Stone Barrington 06-11

be doing what he said he’d be doing, if he knew there was a warrant out for him.”
    “Okay, so I won’t ask for a Hawaii APB.”
    “The phone call was kind of scratchy, like it was from a long way away.”
    “A cell phone, maybe?”

    “Maybe.”
    “He could still be in the city, then?”
    “Could be. He checked out of the Four Seasons, though; I called yesterday.”
    “Could have changed hotels.”
    “And names. Did you add Peeples to the warrant?”
    “Yeah; that’s on the record, now. Does he know we know about the Peeples identity?”
    “I didn’t tell him, but the feds are looking for him under that name, and they’ve got a head start. If they find him first, lots of luck on ever getting him back for a murder trial.”
    “Yeah, I’d like to get my hands on him first.”
    Joan came into the room, and she didn’t look happy.
    “Dino, hang on for a minute. What’s up, Joan?”
    “The bank called; the cashier’s check cleared.”
    “Boy, that was fast.”
    “They wired the funds to a bank in the Cayman Islands.”
    “You hear that, Dino?” he said into the phone.
    “Yeah, we’ll never track him that way.”
    “There’s something else,” Joan said.
    “What?”
    “The check Billy Bob gave us bounced.”
    “ What? ”
    Joan shrugged.
    “I heard that,” Dino said. “Stone, you are a complete, absolute, gold-plated, fucking schmuck!”
    Stone could not find a reason to disagree.

17
    JOAN KNOCKED on Stone’s office door.
    Stone looked up. “Yes?”
    “Don’t look so depressed.”
    “I have good reason to feel depressed,” he said. “Somebody just stole fifty thousand dollars from me.”
    “Not to make it worse, but that leaves us overdrawn at the bank, and if I don’t get some money in there pronto, our checks are going to start bouncing.”
    Stone sighed. “All right, tell my broker to sell another fifty thousand and wire it.”
    “Ah, that would only replace Billy Bob’s fifty thousand, and we’ve already sent him that much, so we’re going to need to raise a hundred and fifty thousand, if we’re going to pay this week’s bills.”
    “All right, a hundred and fifty thousand,” Stone said. That meant that, in a single week, he had cashed in 20 percent of his portfolio.
    Joan disappeared.
    Stone grabbed his coat and walked down the hall to her office. “I’ve got to get out of the house, or I’ll go crazy,” he said.
    “Go shopping,” Joan suggested. “That usually makes you feel better.”
    “That makes women feel better,” Stone said. He left by the street door and started walking west. A cold wind whipped around him, blowing down his neck. He had forgotten to wear a muffler or a hat. By the time he got to Park Avenue he was freezing, and he was certain he was being followed. Crosstown traffic was heavy, of course, not moving much faster than he was, but the same black Suburban with darkened windows kept pulling even with him, then dropping back, allowing other traffic to pass. New York drivers did not allow other traffic to pass; in fact, most of them would rather block traffic completely than let anyone else pass. It was unnatural.
    He turned right on Park, walked to Fifty-seventh Street and turned west again. A few steps from Park, he went into Turnbull & Asser, his shirtmakers. He went up to the second floor and looked idly at ties, choosing a couple, then he found a cashmere scarf he liked. He looked at hats and chose a soft, foldable one, then he walked to the window and looked down: the black Suburban was parked across the street, next to a fire hydrant.
    Stone went to the rear of the shop, to the custom department, and started flipping through the book of Sea Island Cotton fabrics. He grabbed a pad and jotted down numbers of swatches, then a salesman approached.
    “Good afternoon, Mr. Barrington,” the man said. “May I help you?”
    Stone tore the sheet off the pad and handed it to him. “I’d like to order these numbers, please.”
    The man got an order pad and made note of the numbers.
    “How long?”
    “Eight to ten weeks.”
    That wasn’t exactly the instant gratification Stone was looking for. He charged the things he had selected and put on the scarf and the hat, then he walked back downstairs. The black Suburban was still there, its engine running.
    Stone looked down the street and saw a meter maid, or whatever they called them these days, coming. He cracked the front door. “Excuse me, miss,” he said.

    She walked over to the