37
D
INO LOOKED THOUGHTFUL. “HAVEN’T WE RUN ACROSS One Vanderbilt Avenue as an address before? It sounds familiar.”
Stone slapped his forehead. “Mail drop! I tracked it down once, roamed around Grand Central until I found this wall of mailboxes. They’re unattended, except when somebody shows up to sort the mail. Can you call the precinct and detail a man to watch it?”
“Stone, Frederick James has committed no crime that we know of, and he’s not a suspect in any case. You trying to get me fired? Why don’t you get Bob Berman to do it?”
“That’s a thought, but I just had another one. If I were James, and I didn’t want to be located, for whatever reason, I’d rent a box at One Vanderbilt, then I’d go to the post office and have the mail forwarded to another address, and then, if I
really
don’t want to be found, I’d have it forwarded from that address. I might get my mail a week late, but what the hell?”
“So it would be a waste of Berman’s time.”
“Yes, it would. Mr. James has built himself a fire wall, and I can’t think of a way around it.”
“He must get paid,” Dino said.
“Yes, but the checks go to the mailbox.”
“But they have to be deposited, or the guy gets no money, right?”
“Right!” Stone said. He called Tom Jones back.
“Tom Jones.”
“This is Lieutenant Bacchetti again.”
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this. My wife will catch on.” He roared with laughter.
Once again, Stone waited. “Mr. Jones,” he said when he could get past the laughter. “How do you pay Frederick James?”
“He takes checks,” Jones said. “If
I
were dealing with me, I’d demand cash!” This time it was a high-pitched giggle.
“Mr. Jones, when was the last time you paid Mr. James any money?”
“Last month, when
Tumult
came out. His contract calls for a payment on publication.”
“All right. Dig out your most recent bank statement.”
“It’s right here in my bottom drawer, with all my bank statements,” Jones said.
Stone heard the man struggling with a desk drawer. “Got it,” Jones said.
“Now, go through the canceled checks until you find the one to James.”
“Okay, let’s see: laundry, phone bill, liquor store—hey, that’s a big one!” More laughter. “Here it is!”
“Turn the check over.”
“It’s over.”
“There is a bank’s name stamped on the back. That always happens when a check is deposited.”
“Right, there is. It’s kind of dim, though. Let me turn on a light and get my glasses.”
Stone had visions of the man sitting in a dark office strewn with empty liquor bottles.
“Okay, I can see it now. It says, ‘First Cayman Bank.’”
“Swell,” Stone said.
“You like that, do you?”
“It’s no help at all, I’m afraid. Mr. Jones, imagine for a moment that you absolutely had to get in touch with Mr. James. How would you go about it?”
“I’d e-mail him,” Jones said. “I’m not much on computers, but my nephew set it up so that I can get to my e-mail without screwing it up. You want the e-mail address?”
“Thanks, but you already gave it to me.”
“I did? Well, okay. Good luck finding him.” Jones hung up.
“What?” Dino asked.
“His bank is in the Cayman Islands, well known for banking secrecy. We’re not going to find him that way.”
“What about his e-mail address? We could call his provider. Who is it? AOL or Hotmail? One of those?”
“Nope. He’s got a domain of his own: frederickjames dot com.”
“Then it’s got to be registered somewhere.”
“Yeah, but even if we could track it down, we’d find that his address is One Vanderbilt, or some hotel where he stayed for a few days.”
“We could see if he has a phone number in New York.”
“If he does, it will be unlisted.”
“If it’s unlisted, I can find out the number.”
“I just had a thought,” Stone said. He picked up a phone and called Dan Griggs.
“Griggs.”
“It’s Stone. How’s Lundquist doing?”
“He made it through the night, and he’s stable. The doctor says we can probably ship him home in a few days.”
“Good. Listen, Dan, we’ve got another line on Paul Manning. He may be using the name Frederick James. James is a novelist with a new, bestselling book out, and he’s something of a will-o’-the-wisp. Can you check the local hotels and see if he’s registered?”
“Okay, Stone, but I have to tell you, I’m wearying of Mr. Manning, and I can’t keep putting resources into finding somebody who did nothing but trash somebody’s house.”
“I understand, Dan, and I appreciate your help.”
“I’ll get back to you.” Griggs hung up.
Stone called Bob Berman. “How you doing?”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“The hotel guest list turned up the name of one Frederick James, an author. Can you do the whole skip-trace thing—address, phone number, credit report?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a Social Security number?”
“No, but hang on.” Stone dialed Jones again.
“Tom Jones.”
“Mr. Jones, I need Frederick James’s Social Security number. I know you’ve got it. You can’t pay him without it.”
“Sorry. The checks are made out to a corporation.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“You didn’t ask me.” Jones laughed loudly.
“What’s the name of the corporation?”
“Frederick James, Limited; it’s a Cayman Islands firm.”
“Thanks,” Stone said, and hung up. He punched the button for Berman. “Sorry for the delay. No SSN; he deals through a Cayman Islands corporation. I don’t suppose you can get anything on that.”
“Probably not. You have any idea where the guy lives?”
“Until recently, he lived in Easthampton, New York. That’s all I’ve got.”
“Okay, I’ll get back to you.”
Stone hung up to see Liz appear in the doorway, holding the copy of
Tumult
. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve read enough of it to say that it
could
be Paul’s work. But you have to understand, he was something of a chameleon as a writer. He changed styles from book to book, depending on the plot and characters.”
“Thanks for trying, Liz.”
She returned to the afterdeck, leaving Stone and Dino alone.
“What’d I tell you?” Dino said. “She’s going to be useless in finding this guy.”
“I’m feeling pretty useless myself,” Stone said.
“I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere with the Frederick James name,” Dino said. “My guess is, he’s just using it as a pen name, that he’s living his life under an entirely different name, maybe even more than one.”
“That’s a depressing thought,” Stone said.
As if on cue, Dan Griggs called back. “I’ve had a whole squad calling around to the hotels,” he said, “and there’s no Frederick James registered anywhere.”
“Thanks for your help again, Dan. I won’t bother you unless we turn up something concrete.” Stone hung up, and the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“It’s Berman.”
“Anything?”
“Mr. James has an American Express card, and that’s it—no debts, not even a bank account.”
“American Express wouldn’t give somebody a card who had no credit record,” Stone said.
“Then he must have applied under a name that does have a record, then asked them to put another name on the card. By the way, I have a friend at American Express. I called him and he looked up James’s address.”
“Great! What is it?”
“One Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City.”
“Thanks, Bob.” Stone hung up. “Another dead end.”
“You got any other ideas?” Dino asked.
“No.”
“Neither have I.”
“Well, we’re just going to have to wait until he has another go at Liz,” Stone said.
38
E
VERYBODY SEEMED TO BE TAKING A NAP, EXCEPT DINO. “I need some things from the drugstore,” Stone said. “You want to come?”
“Nope,” Dino replied. “Married men don’t need things from the drugstore.”
“Toothpaste and dental floss,” Stone said.
“Whatever you say.”
“I’ll be back in half an hour, if anybody calls.”
“See ya.”
Stone walked to the parking lot and got into his borrowed Mercedes convertible, putting the top down. He pulled out of the driveway, behind a passing Ford, which was driving rather slowly. Stone edged up behind the car, hoping to pass, when, suddenly, the Ford came to a screeching halt, and Stone plowed into it with a crash.
“Oh, shit,” he said aloud. Now he had smashed up Thad’s car, and it was his own fault. He got out of the car and walked toward the Ford. As he did, a man got out of the Ford, and to Stone’s surprise, he was smiling.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” Stone said, “but why did you slam on your brakes like that?”
The man looked like a salesman of some sort. He was dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and necktie, and his shirt pocket contained a plastic pen guard and several writing instruments. “Don’t worry about it,” the man said, and very quickly, there was a gun in his hand.
Stone looked over his shoulder for some way out of this, but as he did, a silver Lincoln Town Car with darkly tinted windows screeched to a halt beside him.
The man with the gun opened the rear door. “Inside,” he said, “and don’t let’s get blood on this pretty street.”
Stone got in, followed by the man with the gun, and the car moved forward, leaving the other two cars stopped in the middle of the street. The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds, he figured, and more disturbing than the gun in the man’s hand was the fact that he was wearing rubber gloves. “What’s this about?” he asked.
“First, let’s get you all secured, and then I’ll tell you,” the man said. “Get down on your knees, rest your head on the armrest and put your hands behind you.” He nudged Stone’s ribs with the gun barrel for emphasis.
Stone did as he was told, and in a moment, he was handcuffed.
“All right, now you can sit back up here,” the man said.
His accent was Southern, sort of educated redneck, Stone thought. “So what’s this about?” he asked again.
“First, let’s get the introductions out of the way,” the man said. “You can call me Larry, and the feller driving is Ernest. And you would be one Mr. Stone Barrington.”
“How do you do?” Stone said.
“I do pretty good,” Larry replied. “Now, as to what this is about, we’re going to take a little drive out in the country, and then we’re gonna make a phone call.” His tone was pleasant, conversational. “I don’t enjoy putting violence on folks, so I’d ’preciate it if you wouldn’t make that necessary. I
can
do it, if the need arises.”
“All right, I’ll behave,” Stone lied. He was going to get out of this at the first opportunity, and he was beginning to regret that he had gotten into the car without a fight. The rubber gloves were weighing heavily on his mind.
Shortly, they were in West Palm, driving west on one of its broad boulevards. “You were saying?” Stone asked.
“Oh, yeah. A friend of mine called me a couple of days ago and asked me to come down here and shoot your ass.”
“What friend is that?”
“Does it matter? He’s paying me and Ernest, here, fifty big ones to deal with you, and that’s the most I ever got for a hit.”
They stopped at a traffic light, and a police car pulled up next to them.
Larry stuck the gun in Stone’s crotch. “Don’t you even think about it,” he said. “They can’t see us, and if they hear something, then I’m going to have to do you
and
the cop. Besides, wouldn’t you rather die with your dick still on?”
Stone didn’t answer that. “I’d like to know who your friend is,” he said.
“I don’t think you’d recognize the name,” Larry said. “He uses a lot of them.”
“What does he look like, then?”
“Tall feller, going gray.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Manning.”
“Manning? If you say so.”
“Funny thing is, I was about to try and give Mr. Manning a whole lot of money. Tell you what: Why don’t you call him right now and tell him that? It might have an effect on the outcome of your day and mine.”
“And why would you want to give him a lot of money?” Larry asked.
“I’m a lawyer. I represent a lady he knows. She’s willing to pay a large sum to get him to go away.”
“How much money we talking about?” Larry asked, clearly interested.
“She’s willing to give him a million dollars,” Stone said, “maybe more.”
But not now,
Stone thought.
She won’t give him a fucking penny, if I have anything to say about it.
“You really expect me to believe that.”
“You don’t have to. Just make the call, and I’ll make
him
believe it.”
“What’s in it for me?” Larry asked.
“How much has he paid you so far?” Stone asked.
“Twenty-five thousand,” Larry replied. “There’s another twenty-five due when he shoots you.”
“When
he
shoots me? I thought he hired you to do that.”
“Well, yeah, but only if you give me any trouble. He wants to do it himself, if he has the time. Something personal, I don’t know.”
“Tell you what. You make the call. If I can get him to agree to a settlement, I’ll give you another fifty, on top of the twenty-five he’s already given you.”
“I don’t know,” Larry said.
“What have you got to lose? Tell you what. Drive me to the nearest bank, and I’ll give you the fifty right now, in cash. Any bank will do. I just have to make a phone call.”
“Well, see, I’ve got a lot of problems with that,” Larry said. “You could make all sorts of trouble for me in a bank.”
“You’ve got a point,” said Stone, who had been planning on making a lot of trouble for him.
“And that wouldn’t be the honorable thing to do, see? I mean, my deal is with Doug, not with you. Word got around about that, and I’d be short of clients.”
“So, call him and let me speak to him.”
“What the hell, why not? Ernest, give me the phone.”
Ernest passed back a cell phone, and Larry dialed, mouthing the numbers from memory.
Stone heard the electronic shriek from the phone, and the announcement that the cellular customer being called was unavailable or out of the calling area.
“No luck,” Larry said.
“Try him again in a minute,” Stone replied. They were out of West Palm, now, headed west on a narrowing, increasingly empty road that seemed to be heading straight into the Everglades. He didn’t want to go there.
“Okay,” Larry said.
“You do a lot of this work?” Stone asked.
“You bet. Make a nice living at it, too.”
“How’d you get into it?”
“Fellow offered me five grand once, when I was broke, so I got myself a mail-order book that tells you how to do it and get away with it.”
“The work doesn’t bother you?”
“Naw, it’s just business. I mean, I don’t have anything against the people I hit.”
“You know, in my line of work, I have clients who sometimes have need of somebody with your skills. Maybe you should give me your number?”
Larry grinned broadly. “Well, first, let’s see how this goes, okay?”
“Why don’t you try the number again?” Stone said.
“Sure thing.” Larry punched redial, then held the phone away from his ear, so Stone could hear the recorded message again. “Hey, Ernest,” Larry said. “It’s your next left, right?”
“Right,” Ernest said, and a moment later, he turned left onto a dirt road. A moment later, they were winding down a track that ran through scrub pines. To their right, mangrove grew in swamp water. Shortly, they came to a small clearing, and Ernest made a U-turn and stopped.
“Okay, out of the car,” Larry said, opening the door and helping Stone out of the rear seat.
“Let’s try the number again,” Stone said.
Larry punched redial, and again, the dreaded message repeated.
“Well, I guess you’re just shit out of luck,” Larry said, pocketing the phone. He pushed Stone toward the mangrove. “My instructions were, if I couldn’t reach him, to do the deed and meet him tonight.”
“You’re doing this on credit, then?” Stone asked, trying not to panic.
“Don’t worry,” Larry said. “Me and Mr. Barnacle go way back. We did a little stretch together.”
Suddenly the name rang a bell. “Barnacle?
Douglas Barnacle
?”
“That’s his name.”
Stone realized that he was about to be murdered by a dead man. “Hang on,” he said.
“Listen, Mr. Barrington, there’s no use stretching this out. You don’t want to think about this any more than you have to.”
“Don’t you read the papers? Watch television? Listen to the radio?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you hear about the shoot-out in a Palm Beach restaurant last night?”
Ernest, who had gotten out of the car, walked up. “Yeah, I heard something about that,” he said.
“What shoot-out?”
“The guy you call Doug Barnacle was living in Palm Beach under the name of Paul Bartlett. The police killed him last night.”
That brought Larry up short. “Ernest, that was the name, wasn’t it? Paul Bartlett?”
“That’s what he was using yesterday,” Ernest said.
“Turn on the car radio,” Stone said. “Find an all-news station.”
“Do it, Ernest,” Larry said.
Ernest went to the car, turned on the radio and found a station. Farm report, bank robbery in West Palm, weather.
Larry looked at his watch. “Ernest, we got a plane to catch.”
“I know it,” Ernest said.
Larry turned and marched Stone back to the mangrove. He put a foot against his backside and shoved him into the swamp. Stone kept his balance and ended up thigh-deep in the black water. A large snake slithered past no more than a yard away. “Mr. Barrington, that was a real nice try. I admire it, but it’s time for you to say bye-bye.” He raised the pistol and pointed it at Stone’s forehead, no more than five feet away.
“Hey, Larry!” Ernest called.
“What?”
“Listen!” He turned up the radio.
“. . . chaotic scene at La Reserve, a Palm Beach restaurant last night, ended up with one dead, and a Minneapolis police officer seriously wounded.”
“Don’t Doug live in Minneapolis?” Ernest asked.
“Shhhh.”
“. . . have identified the police officer as Lieutenant Ebbe Lundquist, of the Minneapolis PD, and the dead suspect as Paul Bartlett, also of Minneapolis. Bartlett had been wanted in Minnesota for the murder of his wife, Frances Simms Bartlett, nearly a year ago, and Lieutenant Lundquist was trying to effect an arrest in the restaurant, backed up by the Palm Beach Police Department.”
“Well, shit,” Larry said. “You’re not lying, Mr. Barrington.”
“No,” Stone said, “I’m not.”
“I mean, you got no idea what some folks will tell you in circumstances like this, you know?”
“I’m sure. But the fact remains, Larry, that you’re not going to get paid for this one, so why do it? You’ve already got the twenty-five thousand, so you haven’t wasted your time, but Bartlett isn’t going to pay off, now.” Stone did
not
like standing in this swamp, with
things
slithering around in it.
“He’s got a point, Larry,” Ernest said.
“Maybe,” Larry said, thoughtfully.
Ernest looked at his watch. “And we haven’t got all that much time before our plane.”
Larry looked at Stone. “I don’t guess you’d really pay me the fifty grand, would you?”
“Give me your address, and I’ll send you a check,” Stone replied.
Larry burst out laughing. “Come on, Ernest, let’s get outta here!” He got into the car, and Ernest drove off, spinning the wheels and throwing mud everywhere.
Stone stood in the swamp for a minute, trying to get his heart rate down, then the snake appeared again, and he started struggling for the shore.
Once on dry land, he lay down and, with the greatest possible effort, got his handcuffed hands under his ass and finally over his feet. Now, with his hands in front of him, he was able to get to the cell phone under his sweater on his belt. He punched in the number.
“The Shames yacht,” Dino said.
“Dino,” Stone said, “I need you to come and get me, and bring your handcuffs key.”