Stone Barrington 06-11

that,” Stone said to Arrington.
    Arrington shook her head. “Not the way I wanted to reenter New York life,” she said, folding her napkin and laying it on the table. “I’d like to go now, and we’d better find another way out of the restaurant. I have a feeling there will be a knot of cameras at the front door.”
    Stone waved for a check.

32
    WHEN STONE GOT BACK to his house, after putting Arrington into a cab for the Carlyle Hotel, a thicket of seedy men with cameras surrounded his doorstep.
    “What do you want?” Stone asked, playing the innocent.
    A hail of questions swept over him. He held up his hands for silence. “Listen carefully; I’m going to give you a statement.”
    They became suddenly rapt.
    “This morning somebody called me about a videotape on a government Web site. I haven’t seen it; I had nothing to do with it; I’m sure it did not contain images of any government official. Sounds to me like you’ve all confused that image with some innocent person. Go away.” He elbowed his way through the crowd and let himself into the house, leaning on the door to catch his breath.
    “Hi.”
    Stone jumped about a foot. “Sandy, what are you doing here?”
    “Lance sent me over to look at your alarm system, remember?”
    “Oh, yeah, I forgot.”
    “It had been disabled.”
    “What?”
    “Somebody had set it up so that it seemed to behave normally when you entered your code, either arriving or departing, but it was doing absolutely nothing. They could have kicked in the door, come upstairs and shot you in your bed, and the alarm would have been completely useless. I’m referring to video shooting, of course.”
    “Did you fix it?”
    “Yes, but—I’ve already told your secretary this—I would be very careful from now on about who you let into the house. Be suspicious of plumbers and, especially, electricians.”
    “I will be suspicious of them. Thank you.”
    “Call Lance if you need me again.”
    “I certainly will. Maybe you’d better leave through the garden, unless you want to be on Hard Gossip tonight. I don’t think Lance would like that.”
    “Right.”
    Stone let him out into the garden and instructed him on how to reach the street, then he went to his office.
    Joan came in. “Did Sandy tell you about the alarm?”
    “Yes, he did.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “I wish I knew.”
    She leaned against the doorjamb and grinned. “So, how’s Arrington?”
    “As you saw her.”
    “She going to be around for a while?”
    “Maybe; she’s looking at apartments.”
    “How nice.”
    “Get out of here, please.”
    Joan went back to her office, chuckling.
    Stone called Lance.
    “Yes?”
    “Thanks for sending Sandy back. Turns out, the alarm system had been disabled, but he fixed it. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
    “It seems that Billy Bob has decided to make your life hell.”

    “Why?”
    “I would imagine, because you’re making his life hell.”
    “No, you are.”
    “You’re helping; he’s seen you doing so. Because of you, his wife has kicked him out of her very nice apartment, and he can’t go back to his own place. He’s pissed off.”
    “I suppose he is. Of course, he left a corpse in my house and stole fifty thousand dollars from me.”
    “Billy Bob is a sociopath; he doesn’t consider your feelings when he acts. His actions are taken only to gratify himself, and right now, he finds it gratifying to make you miserable.”
    “I know about sociopaths; I dealt with a lot of them as a cop.”
    “I doubt if you ever dealt with one as ingenious and as well financed as Billy Bob. The man has technical resources, too, so he’s clearly not working alone. He’s managed, in one fell swoop, to cause both you and Ms. Baldwin a great deal of difficulty. I imagine that a nude photograph of her is on half a dozen bulletin boards at the Justice Department by now. This could, conceivably, end her career, depending on how she handles it. You know how our Attorney General feels about exposed body parts.”
    “How are you going to catch Billy Bob?”
    “It might help if we had the cell phone number he called you from.”
    “Don’t start with that again, Lance. Tiff is now not speaking to me at all, so I can hardly get her to give it to me. Maybe her people can track him down with the number.”
    “That is not what we want, is it?”
    “Does it really matter who puts the guy in prison, as long as he ends up there?”
    “They want him for