Stone Barrington 06-11

believe they have all the answers are always wrong,” Stone said.
    “I know my position may seem harsh, but I wouldn’t trade places with someone who can’t decide what his position is.”
    A man Stone hadn’t seen before came up the stairs from the basement, carrying a wooden box, half the size of a briefcase. “They’re about done down there,” he said, “and they did a good job. You want to check?”
    “Yes,” Lance said, standing up.
    “And you asked me to bring this.” The man held out the box.
    Lance took it and handed it to Stone. “This is for you.”
    Stone opened the box and found a Keltec .380 pistol, a silencer, three loaded magazines, one in the gun and two in a pouch, and a small holster.
    “This is my personal advice to you, Stone, off the record,” Lance said. “When you encounter Billy Bob again, shoot him twice in the head immediately. If you try to take him or reason with him or wound him, he’ll kill you. My people don’t want him dead, and that’s supposed to be what I want, but I’m fond of you, in my way, and I wouldn’t want to lose your life because you underestimated Billy Bob, as I have tonight.”
    Lance went down the stairs, leaving Stone alone with his conscience.

37
    STONE SLEPT, or rather, didn’t sleep, with a .45 under his pillow, cocked and locked. As his mind raced through the night, considering alternatives, he considered Arrington. He had been out with her in public twice, and had perhaps been photographed or videotaped in her company, and that troubled him. He waited until after 7 A . M . to call her.
    “Hello?” she said sleepily.
    “Hi, it’s Stone.”
    “Good morning,” she said, her voice husky with sleep and, maybe, something else. “Did you conclude your business last night?”
    “Not really,” he said. “May we have breakfast together in your suite?”
    “All right.”
    “Order me some bacon and eggs; I’ll be there by the time room service delivers.”
    She gave him the room number. “See you then.” She hung up.
    Stone grabbed a shower and threw some things in a bag, then packed a Halliburton aluminum case with a couple of guns and ammunition. Then, with considerable reluctance, he went down to the garage. The place looked as it had before two men had been murdered there, but cleaner and neater. He got the car started and backed into the street, checking all around him, fore and aft, for any strange vehicle.
    He pulled away and turned up Third Avenue, watching to see if a car, any car at all, followed him. None did. He drove up to the Carlyle on the Upper East Side, parked his car in the hotel’s garage and walked next door to the lobby, again watching his back.
    Arrington answered the door in a beautiful nightgown with a matching pegnoir, her blond hair brushed back but with no makeup. “Good morning.”
    “I’m sorry to get you up so early,” he said, “but it’s important.”
    The doorbell rang. Stone sent Arrington back to the suite’s living room and looked through the peephole. A room-service waiter gazed blankly back at him. He let the man in and let him set up the rolling table; Arrington signed for their breakfast, and he left.
    Arrington raised her orange-juice glass. “Remember the old Chinese curse? ‘May you live in interesting times.’ ”
    “It’s appropriate,” Stone said.
    “What’s going on?”
    “I’m going to tell you this as concisely and as straight as I can,” Stone said. “None of what I have to say is hyperbole.”
    “All right.”
    “A week or so ago, Bill Eggers introduced me to a new client, who he said had asked for me. His name was Billy Bob Barnstormer.”
    “And you believed that?”
    “It doesn’t matter. For reasons we needn’t go into, Eggers talked me into putting him up at my house. He was there for several days, then he left, leaving a dead prostitute in my guest room.”
    Arrington’s eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing.
    “He arranged things so that I would be considered a suspect in her murder, then he vanished. Then I was introduced to Barbara Stein, a wealthy widow who had come to see Eggers, because she had seen a photograph of her husband, who was supposed to be out of the country, in Avenue magazine, with the mayor, and the same prostitute. It was Billy Bob, though she knew him as Whitney Stanford.”
    “I know that name,” Arrington said. “Someone from Dallas recommended him to me as some sort of a financial whiz.”
    “You didn’t meet him, I