Swimming to Catalina

repetition.”
    “That’s always the best way, isn’t it?”
    “Well, it’sone way.”
    “Not the best way?”
    “Sometimes, my dear, you have to improvise.”
    “Improvise? How does one do that?”
    “Like this,” she said, “for starters.”

    “That’s a very nice starter. What’s the main course.”
    “You’re not ready for the main course.”
    “I think I’m getting there.”
    “I think you are, too!” she cried. “What a good student!”
    “I do my best,” he said.
    “You’d better, or you’ll have to repeat the course.”
    “Oh, God,” Stone moaned, “I don’t think I could repeat the course.”
    “We’ll see,” she said.

28
    The hour was near eleven when Stone, drained of any sexual desire and close to exhaustion, drove Barbara Tierney back to Marina Del Rey. As they pulled into the parking lot, she gasped and brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh, shit,” she said.
    “What?”
    “My friend is back; there’s his Porsche. What am I going to do? I can’t show up on the boat having been out all night.”
    “Um,” Stone said, helpfully. Then he had an idea. “Why don’t you run into the chandlery and buy some shorts or something. Change, and you can say you’ve been for a walk.” He peeled off a couple of hundreds and handed them to her.
    “You have a devious mind,” she said. “Thank God. Listen, you’d better beat it out of here before someone sees us together.” She leaned over and kissed him, then dug in her handbag, found a slip of paper, and wrote down a number. “You can call me here,” shesaid, handing it to him, “but only daytimes and…”
    “If a man answers, hang up.”
    “Right.”
    “Before you go,” he said, “satisfy my curiosity.”
    “About what?”
    “I was in the chandlery the other day, and I thought I saw you drive away in a Mercedes roadster. Whose car was that?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Bye.” She hopped out of the car and ran toward the chandlery.
    Stone drove away, but not before he had made a note of the Porsche’s vanity plate, which readBIGBUKS. He got out his portable phone and called Rick Grant.
    “Lieutenant Grant.”
    “Rick, it’s Stone.”
    “Hi. I was promised something on the boat registration before lunch.”
    “Something else; can you run a plate and a phone number for me?”
    “Sure.”
    “The plate is a vanity, BIGBUKS.” He dictated the phone number.
    “These won’t take long.”
    “How about lunch?”
    “Sure. See you at the Grange on Melrose in an hour?” He gave Stone directions.
    “Good.”
    “I should have something on the boat by then.”
    “See you then.” Stone hung up and turned in the general direction of Beverly Hills.
    They were seated in a garden again. Stone liked L.A.’s alfresco dining, which was a rarity in New York.
    “Okay,” Rick said, taking out his notebook, “theplate you gave me is registered to a Martin Barone, of a Beverly Drive address in Beverly Hills; he’s CEO of something called Barone Financial Services. The phone number you gave me, however, is not in Barone’s name; it’s just an extension off the Marina Del Rey’s number, which means it’s on a boat.”
    “What aboutPaloma ?”
    “The boat is more interesting; it’s registered to Abalone Fisheries, which is a processor of canned seafood.”
    “Why is that interesting?” Stone asked.
    “I pulled up some stuff about Abalone out of our financial database. It’s a cannery, all right, but it’s also a holding company; it owns, among other businesses, twenty-two percent of the stock of the Safe Harbor Bank. It also owns seventy-five percent of Barone Financial Services. Martin Barone owns the other twenty-five percent.”
    “A cannery owns a bank and a finance company?”
    “You don’t understand. You’ve heard of Warren Buffet?”
    “The richest man in America? Sure.”
    “His principal holding is Berkshire Hathaway, a textile mill. Years ago he bought the company, and he used it to invest in a lot of other companies, like Coca-Cola, and it’s now worth billions.”
    “Yeah? Who owns Abalone Fisheries?”
    “Onofrio Ippolito and David Sturmack. It’s their version of Berkshire Hathaway.”
    “Ahhhhh.”
    “I thought you’d like that.”
    “Seems like every time I turn over a rock, Ippolito is under it.”
    “What’s your interest in the boat?”

    “When your guys spotted Arrington’s car at the marina, a girl drove it away, and the same