Swimming to Catalina

possible.”
    “And where will you guys be all this time?”
    “We’ll be all over that building, just an elevator ride from you. If he cuts and runs, there’s no way he can get past us and out of the building.”
    “Suppose he just takes a gun out of his desk drawer and shoots me?” Stone asked.
    “Come on, he’s not going to commit murder in his own office, for Christ’s sake.”
    Cable spoke up again; he held up a Mont Blanc fountain pen, the fat model. “More goodies; this little beauty fires one twenty-two-caliber hollowpoint cartridge. You’ll be able to hit somebody at arm’s length—any farther away than that, no guarantees. I’d go for the head, if I were you.” He held up another pen. “Here’s a second one; put them in your inside coat pocket, where a man would normally carry a pen.” He unscrewed the cap and revealed a pen point. “It will actually write,” he said; then he screwed the cap back on. “To fire it, you point it and press down hard on the tip of the gold clip, see?” He demonstrated without actually firing the weapon.
    “I don’t see a barrel.”
    “That’s concealed under the plastic tip. The bullet will blow the end off the pen when it’s fired.”
    Stone took the pens and put them in his inside coat pocket.
    “Now,” Rick said, “after you’ve gotten him to incriminate himself, or if anything should go wrong, just say the word ‘police’ in any sentence. If you say ‘cops’ or ‘FBI’ or ‘IRS’or anything except ‘police,’ wewon’t move. But the minute we hear that word from you, we’re on our way with SWAT teams. We’ll have the elevator keys, and we can be with you in no more than a minute, a minute and a half at the outside.”
    “And if I’m in trouble, what am I supposed to do for those ninety seconds?”
    “That’s what the pens are for,” Cable said.
    “Okay,” Stone said, “I’ll do it.”

61
    Stone sat with Rick Grant and Dino in the parking garage of the Safe Harbor building. Stone took off his shoulder holster and handed it, with the pistol, to Rick. “I don’t think I’d get into Ippolito’s office wearing that, do you?” he asked, slipping back into his jacket.
    “Probably not,” Rick said.
    Dino, who had been uncharacteristically quiet during the planning of this event, spoke up. “Stone, I got a lot of problems with this,” he said.
    “What problems?”
    “You’re walking into this place, and you don’t know anything about it. On top of that, all you know about this Ippolito is that he’s a very, very bad guy who has already tried to kill you once. This is not a recipe for a nice day.”
    “I take your point, Dino, but I have a personal interest in this; I don’t want to sit around and wait for the feds to take forever to make a case against this guy. I want to hurt him myself.”

    “You already did that—twice,” Dino pointed out.
    “I cost him money, that’s all. I want to put the son of a bitch in prison forever.”
    “All right,” Dino said, “if you have to do it, then do it.”
    “Stone,” Rick said, “you don’t have to do this; I can call it off right now.”
    “Iwant to do it,” Stone said. “Now both of you shut up and let’s get on with it.”
    “Let me tell you the setup,” Rick said. “We’ve got a van parked across the street with a power company logo on it and a manhole open. The van is where all the radio equipment is. They’ll receive your signal, then amplify it and broadcast it to our handheld radios, so everybody can hear you all the time. We’ve got two FBI SWAT teams in vans here in the garage; they’ve taken an elevator out of service, and it’s just sitting there, waiting to go straight to the top. We’ve got plainclothes people loitering near every security station in the bank, so that there’s no early warning to Ippolito’s suite that we’re on the way. We’ve got people sitting on David Sturmack and Martin Barone; we’ll bust them the minute you’re safe. Also, the feds have got search warrants for Safe Harbor and all its branches; also for Barone Financial and Albacore Fisheries, and we’ve got the bank examiners ready to roll the minute you’re out of the building.”
    “Sounds good,” Stone said, then he pointed at something. “Look at that,” he said.
    A Rolls-Royce convertible drove past and parked in a bay across from them; David Sturmack got out and went to the elevators.
    “Maybe he’s going up to Ippolito’s office,” Rick