“I have, discreetly.”

“And a photo?”

“Yes. Otherwise they wouldn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. They’re cops, not readers of antiques magazines.”

“Granted. I’ve got to look into the other member of Barton’s outfit who seems a candidate for all this. Can you do a search on arrests and convictions for a Charles Crow?”

“The real estate guy?”

“There’s a real estate guy named Charles Crow?”

“You don’t ever read the papers, do you?”

“Every day.”

“Not the Times, the Daily News and the Post.”

“Dino, I know you consider those rags newspapers, but there’s nothing in them that I need to know.”

“If you read them, you’d know about Charlie Crow.”

“What would I know?”

“Crow is this hotshot real estate… speculator, I guess you’d say. Made a bunch of money, got himself a trophy third wife and a publicist to get him on Page Six. You know what Page Six is?”

“Of course, Dino.” Page Six was the Post’s gossip page.

“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Crow make an appearance there at least once a week, every day during the trial.”

“Trial?”

“Yeah, he got caught in some sort of property swindle, but he got off. Cost him a couple of million in legal fees, though.”

“That could put a dent in a fellow’s wallet, couldn’t it? Especially if he has a trophy wife and a publicist to support.”

“I guess so. Charlie Crow was in Barton’s outfit?”

“Yeah, and Barton says he was a wheeler-dealer even then.”

“Are you sure it’s the same Charlie Crow?”

“No, I’m not,” Stone said. “That was your contention. Is he from the Bronx?”

“Yeah, and you can take the boy out of the Bronx, but…”

“I get the picture,” Stone said. “Charlie is still a little rough around the edges, then?”

“Correct picture.”

“I’d like to know if he has a sheet for anything besides his real estate scam.”

Dino unsheathed his cell phone and made the call. “They’ll get back to me,” he said, putting the phone away.

“Who’s Charlie’s publicist?” Stone asked.

“Ask the guy behind you.”

Stone turned and found Bobby Zarem, ace publicist, at the next table. “Hey, Bobby,” he said.

“Hey, Stone.”

“You ever heard of a guy named Charlie Crow?”

“Hasn’t everybody?”

“You don’t, by any chance, represent him, do you?”

“Too sleazy for my taste,” Zarem said. “He’s one of Irv Kaplan’s clients. They’re well suited to each other.”

“Thanks, Bobby.” Stone turned back to Dino. “You hear that?”

Dino held up a hand while he opened his cell phone. “Bacchetti. Yeah? Yeah. Read it to me. Thanks.” Dino hung up. “Charlie had a juvey record, small time stuff: joyriding in other people’s cars, petty theft. Nothing after that. Maybe the Marines straightened him out.”

“From what Barton says, they just made him a better criminal.”

“Barton should talk.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about the gold double eagle.” Stone told him the story.

“So, when Barton gets a little short, he can always stamp out another twenty-dollar gold piece and sell it for a few million?”

“He’s admitted to doing that twice but not recently.”

“Our Barton is quite the card, isn’t he?”

“He certainly is,” Stone agreed. “Did I mention that the die for the gold coin was in a drawer of the secretary when it was stolen?”

“You did not mention that, but I guess it makes Barton more anxious than ever to get the furniture back.”

“Yes, it certainly must,” Stone said.

“Well, let’s hope whoever has the thing doesn’t go through the drawers; he might recognize it. What does a die look like, anyway?”

“I’m not sure, but I once had a tour through a factory that makes class rings, and they had this good-sized machine that stamped them out. They’d put a blank piece of gold, already cut to shape, into the thing, and bang, the thing stamped the design onto it. The die part was pretty small, though, not a lot bigger than the ring it stamped out.”

“So you could put the die in your pocket?”

“Or in a small drawer in a large piece of furniture.”

“Having the die would be like having a license to print money, wouldn’t it?”

“It would be like not having a license to print money, just a printing press.”

“That would do me,” Dino said.

21

Stone was at his desk at the crack of ten. Joan had left a list of the bills needing to be paid, and it turned out to be a rather depressing list, since there was not enough cash in his bank account to meet them.

Joan came to his office door. “Good afternoon,” she said archly.

“Don’t start, Joan.”

“You saw what we owe?”

“Yes.”

“And what we have in the bank?”

“Yes. Use your own judgment as to which and how many to pay.”

“Is there any oil in the pipeline?” she asked.

“There is oil in the ground, and as soon as I locate it, there will be an abundance in the pipeline.”

“So much for geology,” she said, then returned to her office.

Stone called Bob Cantor.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Bob, you sound a little down.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I can’t go into it.”

“Let me ask you a question: Was the guy you saw at Clarke’s Charlie Crow?”

There was a dead silence.

“Bob?”

“How did you know that?”

“The information came my way in connection with some work I’m doing for a client.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Bob, how else would I be able to guess that? And it was a guess.”

“I only saw him for a minute.”

“And he saw you.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why didn’t he speak to you?”

“Look, we made a pact a long time ago not to contact each other.”

“Do you think his presence at Clarke’s was just a coincidence?”

“It’s a popular place; a lot of people drink there.”

“Do you think it was a coincidence?”

Cantor sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just didn’t expect him to pop up on my radar.”

“Another of your former Marine buddies has popped up, this time on my radar.”

“Huh?”

“Ab Kramer.”

“Holy shit. How’d you run into him?”

“I was having dinner at a restaurant in Litchfield, Connecticut, with Barton Cabot, and he stopped by our table to say hello, then stayed for a drink.”

“Why were you having dinner with the Colonel?”

“At his invitation. I’m trying to help him recover the property he lost when he was, well, mugged, shall we say?”

“How is he?”

“He seems to have recovered himself, except that he can’t remember anything about being beaten up.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t think he would conceal anything from me that would help find his property.”

“The Colonel is a complicated man,” Cantor said.

“You mean he lies a lot?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way. Let’s just say that he plays his cards very close to his vest. Always.”

“You know that Kramer has done well on Wall Street?”

“I read the business pages.”

“What do you know about Charlie Crow’s business life?”

“I read Page Six in the Post, too.”

“So you know that Charlie seems to have an unscrupulous side to his nature?”

“Charlie Crow was born with an unscrupulous side to his nature. When we were in ’Nam, if there were two ways to get something done, he would always choose the crooked way, and he’d always make a profit doing it.”

“Would you say that Charlie has a tendency to hold a grudge?”

“Forever,” Cantor replied.

“So, you think he might still be just a tiny bit peeved about the split in your caper with the gold coins?”

“How’d you know about the gold coins?”

“The Colonel told me.”

“Oh. One of the many reasons I was glad to agree never to contact any of the others again was that I would never again have to listen to Charlie Crow bitch about his cut. If he walked in here right now, the first thing he’d say to me would be ‘Y’know, I got screwed on that deal with the Colonel.’ ”