“Okay. Come down tomorrow morning about eleven, and I’ll see what I can do. You remember the address?”

“Oh, yes.”

“See you then.” Vito hung up.

“Herbie,” Stone said, “I’m afraid there’s been a little hitch in getting you the reward.”

54

HERBIE FINALLY SEEMED to take a hint and left. Lance watched him walk out of Elaine’s. “You know, that is one of the densest human beings it has ever been my misfortune to meet.”

“I have to agree,” Stone said. “And he’s one of the most annoying, too.”

“Then why do you keep messing with him?” Dino asked.

“I don’t keep messing with him. He keeps messing with me.”

“You, too, Lance,” Dino said.

“I know, I know. He was there when I needed him for a photograph, and now I can’t get rid of him. He’s convinced that he’d be perfect for Agency operations.”

“Can’t you find a suicide mission to send him on?” Stone asked.

“Herbie is the kind of guy who’d walk into a suicide mission and walk out with a smile on his face and everybody else dead, and he wouldn’t have had a thing to do with it.”

“How the hell did you ever come up with him?” Stone asked.

“An operator I know gave him to me; Herbie’s his nephew.”

“You, too? You know Bob Cantor?”

“You know Bob Cantor?” Lance responded.

“He works for me all the time.”

“Well, he has more than one client.”

“No wonder he’s busy when I call him these days,” Stone said.

“Okay,” Dino said, “what’s the deal with the phone call you just got?”

“It was Vito.”

“I got that part.”

“He says he may be able to put his hands on Trini tomorrow. He wants us to come down to his grocery store tomorrow morning.”

“You’d better take this seriously,” Dino said. “Vito Galeano is a serious guy.”

Holly spoke up. “He certainly seemed serious when he was about to shoot us and bury us in his cellar,” she said.

“Believe me, he was,” Dino replied. He turned to Stone. “What made you think to ask him to call Eduardo?”

“If I’d asked him to call the mayor, it wouldn’t have worked,” Stone said. “Come on, Dino, who else do I know who’s connected?”

“You could have told him to call me.”

“A guy’s about to shoot us, and I should tell him to call a cop?”

“I’ve known Vito since we were kids. He’s a coupla years older than me, but we went to the same school. He pulled a bunch of bigger kids off me once and slapped them around, so I always felt I owed him. Once, when he was in a tight spot, I had a chance to help, and he’s been grateful. Here’s some advice: If you know him now, next time you get in trouble with some wise guys, tell them to call Vito, instead of Eduardo. Not one in a hundred of them knows Eduardo, but they all know Vito, and they don’t mess with him.”

“I guess that’s good advice,” Stone said. He turned to Lance. “I hear you’re trying to recruit Holly to your organization on a more full-time basis.”

“Stone!” Holly hissed.

“It’s all right, Holly,” Lance said. “Stone’s family.”

“I am?” Stone asked.

“You signed up, didn’t you?”

“I guess I did at that. Holly, maybe Lance is the guy to help you with your little money problem.”

Holly turned red. “Stone, you’d better shut up right now.”

“Are you in need of funds, Holly?” Lance asked, sounding concerned.

“No, I am not,” Holly replied.

“Far from it,” Stone chipped in.

“I don’t understand,” Lance said.

“It’s better that way,” Holly replied.

“Come on, Holly,” Stone said, “who better than Lance?”

“Yes,” Lance said, “who better than me? If you have a problem, I’d like to help.”

Holly looked around the table.

“Maybe I’d better go to the john,” Dino said, half rising.

“Sit down, Dino. All right, I’ll tell you about it.” Holly went through her story. Everyone was rapt, except Stone, who seemed to have trouble not laughing.

When she had finished, Lance patted her hand. “Don’t worry about it, my dear, we’ll think of something.”

“Think of what?” Stone asked.

“Yes, what?” Holly echoed.

Lance looked around to be sure he wasn’t being overheard. “You have a large sum of money obtained from an illegal operation-money you didn’t report. You want to get rid of it in a, shall we say, profitable manner?”

“I suppose.”

“This is called money laundering, and there are a number of ways to do it.”

“I’ll bet,” Stone said.

“All of them carry a certain amount of risk,” Lance explained. “Perhaps the safest thing to do is for you to get the case to me, and I’ll deal with it. After a little time has passed, you’ll have a sizeable sum deposited in an overseas bank account. You’ll receive a credit card in the mail, and from then on, you charge whatever you wish to the card. You’ll have to keep track of what you spend in your head, because you don’t want the mailman bringing a monthly statement, do you?”

“That’s it?” Holly asked.

“That’s it.”

“It sounds too simple.”

“Well, you’ll have to pay a service charge on the original deposit, say, ten percent.”

“To whom?”

“It’s better you don’t know. But you’ll still have more than five million in the bank, should you ever need it, and it would be invested in any manner you wish.”

“So, I’d be earning money?”

“I should think at least an eight percent return.”

“Nice.”

“Of course, you’ll owe taxes on what you earn, but you can invest in tax-free municipals. You can buy just about anything with a credit card these days-a car, for instance-but you’d want to stay away from buying anything that would create a legal record, like a house.”

“A car creates a legal record,” Holly said.

“Not an important one. It wouldn’t show up on your credit report, for instance, if you didn’t finance it.”

“There you are,” Stone said. “Problem solved.”

“Not exactly,” she replied. “I’ve still got to get it to Lance.”

“Put it in your car and drive it up here,” Stone said.

“Or in your airplane.”

“Forget that. I’m not getting involved. I have a law license to protect.”

“Do it while you’ve still got a badge to flash,” Lance said, “in case you’re stopped by a highway patrolman who wants to search your car.”

“I’ll think about it,” Holly said. She turned to Stone. “Can we go home now?”

“Sure.”

Dino spoke up. “I want to go with you to Vito’s place tomorrow.”

“Why?” Stone asked.

“You’ll be better off with me there.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Good with me,” Holly said.

“And don’t you go into that store until I say so.”

55

STONE AND HOLLY were having breakfast the following morning.

“I don’t like this,” Stone said.

“What don’t you like?”

“Before, when we went into that apartment with Dino, we had a SWAT team ahead of us, and there was shooting. Now we’re just supposed to walk into Vito’s grocery store and walk out with Trini? It doesn’t add up, and if it did, I still wouldn’t want to go in there like that.”

“What do you suggest?”

Stone called Dino.

“Bacchetti.”

“I don’t like it, Dino.”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Stone, dummy. You don’t recognize my voice after all these years?”

“What don’t you like?”

“I don’t like walking into that grocery store with no SWAT team and no backup.”

“Vito’s your backup.”

“The last time I saw Vito he was backing me into a freshly dug grave.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“Why should I trust him? Because he didn’t kill me?”

“That’s a start.”

“That was because he was afraid of Eduardo.”

“Because he respected Eduardo.”

“Whatever. He didn’t back off because he’d suddenly taken a liking to me.”

“Maybe he liked Holly.”

“He was going to kill her, too.”