by Stuart Woods
Herbie frowned. “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“Gee, I’m sorry,” Dino said.
“Can you find out where Vito lives?” Stone asked Dino.
“Yeah, sure, but Trini’s more likely to be at the grocery store than at Vito’s house. Those guys never bring business home to the family, especially business like Trini.”
Stone’s cell phone vibrated. “Hello?”
“Is this Stone Barrington?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“This is Vito. You remember me?”
“Vito! How could I ever forget?”
Vito chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t, in the circumstances.”
“Have you got a line on Rodriguez?” Stone asked.
“I think I might,” Vito said. “You want to meet me down at my place of business in the morning?”
“I have to wait until morning?”
“Well, I’m not going to be able to do anything for you until midday, at best, but if you want to spend the night in my basement . . .”
“No thanks, Vito, I’ve seen enough of your basement.”
“Okay. Come down tomorrow morning about eleven, and I’ll see what I can do. You remember the address?”
“Oh, yes.”
“See you then.” Vito hung up.
“Herbie,” Stone said, “I’m afraid there’s been a little hitch in getting you the reward.”
54
HERBIE FINALLY SEEMED to take a hint and left. Lance watched him walk out of Elaine’s. “You know, that is one of the densest human beings it has ever been my misfortune to meet.”
“I have to agree,” Stone said. “And he’s one of the most annoying, too.”
“Then why do you keep messing with him?” Dino asked.
“I don’t keep messing with him. He keeps messing with me.”
“You, too, Lance,” Dino said.
“I know, I know. He was there when I needed him for a photograph, and now I can’t get rid of him. He’s convinced that he’d be perfect for Agency operations.”
“Can’t you find a suicide mission to send him on?” Stone asked.
“Herbie is the kind of guy who’d walk into a suicide mission and walk out with a smile on his face and everybody else dead, and he wouldn’t have had a thing to do with it.”
“How the hell did you ever come up with him?” Stone asked.
“An operator I know gave him to me; Herbie’s his nephew.”
“You, too? You know Bob Cantor?”
“You know Bob Cantor?” Lance responded.
“He works for me all the time.”
“Well, he has more than one client.”
“No wonder he’s busy when I call him these days,” Stone said.
“Okay,” Dino said, “what’s the deal with the phone call you just got?”
“It was Vito.”
“I got that part.”
“He says he may be able to put his hands on Trini tomorrow. He wants us to come down to his grocery store tomorrow morning.”
“You’d better take this seriously,” Dino said. “Vito Galeano is a serious guy.”
Holly spoke up. “He certainly seemed serious when he was about to shoot us and bury us in his cellar,” she said.
“Believe me, he was,” Dino replied. He turned to Stone. “What made you think to ask him to call Eduardo?”
“If I’d asked him to call the mayor, it wouldn’t have worked,” Stone said. “Come on, Dino, who else do I know who’s connected?”
“You could have told him to call me.”
“A guy’s about to shoot us, and I should tell him to call a cop?”
“I’ve known Vito since we were kids. He’s a coupla years older than me, but we went to the same school. He pulled a bunch of bigger kids off me once and slapped them around, so I always felt I owed him. Once, when he was in a tight spot, I had a chance to help, and he’s been grateful. Here’s some advice: If you know him now, next time you get in trouble with some wise guys, tell them to call Vito, instead of Eduardo. Not one in a hundred of them knows Eduardo, but they all know Vito, and they don’t mess with him.”
“I guess that’s good advice,” Stone said. He turned to Lance. “I hear you’re trying to recruit Holly to your organization on a more full-time basis.”
“Stone!” Holly hissed.
“It’s all right, Holly,” Lance said. “Stone’s family.”
“I am?” Stone asked.
“You signed up, didn’t you?”
“I guess I did at that. Holly, maybe Lance is the guy to help you with your little money problem.”
Holly turned red. “Stone, you’d better shut up right now.”
“Are you in need of funds, Holly?” Lance asked, sounding concerned.
“No, I am not,” Holly replied.
“Far from it,” Stone chipped in.
“I don’t understand,” Lance said.
“It’s better that way,” Holly replied.
“Come on, Holly,” Stone said, “who better than Lance?”
“Yes,” Lance said, “who better than me? If you have a problem, I’d like to help.”
Holly looked around the table.
“Maybe I’d better go to the john,” Dino said, half rising.
“Sit down, Dino. All right, I’ll tell you about it.” Holly went through her story. Everyone was rapt, except Stone, who seemed to have trouble not laughing.
When she had finished, Lance patted her hand. “Don’t worry about it, my dear, we’ll think of something.”
“Think of what?” Stone asked.
“Yes, what?” Holly echoed.
Lance looked around to be sure he wasn’t being overheard. “You have a large sum of money obtained from an illegal operation—money you didn’t report. You want to get rid of it in a, shall we say, profitable manner?”
“I suppose.”
“This is called money laundering, and there are a number of ways to do it.”
“I’ll bet,” Stone said.
“All of them carry a certain amount of risk,” Lance explained. “Perhaps the safest thing to do is for you to get the case to me, and I’ll deal with it. After a little time has passed, you’ll have a sizeable sum deposited in an overseas bank account. You’ll receive a credit card in the mail, and from then on, you charge whatever you wish to the card. You’ll have to keep track of what you spend in your head, because you don’t want the mailman bringing a monthly statement, do you?”
“That’s it?” Holly asked.
“That’s it.”
“It sounds too simple.”
“Well, you’ll have to pay a service charge on the original deposit, say, ten percent.”
“To whom?”
“It’s better you don’t know. But you’ll still have more than five million in the bank, should you ever need it, and it would be invested in any manner you wish.”
“So, I’d be earning money?”
“I should think at least an eight percent return.”
“Nice.”
“Of course, you’ll owe taxes on what you earn, but you can invest in tax-free municipals. You can buy just about anything with a credit card these days—a car, for instance—but you’d want to stay away from buying anything that would create a legal record, like a house.”
“A car creates a legal record,” Holly said.
“Not an important one. It wouldn’t show up on your credit report, for instance, if you didn’t finance it.”
“There you are,” Stone said. “Problem solved.”
“Not exactly,” she replied. “I’ve still got to get it to Lance.”
“Put it in your car and drive it up here,” Stone said.
“Or in your airplane.”
“Forget that. I’m not getting involved. I have a law license to protect.”
“Do it while you’ve still got a badge to flash,” Lance said, “in case you’re stopped by a highway patrolman who wants to search your car
.”
“I’ll think about it,” Holly said. She turned to Stone. “Can we go home now?”
“Sure.”
Dino spoke up. “I want to go with you to Vito’s place tomorrow.”
“Why?” Stone asked.
“You’ll be better off with me there.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Good with me,” Holly said.
“And don’t you go into that store until I say so.”
55
STONE AND HOLLY were having breakfast the following morning.
“I don’t like this,” Stone said.
“What don’t you like?”
“Before, when we went into that apartment with Dino, we had a SWAT team ahead of us, and there was shooting. Now we’re just supposed to walk into Vito’s grocery store and walk out with Trini? It doesn’t add up, and if it did, I still wouldn’t want to go in there like that.”
“What do you suggest?”
Stone called Dino.
“Bacchetti.”
“I don’t like it, Dino.”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Stone, dummy. You don’t recognize my voice after all these years?”
“What don’t you like?”
“I don’t like walking into that grocery store with no SWAT team and no backup.”
“Vito’s your backup.”
“The last time I saw Vito he was backing me into a freshly dug grave.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“Why should I trust him? Because he didn’t kill me?”
“That’s a start.”
“That was because he was afraid of Eduardo.”
“Because he respected Eduardo.”
“Whatever. He didn’t back off because he’d suddenly taken a liking to me.”
“Maybe he liked Holly.”
“He was going to kill her, too.”
“You got a point.”
“Of course I do. The point is, what’s going to happen when we walk in there? If we walk in there.”
“You’ll be with me.”
“You’re not big enough to hide behind.”
“He respects me.”
“Why, because he saved your skinny little ass from bullies when you were ten?”
“No, because I saved his fat ass from a long time upstate, and he appreciates that.”
“Okay, that takes care of you. What about Holly and me?”
“It’s transferable.”
“What?”
“The respect.”
“Look, these goombahs are murdering people they respect all the time, you know? The respect seems to kind of vary from day to day—one day you’re a prince of a guy, the next you’re in a fifty-five-gallon drum of lime in a New Jersey swamp, waiting for Judgment Day.”
“Stone, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so nervous.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had more reason to be nervous. I’ve been threatened and shot at and dragged all over the country, and—”
Holly broke in. “I did not drag you all over the country,” she said. “You came voluntarily.”
“That was only because I wanted to get you in the sack.”
“You had already gotten me in the sack. How soon you forget!”
Dino broke in. “You wanted to get me in the sack?”
“Oh, shut up. You know I was talking to Holly.”
“How do I know who you’re talking to? I can only hear you.”
“We’ve got to have a plan, Dino.”
“What sort of plan?”
“The kind of plan where men in black suits and body armor with automatic weapons and stun grenades go in first and let us know when they’ve got Trini handcuffed.”
“You don’t understand. Vito has a certain standing in his community, you know? He would not respond well to assault teams running up and down the aisles of his grocery store, tossing stun grenades. It would not reflect well on him in his neighborhood.”
“Well, we need some kind of a plan,” Stone said.
“What kind of plan do you want?”
“Suggest something.”
“I don’t know what to suggest. I’m okay with just going in there and talking to Vito.”
“How about you send a few undercover people in there to do some shopping and reconnoiter?”
“Oh, sure, and they’re not going to stick out like tourists from Alabama? The whole neighborhood would know.”
“Well, think of something, Dino.”
“I’ll call you back,” Dino said, then hung up.
“Hey!” Stone shouted down the phone. “Don’t hang up on me!”
“He hung up?” Holly asked.
“He hung up; said he’d call me back.”
“So, he’ll call you back.”
“You heard me voice my concerns?”
“I heard. I don’t really see what the problem is. Vito said just to come down there.”
“So now you trust Vito? The guy who was going to put two in your head and bury you in his cellar?”
“I kind of like him.”
“He’s a fucking mafioso, and you kind of like him?”
“Well, your friend Eduardo is a fucking mafioso, and you like him.”
“First of all, he’s not a fucking mafioso, he’s more of . . . an elder statesman of Italian-American diplomacy.”
“He’s a fucking mafioso.”
“And I’ve had a lot more experience of Eduardo than you’ve had of Vito.”
“Granted. Why don’t we just wait to hear what Dino has to say?”
The phone rang, and Stone picked it up. “Hello?”
“Okay, listen . . .”
” Who is this?”
“Now you don’t recognize my voice?”
“What is it?”
“I talked to Vito, and it’s okay.”
“That’s your plan? You talked to Vito, and it’s okay?”
“That’s my plan.”
Stone sighed. “Okay, what do we do?”
“Vito suggested we come in my car, since yours is getting to be a little too well known in the neighborhood, so I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty.”
“Okay.” Stone hung up.
“He talked to Vito, and it’s okay?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s the plan?”
“Yeah.”
56
STONE LED HOLLY upstairs to his safe and opened it. “I’m not comfortable going after this guy with your Sig-Sauer and my Walther,” he said, rooting around in the safe. “They’re both .380s, and we need more stopping power.”
“What did you have in mind?” Holly asked.
Stone handed her a gun. “This is a Sig P239,” he said. “It’s a little larger than your P232, and it’s nine millimeter.”
“I own one. What are we using for ammo?”
He rooted around some more and came up with a magazine. “This is loaded with MagSafe ammo. You know about it?”
“Sounds familiar; remind me.”
“Instead of a lead slug, it’s epoxy with fairly large buckshot encapsulated. It will penetrate soft body armor, but the great thing is that even if it goes all the way through a body, it won’t ricochet, and it won’t kill some bystander. Makes a big wound in the original recipient, though.”
“Why doesn’t everybody use it all the time?”
“Because it costs something like three bucks a round. It’s best saved for special occasions.”
“And what are you carrying?”
Stone handed her a pistol. “It’s a Sig Pro. Guy I know sent it to me. Got a fifteen-round magazine.”
“I want this one,” she said, tucking it into the belt of her jeans.
“Oh, all right, I’ll take the P239.” He handed her the Pro’s magazine and closed the safe. “Let’s go.”
“Okay,” Dino said as they headed downtown at mid-morning, “here’s what Vito told me. You ready?”
“We’re ready,” Stone said.
“He’s luring Trini down to the store with a really good story.”
“What’s the story?”
“The story is, a truck is going to make a delivery to Vito’s grocery store, and half of the truck is given over to a compartment rigged up as a room. It’s air-conditioned, it has a bed and a chair and lights and a chemical toilet and a lot of dirty magazines. The truck actually exists, according to Vito.”
“What’s the truck got to do with this?” Holly asked.
“Vito has told Trini that they’re going to take him to Florida in the truck, two guys driving nonstop. He’s got food and water and the magazines in the back, and they’re there in twenty-four hours.”
“Trini wants to go back to Florida?”
“He says he can get lost among his homeboys down there, and then he’ll get a ship out somewhere. Anybody stops the truck, the rear part is stacked to the ceiling with cartons of Italian foodstuffs. Pretty slick, huh?”
“Pretty slick,” Holly admitted.
“So that’s how Vito knows for sure Trini will be there today?”
“Right. He’s due at noon.”
“And Vito is just going to hand Trini to me?”
“That’s the idea.”
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“What?”
“What’s in it for Vito?”
“He makes Eduardo happy.”
“Eduardo is still in this?” Stone asked.
“Up to his ears, apparently, and Vito always likes to make Eduardo happy. In his business, you make Eduardo happy, good things happen to you.”
“This is just crazy enough to work,” Holly said.
“Wait a minute,” Stone said.
“What?”
“Trini was behind Vito’s kidnapping us, right?”
“Right, I guess,” Dino said.
“Well, I’d like to know what Vito told him.”
“Why can’t you just relax and let this happen?”
“Oh, all right, I suppose Vito could tell him something.”
“You bet your ass he could.”
“What’s the plan when we get there?”
“Vito will tell us then.”
57
THE THREE WALKED into Vito Galeano’s grocery store at eleven sharp. The place was not terribly big—four rows of shelving running up and down the space, a counter at the rear, and, up half a flight of stairs, a loft office from which Vito had a view over half glasses of the entire store. It was old-fashioned and fragrant with hanging sausage and spices. Vito came down the stairs, checking each of the half-dozen customers in the place, and finally, checking out Stone, Dino, and Holly.