by Stuart Woods
He stepped softly aboard and peered through the glass door into the cabin. The light on the pontoon illuminated the interior of the boat, and he could see no one. The cabin door was locked, but it was flimsy, and he made short work of it with the tire iron, making some noise in the process. He half hoped he would wake somebody aboard, so that he could use the tire iron in another way. He walked through the saloon and checked the sleeping cabins; both empty.
Free to work undisturbed, he found the engine room and switched on the lights. There were two large gasoline engines, and he inspected them carefully; they were cooled with raw sea water, as he had hoped. He found a screwdriver and loosened the clips that held the water hoses onto the seacocks, then he pulled the hoses free. He looked around for another opportunity but saw none, so he opened both seacocks and watched the sea water gush onto the engine room floor, then he went forward and did the same for the seacock at the ship’s toilet. Satisfied, he went back on deck, looked around for traffic, then padded back to his car. By dawn, he figured, Maria would be resting comfortably on the bottom.
He drove back to the Bel-Air Hotel and, avoiding the front parking lot, drove through a rear gate and parked as close as he could to his suite. Once there, he showered, changed clothes, threw away the jeans and sweatshirt, then packed and carried his cases to the car. As he drove away, the sun was rising. He went back to Le Parc, where he was still paying for a suite, drove into the garage, and carried his cases up the rear stairs to his suite. Then he got into bed and fell immediately asleep.
He woke at eleven, then called Rick Grant and made a lunch date.
Lunch was a hot dog on the Santa Monica Pier.
“How’s it going?” Grant asked.
“I’ll tell you, but I want it understood that I’m not reporting a crime; this is strictly off the books.”
“Agreed,” Grant replied.
“Yesterday, Onofrio Ippolito, called me at the Bel-Air and invited me to a dinner party aboard his yacht, anchored off Catalina. I went to Marina Del Rey for my ferry ride, which was conducted in a fast sports fisherman by Vincent Mancuso and a friend of his called Manny. When we were almost there, one of them pulled a gun, then they bound me hand and foot, attached a chain and an anchor to me, and kicked me overboard. Just before they did that, one of them said, ‘Compliments of Onofrio Ippolito.’”
Grant looked at him oddly. “And why are you still here?”
“I got very lucky, shed the anchor, and made it to a moored sailboat. Some very nice people brought me back to the mainland.”
“And you’re not reporting the crime? You don’t want me to arrest Ippolito and his boys for attempted murder?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. You could nail the two hoods, but I don’t think you could make the case against Ippolito on the basis of the phone call, and Vinnie and Manny sure aren’t going to implicate him.”
“Probably not. What do you want to do?”
“Well, I’ve made a start; I sank their boat, Maria, very early this morning. She’s right in the middle of Marina Del Rey; they’ll have a hell of a time getting her up, and it will be very expensive.”
Grant burst out laughing. “You’re tight, that’s a start. What next?”
“I told you I thought there was a bookie operation running out of Vinnie’s Deli. Can you have it raided?”
“I’d need probable cause for a warrant.”
“How about a tip from a snitch?”
“Who?”
“Me. You can even put my name on it, if you have to.”
“I think I can arrange a raid.”
“Good; I hope your guys won’t be too careful with the fixtures and fittings.”
“I’ll mention that. What else?”
“This guy, Martin Barone? I’d like to know everything there is to know about him and Barone Financial Services.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know somebody at the FBI that you can trust?”
Grant thought about that for a minute. “What part of the FBI?”
“Them that deal with financial institutions.”
“Yeah, I know a guy.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Tell him there might be a kidnapping involved; those guys love a kidnapping.”
“Okay. Where can I find you?”
“I’m back at Le Parc. I figure they won’t be looking for me there.”
“No, but they might send a cleanup crew.”
“Jesus, I hadn’t thought of that; I’d better get out of there fast.”
“You need a place? I live about three blocks from here; my kid’s in college, you can have his room.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather stick with hotels; I’ll let you know where I am.” Stone pulled out his cell phone and switched it on; it lit up, as usual. “Son of a bitch, it still works. I’ll have to write Motorola a nice letter.”
“I can check with you on that number?”
“Yep.”
“Anything else?”
“Rick, can you get hold of a handgun for me?”
“Something untraceable, I suppose.”
“I’d rather not fill out any federal forms.”
“Stone, are you planning to shoot somebody?”
“Not at the moment, but you never know.”
34
Stone got himself out of Le Parc as fast as he could, first calling the Beverly Hills Hotel for a reservation. He might as well be comfortable, he thought, and hide in plain sight. He checked into a small suite and rang for the valet.
“Yes, sir?” the man said when Stone opened the door.
Stone held up his sodden suit, which he had hung on a hanger, and his shoes, into which he had inserted trees. “Do you think you can do anything with these?”
The man gingerly lifted a sleeve and sniffed it. “Salt water?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Stone said. “A boating accident.”
“I’ll have to soak it in fresh water first, to get out the salt, and then press it several times as it dries.”
“Can I hope for the best?” Stone asked.
“You can always hope, sir, but I won’t make any rash promises.”
“Do the best you can,” Stone said, slipping the man fifty.
“I most certainly will, sir.”
The man disappeared, and Stone closed the door. He got some more sleep, and late in the afternoon took a call from Rick Grant.
“I got the meet set up with my FBI guy, but it’s going to cost you an expensive dinner.”
“Fine; where?”
“Place called Michael’s, in Santa Monica, seven o’clock.” He gave Stone the address and directions.
Refreshed and rested, Stone was at Michael’s on time; Rick and another man were waiting for him at a table in a lovely garden.
“Stone, this is Hank Cable,” Grant said.
Stone shook hands with the FBI agent.
“We’ve met before,” the man said.
“Where?” Stone asked, puzzled.
“We had a meeting about the Sasha Nijinsky case, a few years ago, in New York. I was stationed there then.”
“Now I remember.”
“You were doing everything you could to keep us out of the case, as I recall.”
“I believe I was,” Stone agreed.
“I didn’t particularly hold it against you; it’s what we expected from the locals.”
“I’m glad. What have they got you doing out here?”
“I run the financial investigations division.”
“Just the man I want to talk to,” Stone said, smiling.
“Let’s order,” Grant said.
They ordered drinks, perused the menu and ordered dinner, then got down to business.
“So, what do you want from us?” Cable asked.
“It’s more what I’m going to give you,” Stone replied.
“How much is it going to cost me?”
“It’s a
freebie; I don’t want any glory, just to see justice done.”
Cable hooted with laughter.
Grant stepped in. “Hank, I think it might react to your benefit if you listened.”
“Okay, okay, shoot, Stone.”
Stone turned to Grant. “Rick, did you get anything on Barone Financial Services?”
“It’s registered with all the right state and federal agencies, but it’s some kind of bucket shop. Headquarters is a rundown office building on La Cienega; they’ve got the top floor, the sixth, about two thousand square feet of space.”
“Not a big outfit, then? Are there any other offices?”
“Just one, in Tijuana, Mexico.”
“Fairly weird.”
“What’s really weird is that this little outfit has forty telephone lines, including several special lines for fast modem transmissions.”
“Sounds like a bookie joint,” Cable said.
“You ever hear of a bookie operation that was registered with the state and federal governments as a broadbase financial services organization?” Grant asked.
“Now that you mention it, no,” the FBI agent replied.
“Neither have I,” Stone said. “What it sounds like to me is money laundering, especially with the Mexico connection.”
“Now you’re talking,” Cable said. “I love money laundries.”
“Barone’s girl told me he was in Mexico a lot,” Stone said. “What about Barone himself? Does he have a sheet?”
“Two arrests as a teenager, in New York, for running numbers.”
“He’s connected, then,” Cable said. “Why don’t I see what I can do about some wiretaps?”
“Good idea,” Stone said, “but I think there’s a lot more to this than Barone and his company.”
“Like what?” Cable asked.
“Ever hear of Abalone Fisheries?”
“Yeah. Holding company, isn’t it?”
“Right, but it’s who’s doing the holding.”
“Who?”
“Two guys named David Sturmack and Onofrio Ippolito.”
“Ippolito, the chairman of Safe Harbor Bank?”
“The same. Abalone owns twenty-odd percent of Safe Harbor and nearly all of Barone Financial.”
“Now you’re getting really interesting,” Cable said.
“You ever hear of Sturmack?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“He’s a lawyer who doesn’t practice law, son of a guy who worked closely with Meyer Lansky. He’s clean on paper, but he had major connections with the unions, especially the Teamsters.”
“And Ippolito is in business with him? I mean, Ippolito has a reputation as upstanding.”
“This upstanding citizen,” Stone said, “ordered a hit on me last night.” He told Cable the story.
“Had you ever met Ippolito before?”
“Once; I had dinner with him.”
“And you’re sure it was him on the phone?”
“I am.”
“Holy shit.”
“You look worried, Hank,” Grant said.
“It’s like this,” Cable said. “I can look into Barone Financial on my own—check out the directors and the employees. If enough of them have records, I can probably get a wiretap order. But I can’t go straight at Safe Harbor or Abalone without support from a lot higher up, and that’s going to take a lot of evidence.”
“If Barone Financial is dirty, won’t that give you what you need to go after Abalone?”
“Maybe, depends how dirty, but you can be sure that if Ippolito and Sturmack are mob, they’re going to ave some distance between them and Barone. It’ll be hard to nail them for one dirty operation; they could lay it off on Barone himself. I’ll bet he doesn’t report to either of the two big guys; there’s got to be a layer in between.”
“What about the raid on Vinnie’s Deli?” Stone asked Grant.
“It’s set for two P.M. tomorrow. We thought it best to go in when the tracks are open.”
“Good. Did you get a personal warrant on Vinnie?”
“Yeah; it’s too much to hope we’ll catch him on the premises.”
“If I were you, I’d have a tail on him before the raid. If he gets a call, he could run.”
“I agree.”
“Hang on,” Cable said, “what’s this about a raid on a bookie joint? How does that tie in?”
“Vincent Mancuso, the owner of the deli where the bookie joint is running, works for Ippolito,” Grant said.
“Directly?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if you get a good bust on the bookmaking charge, maybe you can use it to turn Mancuso.”
“I doubt it,” Grant said. “He’ll plead it down and do some time, and Ippolito will take care of him.”
Stone spoke up. “How about if you add attempted murder to the mix? Mancuso and his pal tried to kill me.”
“I thought you wanted to stay dead.”
“Tell him you’ve got a witness to the attempt, and you traced the boat to him. That’s not an outright lie.”
“It might work; who knows? I’d like to have something really heavy to hit him with, though. Pity the murder didn’t take; then we could use the threat of the death penalty to get him talking.”
Stone laughed. “That’s more than I’m willing to give for the cause.” Then he thought of something. “Wait a minute; Mancuso doesn’t know the murder didn’t take; charge him with murder.”
“I can’t do that, Stone; I know you’re alive.”
“Okay, then don’t charge him, but tell him you’re going to in interrogation.”
“It’s worth a try, but he’s going to lawyer up the minute we get him to a station.”
“Then ride him around a little; talk to him in the car. Tell him that if he hands you Manny and Ippolito for the murder and tells you what he knows about Ippolito’s operations, he’ll walk on both charges.”
“Come on, Stone, that’s not going to work. We can’t charge Ippolito for a murder that didn’t work out, and I doubt if somebody like Mancuso knows anything of importance about Ippolito.”
Cable spoke up. “You’re better off getting what you can from Mancuso using the bookie charge as a weapon, without implicating Ippolito. That would only tip him off, he’d pull up the drawbridge, and I don’t want that. I want to get a lot of stuff on him before we move.”
“I guess you’re right,” Stone said.
“Look, Stone,” Cable said, “I get the impression that you want all this to happen now, but it’s not going to. It takes time to get enough evidence to prosecute financial crimes.”
“I understand.”
“Of course, if you could come up with a witness who knows at least some of the inside workings of Abalone, that would move things right along.”
“Let me think about that,” Stone said.
“Oh,” Cable said, “there was mention of a kidnapping.”
“I’m not sure about that yet,” Stone replied. “I’ll have to get back to you.”
“Stone,” the FBI agent said, “try not to get anybody killed, okay? Kidnappings are dicey.”
“I’ll try,” Stone replied.
After dinner, Grant and Stone said good night to Hank Cable, then walked into the parking lot.
“I’ve got two things for you,” Grant said, taking a package from his car and handing it to Stone. “This is a little Walther 7.65 millimeter that conceals easily, along with a shoulder holster.”
“Thanks, Rick,” Stone said. “It’s perfect.”
Grant handed him an envelope. “This is a carry permit,” he said. “I walked it through myself. It’s the kind of thing retired cops get, and it doesn’t specify a particular weapon. I don’t want you to get caught carrying, even accidentally, without a license.”
“I really appreciate that, Rick.”
“I also don’t want you to shoot anybody with that pistol, although it’s as clean as a weapon can be. It would be a great embarrassment to me
if you popped anybody.”
“Rick, I understand your position, really I do. I can’t promise you I won’t use the piece, but I do promise you that if I do, it will be a good shooting.”
Grant sighed. “I guess that’s the most I can hope for,” he said.
Stone drove slowly back to the Beverly Hills Hotel. He had registered there under his own name, and he hadn’t changed cars. He was hoping against hope that somebody would mess with him again, particularly since he was now armed.
35
Stone had a mid-morning breakfast on his terrace overlooking the hotel’s gardens, thinking about what Hank Cable had said at dinner the night before. He needed a witness to get enough on Ippolito to persuade his superiors to go after somebody so prominent. Stone could think of only two candidates. He telephoned the first.
“Hello?” Her voice was careful, neutral.
“Barbara, it’s St…Jack Smithwick.”
“What number are you calling, please?”
“Is he there?”
“I’m sorry, you’ve dialed the wrong number,” she said. Then, just before she hung up, she whispered “Call in an hour.”
At loose ends, Stone went down to the swim, read the papers at poolside, then asked for a phone and called again.
“Hello?”
“I believe the appropriate question is, ‘Is the coast clear?’”
She laughed. “Yes, it’s clear.”
“You free for lunch?”
“Sure, and I’ve got a car this time.”
“Meet me at the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and bring a bikini—a very small one.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.” She hung up.
Stone swam a few laps, then hailed a poolboy and arranged for a cabana.
She saw him from a distance, then walked toward him, along the poolside, unbuttoning her cotton dress as she came.
For a moment he thought she was stripping in public, but when she stepped out of the dress she was wearing a very, very small bikini. She turned heads, and they didn’t stop looking when she sat down at the table next to him and gave him a big wet kiss.
“I was hoping you’d call,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
