, I don’t know what is.”

  “Why I even bother to ask for your opinion I don’t know,” Caleb said hotly.

  Reuben turned his attention to Stone. “You seen Susan lately?”

  Only Stone knew Annabelle’s real name.

  “She came by the other day, but only for a few minutes. She successfully completed her task with Milton. The item is back where it belongs.”

  “I have to admit,” Caleb said. “She did what she said she was going to do.”

  Reuben said, “Now if I could just get her to go out with me. She keeps having other plans. I’m not sure if she’s trying to brush me off or not. But I don’t get it. Look at me. What’s not to love?”

  Reuben was nearly sixty, with a full beard and dark curly hair mixed with gray down to his shoulders. He was six-five with the build of an NFL left tackle. A highly decorated Vietnam War vet and former military intelligence officer, he had burned many professional bridges and nearly succumbed to pills and the bottle before Oliver Stone had brought him back from the edge. He now worked on a loading dock.

  “I saw where your ‘friend’ Carter Gray received the Medal of Freedom,” Caleb said after giving Reuben an incredulous look. “Talk about your ironies. If that man had his way you two would be dead and the rest of us would be getting water-dunked in some CIA-run torture chamber.”

  Reuben roared, “For the hundredth time it’s water-boarding, not water-dunking.”

  “Well, whatever it is, he’s a nasty man.”

  “He’s actually a man who believes his way is the right way, and he’s certainly not alone in that belief,” Ston
e said. “I went down to the White House and saw him off after he received his award.”

  “You went down to the White House?” Caleb exclaimed.