Hot Mahogany

by Stuart Woods

“Lance, with a cell phone and an Internet connection, you ought to be able to save the world from anywhere, even Connecticut.”

  Lance left.

  Stone’s secretary, Joan Robertson, buzzed him in the kitchen.

  Stone picked up the phone. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Bob Cantor is on the phone with you. He wants to have lunch.”

  “When?”

  “Noon, at P. J. Clarke’s.”

  “Okay.” Stone hung up. Bob Cantor was a retired cop who did P.I. work, especially the technical kind, for Stone. Bob had never wanted to have lunch before, Stone recalled. Why now?

  P. J. Clarke’s was already crowded when Stone got there. Cantor waved him over to a table, and they shook hands.

  “Drink?”

  “I’ll have a beer with my bacon cheeseburger, medium,” Stone replied.

  Cantor ordered for them.

  “What’s up, Bob?” Stone asked.

  “Barton Cabot,” Cantor replied.

  It took a moment for the penny to drop. “You’ve talked with Dino.”

  “Right.”

  “How much did he tell you?”

  “That somebody beat him up.”

  “What’s your interest in Barton Cabot?”

  “I served under him in ’Nam,” Cantor replied.

  “I guess I knew you were in Vietnam.”

  “I was a squad leader in his company, and later, I got a battlefield commission, after he made colonel and got a regiment, and I led a platoon. When my company commander was killed, the Colonel made me acting C.O. Is Colonel Cabot all right?”

  “Far as I know,” Stone said. “His brother went up to Connecticut to see him this morning.”

  “He has a brother?”

  “Yep.”

  “If Colonel Cabot needs anything, will you let me know?”

  “Have you kept in touch with him over the years?”

  “No. He dropped out of sight after he got home. I heard he’d resigned from the Corps. I just want to know that he’s okay. The man saved my life four or five times.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “We got shot at a lot.”

  “Bob, Cabot’s brother tells me he was in line to make general. Do you have any idea why he resigned from the Marine Corps?”

  Cantor looked away. “Maybe,” he said.

  9

  Stone looked across the table at Cantor, who seemed to be hav- ing trouble establishing eye contact. “Bob, what do you mean by maybe?”

  “You know what maybe means, Stone: It means ‘maybe so, maybe not.’ ”

  “Is that why you invited me to lunch, Bob? So you could jerk me around?”

  “Look, all I want to know is if the Colonel is all right.”

  “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”

  A rather attractive woman at the next table looked at Stone, shocked.

  “Just a figure of speech,” Stone said to her. “All zippers remain at high mast.”

  She looked back at her salad, blushing.

  Stone turned back to Cantor. “You first.”

  “This goes no further?” Cantor asked.

  “No further.”

  “I don’t think he would want his brother to know.”

  “I won’t tell him,” Stone said.

  Their food arrived, and Cantor took the moment to fiddle with his napkin and sip his beer.

  “Our food is getting cold, Bob,” Stone said.

  “All right. Toward the end of our third tour together the Colonel came across something valuable, something that belonged to the South Vietnamese government.”

  “What was it?” Stone asked, wondering if the South Vietnamese government had possessed an eighteenth-century mahogany secretary from Goddard-Townsend of Newport.

  “Let’s just say it was a fairly liquid asset.”

  “Stop being coy, Bob.”

  “Look, I’m trying to clue you in without causing you any problems, all right?”

  “Problems?”

  “It would not be conducive to your personal safety to know everything I know.”

  “Well, I’m very fond of my personal safety, so just tell me what you can without getting me killed.”

  “Like I said, we came across this fairly liquid asset, and we figured that the South Vietnamese government was about to be overrun by the North Vietnamese government, and we didn’t want to see it fall into their hands, so that they could use it against Americans.”

  “So your motives for… liberating it were entirely patriotic?”

  “Not entirely,” Cantor admitted, “but we did see that it remained in American hands.”

  “Whose hands?”

  “Our hands.”

  “How many of you were there?”

  “Six,” Cantor said, “including the Colonel.”

  “And you all benefited equally from this item or items remaining in American hands?”

  “Not exactly equally, but everybody was pretty much satisfied with the arrangement.”

  “Pretty much satisfied? That means that at least one of you was pretty much dissatisfied, doesn’t it?”

  “You could look at it that way.”

  “Bob, how much did you, personally, benefit from this… patriotic act?”

  “Let me put it this way, Stone: You’ve been in my shop.”

  Stone had indeed been in Cantor’s shop, which was filled with exotic electronic equipment. “I have.”

  “You and I are on pretty much the same pension. Where did you think I got the wherewithal to own, say, two, three hundred grand’s worth of gear?”

  “I suppose it crossed my mind. I thought maybe you inherited something from somebody.”

  “My father pressed pants on Seventh Avenue. Inherit?”

  “Okay, I get the picture. How much better did the Colonel do than you?”

  “It was the Colonel’s deal: He took half; the other five of us took equal splits of the other half.”

  “And how did you transport this windfall back to the States?”

  “Safely,” Cantor said. “By governmental means, you might say. We didn’t do the split until it was on these shores and not on government property any more.”

  “How wise of you.”

  “It wasn’t us; the Colonel is a very wise man. He found a way to convert the, ah, discovery, to cash, and at something close to its actual value.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “What makes you think something went wrong?”

  “Bob, the Colonel had an outstanding war; he was up for general. It is what every Marine officer at his level lives and breathes for; but he resigned his commission.”

  “Well, yeah, there was that.”

  “Why?”

  “He had his reasons.”

  “Come on, Bob, what were they?”

  “Some brass hat got suspicious.”

  “Was there an investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you investigated?”

  “No, none of us, only the Colonel.”

  “And what did the investigation determine?”

  “Nothing. They couldn’t prove a thing. Well, not much of anything.”

  “What did the investigation prove?”

  “It was like this: There was going to be a court martial, but the brass hat running things offered the Colonel a deal. He could cough up the proceeds – all the proceeds – and have the charges dropped and, maybe, get his promotion.”

  “That sounds like a pretty good offer to me.”

  “Trouble was, the Colonel no longer had all the proceeds; we had done the split and scattered to the four winds. Three of us were out of the Corps by this time, one was getting out in a matter of days and the other one was dead.”

  “Did that one get dead because of this… transaction?”

  “I don’t want to go into that.”

  “But the rest of you wouldn’t give back, so you cost the Colonel his career?”

  “No, no, you do
n’t understand.”

  “Make me understand.”

  “The Colonel never asked us for our end back; he never even contacted us. The brass hat wanted the money for himself, so the Colonel turned down the deal and resigned from the Corps. By the time any of us heard about it, the deal was done, and the Colonel was gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Nobody knew. He was just gone.”

  “Did any of you look for him?”

  “I did. When I joined the NYPD I did a search every year or so, using department resources, but I always came up dry.”

  “Are you in touch with the other three guys?”

  Cantor shook his head. “We agreed never to make contact again. It was safer that way.”

  “Did anybody get caught?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you never saw each other again?”

  Cantor looked around. “Not until yesterday.”

  “What happened yesterday?”

  “I was having a drink here last night.”

  “At Clarke’s.”

  “At the bar. I looked up from my glass, and a guy was standing at the end of the bar, looking at me.”

  “You know his name?”

  “Of course, but I’m not telling you. All you need to know is that he was the one who wasn’t happy with the cut. In fact, he was so unhappy that a couple of us were going to off him, but he cut and ran before we had the chance.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “I looked away for a minute, trying to figure out what to do, and when I turned back, he was gone.”

  Stone nodded, he hoped sagely.

  “Stone?”

  “Yes?”

  “How is the Colonel?”

  Stone told him.

  “I’m glad he’s all right,” Cantor said.

  “Bob.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you see this guy again or hear from him, you should get in touch with me right away.”

  “Why?”

  “To make sure the Colonel stays all right.”

  10

  Stone went back to his office and tried to get some work done, but it took him more than two hours to write a brief that should have taken half an hour. There were times when he wished he had an associate to dump these things on.

  Joan buzzed him. “Cabot on line one,” she said.

  “Which Cabot?”

  “There’s more than one?”

  Stone picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “It’s Lance.”

  “How did it go this morning?”

  “We had a very nice lunch together at the Mayflower Inn, in Washington. He seemed not to want me in the house.”

  “So, did you detect any sign of a woman there?”

  “Don’t try and be funny, Stone.”

  “You seemed miffed that I didn’t detect that; I just wanted to see if your powers of deduction exceeded mine.”

  “Barton seems to have mostly recovered his memory.”

  “What do you mean by mostly?”

  “He doesn’t remember anything about the night he was attacked, but it’s common for trauma victims not to remember the trauma.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “Oh, no, not me.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Stone.”

  “That was irony.”

  Lance took a deep breath, obviously trying to remain civil. “I want you to keep an eye on Barton.”

  “I’m not in the ‘keeping an eye on’ business, Lance.”

  “You have a house in Washington; why don’t you spend a few days there and drop in on him from time to time?”

  “I am not your brother’s keeper, to coin a phrase.”

  “Stone, if you had any idea of the pressures on me at work…”

  “That would still not induce the miracle of genetics required to make Barton my brother. Here’s an idea, Lance: Why don’t you instruct Holly to take a little vacation, go up there and keep an eye on him? You said he likes women, and Holly is a very attractive one. She can use my house.” Holly Barker was Stone’s friend and occasional lover and one of Lance’s staff at Langley.

  There was a long silence before Lance spoke. “That is actually a very good idea, Stone.”

  “If she’ll do it.”

  “I think that if I put it as a request for a personal favor she would go up there. You could drop in on her for a visit.”

  Stone ignored that suggestion, though it had already crossed his mind. He hadn’t seen Holly for a while, and the idea of a couple of days in Connecticut with her was appealing. “I hope it all goes well, Lance.”

  “Thank you. So do I.”

  “Good-bye, Lance.”

  “There is just one more thing, Stone.”

  Stone rolled his eyes. “What is it?”

  “There’s the matter of the missing mahogany secretary.”

  Stone said nothing.

  “Stone?”

  “I’m here.”

  “There’s the matter of…”

  “Yes, yes, I got that.”

  “Barton is very concerned about it, of course, given its value.”

  “Of course.”

  “If you can locate and recover it, he is willing to offer you a finder’s fee.”

  “Lance, I’m really very busy with my work, and…”

  “A million dollars.”

  Stone stopped talking. “How’s that again?”

  “A million dollars in cash. On the barrelhead, I believe the expression is.”

  “Well, I don’t know…”

  “Tax free.”

  Magic words, those. Stone’s palms were sweating. The thought of a million bucks at rest in his safe gave him a warm feeling all over.

  “I take it, you’ll take it.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Lance.”

  “Write down these numbers.” Lance gave him Barton’s home and cell phones. “Cell service is dodgy up there, as I’m sure you know, but you can always leave a message on his machine when you find the secretary.”

  “Tell Barton to send me any photographs he has of the piece, or pieces, and a list of any identifying marks on the them. I’d also like to know which one I’m looking for.”

  “He will respond immediately. I’ll have one of my people drop off an envelope by nightfall.”

  “Give my best to Holly,” Stone said.

  “You may give her your best in person.”

  Stone wondered what he meant by that.

  “And while you’re up there, you might just look in on Barton and see how he’s doing.” Lance hung up.

  Stone tried to bring his pulse down. He was going to need Dino’s help to find the thing and maybe Bob Cantor’s, too, so he would just have to accustom himself to parting with some of Barton’s reward.

  11

  Stone was sitting in Elaine’s, studying the photographs of the mahogany secretary when Dino walked in and sat down.

  Before he could speak a waiter set a glass of Scotch before him.

  “You’re still interested in antique furniture?” Dino asked.

  “More than ever.”

  Dino took the photograph and looked it over. “Well, it’s certainly a handsome piece of work,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I’d fork out twenty-five mil for it, but that’s just me.”

  “You know,” Stone said, taking the photo back, “I think if I had a billion, I’d pay twenty-five mil for it, but that’s just me.”

  “Let’s call it a purely academic disagreement,” Dino said, sipping his Scotch. “Where’d you get the picture?”

  “Barton sent it to me.”

  “Why? Does he think you’re a potential buyer?”

  “Hardly. He wants me to find it for him.”

  “You? What are your particular qualifications for finding a missing piece of antique furniture?”

  “About the same as yours.”

  “But I’m not looking for it.”

&
nbsp; “Yes, you are.”

  “Stone, why do you think I’m going to help you find this thing?”

  “Because, if you help me find it and return it to Barton, you’ll be paid the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, cash on the barrelhead, tax free.”

  “Since I know you don’t have that kind of cash in your safe, I assume it’s Barton’s money we’re talking about.”

  “We are.”

  Dino regarded him closely. “And how much is Barton paying you?”

  “You have a suspicious nature, Dino.”

  “I’m a police officer; I’m paid to be suspicious.”

  “Well, the NYPD is not offering you a hundred grand to do this particular bit of police work.”

  “A good point, but you still haven’t answered my question: How much is he paying you?”

  “More than he’s paying you, but I have to do most of the work. And anyway, Barton isn’t paying you; I’m paying you out of what Barton pays me.”

  “I have a feeling that I’m going to end up doing most of the work,” Dino said.

  “All you have to do is quietly circulate a description of the piece among your brother officers, keeping it unofficial, of course.”

  “And just how do I keep it unofficial?”

  “I would suggest that you offer a portion of your reward, say ten percent, to whoever locates it.”

  Dino stared at Stone. “Barton is paying you a million dollars to find it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re paying me ten percent of what you’re getting, and I have to pay ten percent to some street cop?”

  “Do you think this is a bad deal, Dino?”

  “I think it’s an insufficiently good deal.”

  “All right, what number would make you content enough with your lot, should we find the thing, that you would never feel it necessary to mention it to me again?”

  “Two hundred grand.”

  “And you’ll tip your help out of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll never again mention to me the relative sums earned by the two of us in this endeavor?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Make that certainly not, and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Deal. What do you want me to do?”

  “Well, find the fucking thing, of course.”

  “Any suggestions as to how?”

  “You’re a police officer, remember?”