Authors: Stuart Woods
Stone smelled leather, and he couldn’t understand why. There was a murmur of voices from somewhere and the fluttery sound of a machine running. He opened his eyes and found himself facedown on his office sofa; his hands were chained behind him and his feet clamped together. He had a headache centered at the base of his skull, and he was having trouble thinking clearly.
He decided not to move for a while, just to listen and get oriented.
The machine stopped, and there was the sound of something tapping from the direction of his desk. He turned his head sideways so that he could see. There was a strange man seated at his desk; he was removing stacks of bills from the machine, tapping them on the desktop to square them, then banding them and arranging them in a suitcase that lay open beside the desk, while reading numbers from the machine and noting them on a yellow legal pad. Then he heard a voice he hadn’t expected to hear.
“How long do you think this will take?” Hank asked.
Stone moved his chin down enough to allow himself a view of the other side of the desk. Hank was removing a double-handful of money from one of the leaf bags, squaring batches of the bills, then stacking them into the machine. That done, she switched it on, and it began separating and sorting the tens and twenties.
“Shit,” the man said, “even with the machine, it’s going to take us all day, at least.”
“I guess there’s no faster way to do this,” she said.
“Not unless we had a couple more counter-sorters and more people to help, and we sure as hell don’t want more people in on this.”
“No,” she said, “we don’t.”
Stone saw her begin to look his way and closed his eyes.
“He’s still out,” Hank said. “How hard did you hit him?” Her tone was one of idle curiosity, not of concern.
“Jeez, I don’t know. Hard enough to put him down and out, but not hard enough to kill him, I hope. We may need him at some point.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Hank replied.
Okay,
Stone said to himself,
I think I’m getting this.
He rewound his memory to earlier in the evening and watched the replay on the inside of his eyelids. They had drinks; he gave Hank a key; he showed her how the security system worked; she spent ten minutes in the Four Seasons’ ladies’ room while he got a cab; she must have made a phone call. Who else could the guy be but Marty Parese? They stopped talking and worked, and that gave him more time to think. He had come down to fax Eggers the year-to-date
statement. If Bill didn’t receive it, would he send somebody over here? Stone’s question was almost immediately answered.
The phone rang three times, and the voice mail system picked up. “Stone? It’s Bill. Never mind faxing the document, we found our copy. Sorry to trouble you.” Eggers hung up.
Shit. No cavalry arriving from that direction. He did some more thinking.
God knows where Joan is; long weekend
. No conceivable cavalry from any other direction, either. Assuming they didn’t kill him—and that, he thought, might be an unwarranted assumption—nobody would find him until Tuesday morning. Where would Hank and her friend be by then? Acapulco? Rio? Answer: anywhere they damn well pleased. They would have a lot of luggage, of course, given the bulk of his five million dollars, even neatly stacked in suitcases. Unlikely that they would take a commercial flight; they wouldn’t want to be separated from their bags. So, they’d drive. Somewhere they could exchange the money for hundreds. Where the hell could they do that? They couldn’t just wheel it into a bank and make reverse change. Any banker in his right mind would call the FBI.
Wait a minute; why would Marty Parese have a cash counter-sorter handy on short notice?
You couldn’t rent one at a tool rental place. Chop shop had to be a cash business; if you sold somebody a few thousand bucks’ worth of Mercedes bits and pieces, you wouldn’t take a check, and you wouldn’t put the cash in the bank. You’d launder it, somehow. Run it through a legit business account, maybe? One that dealt in a lot of cash? Casino? Check cashing service? Dirty bank? There must be dirty banks.
“Marty, tell me you got the groceries,” Hank said.
“A week’s worth.”
“I gave you a list.”
“Yeah, I got most of that. I couldn’t find truffle oil.”
She gave him a shopping list. When? On the phone from the ladies’ room, or maybe before that. She had a plan; she called him for dinner, not the other way around. Where would they need groceries, especially Hank’s kind of groceries? Someplace with a kitchen.
A wave of nausea struck Stone. Could a blow to the back of the head do that? He answered his own question by vomiting over the edge of the sofa.
“Jesus,” Marty said.
“Oh, Stone, poor baby,” Hank said. She went into his office bathroom and came out with a couple of towels and a trash can. She wiped his face with a damp facecloth, cleaned up the mess, and put the towels in the trash can. “Let’s sit you up,” she said. She rolled him onto his side, put his feet on the floor, and sat him up. “Is that better?”
Stone nodded and looked as dazed as he could, which, given the circumstances, wasn’t hard. He moved his hands: cuffs. He looked down at his feet: duct tape. He was secured.
“You want some water, Stone?”
He nodded. She went to the bathroom and came back with a glass. He took a sip, swished it around in his mouth, and spat into the trash can. “More.” He drank half the glass.
“Put some of that duct tape on his mouth,” Parese said.
“I can’t do that,” Hank replied. “If he vomits again, he could choke on it.”
“So what? I don’t care if he chokes, I’d just as soon put a bullet in his head.”
“Marty, I’ve told you before: if we kill him they’ll never stop looking for us, wherever we go. It’s not like killing Bats—nobody cares about him. Stone has friends in the police, and they’d really come after us. Stone can take the five-million-dollar hit without blinking. He might even be too embarrassed to tell anybody.”
“Whatever you say, babe. Now keep feeding the machine money.”
“How much are we up to?”
“Two hundred and twenty thou.”
“God. We’ll be here until Tuesday.”
“Not that long—we’re getting the hang of it now.”
They went back to work.
Stone felt better for throwing up; his head was clear now; he could think. Trouble was, he couldn’t think of any way out of this. There were things in the office he could use, but he couldn’t move. They could do with him as they willed.
That thought made him nauseous again, but he fought it down. He took some deep breaths.
“You okay, Stone?” Hank asked.
“Just confused,” he said.
“Yes, I guess this is pretty confusing for you.”
“So, was it you and Bats or you and Marty?”
“It was always Marty,” she said. “Bats was just a schmuck.”
“Ah,” he said, “all is revealed.” He was a schmuck, too. Now all he could do was sit here and wait to find out who won the argument over whether or not to kill him.
Jack and Hillary finished their round and went back to the clubhouse for lunch.
“You beat me on handicap,” Hillary said, after they had ordered.
“Come on, I don’t even have a handicap yet.”
“You’re playing consistently, though, which nobody with your experience ever does. I think your instructor is wrong about your playing at the eighteen-handicap level. I think you’re closer to a fifteen.”
“From your lips to God’s ear,” Jack said.
“You seem very much at peace today, Jack. I had noticed a little tension the past few days. Did something good happen?”
“Yes, something good happened. I just cleared up a little of the underbrush of my past life.”
“Underbrush? That’s a funny word.”
“Now everything is just smooth, freshly mown fairway. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so free.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’m happy for you, Jack. I’m happy for both of us.” She looked out at the golf course for a moment, as if she had something on her mind. “There’s something I have to say to you.”
Oh, God,
he thought. And it had been going so well. His greatest fear had been something like this. He had been thinking of marriage, but now he was about to be cut down to size. “What is it?” he asked, as steadily as he could.
“Will you marry me, Jack?”
He nearly spilled his iced tea. “I was going to . . .”
“I know, you were going to back out. I was afraid that you were afraid of me.”
“Oh, no,” he said.
“You haven’t answered me. Do you want to know about my circumstances? I love you, Jack, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“There’s nothing I need to know about you, Hillary. I love you, and I’ll marry you just as fast as we can do whatever it takes to get it done.”
“Oh, that’s such a relief,” she said. “I was afraid you were afraid of my wealth.”
“Not your wealth, hon, just our different stations in life.”
“There’s no difference, Jack. We live in the same community, in the same building, even. We play at the same golf course, we have the same best friends.”
“You’re a very generous person, Hillary.”
“You’re right, I am, but I’m not exercising generosity. I feel that we are absolute equals. I’m sorry about the difference in our fortunes, but it wasn’t my fault—I inherited it.”
“I promise I won’t hold it against you.”
“There are some things you need to know about my life and the way I live it.”
“I don’t need to know anything.”
“If we’re to be married, you need to know
everything
. I was married twice before I met you: divorced once, then widowed. Bob was a very wealthy man, and neither of us had children. After the estate was wound up and the taxes paid, I had a stock account with about seventy million in it, and four houses. I sold the one in Scottsdale. Now I live here in the winter and in Northeast Harbor, Maine, in the summer, and the spring and autumn on Fifth Avenue in New York, across from Central Park. Do you think you could live like that? I mean, I can sell any place you don’t want to live.”
“Excuse me, I’m a little breathless,” Jack said. “I’m sure that any place you love will be fine with me.”
“There’s a lovely sailboat in Maine. Have you ever sailed?”
“Only on the Staten Island Ferry.”
“I think you’ll like it. I’m also the largest stockholder in Bob’s company and on the board, and I have the use of the corporate jet, so we don’t have to bother with the airlines. Have you done any traveling?”
“Almost none.”
“Let’s take a look at Paris, London, and Rome—for a start.”
“You talked me into it.”
“I’ve checked—we need to go to the courthouse and get a license, then there’s a three-day waiting period, and then anybody who’s a notary public can marry us. I thought my lawyer could do it.”
“That’s fine with me. Let’s ask Winston and Elizabeth to stand up for us.”
“Yes, of course. My apartment is so much bigger than yours—will you move in with me?”
“Of course.”
“The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Great.”
“I haven’t felt so good in years,” she said.
“I’ve
never
felt so good,” he replied.
“You know when I knew?” she asked.
“When?”
“When you bought the Bentley. I liked it that you included me in your decision, and especially that you had no problem taking my advice. A lot of men wouldn’t want a woman’s opinion.”
“I will always want your opinion, and I’d be a fool not to follow your advice.”
“That’s it, then.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s it.”
“Would you like to play another round after lunch?”
“I’d love it.”
Two women in golf clothes got up from a table on the other side of the restaurant, and Hillary waved them over. “Hi, girls,” she said. “Let me introduce you to my fiancé, Jack Coulter. Jack, this is Nikki Seybold and Gail Barley, both of whom I’ve known since college.”
Everyone shook hands.
“Would you like to join us and make a foursome?” one of the women asked.
“Thanks,” Hillary said, “but I want Jack all to myself.”
They laughed and went on their way.
“They’re jealous,” Hillary said.
Stone had managed to doze off. He awoke slowly and kept his eyes closed, so as not to inhibit their conversation.
“Looks like we’re making good progress now,” Hank said.
“Yeah, we’ve cracked four million. We’ll be there in another hour. Let’s take a break.”
“What for?”
“I’m starved,” he said. “It’s five-thirty, and I haven’t eaten since five o’clock this morning.”
“All right,” she said. “Let’s get these four bags into the van, then we’ll get something to eat and come back and finish.”
“Deal,” Parese said.
They zipped up the four suitcases, stood them on their wheels, and began rolling the first two out of the office. A minute later, they came back for two more.
“Is one more bag going to be enough?” she asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got less than seven hundred grand to go, then we’ll be done.”
“Okay, let’s go. Stone!”
Stone appeared to jerk awake. “Huh?”
“We’re going to get some dinner. We’ll be right back.”
“Just a minute,” Parese said. He picked up a roll of duct tape and walked over to Stone. He passed three lengths around the sofa and across Stone’s chest, pinning him there, then he ripped off a short strip and slapped it over Stone’s mouth. “There, that’ll hold him.”
The two left the office by the street door.
Stone waited a full minute to let them clear the block, then he started his struggle. He leaned as hard as possible against the tape across his chest, trying to stretch enough to give him some wiggling room. It seemed to work, but he remained taped to the sofa. Then he started thrusting his feet and pelvis forward, to get more stretching and to make it possible for him to slide under the tape and onto the floor. This took a good ten minutes, but he remained stuck to the big piece of furniture. He had his old handcuff key from his cop days somewhere in his desk, but he couldn’t get up and walk over there to get it. He was huffing through his nose and sweating. Half an hour after they left, they came back with cartons of Chinese food.
“Hey, there,” Hank said. “You doing okay?” She came over and ripped the tape off his face.
Stone took some deep breaths. “Yeah.”
“You want some Chinese?”
“Not hungry.”
“Suit yourself.” She went back to the desk, and they made room for the food, then served themselves and opened a couple of beers.
Stone watched them and tried to relax.
They finished and Hank resealed the cartons. “In case you want some later,” she said to Stone.
“Okay,” Parese said, “it’s six-fifteen. I want to be done and out of here by seven. We’ll be out of the state by eight-thirty.”
“Then let’s do it.” They resumed their stacking, counting, and sorting, and the last suitcase began to fill up. Stone watched them helplessly. Promptly at seven, Parese closed the last suitcase. “You wheel this to the van, and I’ll get the machine. Who knows, somebody might want a recount when we do the swap.”
“Okay.” She wheeled the suitcase out of the office, and Parese picked up the machine, which looked heavy.
“Need a hand with that?” Stone asked.
Parese set down the machine and laughed. “You’re something, Stone. Hank told me you was a card.”
“A laugh a minute,” Stone replied.
Parese picked up the machine again. “I’ll be back in a minute to say goodbye.” He staggered out of the office with his load. Three minutes later, they were back.
Parese got into his coat.
“We’ll get out of your way,” Hank said, putting on her coat.
But then Parese had a Glock in his hand. “Time to say bye-bye,” he said to Stone.
Hank put her hand on the gun and pushed the barrel down. “No. I said no, Marty, and I meant it. We’re leaving no corpses behind. Nobody will see him until Tuesday morning, and if he could get out of that tape he would have while we were gone.”
“Sorry, babe, but there will be no witnesses.” He racked the slide on the Glock.
Stone looked around desperately for help, but there was none. Then the phone rang. Parese turned and looked at it, and on the third ring the voice mail kicked in.
“Hi, Stone, it’s Kate Lee. Will and I are going to be in New York over the weekend. Can you have dinner with us at the Carlyle on Sunday night? Call me on the private cell number, don’t go through the White House switchboard. Hope to see you Sunday!” She hung up.
Parese was still staring at the phone. “Was that who I think it was?”
“Now are you getting the picture?” Hank asked. “The feds will be after us, too!”
“This is a mistake,” Parese said, but he shoved the gun back into its holster on his waist. “All right, let’s go.”
“You first,” Hank said.
He started for the door.
Hank ran across the room, took Stone by the chin, and kissed him on the lips. “Bye-bye, darlin’,” she said. “It’s been more fun than I can tell you.”
“A word of advice, Hank,” Stone said.
“What’s that, darlin’?”
“You’d better kill Parese before he can kill you.”
“That crossed my mind,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me, and thanks for all that money!” She turned and ran out of the office. A moment later, Stone heard the racing of a motor, then the vehicle drove away.
He started with the tape again, thrashing around with all his strength, and finally he was able to slide under the tape to the floor: a triumph! Except that he was still handcuffed and his feet
taped together. He returned to a sitting position, then stood up and hopped toward his desk, flopping down in his chair. There were two things he wanted: the handcuff key in one of his desk drawers and Joan’s .45, which lived in the middle drawer of her desk, always loaded. In case they came back. He decided to find the key first. That would make everything else easier.
He swiveled to his left in the chair and reached as far sideways as the handcuffs would allow, then got his desk drawer open. He rummaged among the drawer’s contents with his nose and chin, checking every cranny, but he found no key.
He started with the left-hand top drawer and repeated the process. It had to be here somewhere. Half an hour later, he still had two drawers to go, and he was exhausted. Then he heard the door open: they were coming back. He laid his head on the cool desktop and waited for Parese and his Glock.