Dirt

great place to make love.”
    “Mmmmm,” she said.
    “And Tiff, for God’s sake, stay away from Dick — no hotels of anything; it’s for his own good, tell him that.”
    “He has been insistent.”
    “How did you communicate?”
    “Pay phone at both ends.”
    “Do this: Tell him no contact for two weeks.” Stone had no idea where he’d be on this investigation in two weeks, but what the hell?
    “Okay.”
    “See you, Tiff.”
    “Bye.”
    Bob Cantor called next.
    “Boy, that Tiffany is something!” he said.
    “Down, Bob. Her boyfriend could buy and sell you, and he would.”
    “Too bad. Oh, Amanda Dart made me rip out everything.”
    “She told me. I’ll just have to live with it. You ever do any surveillance work?”
    “Once in a while.”
    “I’ve got two people need checking out; got a pencil?”
    “Shoot.”
    Stone gave him the names and addresses of the maid and chauffeur. He would check out Martha himself. “I need this soonest,” he told Cantor.
    “Gotcha. Oh, Stone, I almost forgot; I might know who did the wiring job on you and the other two.”
    “Yeah? Who?”
    “Maybe a guy who occasionally hangs out at a bar I go to.”
    “What makes you think you know?”
    “He has a signature; it’s the way he wraps a wire around a terminal — he makes a kind of knot. Somebody told me about it. You want me to add this to my list?”
    “You do that; I’d like very much to know who he’s working for.”
    “You got it.”
    Stone had a thought. “Bob, will you wire a place for me? Phone, too?”
    “You bet; but it’s more expensive if I have to break in and work under pressure.”
    “Her name is Martha McMahon; she works all day, five days a week; she lives in a small elevator building, no doorman.” Stone gave him the address.
    “You want to listen live, or have it taped?”
    “I don’t have time to listen live. Can you tape it from a remote location, so you don’t have to be there?”
    “Sure.”
    “Do it. Make her first on your list.”
    “You got it.”
    Stone hung up. It bothered him that he himself was the subject of surveillance. He was going to have to start watching himself. He went into his study, unlocked a cabinet, and took out a Remington riot gun with an eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel. It was standard police issue; he had bought it at a departmental surplus equipment sale years before. He ignored the double-ought buckshot shells in the cabinet and chose number nine birdshot; he wasn’t out to blow a yawning hole in anybody. He inserted four shells into the gun, pumped a round into the chamber, then added one more shell and flipped on the safety. Then he walked upstairs to his bedroom and put the weapon on a small shelf he had built under the bed.
    Remembering that he had not relocked the cabinet, he went back downstairs to the study, key in hand. For a moment, he gazed at the nine-millimeter automatic, hanging inside in its shoulder holster, then decided against it and locked the cabinet. No need for that yet.
     

Chapter 30
     
    Stone stood half a block from Amanda’s building and waited for Martha to some out. Martha knew him by sight, and he would have to be careful.
    It was nearly six when she left the building, and she walked with great purpose down Lexington Avenue, went into a Gristedes market, stayed twenty minutes, and left with nothing in her hands. Probably having her groceries delivered. She walked on downtown, did some window shopping, and then did something Stone thought odd: She went into an expensive cosmetics shop and spent nearly forty minutes there, allowing a salesgirl to make her up, then leaving with a loaded shopping bag. This seemed strange, because Martha, on the occasions when he had seen her, had never worn makeup at all. There was a new man in her life, Stone figured.
    She continued downtown until she reached her building and went inside. Stone intended to wait until she emerged again. If she was still all made up she might have a date later. Then he saw a van parked a few yards down the street from her building; it was gray and had a telephone company logo on the sides. What surprised him was that Bob Cantor was behind the wheel, wearing a hard hat. Stone approached and knocked on a window.
    Cantor jumped, then grinned and let Stone in. “Just in time,” he whispered, “she’s on the phone with a guy.” He flipped a switch, and the call was played over a speaker.
    “…really sorry, but I’ve got this meeting,” a man’s