6 Stone Barrington Novels (180 page)

STONE WALKED
Barbara Stein downstairs.

“Would you like to come and get the key now?” she asked. “You can ride with me.”

“Yes, thank you.” They got into her car, while the chauffeur held the door for her. Stone looked around the interior. It was the new Maybach, made by Mercedes-Benz, and he hadn't been in one before.

“Go ahead and play with the seat,” she said, pointing to the controls. “Everyone wants to.”

Stone tried the switches and discovered that it was much like a first-class airline seat. He could nearly recline.

“Fun, isn't it?” she asked, smiling.

Stone thought she looked very nice in a smile. “Yes, it is. I drive the small economy version of your car.”

“I would never have bought the thing, but Morris ordered it before he died, and I thought, what the hell?”

“How long were you and your husband married?” Stone asked, as they made their way silently through traffic.

“Twenty-one years,” she said. “I was twenty-two and working as a flight attendant on the transatlantic route. Morris flew with me twice, then asked me to dinner in London. I was swept off my feet. He had been widowed for less than a year.”

Stone was doing the arithmetic. She was older than he had thought, but apparent youth was common among the well-tended women of the ultrarich class.

“Do the math, yet?” she asked. “You're blushing. It's so rare to meet a man with blond hair these days; you even have blond eyebrows. What are your national origins?”

“English on both sides, all the way back to the Bronze Age, but I suppose a Viking rapist must have insinuated himself, somewhere along the way.”

“I expect it gets blonder in the summertime.”

“I'm afraid so.”

“I'm Polish, myself,” she said. “My maiden name was Murawski.”

“A handsome people, the Poles.”

She laughed. “I like you, Mr. Barrington.”

“Please call me Stone.”

“And I'm Barbara. Where did the name come from?”

“My mother's name was Matilda Stone.”

“The painter?”

“Yes.”

“I've seen her things at the Metropolitan, in the American Wing.”

The car drew to a smooth halt in front of 1111 Fifth Avenue, and they got out and went inside.

Barbara Stein lived in a three-story house, it turned out, but it was situated at the top of a fourteen-story apartment building. The elevator opened directly into the foyer, and a butler stood waiting to open the doors to the living room, which was on the top floor.

“There are two other floors downstairs,” she said, “but we always enjoyed entertaining up here, because of the terrace. She led him through French doors to a beautifully planted terrace stretching the width of the building, with spectacular views west and south over Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum.

“Breathtaking,” Stone said.

“Would you like something to drink? Iced tea, perhaps?”

“Thank you, perhaps another time. I'd really like to get that key and get some people over there as quickly as possible.”

“Of course; please follow me.” She led him down a floor to a gigantic bedroom and thence to a large, mahogany-paneled dressing room, filled with a man's clothing. She rummaged in the top drawer of a built-in stack and came up with a key. “Here it is.” She gave him the address.

“Do you know if he has a safe there?”

“I expect so; there's one here, too, behind his suits.”

“Then, if it's not too much of an imposition, I'd like to bring some people back here to go through his things and open the safe.”

“Of course; whenever you like.”

“In the meantime, you might ask your staff to pack all these things, and they needn't be careful about how they do it.”

She laughed. “I'll see that they make a mess of it.” She led Stone back upstairs and to the foyer. “Thank you so much for your advice. When can we start on the annulment?”

“First, let me see what we come up with in the search, then we can make a decision.”

She rang for the elevator and held out her hand. “I'll look forward to hearing from you.” She held onto his hand just a moment longer than necessary.

“I'll phone you later today,” Stone said. “Are you in the book?”

“Under B. Stein.”

He gave her his card. The elevator arrived, and Stone rode down. On the sidewalk, he phoned Lance.

“Yes?” Lance drawled.

“Meet me at . . .” Stone looked at the address and read it to him. “Between Lex and Third.”

“Why?”

“Because I have the key to Whitney Stanford's apartment at that address.”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“Fine, and bring some help and a safecracker. Later, you'll need to go to an apartment on Fifth Avenue, too, where his wife lives.”

“Wife?”

“Of some months. She was formerly married to Morris Stein.”

“
The
Morris Stein?”

“The same.”

“Good God!”

“Fifteen minutes.”

THEY ARRIVED
at the building, in the East Sixties, simultaneously, Lance with two companions. It was a small apartment building, with no doorman. They took the elevator to the top floor and let themselves in. “We have Mrs. Stanford's permission, so a warrant won't be necessary,” Stone said.

“A warrant is rarely necessary,” Lance replied drolly. The place was a two-bedroom floor-through, professionally decorated in an impersonal style, with a roof terrace at the back.

“All right,” Lance said, “take the place apart, but this is a covert search; everything must be left exactly as it was. Jim, find the safe and get started on that first.” The two men went to work, and so did Stone and Lance.

“Watch me for a minute,” Lance said. He donned a pair of latex gloves, went to a desk in the living room, pulled out a drawer, and set it on top of the desk, then he removed and replaced precisely the contents of the drawer. “Like that,” he said. “I realize you haven't been trained to do this, so go slowly, and check the bottoms of the drawers, too.” He handed Stone some gloves.

He left Stone to the desk and went to another room. Stone went through the drawers very carefully, and under the right-hand top drawer he found a small piece of paper taped in place.

“Lance,” he called.

“Yes?”

“You're not going to need to crack the safe; I've found the combination.”

Lance returned, looked at the piece of paper once, then went away again. A moment later, he called out, “Stone, come in here.”

Stone found his way to the master bedroom and into a dressing room. Lance stood before an open safe.

“My God,” he murmured. There were four passports stacked up in a corner of the safe, next to stacks of cash in dollars, pounds and Euros. Stone picked up a stack. “Two-dollar bills,” he said, “unused and with consecutive serial numbers. The rest seem to be hundreds.”

“Photograph everything,” Lance said to his men, “then put it all back. I want an individual, readable shot of every page of every passport. Take down the serial numbers of every bank note.”

Lance left them to it while he and Stone went quickly through the other rooms of the apartment. Except for the contents of the safe, not another scrap of paper yielded any useful information.

TWO HOURS LATER
they had finished and returned everything in the apartment to its original state. As they were about to open the door, there was a noise from the other side. Lance held a finger to his lips, and he and the other two men produced guns and stood away from the door.

There was a scraping noise that went on for, perhaps, thirty seconds, then the door opened and two men walked in, followed by a woman.

The woman was Tiffany Baldwin.

TIFF STARED AT STONE.
“What the hell are
you
doing here, and who the hell are these guys?” She gestured at Lance and his two men.

Lance showed her his ID. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, looking appreciatively up and down her. “My name is Lance Cabot.”

“How do you do?” she said, then turned back to Stone. “You really are mixed up with the CIA?”

“ ‘Mixed up' is a good way to put it,” Stone said.

“You haven't answered my question,” Tiff replied. She turned back to Lance. “What are you doing here?”

Lance spoke up. “It would appear that we have a mutual interest in the gentleman who resides here. I should think we also have a mutual interest in not disturbing the contents of his apartment. If he knows either of us has been here, he'll bolt.”

“I assume you've already turned over the place.”

“You assume correctly. The only items of any interest were four passports from as many English-speaking countries and some cash. They're all in a safe, and we left it undisturbed. May I suggest that, if we have anything further to discuss, we do it outside? The man could come home at any moment.”

“All right,” Tiff said. She led the way out of the apartment. The elevator had to make two trips to get them all downstairs.

On the sidewalk, Lance spoke to her again. “I assume you're after Mr. Stanford for financial crimes?”

“You could say that,” Tiff replied.

“We are here on a matter of national security,” he said, “and I'm afraid that trumps your investigation. I must ask you to stay away from the man. There's a great deal more at stake here than you realize.”

“We'll see about that,” Tiff said.

“Have your boss call my boss,” Lance said. “So good to meet you.” He herded Stone and his two men toward an anonymous-looking sedan.

Stone stopped and whispered in Tiff's ear. “Dinner tonight?”

“You're on,” she said.

“Elaine's at nine o'clock. See you there.”

Lance held the door of the sedan, and Stone climbed in.

He phoned Barbara Stein. “May I bring over my people now?”

“Of course,” she said. “I have an appointment at my hairdresser's, but I'll instruct the butler to let you in and give you the run of the place. I won't be back before five this afternoon. I'm leaving a note with the doorman for Whitney.”

“Thank you, Barbara; we'll leave the place as neat as possible.” He hung up and turned to Lance. “We're on.” The car drove away.

“I'm impressed with your resourcefulness, Stone, not to mention your acquaintanceship.” Lance said. “I was optimistic about your eventual value to us, but you've surpassed my expectations.”

“I'll bill you,” Stone said.

“How ever did you learn about the wife and the apartment?”

“I have my methods.”

“We must discuss those sometime. You know, I think it might be valuable for you to take a little trip down to rural Virginia for a few weeks sometime, to undergo some useful training.”

“Useful to whom?”

“To us and to you. I think you might find the experience entertaining.”

“Is this the famous ‘Farm' you're talking about?”

“Camp Peary, to be precise.”

“Lance, I would not find it entertaining to run around in the woods, being barked at by drill sergeants. I'm a little . . . mature for that sort of thing.”

“Oh, it's not like that at all. You'd enjoy learning some of the dark arts.”

“You make it sound like Hogwart's Academy.”

“Well, I suppose it is, in its way.”

They pulled to a halt in front of Barbara Stein's building and got out of the car.

“You know,” Lance said reverentially, “someone once said that, if there is a God, he probably lives at Eleven Eleven Fifth Avenue.”

Stone spoke to the doorman, and they were sent upstairs, where the butler greeted them.

“Gentlemen,” the man said in a tony British accent, “my name is Smithson. Mrs. Stein has told me that you are to have access to the entire apartment, and that I am to assist you in any way I can.”

“Thank you, Smithson,” Stone said, “but I don't think we'll need anything.”

“There are bells scattered around the three floors, for butler, maid and cook. Should you require my help, please press the ‘butler' button.”

“Thank you.” Stone turned to Lance. “Let's start with our man's dressing room; there's a safe in there.”

Stone led them downstairs to the master bedroom and thence to Stanford's dressing room.

“The man does live well, doesn't he?” Lance said, looking around at the racks and cubicles full of expensive clothing.

Stone pushed back some suits, revealing the safe.

“Get started on that,” Lance said to one of the men. “The rest of us are going to go through the pockets of every jacket and pair of trousers in this room, collecting every stray piece of paper we find.”

Stone took a suit off a rack, hung it on a hook, and started to go through it.

DOWNSTAIRS THE DOORMAN
watched as a red Hummer trundled to a stop at the end of the building's awning, and Mr. Whitney Stanford got out.

The doorman stepped directly into the man's path. “Good afternoon, Mr. Stanford,” he said, removing an envelope from his pocket and handing it to him.

Stanford accepted the envelope. “I'll read it upstairs,” he said, starting to move around the man.

“I'm sorry, sir,” the doorman said. “But Mrs. Stein has asked me to tell you that you may not enter the building.”

“What?”

“I believe the letter in the envelope will explain.”

Stanford ripped open the envelope and read the letter, which was short. He tucked it into an inside pocket. “Please tell
Mrs. Stanford
that I'll be at my apartment, and ask her to phone me.”

“I'll give
Mrs. Stein
the message, sir. Good day.” He opened the rear door of the Hummer. Stanford got in, and the truck drove away.

“ALL RIGHT,
what have we got?” Lance asked.

“The contents of the safe are much like those of the one in his own apartment,” one of the men said. “Three passports—Irish, South African and British—and about a hundred and twenty thousand in dollars and Euros. And a stack of two-dollar bills.”

Stone pointed to a paper on the dresser top. “We've got credit card receipts, one from a tailor and several phone numbers jotted on scrap paper,” he said.

“Write everything down and put it all back,” Lance said.

“Mrs. Stein is moving all this stuff into a storage facility tomorrow,” Stone said.

“In that case, we'll take the paper with us—the passports and cash, too.” He turned to Stone. “How do you suppose he's generating all this cash?”

“Various scams, I guess, but he's working with eight million dollars that he claims to be investing for his wife.”

“That should keep him going for a while,” Lance said. “Does Stanford have a study here?”

“His wife says not.”

“Then we're done; let's get out of here.”

The went back downstairs, and as they left the building, the doorman spoke.

“Excuse me, Mr. Barrington?”

“Yes?”

“You might like to know that Mr. Stanford was here less than an hour ago.”

Lance took an immediate interest. “Do you know where he went?”

“He said that he was going to his apartment, and Mrs. Stein could phone him there.”

“Let's go,” Lance said, heading for the car.

“Oh, and he was riding in a red Hummer,” the doorman called after them.